Our Neighborhood

Building Hope

It’s 5:00 am and the sun is already up and pouring forth heat. Joanna Sabite rises to greet the morning by fetching firewood. Throwing her son Bonomar upon her back she starts the familiar 5.2 mile trek to the nearest forest to collect scraps of wood so she can cook for her family. She remembers the days when deforestation wasn’t quite so bad and there were trees and available cooking fuel just outside her fence. It’s December and food is scarce. Last years harvest of corn and beans has come and gone so she scavenges for edible leaves growing on wild plants to feed her family of six. Her oldest daughter Adonia usually helps with this chore but today is sick with malaria. The local clinic freely diagnosed her yesterday but the pharmacist said the medication will cost 250 meticais (10 USD). It will take her 5 days to be able to make this kind of money, so she defeatedly mumbles a prayer of hope for a new day.

This is the reality of life in Mozambique. We live in a war torn country that is slowly pulling itself out of the ashes. Here in the rural north, over 1700 miles from the capital city, only 41% of the population lives with access to clean drinking water and only 49% with access to basic medications.* Joanna and 8 million of her neighbors live on less than a dollar a day! It’s these conditions that breed local myths like, “Withold water to stop diarrhea” and “condoms can give you AIDS” that are killing the masses and creating an environment where hope is fleeting and justice is evanescent.

But the story cannot end there. With partners like yourself Joanna now lives on over 16 dollars a day (thanks to a micro-loan project that helped her acquire 500 chickens), cooks with a locally made mud stove that saves her numerous trips to the forest due to it’s efficiency, has access to clean drinking water because of MGK drilling projects, enjoys the benefits of her own medicinal garden that grows Artemesia (an anti-malarial herb) and the year round nutritious food of the moringa leaf. She has also participated in helping her Co-op grow to accomplish what she’s accomplished. Joanna and her neighbors are finding tangible hope in each other and an overarching transcendent hope through a Creator who cares about Joanna’s family and her village. It’s the successes like Joanna and her family that makes MGK a special and unique place of reconciliation impacting the Niassa province of Mozambique.

* According to a World Bank Survey 2007