Countryside, Mozambique

(Notes from a journey to Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia, Sep/Oct 2015.)

Rural Mozambique provides ample evidence of the country being among the ten poorest in the world. Villages abound in mud-brick homes with reed/straw thatch roofs. The only pucca buildings seem to be mosques and churches. Most of the basics of human development—primary education, healthcare, clean drinking water, transportation, nutritional diversity—are quite meager and they worsen as one travels north and west. Few find employment in jobs outside subsistence farming, nor are there any cattle. Of course, many in parts of India are not much better off but a higher proportion in India seem to have escaped this level of poverty in recent decades, whereas the vast majority of rural Mozambicans still seem to be in its grip. Our two-day road trip from the Island of Mozambique to Mandimba at the border of Malawi was the roughest part of our journey. My favorite aspect of this dusty road trip—including stretches on dirt roads in overstuffed minivans through dispiritingly poor rural settlements—was its beautiful landscape dotted with rugged inselbergs. [—Namit Arora, October 2015]