PRINTRedeeming graces
Catherine Pearson
March 27, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
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Certain constants span the continents. From Missouri to Mozambique, families brush their teeth, wash the dishes, make their beds and hope for the best. They want their children to be healthy, happy and someday employed. Like any good mother, Zabela Nhavene wants that, too, but she has plenty of reasons to doubt it will happen. Her personal history mirrors that of her home country of Mozambique — a rocky past with depleted resources. Zabela’s first husband left her with the children.
Then her grown daughter left Zabela with her grandchildren, and her second husband left her to move across town with another wife. He refuses to care for their daughter, Siselia. They don’t have enough food, sometimes not even detergent to wash their clothes.
At 50, Zabela has no job and never made it beyond fourth grade. Even subsistence farming has been unreliable due to drought. She is the sole support for her 14-year-old daughter and two young grandchildren. She tries to provide food, safety and sleep. But sleep is hard to come by when rain leaks through the roof and muddies the dirt floor. In this past spring’s windstorm, the desire for sleep paled in comparison to the need for safety.
Last March, Zabela was under the corrugated steel roof of her house when it started raining. She was used to the leaking, but this storm was different. The wind whipped the reed walls of the house, and hail fell from the sky. She knew the house would not last, just like she knew the fatal danger of strong winds and flying roofs. She prayed, “God help me. If this house falls in, it will kill us.” Although going out in the storm could have been equally dangerous, she took her daughter and grandchildren and fled into the night.
Dripping wet, Zabela banged on her neighbors’ doors, but was repeatedly turned away. Terrified, she cried out to God for help. Then she and her family watched the wind lift the roof from their house as the walls fell in. They sought refuge at a third neighbor’s home; this time they were invited in and stayed for two days.
After the storm, they learned that three other villagers had died, one from a house collapsing on him and two killed by flying roofs. Those with strength and resources began rebuilding. Zabela depended on a friend’s free labor, which meant sacrificing speed and quality of construction. Eventually, she returned to her reconstructed leaky roof, until last August when Habitat for Humanity International in Mozambique stepped in.
Still a Long Way Off
While Zabela swept her dirt yard in the stifling heat of sub-Saharan Africa, American Midwesterners slipped over ice-encrusted lawns. In January 2007, nine people from Methodist churches in mid-Missouri decided to go to Mozambique and partner with Habitat for Humanity. They bought bug spray with large quantities of DEET repellent and shopped at thrift stores for quick-drying pants. They paid for plane tickets and sent away for visas. They got malaria medicine, tetanus shots, granola bars, peppermints and handy wipes. They requested vacation days and sent e-mails to friends and relatives telling them they’d be in Africa for two weeks. Co-workers assumed they were going on a safari.
The group was one of several from Methodist churches in Missouri that committed to build houses with Habitat for Humanity Mozambique. Habitat for Humanity started building houses in the late ’60s, outside Americus, Ga. The interest-free repayment plan was non-profit and went into a revolving fund for future homes. Hoping the approach would work well in developing countries, Habitat tried this model in the ’70s in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. An apparent success, Habitat for Humanity International officially began in 1976, but it didn’t appear in Mozambique until 2000.
Mozambique, a Portuguese colony until 1975, became independent and then entered a 15-year civil war. A string of natural disasters followed, including a flood in 2000, which was recorded as the most damaging in Africa. Although Mozambique now has a swiftly growing economy and has established peace, it still wages war against AIDS. Men travel hours and days to find work and, if they return at all, might bring back more than a paycheck to their families: AIDS affects more than just those it afflicts. Grandmothers such as Zabela — elderly, weak and overwhelmed — are heading households of small children at a time when they should be receiving care.
Habitat for Humanity Mozambique’s new director Mark Estes has worked with Habitat in Vietnam and recognizes the importance of helping women in particular. “When you help the men, you help the men,” he says. “When you help the women, you help the family.”
Children are the treasures of Zabela’s village; they are more reliable than the longed-for rain, which refused to fill the cracked-dry creek beds, or the dwindling cash tucked into women’s waistbands. Giddy laughter, robust songs and heart-wrenching tears permeate the arid land.
Children seem ever-present, as inescapable as their own futures. These concerns consume Zabela, who watches her 14-year-old daughter, Siselia, nearing adulthood. She wants Siselia’s life to be different than it is now. She wants it to be better. And she has passed along that hope to her youngest daughter.
Siselia wakes at 6 a.m. with the sun and washes her face with the water left over from yesterday’s trip to the well. She brushes her teeth and then carries the 20-liter jug back to the tap to gather more water. If rice remains from last night’s dinner, she will build a fire and reheat the pot. If not, she must settle for just tea.
After breakfast, she can relax. She’ll sit with her family — her mother, 5-year-old nephew and 2-year-old niece — on a straw mat spread on the dirt yard. They talk about school, gardening and, she shyly admits, boys. Her current boyfriend is 17. Someday Siselia wants to marry and have kids but not until she is older. First, she wants to get an education and a job.
Habitat, much like Zabela, is focused on the children’s future. A new house offers a decent night’s rest, a dry floor for homework and a warm space for studying. Having a parent who owns a home could mean finishing school. Last August, Zabela and her family moved into one of more than 80 houses Habitat built in Massaca in 2007. This is unlike Habitat’s traditional model and method in both construction and approach. Materials and labor are local, and the houses are amortized.
A Change of Plans
In 2004, Habitat for Humanity Mozambique started focusing on particularly vulnerable groups and by March 2007 had built eight cement-block houses for orphans and children. The fully subsidized houses are for anyone who has lost one or both parents to HIV or children who have sick or dying parents. Private donors and USAID fund part of the subsidy, which is then matched through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
In August 2006, Methodist teams from Missouri and a group from the U.K. were building farther north in Mozambique, near the city of Chimoio. They asked to tour the area and visited the sick. Pastor Henriques, of the Assembly of God church near Chimoio, was leading the group when they noticed a makeshift tent of sticks and a sheet of plastic. Inside was Saquina Antonio, a widow in her 70s.
Saquina is a victim of HIV in an unexpected way. After her husband died, she moved in with her daughter and son-in-law. After they died, Saquina moved in with her niece and stayed until her niece married. The new husband did not want Saquina living there and kicked her out. Saquina returned to her original community, which pooled its limited resources and built the makeshift house. As the volunteers heard her story, they were moved to tears.
The team wanted to help immediately but was already committed to working on a cement-block house for the entire trip. They asked what it would take to get Saquina dry and warm. A basic structure was sketched in the sand and estimated to cost $100. The group donated twice that. Within a week Saquina was in a new home constructed of mud-brick walls and a cement floor, with clothes and food provided by the extra money. At the time, the Habitat house model was a three-room, cement-block house that cost around $3,000 and took about six weeks to build. Saquina’s house, although barely large enough to lie down in, prompted questions about a better way to reach the poor. One small house for one elderly widow led to dozens of homes for families in need. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Saquina died in her new house in June 2007.
Saquina’s house was the first of its kind, and although the construction that followed has been slightly larger and more expensive, the goal to quickly house the poorest of the poor has remained the same for Habitat and for the groups of Missouri Methodists who continue to return, year after year.
The answer that evolved during this past year is unlike Habitat’s traditional method of construction and criteria for repayment. Until recently, Habitat primarily operated with affiliates to build houses for families that paid into a revolving loan fund. The family had 10 years to repay the loan, which would cover the cost of the next family’s house. This approach excluded those in greatest need — those who could not afford to pay anything.
The Missouri groups arrived expecting the old model: cement-block houses with glass windows and metal roofs. They were greeted with a two-page handout — a change of plans. Dan Simpson, former director of Habitat for Humanity Mozambique described the effort as reaching the poorest of the poor. “You can’t expect them to repay a loan for a $3,000 house,” Simpson says. “You can’t expect them to repay a loan period.”
The loans aren’t the only problem that comes with Habitat’s traditional model of home-building. The transition from corrugated steel propped on reeds to a three-room cement block house with glass windows might be more than unfamiliar; it borders on frightening. What if the window breaks or the walls crack, as they are prone to do long before the loans are paid off? There is no money to replace them, no means to repair.
Last April, Habitat started building a new style of home in Massaca. The round huts — 12 feet in diameter with cement floors, reed walls and thatched roofs — are modeled after housing structures that have lasted 20 to 30 years. Since then, Habitat has completed more than 80 of these homes. Labor and materials cost less than $500, and the homes take three and a half days to build. The wood, reeds and thatch are harvested from nearby fields and sold in local markets. Homeowners can get the supplies for maintenance and repair their homes themselves. Unlike glass windows, these replacement materials are accessible and inexpensive or even free. The recipients of the homes and the community approve of the revised approach. Keeping it local is key to Habitat for Humanity’s international success.
Reflections upon giving
This past August, volunteer Betty Sundermeyer ducked to enter Zabela’s new home for the dedication ceremony. Betty lit a candle that illuminated the dark hut and placed it in Zabela’s shaking hands, coated by dripping wax. Zabela unleashed her thanks and out-danced the younger mothers and grandmothers. If Zabela’s hands seemed timid, her body was strong, her voice rang clear and steady — a song of praise to God in her local language — God had taken her from low places and set her on high. He had sent help in the form of jet-lagged, English-speaking Americans who smiled and took pictures, sweated and sang, hammered and danced with a woman they’d never see again who stirred their hearts with love. V
