Some seriousness

Kajsa said today that it is sometimes hard to know when we are doing things for our project and when we are having vacation. When we talk to people living here, Mozambican or others, we learn about the country, how things work. This is basically the same thing as we do during the interviews with the only difference that during the interviews we focus on one specific subject. And the fact is that all we learn about Mozambique will affect our resulting report. Because electrifying a country is so much more than just choosing the best technology and then installing it at the best place. The electrification itself does not lead to development and prosperity. There is more to it. Like the fact that the people should want to have it. And are interested enough to make sure the electricity supply is maintained. They need the knowledge and the feeling of commitment in some sense. All in all, there is a need for coordination between many different parts in society and many different parts within the development planning. And by talking to people we get to scratch on the surface of how Mozambique works and in this way how the people and society works. What realise what drives this country forward and what the people dream about.

We have discussed the fact that so many people are involved in the development of Mozambique. Walking in the southern parts of Maputo you come across UN building after UN building followed by embassies and other association head quarters. I wonder how that affects the everyday work here. I mean, there are people from Norway, Sweden, Italy, Germany, China, India, South Africa, all wanting to help and give advice and donate money and explain their way of doing things. And with every single country, there is a tradition of how to do things; the German way, the Indian way, the Swedish way. What says that this is the best for Mozambique? And who says that these people communicate with each other? One is doing a project on how to empower women, one on how to improve the health care, one on planning the roads and one on how the electricity grid should be extended. These things need coordination and that people communicate. We suspect they don't and we don't blame them. It can't be easy. And the Mozambican government stands in the middle as some kind of organiser. We asked a Mozambican man if he thought all this "interference" was good or bad, but he believed in the Mozambican government. He said that they make all the decisions and the foreign aid and NGO:s basically follows these directions. But I still think it must be so hard.

The biggest problem in his opinion was the fact that the country is so large that the decisions and improvements never reaches ever so far from Maputo. Most things happen here, and stay here. The couple we rent the room from came back today after three weeks in the very north of Mozambique and they said they had spent approximately half of their time on the road in small minibuses crammed with more people than would have been comfortable for a 30 minutes drive. For 8-10 hours at a time! It is easy to understand that remote areas are left to survive on their own.

With these more serious thoughts and reflections said I will now write you a second post on all the happy vacation stuff we have done! Once again, as Kajsa said: It is hard to know what counts as what. Work or leisure? It all is a big happy blurr.