Mozambique: Displaced people cheat hunger with beans leaves and salt

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Mozambique: Displaced people cheat hunger with beans leaves and salt

8:48 CAT | 01 Apr 2021

Photo: Lusa

The bean leaves that grow next to the shack in Pemba cheat the hunger of the 30-strong family of Virgílio Chimuemue, 61, a man displaced by the war in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique.

” I spend many days deprived, without help, with only with those leaves there. We always cook them, with some salt. The children eat them anyway. Bean leaves – they always collect and eat them,” he tells Lusa.

There is not enough food, “but the children sleep better, the children can play”, far from the sound of the weapons of the insurgent groups that have been plaguing the province for three and a half years.

But the price of security is hunger. Virgílio had to leave the fertile lands of Muidumbe, where he lived to “cultivate the field”, to cultivate the art of working the ‘machamba’.

“We save [food donations] by eating once a day,” keeping back bags of cornmeal for Virgílio’s grandchildren.

“We check the children, and when they are worse is when we go to prepare,” he says, pointing to the bags sheltered by tarps, where pots and pans are scattered on the sandy floor.

Today is one of the days when smiles greet the donations of support from Caritas.

“These bags contain cowpeas, which cook faster, because we know they don’t have charcoal,” explains Betinha Ribeiro, one of the humanitarian support team which travels in an open-box vehicle through the rutted streets of the Expansão neighbourhood.

Paths with so many ditches scoured by the rain that a neighbourhood almost glued to the city seems quite distant.

Sugar, spaghetti, oil, are the ‘luxuries’ in this donation. There is also rice that will be cooked and used by everyone.

“I don’t have a job here, I’m always a displaced person,” Virgílio complains, with never any money “to buy food”.

Another religious association, Arco-Iris, also occasionally brings food to the family, without further support responses, despite being identified.

“They come there and write down our names, but they never bring anything. They use our refugee names,” Virgílio complains, unable to understand what is wrong.

What he’s sure of is, he cannot go back.

Source: Lusa