I am an exchange student living in Mozambique. I have been living here for 3 months now and I have gotten used to some of main facts and customs here in this African country. Here in Mozambique, I am staying with the Okpara family. They have two boy children named Buzibi and Charbi. This family is very poor and they make very little to support themselves. My exchange family lives about 2 hours north of the capital Maputo. The house I have been living in is very small with objects scattered all around the house. Since we have very little money it is hard to buy food and water to eat and drink. It is also hard to find food to gather in these dry lands in the interior part of Mozambique, unlike the United States where we can just go to our local supermarket to get food. A popular food eaten in Mozambique that I learned about is called xima, which is made from ground up corn meal usually topped with a blend of sauces. Most nights though, we just had some kind of meals with rice. Electricity is also very limited here so my exchange family tries to save a lot of it for when it is needed. When I walk around, I have noticed that there are a lot of sick people living here which I have discovered that many people can’t afford health care in Mozambique. This is how many Mozambique citizens end up with AIDS or HIV. Mozambique is a very poor country with very little money per family with the average family making under $1000 U.S. Dollars where the average family in the U.S. makes over $46,000.
As for school, the public school nearest to our house is dilapidated and run down, where many kids don’t receive a good education. I am in the ninth grade and many kids even at this age cannot read or write and I can barely understand them. I did meet one boy named Khamisi who did very good in school and could speak English very well. As I got to know him better, the better I knew about this country. Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique but Emakhuwa is the top language spoken. Portuguese is the main language taught in school but they are also learning English, too. Not too many kids are actually in school because many families can’t afford to send their children to school. Many of the kids who don’t go to school pass the time by playing soccer, one of Mozambique’s traditional sports.
During my stay in Mozambique, I learned a lot about the country and what the people do here in their daily lives. I also learned about the schools here and the students that go there. Mozambique is a very interesting country but there is a lot of poverty and people here rarely live to the age of 50. It is very hard to receive a good education here, and the textbooks are all out of date. Mozambique interested me by seeing how other people live, but this is not the way I would want
to end up living.
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