Mozambique

PRESIDENT CLINTON joined a panel of U.S. government officials and African dignitaries at the National Summit on Africa in Washington last month to discuss the United States' policy on Africa. Articulating his desire to further our partnership with the continent, Mr. Clinton stressed that Africa does matter to the United States. At the same time U.S. officials were pledging their support for revitalizing the African continent, thousands of people in Mozambique were fleeing their homes as torrential rains deluged the landscape, destroying homes, crops, roads and futures.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa --An acute health worker shortage in southern Africa is preventing many people with AIDS from getting lifesaving drugs, and Western donor policies are part of the problem, a new report claims. Major American and European aid programs do not help pay nurses' salaries because the effort is seen as "unsustainable," says the report, released here yesterday by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders. Also, the International Monetary Fund, by pushing countries to limit wages, has restricted African governments from raising salaries as a way of easing the "brain drain" of home-grown medical expertise, the report adds.

MAPUTO, Mozambique -- A partial cease-fire between Mozambique's government and a tenacious guerrilla movement is being hailed as a major breakthrough toward ending an almost 16-year civil war that has killed 200,000 people and displaced more than 2 million.Over the weekend, the Mozambique Resistance Movement, widely known by its Portuguese acronym Renamo, agreed to a truce along two railway corridors from Mozambican ports on the Indian Ocean to land-locked Zimbabwe.Renamo entered into the accord the day after a new constitution went into effect Friday in Mozambique that incorporated key Renamo demands.

CHOKWE, Mozambique -- In the dimly lit church made of mud brick and corrugated metal, the young people gathered here believe it is a given that safe sex is anything but safe. "From what I know, some condoms have got holes," said 23-year-old Zodwa Ubisse, rising from a wooden bench to address 20 of her peers. "I've tried taking some new ones, but water comes out, so they're not safe." "So abstinence is the key, isn't it?" summed up Nelda Nhantumbo, the 25-year-old student-teacher, drawing nods and murmurs of assent.

AMBA, Mozambique -- A strong breeze picked up the sand-like dirt and whipped it across the bleak, flat bush, right through the thickly bunched reeds that form the walls of most of the houses.The incessant wind blowing beneath a gray sky seemed to accentuate the poverty that grips this country, among the world's poorest. But it could not take the small smile of satisfaction off the face of Natalia Chachaio.She had come home to this village about 50 miles northwest of the country's capital, Maputo, eight years after the cruelty of war drove her into exile in South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique told a U.S. congressional delegation yesterday that he was anxious to reach a cease-fire agreement with anti-government rebels so that his war-torn country could begin to mend itself, the delegation leader reported.Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., led the delegation that met with Mr. Chissano in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, during a half-day trip."He was frustrated that peace talks have been moving so slowly," Senator Mikulski said in Johannesburg.

Much like visitors who gawk at fish in the National Aquarium, a delegation of Mozambique politicians came to Baltimore yesterday to observe the city's newest exhibit: the 1999 mayor's race.The eight African officials are guests of the National Democratic Institute, a Washington agency created to foster world democracy. The contingent, which included two elections commissioners, spent a day with three of Baltimore's leading mayoral candidates, getting a front-row seat to what has become a turbulent campaign involving 27 candidates.

Mozambique: A country six months wet, six months dry, sprawling along the hot, humid coast of the Indian Ocean between Tanzania and South Africa. Large enough to grant 10.6 square miles to each of its 15.4 million people (in 1989), and best known in the Western world, probably, for its major river. The Zambezi flows eastward, slicing the country in two.Mozambique is where Vasco DeGama dropped anchor in 1498, creating a colony for Portugal well into the 20th century. It's where, in 1871, New York Herald reporter Henry Morton Stanley came upon Scottish medical missionary and explorer "Dr. [David]

CHOKWE, Mozambique -- In the dimly lit church made of mud brick and corrugated metal, the young people gathered here believe it is a given that safe sex is anything but safe. "From what I know, some condoms have got holes," said 23-year-old Zodwa Ubisse, rising from a wooden bench to address 20 of her peers. "I've tried taking some new ones, but water comes out, so they're not safe." "So abstinence is the key, isn't it?" summed up Nelda Nhantumbo, the 25-year-old student-teacher, drawing nods and murmurs of assent.

MACHAZE, Mozambique -- Filimone Ntembapa had only two choices after the rains failed to come this year. He could move his family while they were still strong enough to walk, or he could watch them starve.The 51-year-old tribal chief already had seen many of his people flee the village of Butiro in search of food, and he knew the time had come for him to go too.So last month he packed up his two wives and six children and led them out of Butiro on a dangerous nighttime flight through rebel-held territory to this government-controlled town.

More than 2,000 people, including six African presidents, gathered in Baltimore yesterday in the second day of a four-day summit on trade with the struggling continent. The Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore's Inner Harbor East was host to the fifth U.S.-Africa Business Summit, sponsored by the Corporate Council on Africa. The gathering also included other high-ranking government officials and representatives from U.S. companies already investing in or interested in doing business in Africa.

After more than two decades of research, researchers said yesterday that they have found the first vaccine that is effective against malaria. Trials in Africa showed that the vaccine blocked almost half of new infections in young children and reduced serious disease by nearly 60 percent. Experts termed the results a major breakthrough in efforts to tame a disease that afflicts 400 million people each year, killing 1 million to 3 million - most of them children in Africa. Malaria is the leading killer of children under age 5 and ranks with AIDS and tuberculosis among the world's most lethal diseases.

MAPUTO, Mozambique - On sweaty summer nights in this tropical East African port, people searching for relief can go to A Fofoca Pub. A sticky sea breeze staggers through the open windows, and the pub's prized satellite television offers patrons news of places much cooler - such as Wisconsin, the site of last week's Democratic presidential primary. When a customer shouted that he saw U.S. Sen. John Kerry on the screen, heads turned to focus on a CNN report about the Democratic front-runner's wooing Midwestern voters.

WASHINGTON - Amid the destruction and crushed hopes in Sierra Leone, one of the most significant casualties is the credibility of United Nations peacekeepers, who have failed for the fifth time in less than a decade to prevent local hatreds from exploding into butchery. The hundreds of dead in the small west African nation, the kidnapping of 500 U.N. soldiers and the thousands of refugees have again exposed the confusion and weakness that regularly grip the world body in the face of war. "You have 7,000 peacekeepers on the ground in Sierra Leone.

SKUKUSA, South Africa -- To cull or not to cull Kruger's elephants, that is the jumbo-sized dilemma facing officials at South Africa's most famous national park. Five years after they stopped killing elephants to control their numbers, the practice is again under consideration. When public pressure forced a halt in culling in 1995, Kruger National Park had an elephant population of 7,806, not too much above what was then considered the ideal, 7,000. Today it has 9,152. A new elephant-management policy, ready for implementation, opens the way for renewed culling by shooting the animals from a helicopter.

PRESIDENT CLINTON joined a panel of U.S. government officials and African dignitaries at the National Summit on Africa in Washington last month to discuss the United States' policy on Africa. Articulating his desire to further our partnership with the continent, Mr. Clinton stressed that Africa does matter to the United States. At the same time U.S. officials were pledging their support for revitalizing the African continent, thousands of people in Mozambique were fleeing their homes as torrential rains deluged the landscape, destroying homes, crops, roads and futures.

MAPUTO, Mozambique -- Graca Machel settles at the conference table in her office here, asks an assistant for a cup of espresso and says, as nicely as such things can be said, that she will be glad to discuss her work but has no intention of talking about her relationship with President Nelson Mandela of South Africa.Soon, however, she cannot seem to help herself. The very mention of his name brings on a girlish, conspiratorial grin. She laughs at her lack of resolve."Oh, all right," she says, with a mock sigh.

LAST YEAR, Mozambique had the world's fastest growing economy. It was the success story of the international program to forgive debt of the 41 poorest countries -- in its case, $3.7 billion worth. Inflation was modest. It was throwing off the culture of dependency. Now the southeast African country of 19 million people is a basket case through no fault of its own. The rains came all January. Cyclone Eline was a knockout blow in late February. Another cyclone is menacing in the Indian Ocean.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Once more, the world cries for Africa. This is a continent where joy seems permanently hostage to tragedy, where setback lies ever in ambush of progress. A baby, born in a tree, is snatched to safety with her mother by a helicopter rescue crew, just after the newborn's grandmother is swept out of the branches to her death by the raging floodwaters of Mozambique. There, in a flash, is the human dimension of the continent's all-too-familiar fate. As for the family, so for the country, and also for the continent: hope and despair, permanently twinned in a perplexing partnership that too frequently brings disappointment to the best efforts at improvement.

LAST YEAR, Mozambique had the world's fastest growing economy. It was the success story of the international program to forgive debt of the 41 poorest countries -- in its case, $3.7 billion worth. Inflation was modest. It was throwing off the culture of dependency. Now the southeast African country of 19 million people is a basket case through no fault of its own. The rains came all January. Cyclone Eline was a knockout blow in late February. Another cyclone is menacing in the Indian Ocean.