Mozambique: floods-reconstruction/IPS MS Solidarity 2000-News/

The Untold Story of Resilience

By Antonio Gumede

MAPUTO, June 2000 - When a Swedish national working in Mozambique was shot dead at the height of the civil war in Mozambique in 1984, the logical option for volunteer-dependent non governmental organisations such as MS would have been to fold up its operations and leave the country.

MS did not quit. Instead the organisation, which had been operating in the country for only two years at the time, responded by reluctantly instructing its volunteers to retreat from the rural areas into the provincial capitals.

This was in line with the attitude adopted by other Nordic organisations that had staff deployed in Mozambique at the time. Yet the volunteers could have chosen to leave if they wished to do so. "The easy thing would have been to leave", says Ms Hanne Rode, the coordinator of the MS programme in Mozambique.

The war had brought with it a lot of hardships with widespread shortages of basic essentials. "We had to survive on vegetables and sardines", she recalls. So what made the volunteers stay? After all Mozambique was the only country in the world where volunteers recruited by MS had an option to relocate if they chose to because of its particular circumstances.

These circumstances should in principle made Mozambique a no go area volunteers turning the recruitment process into a nightmare. Ms Rode herself was offered the option of going into comfortable Zimbabwe, but turned it down.

She wanted to come to Mozambique. She says that, the effect of this clause of self-exclusion was that those Danish volunteers who came to Mozambique were committed to the country and had politically correct attitude towards the country.

That is why, she says, most of the volunteers who came at that time are either still here or keep coming back. "They are our veterans fighters", she adds jokingly. Needless to say that for an organisation which uses the philosophy of creating a space for human beings to interact as a conflict-prevention mechanism, quitting at the time Mozambique needed them most could have tainted the image of the organisation.

Ironically the frustration of the volunteers associated with the influx of "pick and pay" donor assistance which began flooding the country when Mozambique formally abandoned the socialist policies and adopted liberal policies 1987-88 and rapid political and social changes that followed did more damage to the operations of MS in the country than the ravages of civil war and social and economic hardships.

The number of volunteers or development workers, as they are now known, dropped from a peak of around 40 in 1990 to 11 in 1997. This period coincided with change in the philosophy of the organisation from the emphasis of providing human skills into one that focussed primarily on building partnerships and capacity within national partner associations or institutions that work MS. Things seem to have changed for better.

There are now 24 long-term development workers deployed by MS in Mozambique, working in areas as diverse as environment, civil society, museums, public administration, health, physical planning, culture, education and capacity building in the five provinces where the organisation focus its activities, namely Maputo, Manica, Sofala, Tete, Nampula and Cabo Delgado.

The draft programme covering the period 2000 - 2004 will focus on three main aspects namely the strengthening of organisational capacity, facilitation of income generation activities at local level and the strengthening of the management of natural resources and natural disasters.

The number of development workers is expected to grow to around 28-30 by 2004. With an operational budget of roughly US$ 900,000 MS for the year 2000 in Mozambique does not command the amount of resources that would attract the envy of any developed world NGO working the developing world.

There are national Mozambican NGOs with far more resources at their disposal The limited resources may act as an impediment to the number of activities that the organisation can carry out. However, the organisation philosophy is precisely to build partnerships and capacity through skills transfer and interaction rather than dishing out financial assistance and wait for the next disbursement in the next project cycle.

"We have moved away from the practice of building everything around a development worker and when he/she leaves everything collapses. Our job is not to substitute the Mozambican; it is to assist them to work better", Hanne Rode says.

Under the new philosophy of working through partnerships, the partner organisations are required to take part not only in the identification of the areas where they require assistance to build capacity, but even participate in the drafting of the terms of reference and actual selection of candidates. In this sense, the organisation has probably achieved more than many other NGOs which boast large pools of resources.

One modest example of MS achievement is the creation of the Mozambican youth volunteers association AJUDE. AJUDE is a youth network with 1250 members. Ernesto Tchamo, the national coordinator, says that MS contributed greatly to the development of his association. This consisted in bringing young volunteers from Europe as well as sponsoring the participation of AJUDE members in youth camps in Denmark.

AJUDE is now organising youth camps and volunteer work in Mozambique during the floods that hit southern Mozambique in February and March AJUDE volunteers built 12 classrooms in two primary schools and participated in the erection of temporary shelter for the people displaced by the floods.

"We have learnt to value working not money but as a gesture of solidarity with other people", says Tchamo.