A couple days ago I had a nice intimate conversation with the owner of one of the stores in town. She had very few customers, it was almost closing time, and the paperwork was all done. I had some time to kill, so I started asking about her family - how they were doing and such.
We ended up talking about providing the future and how we live on through our children. She talked about how during the war, she ended up having to run to "the jungle" in order to hide out. She told me how her father narrowly escaped ambushes on a couple of occasions and how she ended up having to drop a promising career in order to provide for her children in the here and now.
It was a rare, frank talk about the effects of the war on people here. In fact, it's the only unsolicited one I've gotten in the almost one year I've been here. I asked her why that is, why people don't talk about the war. People are happy to be living in peace. To her, she doesn't care if her country finds riches and the comforts of life that Westerners enjoy. It's just the living that she and other Mozambicans enjoy.
She's putting three children through university, not a small thing she's doing. Private university costs about $200 a month, so only one of the kids is going to a private school.
She's one of the lucky ones. She and her family survived the war, and she's found a way for her children to have a better life. She knows she's lucky, too.
Which makes me feel even luckier.
Peace
John
