My Neighbor just told me

I am completely and utterly fascinated by the history of this country. It has somewhat of a Pavlov-ian effect on me.  Anytime, anywhere I am, all someone has to do is mention something about the war, and my curiosity peaks all the while my mouth starts to drool.

It’s weird to think that I was alive while the war here was raging.  While I was using plastic guns to play fake war with my friends back home, my Mozambican counterparts (some the same age as me) were playing actual war with real ones.  During two wars that raged for over 25 years, entire villages were burned to the ground, children were recruited to be soldiers and their parents were killed or forced into slavery, families were literally torn apart appendage by appendage, hundreds of thousands were buried across the country in mass graves, and millions of people were forced to flee the land their families had occupied for centuries.  It was mass starvation, endemic poverty, malnutrition, trauma, and severe psychological damage to all those who were involved.  It was mass murder and the self-destruction of an entire nation.

It’s been 20 years since the Rome General Peace Accords ended the Civil War between FRELIMO and RENAMO, but war is still very much fresh on the minds of those that survived the horror.  How could they forget?  It doesn’t help that the world around them constantly seems to produce unwanted reminders of what they went through.

My neighbor just told me that sometimes when people in the Nampula Province (where he’s from) burn their trash (this is typically how people dispose of it, though in Montepuez the city administrator has started a collection program, something that is unique to both this region and country), every once in a while the fire will set off latent bullets that liter the ground, left behind from the war that ended two decades ago.

The bullets are there for a number of reasons.  Could be that they were purposely put there along with a number of other dangerous toys, stored and then forgotten about (or worse) by people making a makeshift weapons cache underground that would be easily accessible if the need to arm oneself ever arose.  Or maybe it was a bullet that dropped out of someone’s vest 20 years ago.  Maybe it was a dud.  Doesn’t matter how it got there; what matters is that it’s terrifying that this threat actually exists.  Imagine going into your yard to ignite your trash or dead brush, and then being inadvertently ripped in half by a spray of forgotten bullet’s someone decided to dump on your property prior to it being your property.

Luckily, the thought of erratic trash bullets ripping across your machamba is easily forgotten when you start to remember that this is Mozambique, and you have way bigger things to worry.  This country has an incredibly fresh and vicious past that left us a ton of reminders with which to remember it.  Aside from the intangible cultural mementos, there are a plethora of physical souvenirs as well.  And these little trinkets like to explode.

Over the course of two wars that spanned nearly thirty years, hundreds of thousands of landmines – potentially millions – were laid from the northern border with Tanzania to the areas that surround Maputo, the capital city in the far south.  That’s a distance over two California’s in length.  And most of that is bush.  Although an incredible amount of effort has been put into clearing these mine fields (the UN is using rats that have been trained to detect mines!) and making the country safe to explore off-road once more, there are still areas that are not only heavily mined, but poorly marked as well. And then you think, "Well, shit...at least a bullet sometimes lets you keep your leg."