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Ambassador Vasquez Travels in Mozambique, Highlights U.S. Aid

USINFO travel blog transcript, December 3-7

Ambassador Gaddi Vasquez, the eighth U.S. representative to the United Nations agencies in Rome, traveled to rural communities in Mozambique December 3-7, highlighting U.S. support for humanitarian and agricultural partnership programs in a USINFO travel blog.

Following is the transcript of the travel blog:

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of International Information Programs
USINFO Travel Blog Transcript

Media Tour to Mozambique

Guest: Gaddi Vasquez
Date: December 3-7, 2007

Moderator introduction: Ambassador Vasquez will travel to Mozambique December 3-7, 2007. He will visit rural communities in the southern and central parts of the country to observe how the United States and the UN Food and Agriculture Agencies are working together to strengthen partnerships for food security in a region suffering from high HIV/AIDS rates and extreme weather conditions. The Ambassador will lead a group of journalists from Korea, Malaysia, and Mozambique. Together they will meet with farmers, Peace Corps volunteers and community representatives, government officials, teachers, students, AIDS orphans and health professionals to discuss how humanitarian and agricultural assistance partnerships can better help local communities build sustainable livelihoods.

During the trip, the Ambassador will post daily updates and comments reflecting the day's events. We will also post occasional comments and questions from our global webchat community and those following this online journal.

Check this site beginning on December 3 for the Ambassador's posts!

Gaddi Vasquez: Day One – Monday, December 3, 2007

Bem vindo! That’s Portuguese for welcome. Thanks for joining me for the third USUN Rome media tour. I am in Maputo, Mozambique, where it is great to connect with all of you through the blog-o-sphere.

The climate is warm and the hospitality we have received from the Mozambicans has been equally inviting. The group of journalists, still a bit jetlagged after long flights from Asia, joined me this morning to get a lay of the land from resident U.S. and UN officials and Mozambican agricultural research, food policy, and disaster management specialists.

Almost every person we met with today echoed one notable fact -- Mozambique’s post-conflict recovery is an African success story. Over the past 15 years the country has put enormous distance between itself and the devastating conditions of the civil war era. The United States has made a strong vote of confidence in the future of Mozambique through our strong support to UN humanitarian programs in addition to a wide-range of official and private development assistance which includes a new Millennium Challenge Compact of $507 million. Yet, while economic engines propel the country forward, some of its greatest challenges remain in food and agriculture -- droughts in the South, flooding in central region, unrealized agricultural potential in the North, and devastating effects of HIV/AIDS.

These are the challenges we want to see up close and personally. We will start tomorrow as we leave Maputo and head south to rural villages with the UN agencies as our guide, an interpreter to help us get the most out of every conversation, and Mozambican journalists who will add a local media perspective to what we see. Throughout the week I also aim to get a sense of how the UN food and agriculture agencies are working to “deliver as one” and creating synergies under the One UN pilot program. I look forward to reading your questions and comments.

Day Two – Tuesday, December 4, 2007

A convoy of cars took us about an hour outside of Maputo over muddy roads of sandy soil to the district of Moamba. Mango trees and corn stalks were still wet from last night’s downpour. Women came out in strong numbers everywhere we turned to show us their proud ownership of local farming in fields that receive little overall rainfall throughout the year.

Our capable guides this morning were two female Mozambican employees of the World Food Program (WFP) -- a provincial director and a local food monitor. They introduced us to a site deep in the fields outside of Zifuva village where local women were digging with hoes to enlarge an existing water reservoir. For their work in maintaining such an important part of their farming community’s infrastructure, WFP provides them food. The sustainability aspect of this “Food for Assets” program is one that the U.S. strongly backs through a contribution of $14 million over the past five years to WFP’s relief and recovery operations in Mozambique. One blog reader asked if humanitarian programs make a difference in the long-term. Yes, they do, especially when we encourage projects like these that give incentives to rural communities to build long-term local capacity. The Zifula women are diversifying their agricultural options to withstand the drought that arrives like an unwanted, destructive guest. They cannot change the weather but they can prepare for it. I was impressed to hear the women tell me that their recent harvest was abundant enough to allow them to share with a neighboring community in need.

In the town of Moamba, I learned from leaders of a farmers association, which is about 40% female, how healthy competition with neighboring South Africa has spurred them to transform local small-scale vegetable farming. Through an International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) -- funded market linkages programs, business skills training, and community -- run irrigation systems, farmers have dramatically increased their agricultural output to meet demand. Local farmers explained with great satisfaction that 100% of the cabbage now sold at a South African-owned supermarket chain in Maputo is locally grown. The local farmers have driven their competitors out of the market with one vegetable and now have an eye to capture 80% of the total market share -- green beans and tomatoes are next. When you consider that previously the vast majority of produce sold in local stores was South African, you realize that vegetable-by-vegetable Mozambicans are recapturing their domestic markets.

Bright and early tomorrow we fly out to two central provinces: Manica, which borders Zimbabwe, and Sofala whose capital Beira is the second largest city in Mozambique and one of its three main ports. The mighty Zambezi River flows through both provinces on its way to the Indian Ocean. Log in again and read my next entry to learn about my conversations with children impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Day Three – Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The stark reality of communities suffering from HIV/AIDS touched us deeply today. Right in the heart of Mozambique, where families and neighborhoods are falling to pieces, two unsung heroes -- Joao Madeira and Ana Paula Salgado -- showed us the depth of their dedication to saving lives. They are a beacon of hope to vulnerable children through the support of innovative WFP and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) programs.

Just outside of Chimoio, the capital of the landlocked province of Manica, Joao Madeira is a father to scores of children. Not in the traditional sense, of course. Out of necessity, he has assumed the role of mentor to students that participate in an impressive program created by FAO called Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools (JFFLS). Most children in Chimoio have lost one or both parents to AIDS -- recently released national statistics put the prevalence rates at more than 25% in Manica and Sofala Provinces. Within this context, JFFLS have since 2003 minimized the vulnerability of youth by involving the greater community in educating teenagers about farming, teaching students the skills needed to lead healthy lives, and building a social safety network.

I stood in awe as boys and girls brought us to the fields of their village and explained how they use tools they have constructed to minimize erosion, how they weed and irrigate the land, and how they identify risks to crops. It was a show-and-tell like no other that I have seen on my trips abroad to almost seventy countries. Here were youngsters speaking with confidence about their agricultural know-how, singing songs of thanks and joy, showing me charts of how the JFFLS have positively impacted the attendance levels and retention rate of traditional schools, and listening attentively to Joao explain that the reason for my visit was to share in his pride of their accomplishments.

A three-hour drive along the 300-km long Beira Corridor that links Zimbabwe to the port city of Beira took us to a unique orphanage. I call it unique because Americans sometimes visualize an orphanage as a place where parent-less children grow up, as something like a state-run, bare-bones boarding school. That is not what we saw in Beira, pop. 600,000 with the highest HIV inflection rate in the country at 41%. A passionate caregiver by the name of Ana Paula Salgado, head of provincial transition center for AIDS orphans, hosted us for one of the most memorable site visits of this media tour. She guided us through a spartanly-refurbished concrete house where she and a team of women, local medical students and a UN volunteer care for infants, even newborns, that arrive from the local hospital or provincial health centers. Porridge of U.S. corn and soy meal delivered by WFP with the support of PEPFAR feeds these infants and serves as nutritional sustenance critical to their survival. The children at the center receive tender, loving attention from the staff until they are no longer at high risk and are then reintegrated into the community following Mozambican governmental regulations.

The agricultural field schools and the orphanage exemplify the extremely important, long-term nature of the daily work of the UN food and agricultural agencies in the developing world. The journalists traveling with me remarked how ironic it is that so few in their countries know about the day-to-day dedication of people like Joao and Ana Paula. It is worthwhile to reflect as we did today on how the strong commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS can eventually help improve the odds of a bright future for Mozambican children.

Day Four – Thursday, December 6, 2007

Before flying out of Beira, we started the morning with an introduction to the port facilities and WFP port warehouse. Earlier in the week an American vessel, the Liberty Eagle, unloaded 6,000 tons of U.S. food, mainly beans and maize meal. As we walked through the warehouse we saw the temporary storage of 1,000 tons of oil, 3,000 tons of beans, and 150 tons of bulgur wheat. The total amount of U.S. food received in 2006 at the Beira warehouse and shipped out to Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi was more than 120,000 tons. None of the food stays at the port longer than three weeks. What many people do not know is that on any given day WFP is engaged in distribution and operational planning, always ready to respond to a crisis at a moment’s notice.

Across the Gorgongosa National Park from Beira, over 100,000 Mozambicans that lived along the banks of the Zambezi River, the third longest river in Africa, are still displaced from flooding that occurred in earlier this year. The international media flocked to town called Caia at the height of the floods but little has been written about the recovery since. Given the need to arrive in the area by charter aircraft or by way of a five-hour road trip from Beira, one might understand why visitors are few and far between, yet substantial need remains.

We visited two communities outside Caia where men, women and children are busy rebuilding their lives. Most of the people we met with used to live on low-lying islands in the Zambezi River. When the water rose, these families were rescued and brought to higher ground. One of the many challenges that they face in their new villages is building more permanent houses -- their temporary dwellings are a mix of reeds and tarpaulins. Through a WFP Work-for-Food program, they are receiving monthly rations of corn meal and beans from a local NGO. In return, the communities are making their own bricks and family-by-family building more sturdy homes that to conform to district development plans. I was pleased to learn that able community members assist disabled neighbors, widows and children who are heads of household in this process so that eventually all will have safe living conditions.

WFP staff and local representatives of the Mozambican disaster response agency told us that international organizations, local NGOs and the Mozambican government are actively collaborating on disaster response education campaign to teach people in vulnerable communities what to do when floods and cyclones hit. A Peace Corps volunteer in Caia is helping with that effort and is also a teacher at the local JFFLS.

We fly back to Maputo tonight. I will wrap up this fascinating trip tomorrow evening before packing my bags to head back to Rome.

Wrap-up – Friday, December 7, 2007

Rain fell all day as our Asian journalists worked on their stories, interviewing local NGO representatives and Muslim cultural leaders in town. Together with colleagues from the U.S. Embassy and the UN agencies, I held a press conference at which I shared with Mozambican journalists some of the same impressions that I have communicated to you through this blog. I told them that a former Congressman and friend of mine told me years ago that once you come to know Africa, you cannot help but fall in love with the continent and its people. I am humbled by their daily sacrifices.

I had the unexpected, serendipitous opportunity today to speak at the swearing-in ceremony of a new class of Peace Corps volunteers. Sixty-four newly trained volunteers will soon head out to their villages and towns in Mozambique to start providing English, science, and health instruction in secondary and technical schools. Like the volunteer that guided us yesterday in Caia, they will live among the locals and share their talents with rural communities.

From what I have witnessed and through the conversations I have had with development professionals in Mozambique, I am confident that there is ongoing strategic planning by WFP, FAO, and IFAD to increase their collective impact and efficiency. One UN official told me that the “multilateral donor coordination is as good here as I have come across it in the UN.” The UN agencies have used the multiple natural disasters that have stuck Mozambique this year to work through new joint responses and to combine efforts to help the national government respond to food security threats. As one, the UN is consulting with the national government on agriculture, health, nutrition, environmental, and economic issues and encouraging intra-governmental collaboration.

I leave Maputo tomorrow morning after a very enriching and educational journey through Mozambique. I am encouraged by the incentives created by U.S. investment in UN food and agricultural projects that I have visited and by the strong community ownership of these capacity building activities. The journalists and I will take with us a vivid picture of the African will to survive. Thank you for coming along for the virtual ride.