The Hot County

by Nário Sixpene (Mozambique)

Making a local connection Mozambique

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Me and my father decided to take a train to Matola Gare. Matola Gare, as I know it, is a county of war memories, where is a military barracks, surrounded with farms belonging to people who don’t feel intimidated by the old history of the county and usually go there to cultivate their farms and built their houses. It is a county, but with few people. One Oldman who sat by our side in the train told me that " twenty-eight years ago, no one could wish to go to Matola Gare. There were soldiers of Renamo party everywhere, and if they caught you, you had to pray to god for your life". He was speaking about the time when our country was immersed in civil war that took almost sixteen years. During that time turmoil was installed in whole country. After he told me that, I understood why many people left their farms on that time, and after the war ended, people were afraid to go back to those lands. One of the things that took my eye when I arrived in Matola Gare is the crowd at the main station of the village. there, when a passenger train arrives, it is possible to see a crowd. As it is very long with many carriages, more than one hundred people get off the train and they scatter by the time, as many of them are going to their destinations. It is believed that more than one hundred fifty people go to Matola Gare just to cultivate their farms. " I’m getting wet, it is very hot". I said this to my father when we were hiking to our farm in Matola Gare. But I was getting tired and I Was sweating because we were hiking for almost one hour as the farm stays 1 km after the village. Besides that, Mozambique Is a hot country, here the weather can reach 48° C. " You should be acquainted, this is the land where you belong, a country where you were born, our climate is tropical." Indeed, I should be acquainted by that time. But I think I couldn’t get acquainted of a weather that is always high, and consequently burning people. As result, farmers are complaining about the weather, as it burns the agricultural products. While we were hiking to our farm, suddenly appeared Uncle Celina, an old woman who likes to crop her farm by herself though her age and said that "it hasn’t rained properly in last four years. Some say that it happens because of climate change, as scientists say, Mozambique has been one of the victims of climate change. In last year, in the center and north of the country where had been two cyclones that killed more than six hundred people. But here in south of the country, the scenery is quite different, drought has been burning our production and I don’t how shall we live" The majority of Mozambican population depends on agriculture to survive. "Why are we still cropping the land if it hasn’t been raining and worse, we don’t even know if it will rain?" I asked my father. "We cannot give up working just because it didn’t rain as expected in last couple of years, you have to be hopeful”, my father answered to my pessimist question and tried to motivate me to work. In last couple of years, due to droughts, we lost many products stemmed from farm. Maisie, sweet potatoes, peanuts and others. "We don’t know when is it going to rain, and if it happens to rain without had prepared the farms for sowing. We can’t slash our interest in farm, because we can’t predict the weather". My father was very hopeful about the rain, but after the bad experiences of the past years, I couldn’t feel the same although I had to help him farm the land. Grubbers and gloves are our tools to work, we rarely use animals or a tractor. But when the things go difficult, we try to find help on them, after all we have to be hopeful, because we don’t know when is going to rain.