Maputo, Mozambique -- As funerals and mourning continue following last Thursday's explosion at an arms depot just outside Maputo, Mozambique, that killed 101 people, a diminutive woman checked in today with the teams collecting additional unexploded rockets that remain in the affected residential areas of Mahotas, the CMC quarter and Magoanine.
Tammi Mott, coordinator for the Southern Africa Regional Office of global humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS), was offering encouragement and an assistance grant today, but had dug in herself, literally, over the weekend.
Mott volunteered last weekend, to help members of the Christian Council of Mozambique's (CCM) skilled Transforming Arms to Ploughshares (in Portuguese, Transformacao de Armas em Enxadas, or TAE) team, as they assisted in collecting and hauling away hundreds of unexploded rockets.
Today Mott reports, "So far, they've removed 95 UXOs (unexploded ordnance) in all, and now in the community of Zimpeto alone, 37 rockets."
Mott says the Transforming Arms to Ploughshares team began assisting the government-led weapons collection on Friday (March 23) and retrieved a dozen unexploded rockets that day. The teams worked in 96-degree Fahrenheit temperatures, removing rockets that weighed up to 112 kg (246 pounds)and were buried up to two meters in the ground.
Over the next two weeks the TAE Team expects to remove another 300 UXOs (unexploded ordnance) in the residential compounds -- deadly souvenirs of Mozambique's civil war, which ended in 1992. Reuters reports that all the teams working in the affected area have recovered more than 3,000 weapons so far.
Of the massive blast last week that killed 101 and injured more than 450 people, Mott said, "the village of Magoanine was overwhelmed. The people are still reeling and in grief."
This Saturday (March 31) the Christian Council of Mozambique will lead a prayer service at the armory.
The neighborhoods between the Mahlazine arsenal and Maputo city were the most severely affected, with over 400 houses destroyed and an estimated one in twenty hit by rockets, missiles or ammunition that rained down following the explosion.
Mott, whose office is in Maputo, reported seeing houses with holes in the walls where rockets had entered one place, passed through, and out the other side. Some homes were minimally touched, others devastated. "On Saturday, the residents were obviously stricken. Many assisted us. But they were so tense," she said.
CCM's Transforming Arms to Ploughshares team is removing the rockets and transporting them to the Mozambique Defense armory where it is estimated that over 1,000 rockets and missiles have already been recovered from last week's blast. Most of the rockets are reported to have been obsolete Soviet-made weapons.
Collecting and destroying weapons has been the major focus of the Christian-based Transforming Arms to Ploughshares program since 1995. The internationally recognized weapons-for-tools exchange program has received strong support from the Government of Mozambique, and as of 2006 the Christian Council of Mozambique has lead in the collection, destruction and transformation of more than 700,000 weapons in the country.
Outside Maputo, the Transforming Arms to Ploughshares team and other government teams have been dealing with the immediate aftermath of the weekend's destruction, without all the high tech devices Americans are accustomed to seeing on television action dramas. Working with a military technician team member, Mott says the team used "the tools of their experience, their skill, incredible efficiency, and pure physical strength."
'Anywhere else, a team of analysts collecting data and a $250,000 armored vehicle'
"I just couldn't help thinking what it would be like elsewhere," she said. "Some team would come to study the situation for a day, then another to analyze the data collected, then another would arrive with a $250,000 armored vehicle to remove the thing."
In its ongoing work, and with support from Church World Service, "Transforming Arms to Ploughshares" has exchanged arms for tools like sewing machines, hoes and bikes. But Mott says, "Because the program was so successful, in recent months, the collection program has moved on to the next level."
Program now exchanging community-sized development solutions for weapons
The team is no longer just working with individuals but involving whole communities, she says, "but is instead exchanging weapons for development programs such as Church World Service's 'water for life' resources that further help communities gain the skills and build the resources that enable them to have, own and maintain their own clean water resources."
In Mozambique, on September 11, 2006, a whole community exchanged its arms for a school. In a related Transforming Arms to Ploughshares trauma healing project, participants turned weapons into bold sculptures. A new Church World Service program to launch this May will combine the two concepts, as communities exchange their weapons for a community-maintained water system, and as a local artist turns some of the collected arms into a sculpture to be embedded into the water structure, a memorial to transformation and peace.
Church World Service has partnered with the Christian Council of Mozambique since the country's struggle for independence and throughout its civil war, with focus now on rehabilitation and sustainable development efforts.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Maputo, the Christian Council's Women's Section and Women's Society Executive Board have conducted a blood drive for impending shortages at the Maputo Central Hospital, and parishes attached to CCM member churches are providing prayers and comfort for those who lost their loved ones.
Contacts in Mozambique:
Tammi Mott, Church World Service Southern
Africa Regional Office, Maputo, Mozambique, cell phone: 011 718 581-2643
Boaventura Zita, National Coordinator of Turning Weapons Into Ploughshares
(TAE) Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM); boazita@yahoo.com; cell phone:
00 258-82815973
Media Contacts:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin (24/7), 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net