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Mozambique

Recreating a Language: a socio-historical approach to the study of Shaba Swahili

Swahili is a Bantu language spoken in a wide area of Africa. In East Africa, it is spoken in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the southern part of Somalia; in central Africa, one hears it in Burundi, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the former Zaire; in Southern Africa, it is spoken in Zambia and Mozambique. Used by people in ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse areas, it provides a wide continuum of dialects (for dialect details, see Nurse & Hinnebusch, 1993).

UN Peacekeepers and Cultures of Violence

The psycho-social impact of persistent and widespread violence on people living in warzones has far-reaching consequences for both indigenous and outside attempts to facilitate peace. Today, more than ever, it is women and children who bear the greatest burden of violence, through brutality, rape, torture, and murder, and who suffer the greatest percentage of death due to war.

Turning the Refugee Tide

"We don't know where he comes from or who his family is, but maybe when he's ready he'll tell us," said 87-year-old Benjamin Kagarazfa, the "mayor" in a small section of a Mozambican refugee camp in Zimbabwe. He rubbed the boy's head as if he was soothing a frightened little goat. "His name is Samieri. He came by himself last week but one, on a Monday."

Kagarazfa, like Samieri, lives in the Nyangombe Refugee Camp. The camp is in an arid wasteland all by itself, on the banks of the Nyangombe River, which flows freely only a few months each year.

Treating the Wounds of War

I use these tin cans when I do my healing ceremonies. I take an empty can and put in some rocks and then seal it. I shake the can when I am working, and the rocks clatter - it makes quite a noise. This can with the rocks in it, that is what someone's head is like when they have been affected by war.

Going Beyond Emergency Relief

As South Africa moves haltingly toward some form fo majority rule and its 40,000 refugees return home, prospects for genuine development are good. Yet decades of conflict throughout southern Africa - in which South africa's apartheid regime has played an instrumental role - have created a legacy that will plague South Africa's neighbors well into the next century. Colonial state repression and indigenous armed struggles toward decolonization caused nearly 250,000 refugees to flee Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and 50,000 to flee Namibia (then South West Africa).

Flexibility Equals Survival

In many parts of Africa, a highly flexible system of town and village marketplaces, staffed primarily by women, maintains, a trickle of income, consumer goods, and food with remarkable resilience through stresses of political upheaval, economic crisis, and seasonal and extended drought.

Voices of Courage: Indigenous people tell their stories of persecution, humiliation, and hope

Voices of Courage: Indigenous people tell their stories of persecution,. humiliation, and hope

Since its founding in 1982, Cultural Survival Quarterly has become the largest subscription international journal to document the realities of indigenous people. The fact that so many indigenous peoples have survived the discrimination, persecution, and genocidal campaigns launched against them is a tribute to their tenaciousness. The fact that they still have the courage to speak is even more remarkable.

Rebels Create Havoc in Mozambique

In December 1987, Robert Gersony was engaged by the Department of State's Bureau for Refugee Programs to undertake an assessment of designated Mozambican refugee matters. The bureau's director, Ambassador Jonathan Moore, decided to have the assessment conducted as a result of the bureau's perception of a mounting refugee crisis in southern Africa.

The bureau had witnessed an increase of 300 percent in the number of Mozambican refugees in southern Africa over the past year. The bureau currently estimates that the total number of such refugees is about 870,000.

The Hagahai: Isolation and Health Status in Papua New Guinea

The Hagahai are a recently contacted group of seminomadic hunter-horticulturalists living in the fringe highlands of Madang Province in Papua New Guinea. Although occasional explorers and miners probably walked through their territory in the Schrader Mountains as early as the 1930s and several attempts were made to census them during the 1970s, the Hagahai effectively remained hidden from mission and government influence until the 1980s.

ORT: The Need for Education and Participation

Considering that Mozambique had one of the worst health situations in Africa at the time of liberation, there is no question that an enormous amount has been accomplished, and that a great potential exists for accomplishing even more. The level and quality of services I observed in the health centers was outstanding.

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