Mozambique: Movement Alert Report (8-14 February 2024) - IOM
FILE PHOTO - The conflict has already caused more than 3,100 deaths and displaced 817,000. [File photo: MMO]
After losing everything fleeing the war in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, Adolfo Anlawe, 56, was saved by five parrots, which allowed him to start over with new ambitions with his family.
“I just wanted to get the daily curry,” he says, explaining to Lusa – in Kimwani, one of the languages spoken in Quissanga, a village destroyed by armed rebels in 2020 – how he went on to achieved much more than that.
Curry is the name of what you can add to rice, to ‘xima’ (porridge made with manioc flour or corn) or any other food base – it’s the flavour that breaks the monotony of food and gives it some more nutrients.
After days of fear, fleeing through the woods with his family, Adolfo arrived in Metuge. There he made a bird cage out of sticks and leaves, adding at the end some corn bran that he found in other people’s garbage.
It’s a technique he has used many times, in which the bran is the bait which lures the birds into the trap.
In July he made a cage half a meter long by a foot wide. Every day at dawn, he placed it under a tree usually full of birds that go there to eat the tree’s fruit. Adolfo was surprised to see that, in one week, he had captured five parrots.
“I was so amazed, I don’t know it was possible,” he says, noting that he took advantage of his luck and went into the bird business.
He sold each parrot for 2,500 meticais (€33) and with the money he got himself one hectare of land for cultivation, the main source of livelihood in Mozambique.
“Thank God I got my machamba [vegetable garden],” he says. Now, everything is possible again.
“Perhaps even returning to Quissanga, which my wife would like,” he says. “Now, I think I have the opportunity to develop a business through the machamba.”
Adolfo now has enough production to feed himself and his family and sell the surplus, a life many displaced left behind and would love to embrace again.
But Adolfo has another ambition. Before returning to Quissanga, he hopes to build a house near the national road Metuge intersection, and develop the business with greater visibility.
This displaced person who was saved by the parrots fled from Quissanga district to Metuge, along with his wife, five children and nine grandchildren.
Adolfo Anlawe is also responsible for caring for four nephews aged between 11 and 19, whose father was beheaded by the rebels during the January 2020 attack, which culminated in the destruction of the Bilibiza Agricultural School.
The family’s flight to Metuge lasted three days, without water or food, and with their seven-year-old son at risk from hunger and thirst.
“God only knows how I managed to get all the children to Metuge alive,” he says.
Today, in the Nagalane resettlement camp, sitting barefoot on a log, Adolfo is surrounded by all them as they share a meal of cassava, xima and dried fish that he got thanks from odd jobs in the machamba, the centre of the family economy.
Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas, but has been terrorized since 2017 by armed rebels, with some attacks claimed by the Islamic State extremist group.
The conflict has already cost more than 3,100 lives, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and displaced more than 817,000 residents, according to Mozambican authorities.
Since July, an offensive by government troops with the support of Rwanda, later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has increased security, recovering several areas from rebel hands, including the town of Mocímboa da Praia, occupied since August, 2020.
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.