Maníngue Nice: All The Talk of Chókwè

I remember learning in elementary school that the reason for the rise of Egypt's Powerful Empire is because of their ability to tame the Nile and its annual floods, and utilize them for their benefit to produce food and agricultural development.

I find it interesting that in this modern world today there is a nation that faces the same problem that Egypt faced 4000 years ago---building infrastructure to tame a wild river and use it for your benefit; and can not produce similar results as the Egyptians did 4,000 years ago, even with today's advanced technology---- pumps, satellite analysis, computers, etc. As far as the nation who does not utilize the technology is concerned, these technologies don't even exist. They aren't relevant because they aren't being used. If I don't have the money to buy an airplane ticket, I can never set foot on an airplane and use that means of advanced, efficient transportation. Similarly Chókwè has this problem with advanced modern technology.

Chelsea and I have been working tirelessly for the last month trying to get 1,200 hectares of land in Chókwè in our businesses' name: Economia Agrária do Vale do Limpopo. This piece of land at one time was very prosperous. In the words of a Brazilian Agronomist- At one time it was "the bread basket of lower Moçambique." If you drove to it today you would be able to see all of the advanced canal systems that once existed, although now they are grown over with brush and filled with mud from the years. The piece of land was developed in 1932 by Portuguese agri-entrepreneurs and engineers. They managed to tame the great Limpopo river and its floods for their benefit. In 1975 the Portuguese were expulsed from Moçambique and all that these agri-entrepreneurs and engineers had done in Chókwè was handed over to incompetent (that is no insult) and resourceless Mozambican nationals (who had a war on their hands) to care for. Then came the civil war, 1,000,000 Mozambicans died and 3.5 million were refugees, which made it almost impossible to plant and harvest a crop in Chókwè because the region was greatly impacted by the war. So a combination of a lack of knowledge (The Portuguese weren't too concerned with passing down their trades) and war left the once prosperous land in a state of zero productivity. Eventually the canals got clogged and dried and no longer were canals, thus the land they supplied water to had a yelld of 80% less than its potential if irrigated. To make matters worse, in 2000 there came a Cyclone (The Southern Hemisphere's word for a Big Tornado/Hurricane combo) which brewed up a rain storm in which 90% of the country's functioning irrigation infrastructure was damaged, 1,400 square kilometres of cultivated and grazing land was lost, leaving 113,000 small farming households with nothing. All this happened in Chókwè, Gaza, Moçambique, thus completely destroying the canal infrastructure beyond the point of destruction that it was already at. Then some americans come to the land in 2011 and want to use it to produce national product for a country that imports an estimated 50% of its rice staple, and they (even though they aren't using the land) make it a battle, which is understandable when you understand the quote of my good friend Elias who helped me understand why this happens here:

"Alex, Mozambicans have no wealth. The only wealth We have is our land. Even if we don't use it, we know that one day we can put seeds in it and it will give us food and provide for us. It is the one thing we can count on."

Hence their understandable reluctance to give us the land.

We hope to have the 1200 hectares within 2 weeks after a month of bureaucracy and corruption.

We are all the talk in Chókwè and we will be the biggest agricultural project in the area since 1975, the way I see it, if the Portuguese once had this land producing yields that they exported to around the world, why cant we make this beautiful land that God gave us do the same now?!