A Burden of Responsibility

Another beautiful day in Maputo. Its supposed to be mid-winter, but the sky was cloudless all day long and it was balmy T-shirt weather. It really should be paradise. But I don't know. It seems to me that there is more to paradise than a pretty view.
On our way to find a bank this morning (dodging the obligatory Saturday wedding traffic), a beggar , a young man with a wasted, crooked hand knocked on the window. He looked like a burn victim.
In the supermarket, a young boy asked for 5 mts - he was short for the cost of the bread he and his little brother were buying.
Of course, we made ourselves feel better by giving to both.
A friend of mine recently remarked that her lot is different from the lot of the overseas expat. She is South African and she said `the Europeans and Americans know they can go home and just leave this behind them - the Africans know it won't change.' I really didn't know how to deal with the comment - just as I don't know how to deal with the poverty which laps at the edges of our comfortable expat lives. I don't know where personal responsibility starts and ends. So we all drank more sangria and changed the subject.
But of course the subject doesn't go away. Here we are, living and working in a country not our own. DB works hard, but earns relatively well and we benefit from a lifestyle not available to the vast majority of Mozambicans. We have a lot, in a land where many have so little. And so we become responsible for people. The children without money for bread, the beggars on the corners and especially the people we employ.
We have three employees: a gardener, an empregada (maid and child carer) and a driver. Our gardener only works with us once a week, but as employers, we have become largely responsible for our empregada and our driver, and therefore for their families too. It is a weight of conscience.
There are supposed to be elections in November, but Renamo (the losers after the civil war) are sabre-rattling up in the North. It is difficult to access the news here because the main language is Portuguese, but, according to my empregada, Renamo have been frightening people up in Tete. She tells me that she doesn't think elections will go ahead and that she is worried about what Renamo will do.
She remembers the war when she was a child living across the bay in Catembe. She remembers the fear and running from her home in the night. She tells me she had an aunt who was captured by Renamo and forced to walk to Pont d'Oura to a work camp. The aunt managed to escape across the border to Swaziland, but was gone for a year, too frightened to cross back into Mozambique. My empregada tells me that Renamo would make parents shoot their small children so that they wouldn't slow down the march to the work camps. She asked me if I have ever had `to run' (for my life).
`What will happen?' my empregada asked. `What will happen if there is trouble? Will all the contractors from overseas go home? Will there be no more jobs?'
What would happen? I suppose we'd run home as fast as we could and the people who have been part of our lives would be left behind.
There is a weight to being an expat worker. You become responsible for people and a country other than your own. It is an uncomfortable weight.