Project termination

A year has already lapsed since the last unsuccessful mission – it was a year full of changes, negotiations and substantiation of the successful termination of the project. There were efforts made by state authorities to return the grant; the biggest change was the replacement of the civil officer and the motivation to terminate the ongoing project increased. The worst experience was the dissolution of the Slovak organization of PLOP which was in charge of the project from the management aspect. The same happened to the organization of ADICAE which was the umbrella organization of the project in Africa. And so I happened to find myself in a situation where I had to look for new people who would attend to the last mission. The first person I found was the new project manager, a student from Mexico studying in Bratislava - JUAN JOSE CHAVEZ FUENTES. It was necessary to deal with a lot of things such as plane tickets, visas, to communicate with people in Africa. But let me start from the beginning – the day of departure came, as we say, within one year and one day, this time it was 29 September 2008 Vienna – Londin – Johannesburg – Maputo. At the airport in Maputo, we were awaited by Pasarino, the president of ADICAE, together with our broken car. This time it was not really broken, but due to a wheel clamp we were not able to go to the hotel. After the arrival of an armed policeman with a machine rifle on his shoulder and after a short exchange of opinions, Pasarino did not have to pay a fine. This time we did not want to stay in Maputo for a long time, our priority was to get to Meloco as soon as possible. However, the next flight to Pemba was leaving in two days. After inquiries at the airline agency we learned that our reservation had been cancelled and that the next flight was in three days. After the arrival in Pemba with one stopover, we were awaited by our black friend Ramosh, the president of the Trade union organization in Pemba. This was the person who helped us the most and who spent the whole trip with us to the detriment of his own family. We spent one night in the seaside resort of Nautilus; the weather was very warm, around 30 °C and so we could even swim in the sea for the first time. On the second day, we rented a car, reserved in advance, for our whole trip. Driving a car in Africa was very unusual for us, the Europeans, since the steering wheel was on the right side and they drove on the left side. After we picked up the car in the morning, we bought the necessary food, a 500 l barrel for water and we set out on our 300-kilometre long journey to our target village of Meloco. Around 50 km from Meloco, in a small town called Montepuez, we filled the barrel with water. It was not so easy since we came to about five wells which did not have any water in them. In the end, one black guy on a motorbike led us to the nearby town and for 500 crowns we filled our 500 l barrel located on the car. The road to Meloco was made of sand and was full of road obstacles and so we named it “Africa Safari”. We managed to sink in the sand too but since our car had a four-wheel drive, we managed to get out too. The welcoming in Meloco was very modest; the first days we spent in this place were also accompanied by certain mistrust from the domestic inhabitants. We met the new leader – administrator called Silva; he was something of a mayor of the village who had just been recently appointed and lived in the biggest house in Meloco together with his family. He was a very self-sacrificing person who helped us a lot with the local citizens from the organizational point of view. I gave him a red solar cap with a fan which he always wore, even when riding on the motorbike. Already on the first night of our arrival in Meloco we went to see our stored materials that had been waiting for us for a year. Almost everything was there, even bottled water – crawled on by mice and cockroaches though, but that is normal there. We took the fold-out beds and the mayor temporarily accommodated us in a brick building belonging to the hospital and its nurses who were, at the time, somewhere on some training. We later discovered that during the journey of the truck, three cells out of eighty were broken and also the TV set was damaged. After the first night, on the first African morning, we were struck by the unspeakable warm African air and overwhelmed by the sounds made by African turtle-doves and crows already from six in the morning. Mayor Silva assigned four locals to us who worked with us during our whole stay. Already on the first day we started to carry the material in the car – the first transported thing was a wooden cottage the place of which was selected by the mayor as a place of honour. We were building it for two days from a heap of wood on the ground before the eyes of the local Peeping Toms who came to watch us every day in large numbers. The garden European cottage had the most success; I equipped it with solar panels and accumulators that power the lights and the fan. The locals named it “Embassy of Slovakia”. In the cottage, we also put in operation a TV set with a home cinema and a satellite receiver. Each evening we started the TV and showed them concerts, films or fairy tales. Gradually, as we were mounting the solar cells to the individual buildings, in the night hours a circle of approximately 500 m2 of the square was illuminated. The first illuminated house was the mayor`s house, then our embassy, the hospital and the mayor`s office, then followed the school and the police station with a jail. The prisoner that was there was lucky since while we were working he was free. Since the date of handover of the project was determined in advance to 25 October 2008, we had to work from the morning until the evening, for twelve hours almost every day. Only once we went on a trip by car to Pemba where we finally ate well and swam in the sea. On the second day we purchased some more food, a TV set and we set out on our return journey to Meloco. This time, our arrival during late night hours was awaited by tens of the local people since they were waiting for us to start the TV. Despite our fatigue from the journey, we turned the TV on in our cottage – Embassy of Slovakia. With each day spent there we were getting closer to the mistrusting locals until we merged with them and became regular citizens of Meloco. In the presence of the Administrator, we gave out clothes that I had in the container and football balls which were, partly eaten off by mice, yet nevertheless, the children were very happy to receive them. The day of handover of the project came, we had almost all ready for it and so upon invitation, we went on another “Africa Safari” to the nearby 80-kilometres away towns called Balama and Namuno where we visited the guesthouses for which we were to implement the solar cells. In these little towns, they also had a public power network but electricity was switched on for only three hours a day through a diesel generator. And it was exactly here, where I proposed them a combination with a solar power plant that would provide them with electricity during the whole day at least. Since Namuno is the domicile of the Administrator, they started to think about it seriously. On the morning one day before the day of handover of the project we woke up to an unusual morning – the whole village was up and running, our embassy was surrounded by whirls of dust, we did not understand what was going on and so I immediately turned my camera on and started to film the extensive cleaning joined by the whole village. Our embassy already had a finished bamboo fence, a latrine a la Africa was built – a dug whole, approximately 2 m deep, with a small opening and surrounded by a fence in the shape of a snail of the height up to the eye line and so when “doing the thing“, I was able to see the surroundings. Each hut had such latrine. A large penthouse made of bamboo and lined with thick grass served for a solemn lunch for almost 150 VIP guests.

We returned to Meloco from our sightseeing tour in Balamo and Namuno only in the evening, during the journey we sank in the sand a couple times, but we always managed to get the car out by pushing it. One of the places where we were stuck in the sand was a place where lions came to drink water and so we did not push the car. In several places I was zigzagging between huts of the aborigines and I felt like I was driving right through their yards. After a seemingly endless journey, we were happy to see the illuminated Meloco where the invited guests had already been awaiting us, watching the TV in the house of Mayor Silvia. Even the Administrator himself came because he wanted to see how Meloco was illuminated in the evening. He was surprised not to hear any generator motor, to see that intensive light illuminated the whole house and that the TV set and the satellite receiver work without problems. In the end he declared that we brought a “light miracle”.

The day D came on 25 October 2008. That morning will forever stay stored in my memory. It was spectacular – the whole square and our embassy were decorated with decorating flags; the people were dressed nicely, some even in colourful uniforms; the local drummer was inviting the people to the assembly since early morning. In a distance we heard strange musical instruments – they were the sounds of a practicing musical band preparing a performance. The whole sunny and very hot day (around 35 °C) had an exceptional atmosphere. I felt as if I was watching a movie at the cinema and suddenly crossing, through the screen, over to the plot of the film. However, it was all real. The program of the board revelation that was agreed upon in advance suddenly did not apply. The embassy and the board stayed covered with a cloth with the picture of the president of Mozambique. Even though they have a political democracy here, the ruling party called Frelimo uses many events for its own promotion, and this was also the case of our project. The inauguration of the embassy could only be performed by the highest ranking person, notably the president of Mozambique. But since he could not have come, the inauguration had to be postponed to another date – we will probably not be present then. The whole program had the spirit of a political campaign and even though we were at the centre of attention of the whole village, our participation was only marginal. The guests, who were on a stage, had long speeches (also about the necessity of our project), they even called me up to the stage and officially introduced me. Otherwise, we were going around the guests and the aborigines. In total, we used 1 km of cable and 70 pieces of lamps for the entire project.

The solemn lunch for the invited 150 guests was very modest – goat and chicken with rice was served, there was also warm beer or soft drinks – the meals were eaten traditionally with hands. After lunch, we watched the cultural performances and the last night of our stay in the modest village of Meloco was ahead of us. On the next day, accompanied by the sounds of African turtle-doves we made a final good-bye round of the village and set out on our return trip to Pemba, by plane to Maputo and from Maputo to Europe.