Jim Day
A COUPLE of hundred Mozambican children filled the sandy school playground, some lounging in the shade of a shady tree, others practising their Van Damme kickboxing moves, while a small group of student volunteers from South Africa and elsewhere put the finishing touches on their rebuilt school.
While one of the volunteers painted the name of the school on a new wall, “Escola Primaria Umidade 2” – “Unity Primary School Number Two” – project co-ordinator Jacob van Garderen showed what 11 students from the Southern Africa Student Volunteers (Sasvo) and a handful of locals had done over the previous two weeks in this school, nestled among thatch huts and palm trees on the outskirts of Maputo
They put a roof over four classrooms that had been open to the elements. They capped the blocked and unusable toilets, and dug new toilets. They put up walls where there had been none.
The result is school no longer has to shut down every time it rains. The 1 600 students will still have to come to the six classrooms in three shifts throughout the day, as do all primary-school students in Maputo, but now they will at least have a dry floor to sit on.
“It has been 15 years we’ve watched our school falling down,” said Umidade headmaster, Armando Francisco Musgane, adding that in the past, efforts to find money for repairs had failed, so most classes were held outside.
The two classrooms that were not rebuilt show what the whole school looked like two weeks before. The concrete-block structure has only three graffiti-scrawled walls and no roof, and the dirt floor looks like a well-used old campsite, with rusty beer cans, broken glass and coconut husks littered everywhere. The school has no furniture, no exercise books, no blackboards, no electricity, and no water.
There are 85 schools in the Maputo area, and all of them are in as much need of repair as Umidade 2 was before the Sasvo project, said David Simango, Maputo’s director of education. No other school reconstruction projects are currently under way in the district, although primary education is the top priority for Mozambican education officials, he said.
Four years after the end of Mozambique’s civil war, the country is the poorest in the world. The amount of foreign donations for reconstruction has dropped by $190-million since 1994. The International Monetary Fund, which has placed austerity measures on the country, has said it regards reconstruction funds as inflationary.
In a nation with a per capita gross national product of about $100, reconstruction money, including money for schools, is indispensable.
Last year, the United Nations Development Programme estimated that more than one million of Mozambique’s two million primary school-aged children do not attend school, noted Christof Heyns, director of Sasvo.
“It is difficult, so difficult, to study here,” said Eugenio Abel Tembe, a 19-year-old student who previously attended Umidade 2. He helped rebuild the school with the Sasvo volunteers, and the experience piqued his interest in working on more redevelopment projects. “Before I did this project, there were things I couldn’t do. Now, I am sure I can do it.”
The reconstruction project is one of 26 completed by Sasvo volunteers in December and January in South Africa, in Tanzania, Botswana and Mozambique, said Heyns.
Students volunteer their labour and expertise, and in return they get transportation and lodging while completing a project. More importantly, say these students, they contribute to the well-being of a community and gain experience in redevelopment projects.
Such projects, however, are only “a drop in the ocean,” said Van Garderen, and that is evidenced by the fanfare this one project received in Maputo.
The South African High Commissioner for Mozambique, top education officials, monetary donors, university professors and the media all came out to see a project that lasted two weeks in total and cost about R25 000 in materials.