Thread: Employment Opportunities

Don't worry, there are plenty of important types up here that like to claim credit for all sorts of things as well!

I've been very interested in how similar your stories are with what it's like up here. Thankfully we don't have explosives everywhere, but there are all sorts of non-prof and non-gov outfits around, training going on all the time, and plenty of gear being brought in for all of these programmes. So it always looks fairly familiar.

Thanks again!

Had to laugh at this on the weekend.

My wife and I were waiting in our car to catch a ferry across Maputo Bay to Catembe and, as usual, the hawkers come along trying to sell whatever they have.

This gent caught our attention though. He was wearing a Scout shirt. My wife (and I..when home) and my Land Rover are out in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and the badges this gent had on his shirt were from Glen Waverley & Wheelers Hill (the shoulder patch)..and there was another badge from where the original owner had ventured to Qld in Jan 98 for the 18th Australian Scout Jamboree.

Is there anyone on here that is connected with the Scouts around Wheelers Hill & Glen Waverley??...would love to be able to show these photos to the original owner of the shirt.

Hi BBC,

I have sent the pic to a friend of mine who is still involved scouting in Melbourne and she suggested to try getting on to facebook with either the vic rovers or scouts victoria pages. As a side note, I was actually at that Jamboree.

Phill

Chokwe, is a place that would not loom much in the knowledge of people on here. It is the place that my wife, her Mum, and myself had recently been to, to celebrate the Lobola ceremony.



This photo was taken in the main street of the town this AM:



2m of water has flooded the place and the family, where they were located, have been able to evacuate but, they have lost everything....sad.



Below are reports this morning from AIM, Radio Moçambique, and Noticias:




80113E FLOODS: CHOKWE UNDER WATER

Maputo, 24 Jan (AIM) – A massive flood surge down the Limpopo River hit the town of Chokwe, in the southern Mozambican province of Gaza, on Wednesday morning.

The waters of the Limpopo were rising sharply as from 20.00 on Tuesday evening, but according to the mayor of Chokwe, Jorge Macuacua, cited by the independent television station STV, the main flood wave hit Chokwe at about 11.00 on Wednesday morning. By midday the entire town was swamped. Some of the smaller houses were completely submerged.

In some Chokwe streets, the water was about two metres deep. All the roads were impassable, and movement through the town was only possible in boats operated by the country’s relief agency, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGC).

The whole town has shut down, with all banks and shops closed. Electricity supplies have been cut.

These are certainly the worse floods Chokwe has faced since the huge flood on the Limpopo in 2000. The authorities have tried to organise evacuation. The INGC has set up a temporary accommodation centre at the village of Xihaquelane, 40 kilometres from Chokwe town, but this centre can only accommodate around 600 people in 50 tents. The number of people at risk in Chokwe town and district is put at 55,000.

So many people have preferred to move 60 kilometres to Macia, capital of the neighbouring district of Bilene. A long queue of vehicles could be seen on the road from Chokwe to Macia, carrying people to safety. The same road became a corridor for herds of cattle, goats and sheep, as farmers tried to move their livestock out of the path of the flood.

A Chokwe magistrate, Fernando Macamo, contacted by the independent newsheet “Mediafax” described the situation as one of “extreme emergency”,

“My residence has been engulfed by the waters, all my property has been submerged, and to escape from this situation I have taken refuge on the terrace of the Limpopo hotel”, said Macamo. The hotel was much in demand from Chokwe residents who had ignored recommendations to leave the town.

Macamo and Macuacua both said that many other people have climbed trees or are stranded on rooftops.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday in Maputo, the INGC general director, Joao Ribeiro, regretted that, although most people in high risk zones had left their homes, many others had stubbornly ignored recommendations to leave flood prone areas in the river basins of southern and central Mozambique. The INGC was therefore forced to resort to coercive evacuations in order to save lives, he said.

“We have begun to remove people affected by force, and now we’re stepping this up, because there’s still resistance and the danger is real”, he stressed,

Over the last few days, Ribeiro said, the INGC has increased its communications with endangered communities, including the use of megaphones urging people to leave their homes. “It’s not for lack of communication that people have not left”, he added. “We have informed people to abandon areas at risk, and most of them have now done so”.

The flood surge that engulfed Chokwe is moving downstream, and by Friday it will strike the Gaza provincial capital, Xai-Xai, near the mouth of the Limpopo.

The National Water Board (DNA) has urged everyone living on the lower Limpopo to evacuate now.

“The situation is critical and so people should evacuate”, declared Rute Nhamucho, head of the DNA Water Resource Department. “Xai-Xai is on maximum alert, and the city could be evacuated at any moment”.

The Maputo daily “Noticias” reports that people and institutions (both public and private) are already leaving Xai-Xai, fearing a repeat of the catastrophic floods of 2000.
(AIM)
Pf/ (617)


Been some heavy rain down here in Maputo. In 3hrs worth of rain last tue during the day, 158mm fell; massive.

What is strange is that despite repeated floods, nobody does anything like build a levy or something, or proclaim and mark the flood areas.

So every couple of years, Moz becomes a disaster zone.

Odd behaviour. I'm an African by all accounts, but I still don't understand.

Originally Posted by jakeslouw

What is strange is that despite repeated floods, nobody does anything like build a levy or something, or proclaim and mark the flood areas.

So every couple of years, Moz becomes a disaster zone.

Odd behaviour. I'm an African by all accounts, but I still don't understand.

Jakeslouw,

Mozambique floods displace 70 000 - Africa | IOL News | IOL.co.za

Boet....very different levels of development. The land is divided up between the people and despite the fact of cyclic seasons of flooding, they will always come back to generate their existence of their plots of land. Until there is developed the capacity to either, regulate the land and it's use and develop flood mitigation measures...all some time away....and, where is the money coming from to do so?

Now...if there were some sort of money to be made out of doing it...the government would have already been doing it.

On a different note, getting back to your Afghanistan adventures I found this site recently, if it's a repost I'm sorry.
Remembering 1960s Afghanistan, the photographs of Bill Podlich

Originally Posted by Hymie

On a different note, getting back to your Afghanistan adventures I found this site recently, if it's a repost I'm sorry.
Remembering 1960s Afghanistan, the photographs of Bill Podlich

Thanks for that Hymie, what a great insight into a different time. Afghanistan is truly a dramatically beautiful place and it has some wonderful people. I will go back there one day.

Sorry for the delay in replying. We have had very intermittent electrical supply, right across the city, since Fri night.

Been busy chasing up the bureaucracy for my residency here, one requirement of which is the need for me to gain a Mozambican Driver's Licence...medical exam, criminal record, then a theory exam...found out today that I had successfully passed the theory exam...a 1hr, 5 page written exam, of 30 questions...all in Portuguese...result....100%.....a great outcome!

It was certainly a lot more of a process than what it took for me to get my other foreign licence, in Ghana..that was just an eye test.