Desperate mothers scalped for water at camp
Swatting away flies, Cinesto Guvare argues loudly with a young woman.
The woman is desperate. She has missed the water truck and has nothing for her young family to drink.
Guvare, who runs a small business at the entrance of the Chakelane displaced peoples' camp, is not interested in her plight.
"Either you pay or you don't. Don't waste my time, there are others here," he shouts.
In front of Guvare's four 10-litre buckets of ice-cold water is a line of mothers, several of them pregnant. The heat is scorching and people are desperately thirsty.
More than 60000 people are living at the camp after floods devastated southern Mozambique, killing 80 people and displacing nearly 200000 two weeks ago.
A few metres from Guvare, other merchants run the same lucrative business: selling water that they get young children to collect.
"I am not ashamed . it is business and business is good," says Guvare. "I sell small cups of water for 30meticais (R10) . "
The traders, whose stalls are brimming with supplies, sell small tins of pilchards for 25MZM (R8), a bag of maize for 110MZM (R36), eggs at 6MZM (R2) each, a bar of soap for 300MZM (R100), charcoal for 400MZM (R133) and a small bottle of cooking oil for 250MZM (R83).
The average Mozambican family's annual income is R2 610.
"People will always come to me," says Guvare. "Not everyone here gets food and those who are really hungry will not wait for food to be delivered, which maybe happens once a day."
The camp, staffed by the UN and Red Cross, is the one from which South African humanitarian agency Gift of the Givers withdrew after discovering that its administrators and their families were on the list of aid beneficiaries.
"It is food from the UN . we get people to collect for us and then we sell it . we sell everything: food, oil, soaps, clothes, anything we can," says Guvare.
"Life is tough, even for us, but we have to survive and this is how we survive."
The woman he has yelled at eventually hands over a crumpled note, gratefully taking the cup, her young daughter gulping down the water.
Asked if he is not concerned about being caught selling aid that was intended to be free, Guvare says: "If I don't, someone else will, so it might as well be me."
Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman says his organisation delivers food direct to people in need.
"Though bartering will never be stopped, and we have no control over what people do with the aid once they receive it, we give direct to those in need and not administrators."
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Posted 132 days agoWell you bloody should be ashamed!
Sad that great goodness is always poisoned by great evil. There are so many very heroic acts being done in Mocambique at the moment and then you have to have this horses behind reminding us of just how distasteful humans can be.
Scribbles
RSA.MommaCyndi
The UN simply does not have the manpower to follow every single person in a camp to see if they are going to sell it or not. They work on maximum delivery in minimum time. You can't have personnel wasting time following kids with buckets of water when the camp down the road has kids dying from not having any.
Scribbles
To some security of family is EVERYTHING... As the one peddler noted, life for his family isn't much different from the people he's selling to. He's simply trying to get a leg-up. Again, it's disgusting, I'm not refuting this. I'm just pointing out that many of us might do the same depending on the situation.
As for the UN, it's a much bigger organization than the Gift of the Givers so I hardly think it would be that difficult to take a leaf out of the NGO's book. They certainly don't have to follow children with buckets of water.
RSA.MommaCyndi
The UN is not a police agency. The politics of the whole thing become very dicey in some countries. Gift of the Givers is a lovely but independent NGO who can pick and chose where they want to participate. The UN isn't. If they do get involved in anything after the distribution has been done then they are accused of having a political agenda or undermining the sovereignty of the country. That then impacts negatively on their ability to provide aid in that (and other) countries. It isn't a simple matter, it is a minefield of politics.
Scribbles
Good, because that's definitely not what I'm trying to convince you of seeing... Not even close.
As for the UN, I suppose I didn't consider the political ramifications. It's unfortunate that people have to suffer because of politics, a disturbingly common theme around the world...
RSA.MommaCyndi
donorfatigued
Posted 132 days agoEven the mayor of Chibuto, to where our supplies were flown, and all the way up the ladder of corrupt Mozambican officialdom to the governor of Gaza province were involved in attempted theft of airlifted supplies. Our independent, non-UN South African group of private volunteer pilots made it's own distribution arrangements through a local Portuguese doctor and we had volunteer personnel, ex-SADF guys, ride shotgun and accompany the distribution trucks to protect the supplies and ensure that distribution happened properly.
Other airlifting donors such as the Spanish, Germans etc who flew in using large aircraft like Transalls etc, piggy-backed on our system as they could also see that no food would reach the proper recipients.
Corruption in Mozambique was then and clearly is now, endemic. With such deeply corrupt and inhuman attitudes there can be no solutions to the problems of that country.