Physical Health Mozambique Project #35501

Mossuril Museum of Slavery's Nursery School

by Stichting Teran Foundation

Project Report | Aug 16, 2019
TIA: This is Africa so we are waiting

By Lisa St. Aubin de Teran | Project Leader

Angela, Fatima, Fatima, Latifa & Fatima

This report is a TIA letter. TIA = ‘This is Africa’ and those who live here, particularly in the outer reaches of this exceptionally lovely continent, know that life consists of taking two steps forward and one step back. And absolutely nothing gets done without enormous patience and perseverance.

For SHINE’s executive branch of 3 Fatimas, Angela and Latifa waiting for a green light on their much- needed nursery school is yet another disappointment in a long line of such. After 16 years here, I know that there is no way we can start without a final written authorization from the District Government. And because the ruined building in question is a national monument and part of Mozambique’s cultural heritage falling under the jurisdiction of UNESCO World Heritage Mozambique Island, the District Government has to wait for the written and stamped approval of an office called GACIM on that island before it can give its own final permission.

Much of 2019 so far has been a year of sitting waiting on the fork of that cleft stick.

To try to speed things up, we re-issued our request in April with copies of all the paperwork and drawings (lest any had gone astray in transit).

And to try to fill the gap, we have open air playgroups for up to 100 local children who come and play with our games and toys, learn a little English and some Portuguese, sing some songs and listen to stories.

Yesterday, the Permanent Secretary of Mossuril assured me and a SHINE representative that we will be able to start ‘by September’.

We live in hope. Hope is a weed that can flourish anywhere including on this sun-leached patch of coast We have successfully carried out many other projects: each of which was like climbing uphill through molasses, so we will create an escolinha / pre-school and we will have an IT learning hub for women and girls.

Meanwhile, we are waiting and dreaming.

Every day we walk past the ruin that will one day be the Escolinha Eromelo and where the walls are tumbled down we imagine them restored, and where the high, back wall is now closed, we see a new entrance for the playground-to-be. And Fatima 1 (the President of SHINE)and Angela count the days until we can open the new playschool and they can both have a job there while now they are both unemployed.

It was not for nothing they chose the name ‘Eromelo’ for their project: ‘Hope’.

A lot gets lost and taken here, since the recent cyclones, 4 out of the five of us have had malaria (again) and several of the SHINE group have lost family members. Mossuril is getting a new water supply and there is talk of it finally getting a proper access road; but we believe that the best key to its future development is to give it a pre-school and to help educate local women.

And last, but not least, we hope our supporters ;out there' will bear with us as we wait to get through the minefield of bureaucracy which, some say, is the worst legacy that the Portuguese left to this country. We are bound up in red tape. We know we will get free of it eventually and we know that will be some time soon. But until we get that green light, we are bound to wait.

Thank you to all of those who have helped so far and in particular to those who make a monthly contribution as this is used for emergencies and medical costs for the SHINE women who will, eventually be running the project. Malaria treatments are free at our local health post but when supplies run out or, when blood transfusions are needed (and malaria can provoke pernicious anaemia) supplies have to be bought in the city. A toddler died of malaria last week because we couldn’t get her enough blood in time. Our pre-school will provide nutritious snacks like moringa cookies, eggs, and tuna, and fresh fruit. Sub-nutrition is endemic here and it has a knock-on effect. The best and least intrusive way to combat it will be via tasty play-time snacks.

I hope we get the chance to serve them soon.

Despite the need for patience, I remain yours somewhat impatiently, Lisa de Teran

Some of the local children

One of Mossuril's virgin beaches

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Jun 7, 2019
Nursery-school project report: Rain stopped play

By Lisa de Teran | Mrs.

A child in floodwater after the cyclone

Ever since Cyclone Idai threatened and then hit Mozambique on the 14th^st of March there have been torrential rains and we have no internet. I had to travel out of Nampula Province to send this report and our only road out of Mossuril has been closed by rain damage.

After Cyclone Idai destroyed 90% of Beira and before it turned its wrath on Zimbabwe, it was scheduled to hit Mossuril and Mozambique Island with winds of 210km per hour. But it changed direction and we were saved while other parts of Sub Saharan Africa were smashed to smithereens. So whatever damage there has been here along the coast of Mossuril, however many trees have been uprooted and huts blown down, we all give thanks for our salvation while we reach out in spirit to the hundreds of thousands of victims of the worst weather disaster ever to hit Africa.

With power lines down and dead cell phones and the one and only road connecting Mossuril to the rest of the country washed away in places and bogged down impassably with mud in others, there was not much we could do. Yet again, our isolation was as nothing compared to that of Beira.

Much as we wanted to get out there and help, the logistics turned such thoughts to mere wishful thinking.

Back in March 2008, when Mossuril was beaten by the tail of Cyclone Jokwe, Teran Foundation was able to give both immediate and mid-term help because we were embedded in the heart of it. Back then, we set up a soup kitchen and shelter for over 200 afflicted villagers and together with Save The Children we were able to pin point over 800 families in need of immediate help. Within one week we raised 25.000 USD for cyclone relief and were able to distribute hundreds of emergency packs and help rebuild dozens of new homes.

Sadly, Cyclone Relief from Idai’s devastation has proven to be a logistic nightmare in which most of us can only help indirectly. 8 weeks after it struck, it can no longer hold the headlines but over one million survivors still need that help from bigger charities on the ground.

In Mossuril, the mud huts of several dozen villagers had their roofs blown off and some collapsed completely. And one week later, an undermined water tower fell down and killed a woman who was getting a bucket of water. Half the roof of Mossuril Primary School was ripped off as was the roof of Teran Foundation’s art and craft room. Closer to home, tons of rubble and iron wood beams crashed into our house as several of its flat roofs caved in under the weight of the rain.

Then while Mozambique was still reeling from the loss and shock of Idai, in a hitherto unprecedented second strike, Cyclone Kenneth headed in and razed chunks of the Northern Coast and its hinterland. It virtually flattened 80% of the houses on historic Ibo Island and caused havoc in Pemba.

Once again, Mossuril was scheduled for destruction and then saved. Once again, we feel lucky to be alive. And then in the wake of Kenneth there was yet more rain: Biblical rains hammering down night and day. I have lived in the tropics for nearly 3 decades and seen many a tropical storm but I have never seen any as heavy as these.

Now we have had three consecutive dry days and everything is drying out so quickly we can begin to take stock and to plan and dream again. So we are picking up our planned Nursery School and even though our stockpiles of cement and lime and building sand have been washed away, the shell is still standing. The ruined former slave prison has walls 80cm-deep and it has withstood dozens of cyclones and hurricanes, tornados, riots and wars.

The back of the ruined building is more vulnerable than the front because the ruin is at its most dilapidated there. Our pre-school is destined to occupy two large rooms at the back.

The day before Idai hit Beira, at around 5pm our time, a great and noisy wind swept through Mossuril literally blowing people of the street. It lasted for about ten minutes (terrifying all and sundry including your truly) before blowing out to sea with its booty of roofs and uprooted trees, fishing boats and whatever else it managed to capture on its way.

Now that the rains have ceased and the floods here, at least, have subsided, after the local work force has cleared away the debris from their own yards and mended their own mud huts, we will finally be able to start restoring and building the much-needed nursery school.

Meanwhile, the local hospital is treating hundreds of villagers for malaria. In Mozambique, all malaria treatments are free. After the rains, the mosquitoes are everywhere. A haze of them is zizzing around my head and hands now as I type. But, as I said at the beginning, we cannot complain because we are so much better off than the people of Beira and Zambezia and Ibo and Pemba and Cabo Delgado many of whom have lost everything including their crops and 737 of whom lost their lives.

While the villagers here still need help and their kids still need their pre-school, they are not at the front of the queue (so to speak). So for those of you with a lot to donate, please help the cyclone victims of Beira Then, if you have anything over for the Second Eleven, although our team had to sit this one out while rain stopped play, we are raring to get back into the game.

Beira March 23 2019

Links:

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Mar 6, 2019
Mossuril Museum of Slavery's Nursery School (35501)

By lisa Duff-Scott | Project Leader

Dear Friends and donors,

Here in Mossuril we are waiting for a particularly heavy rainy season to end so that we can start building and restoring the new nursery school. This has been the wettest rainy season I have known since I first arrived in Mossuril in 2003.

So far, despite several direct cyclone warnings for Mossuril during the past 3 months, we have been lucky enough to escape with nothing worse than torrential rains, gale-force winds and roads blocked by knee-deep mud.

Meanwhile, though, we have been working on the administrative and logistic side of the project. And after some stalling at the District level, the Provincial Governor of Nampula, H/E Victor Borges has kindly stepped in to sweep the red tape out of the nursery-school-to-be’s way.

In Mozambique, the Government has been de-centralized thus projects can only move forward when the relevant District Government actively allows them to.

Now, as soon as we get past these last few weeks of rains we will be able to get going under the guidance of the local master builder, Momade (left).

While we are waiting we have adopted a nursery school which is already up-and-running on neighbouring Mozambique Island which has lots of children and staff but no toys or games or equipment of any kind.

Thanks to all your support via Global Giving and in particular to the pro-active enthusiasm of Selina and her friends in Ibiza, we have a lot more nursery school equipment, toys and games arriving in September for our new pre-school. So we have donated 2 boxes of pre-school books, toys and games to Mozambique Island (always known as ‘Ilha’).

And we also have 2 laptops for Mossuril’s nursery school which will help Selina from Ibiza and her two fellow-volunteers to give support and extra pre-school teacher-training to Angela and Fatima when they come out to Mossuril for the month of September 2019. The laptops will then belong to the pre-school.

This year, we are asking all of our volunteers to either pay their volunteer registration fees directly as a donation to the nursery school project or to bring an equivalent value in kind.

We are pleased to now have a collection point in the UK, one in Amsterdam and another in Ibiza for toys and books but especially for Early Learning toys and games. So we would like to thank everyone who has already contributed as well as those who will be helping with gifts, goods, transport and / or donations in the future.

As the storms have also hit Nampula City, both Angela and Fatima are waiting for the weather to settle down before taking up their Mozambican Government pre-school teacher-training course. As both of them have families in Mossuril, they will need to commute weekly to the big city (180km away) and for that Mossuril’s one access road needs to be passable.

And, meanwhile, we are preparing an extra push to raise the remaining budget to make this pre-school a big success.

While sitting around watching the rain is not very exciting, after 16 years of living here, we know it is sometimes necessary.

In fact, it is so common that I wrote a short story about it some years ago. It is called ‘Watching the Rain’ and it is set in Mossuril and based on a true story. This weekend I will dig it out and publish it on Teran Foundation’s facebook for anyone who is interested.

I believe that the greatest good grows out of nursery education and pre-school care and ‘vakani vakani’ (= slowly slowly) we will provide Mossuril with its first pre-school.

ETA is now September 2019.

Best wishes and thank you again from Lisa St. Aubin de Teran on behalf of children and their parents in Mossuril.

Attachments:

2nd Report Mossuril Museum of Slavery.docx (DOCX)

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