Tinderbox: when "if" becomes "when"

Another light thunderstorm is rolling through Mapinhane today. Not much rain with this one, but the ugly bruised black cloud and grumbly thunder sure talk the talk. It never ceases to amaze me just how deep the BOOM and CRAAAACKLE of thunder can be – like the direct hit of a two-ton bomb, or the tantrums of gods/goddesses throwing shit across the sky in a very public domestic dispute. A pot here.  A vase there. Oops, there goes the lamp by the loveseat. Our mortal eyes can follow the violence flicking across the sky. Our skin can feel the electricity. And the heavy accompanying silence.

The storm has offered a nice reprieve however – from the incredible heat that’s already set in, and from the misery of being sick with few amenities.  I haven’t been sick in awhile but I woke up this morning to run and felt all shaky and weak. I brushed it off in typical denial, ran anyways, and not even an hour later found myself curled up on the cool cement floor in the fetal position, shivering and angry with myself. Thankfully I passed out and slept most of the day. But not even my dreams were comforting.

I just finished reading the Hunger Games series last night. It’s a phenomenal series. Plus, I adore the protagonist Katniss – her strength, resiliency, and sincerity in the face of ever unfavorable odds is makes her a fiercely lovable fighter and heroine. Yet, all the fighting, gore, violence, struggle, sacrifice, death, and heartbreaking loss clung to my conscience. Even without reading the Hunger Games, the anti-malarial “black box” meds I’m on (Larium is easily the hardest drug I’ve ever used) bring intermittent waves of violent dreams anyways, and often transform otherwise mild nightmares into full-blown graphic death/murder scenes. On Larium, I’ve dreamt about people getting slashed apart, executed, thrown off balconies, always large pools of blood…  I’ve been hesitant to write about any of this in order to avoid concern or alarming anyone (I’m well monitored don’t worry, we have an excellent med unit here in PC). And while I’m obviously horrified, I’m secretly, sickly fascinated with this drug-induced revealing of my subconscious. Is this a hint of the darkness that we all have in us? That’s partly what the Hunger Games series challenges afterall – that our ability to tolerate or even enact cruelty exceptionalises no one.  After these awful dreams, I always wake up in my own pools of sweat and have to shake myself back into reality. The worst nightmares of course are the ones that substitute loved ones from my own life. Those dreams take a little longer to shake off. And so, as I tossed and turned on the floor in the midst of fever/Larium, Katniss’s fictional enemies quickly morphed into my own.

In the midst of all the civil unrest and RENAMO guerilla attacks against innocent people here in Mozambique, I dreamed that RENAMO was attacking Mapinhane and shooting my Mozambican friends, mowing them down from the back as they ran towards me. I was screaming and screaming and SCREAMING bloody murder, writhing, fighting someone’s iron grip around my waist, demanding that they let me go so I could run to them, protect them, shield them with my body, do SOMETHING. Instead, like a slow motion scene in a spy movie, I was knocked off my feet, and my eye caught the Peace Corps logo on the side of the van right before I was chucked into it and had the doors locked after me. We were driving away. Running away. Leaving everyone to die. I woke up bawling. It was a horrible, unrecoverable morning.

The tragic thing is, realistically, that’s more or less what would happen if war breaks out in Mozambique again. I, a privileged American get whisked out of danger while the people who’ve cared for me are left to fend/fight for themselves. If this nightmare were ever to be realized (perhaps not in the Hollywood-esque style of my nightmare, but more in the day-to-day slow way that dominos fall, aka PC decides to close its Mozambique program and we’re evac´d before there’s any danger), I’m positively sure it would break my heart.

Least to say, the civil unrest here in Mozambique has been on everyone’s minds the last few months or so, but especially the last two weeks with the waves of new civilian attacks.  RENAMO, in response to a supposed assassination attempt against their leader Dhakalama, has negated and withdrawn from the 1992 Peace Treaty that ended the last civil war. Moreover, RENAMO is rejecting talk offers from President Guebueza and FRELIMO that came too little and waaaay too late, and subsequently is now demanding that all elections are terminated before any negotiations can go forward. And, if the elections are not terminated, RENAMO will go to whatever length necessary to terminate them forcibly. Guebueza, arrogantly feeling that he has the stronger hand with the municipal elections underway and the presidential elections next November, is in no way compromising his position. And so, RENAMO is now using the opportunity of political fallout to justify clashes with police and military bases as well as wage a minor bush-league campaign of terror throughout Sofala province, particularly in Gorongosa National Park (where their bush military headquarters is located) and a 100km stretch of the National Highway (N-1) between the Rio Save and Muxungue.  Most notably, RENAMO guerillas have been opening fire on private vehicles, 16-wheelers, public buses, and chapas alike, killing dozens of innocent people. Last week, guerillas escalated their siege of the N-1 by literally digging a large trench across the highway, entrapping the armed convoy and opening fire. Such an attack mirrored strategies used in the last civil war, as did last weeks attack and ransacking of a community Heath Center in Nhamazi, Nganda Gorongosa. Meanwhile, FRELIMO’s bullying of any opposition political party was made especially clear when in Beira leading up to the elections, FRELIMO police broke up a peaceful political rally with gun shots, tear gas, and set cars on fire. Mozambique’s political process is clearly anything but fair and democratic.

Perhaps the saddest consequence of these attacks is how they are shaking up the national Mozambican psyche.  Within one week of this new slew of attacks, most Mozambicans I talked to shifted from saying “If there’s a war…”to “When the war reaches us…”

This past week when my colleagues and I were correcting the tenth grade national exams, Prof. Elisio and Prof. Juliao always had their radios on, listening through the static for information on the most recent attacks. The mood has understandably tended to be a bit glum.

Yet, an interesting thing has occurred too in the face of this instability and bad news – the use of humor to talk about things that are actually really scary to imagine. After many hours of the radio blaring bad news and the stacks of ungraded exams diminishing only slightly, Osvaldo stood up and declared proudly, “Well, that’s it. I have no choice but to become the next President and resolve all our problems.” We all laughed, rolling our eyes, asking him to explain his vision for Mozambique. He started by guaranteeing that each and every teacher would receive a pencil sharpener with their service and no longer would any teacher need to hassle the Ped. Director again! We were all clutching our sides, laughing our asses off at his mild and subtle satire of the ever-bribing-African-politician motif. Over the next few days, Osvaldo kept adding issues and ideas to his campaign platform, including the Mozambican ownership of Mozambican resources (*cough* CHINA *cough*) and a redistribution of wealth (*cough* CORRUPT MAPUTO MINISTERS *cough*) that seemed to echo a bit of Mozambique’s communist history, not to mention the freedom from hunger and the right to work.  Osvaldo then dubbed me his “branca Condoleeza Rice” and Prof. Elodio his Vice President, then sprinkled in a few token “God Bless America”s and “God Bless Mozambique”s in broken English to make sure he was reaching his entire audience. And so, in spite of the tensions and fears (for example, Prof. Bonde’s whole family is in Beira, trapped in Sofala and he can’t return to them for the holidays out of fear of attacks), we all had big grins lighting our faces for the rest of the day.

Election season is a tinderbox anywhere you go. But here in Mozambique, it’s crazy… crazy enough that Peace Corps has instated a 8-day travel ban spanning the entire week of the election. Last Saturday as I was walking around Vilanculos stocking up on groceries for the week, FRELIMO posters were plastered to every inch of space – on walls, road signs, market stalls, t-shirts, cars, motorbikes… EVERYTHING. My fav encounter? I even saw two dudes riding around on their 4x4s with big-ass FRELIMO flags jacked up on a pole flying high and streaming as they revved their engines and ripped around town. That particular example of showiness (and propaganda) could have been in Politico-land, USA. But was the most different than the States (and the most disconcerting) is just how one-sided politics and representation in Mozambique is! Sure, you can talk about the oppression of political respresentation, but until you can’t turn a corner without the glaring red flag and stoic face of one man staring down at you from every perch, political monopolization is just an idea. But now, its an overwhelming reality, a reality that has existed for a while but was too difficult to envision. There simply aren’t other political parties big enough to challenge FRELIMO. RENAMO has boycotted the elections and gone military, and MDM (Movimento Democratico de Mocambique) is so new and undeveloped that it hasn’t formed a base of supporters outside Beira yet to challenge the FRELIMO monopoly. If I were a Mozambican who wanted to vote, but didn’t like the FRELIMO platform, was boycotted by RENAMO, and knew my vote would be wasted with MDM, what choice would I really have? Not much. I’d wager most Mozambicans, especially uneducated Mozambicans probably say, “FORGET IT, I’m going back to my farm in the bush. The democratic process doesn’t impact me anyways!” OR, I’d buy into the FRELIMO corruption club and try to somehow get the vote buying and social politics of small town party rallies to support my family and make ends meet… maybe even send my kids to university with party money … at the expense of actually building a democratic state of course.

 

Really, democracy can’t work unless everyone is enabled to participate. Otherwise, it’s just cyclical abuse of "have-nots" by "haves." If you're not top dog, someone else would love to be.

Overall however, although the political system is corrupt and broken in Mozambique, and a group of young angry men with machine guns are taking advantage of poor, vulnerable people, actual civil war is still decent way off in the horizon.  I forsee only one main thing catalyzing these localized skirmishes into something that ignites the entire country – a proxy war. I'm talking for example about a global political chessboard where China decides to back RENAMO for an opportunity to monopolize the natural resources. Mozambique is RICH in undeveloped natural resources just waiting to be unearthed. Would that cause the USA to get involved? South Africa? Brasil? Would we have a proxy war on our hands? Would the international community even care??

I hope beyond hope that such an idea is only one of my darkest nightmares – a nightmare that dissipates with a new day and the optimism that accompanies morning sunshine. Mozambicans want peace and sovereignty. Let’s help them keep it.