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Standing among corn shoots already knee high, Francisco waves toward other fields where the telltale puffs of black smoke show mines detonating beneath the Casspir's wheels and talks of planting there too. Then he can not only feed his family of seven children but also sell for a profit. "As we get our land back, we can cultivate more and graze more cows. Then maybe we can get roads, and trucks will come to take our food to market. And then the stores and clinics will come back," he says. Already his younger children can go to school again, and a midwife has moved into the village.
The essential first step for African nations is the step back from the edge of famine. The Mozambicans are doing other things right too. Theirs is a people's peace, driven by popular refusal to continue the conflict and a fierce determination to live a normal life. Today political stability--though not much democracy--has been achieved through the government's policy of "no victor, no vanquished." Four years ago, Renamo elected impressive numbers to the national assembly; now it has a stake in running the country, and hostilities find voice mainly as parliamentary debate. Frelimo jettisoned its socialist economic credo by 1989 and decided not only to adopt market-based capitalism but to take the bitter IMF-ordered medicine required for international investment.
What really fuels Mozambique's climb, though, is the energy of individuals tackling problems from the bottom up. Take the "Italian roads." Instead of paying foreign companies for expensive foreign-built, high-maintenance asphalt roads, local authorities are copying a cheap labor-intensive, low-tech alternative pioneered in Italy: roads constructed of small, handmade stone or concrete pavers that can be laid directly on the sandy soil and individually replaced when rains wash them out.
Or take the little restaurant on the beach at Xia Xia, a great sweep of sand running for miles north of Maputo. Nuno Fonseca and his second wife Paola spent the war years in Maputo but came back to her largely destroyed hometown in early 1994. Once there were swank hotels along the strand for tourists. "When we got here there was nothing, nothing," says Nuno.
He "saw opportunity in abundance" and told the government he wanted to set up a campground on the beach, maybe a little restaurant. He brought in water and electric lines, put up a concrete toilet-shower building, then opened for business. Now he owns a caravan park, 12 rental bungalows and the restaurant, and he has plans for more. "I'm very confident about the future," says Nuno. "No one is interested in war ever again." As he sips a coffee, he muses, "You know, a lot of people here are trying to do things just like me. Sure, the government can help, but we've got to start taking care of ourselves."
ERITREA