Day of Peace and Reconciliation

Lucas playing soccer with the teacher team

Student pyramid at the holiday celebration

Ceremonial wreath with border guards

October 4th is a national holiday here in Mozambique celebrating the signing in 1992 of the Rome Peace Accords, which ended over a decade of civil unrest and war between FRELIMO, the ruling party, and RENAMO, the armed opposition, which followed soon after the resolution of the armed conflict with the colonial Portuguese forces in 1975. Considering how peaceful our town has been during the past two years, it’s hard to imagine that the people now coexisting here were killing each other just twenty years ago. You can still find bombed out buildings, blown up bridges, and plenty of bullet holes throughout the country, but you never see firearms other than the Kalshnikovs the police and border guards carry. Even bandidos have a hard time getting guns and mainly use knives or machetes to commit their crimes. Most of the landmines in our region have been cleared out by Project Halo, a de-mining group sponsored mainly by USA, Japan, and Britain, but there are still swathes of countryside too dangerous to visit because of all the explosives laid down by both sides during the conflict. People rarely speak of the troubled time of conflict other than mentioning how hard life was. Many Mozambicans in our area fled to Malawi, living in refuge camps during the most violent parts of the war. Students and even most teachers are too young to really remember the war, and even those who were alive don’t like to remember the horrors. One neighbor has confided with us how his first family was killed when bandits, the term used by the government for the RENAMO fighters, bazooka-ed his home. Our host family during training also told us about hiding above the ceiling on the rafters while bandits pillaged through the house. In general, people seem to leave the violence in the past, and if it hadn’t been for all the books we’ve read, we wouldn’t know much about this troubled period in Mozambique’s recent past. So, like every other holiday, we celebrated laying a wreath of flowers at the star monument in our town square. Our kids performed a hilarious theater about cholera and our teacher team, including Luc, played a soccer match against the border guards. We tied 2-2. Most of the youngsters and many of our students didn’t even know what holiday we were celebrating, or exactly which conflict the Rome Peace Accords ended, they just enjoyed a the day off and the various festivities.