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Damian McCallion ACA, Accountancy Ireland, August 2006
“What would you do if you were driving through the bush and
a war lord stopped the convoy you were travelling with, to demand
10% of your cargo?” It wasn’t a question I had
ever anticipated being asked in interview - I was a chartered accountant
after all. But I was being interviewed by GOAL, the international
aid agency with a reputation for being direct and to the point.
Things moved quickly and two weeks later I was in Africa on a six
month contract as Financial Controller with GOAL Mozambique.
Situated on Africa’s southeast coast, Mozambique shares
a border with South Africa. Ranked among the ten poorest countries
in the world, people here earn less than 50c a day and the
southern African country has been declared one of ten African countries
worst affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
I won’t ever forget the first view I had of Maputo, Mozambique’s
capital city, as the South African Airways plane began its descent.
Thousands of tin roofed huts sat at the city limits, not far from
high rise buildings and, on the drive from the airport, hundreds
of barefoot people streamed past. I thought, ‘how can these
people be so poor?’ For the first time I had seen what it
means to live in an utterly unequal and divided world.
In just two short weeks my life had changed completely. An
auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers for the previous three and a
half years, I had spent a long time thinking about the kind of work
I would undertake in Mozambique, but had wondered, many times, if
it would ever materialise. Now I had arrived and it was real.
GOAL came here in 1987 to work with Mozambican refugees in Swaziland.
Over the years, the agency has worked in emergency relief as well
as in rehabilitation and development.
Nowadays, the charity concentrates on the HIV/AIDS sector offering
information, education, care and support for people living with
HIV/AIDS - a huge problem here.
Last year’s (2005) figures show an average adult HIV-prevalence
rate of 18% and, every day, five hundred people become newly infected
- 45% of them are under 24. This country’s HIV problem is
exploding and AIDS is decimating life expectancy. Right now,
Mozambicans can expect to live until their mid-forties (Men - 46
years; Women - 48 years), but by 2010 projections show that this
figure will have been slashed to just 27 years, the lowest life
expectancy in the world.
During my time in Mozambique, I was based in both GOAL offices,
one in Maputo, the other almost 500kms north along the coast, in
picturesque Inhambane.
On my first work day in the country, I formally opened and welcomed
participants onto a Home Based Care training course near Maputo.
Everything and everyone seemed strange. The road was a sand track
full of bumps and hollows, the children stared at what might even
have been the first white person they had ever seen, and when the
course participants were asked to described their hobbies, most
said they enjoyed cleaning their houses, washing clothes or serving
food to their husbands. I thought about how an Irish person might
have answered the same question - going to the cinema, playing golf,
holidaying, or watching a soccer match. You’d have to wait
a very long time for any Irish person to say they enjoyed cleaning
the house or washing clothes!
Three days later, I was sitting in my office with the outgoing
Financial Controller when we heard a noise outside. My assistant,
who had just gone out for lunch, was being abducted in a car-jacking.
When we telephoned the police they said that they were unable to
respond because they had no petrol. Thankfully, the car-jackers
released the man forty minutes later, out in the bush, and we sent
a car out to collect him. He was unharmed, but the incident made
me realised that life here was dangerous. GOAL’s safety conscious
attitude was comforting and I felt safer because the organisation
took precautions like hiring drivers to transport us and offering
us advice.
Weekends were always action-packed. Being an expatriate and an
NGO worker, I made many very good friends and met regularly with
staff from UNICEF, the World Bank, the World Food Programme
and the Irish Embassy. The Irish Embassy was particularly good,
even keeping me back copies of The Irish Times to read.
Mozambique has one huge beach, which stretches right along 2,000
kilometres of coastline, and it was usually deserted while I was
there because the locals judged the mid-winter temperatures to be
too cold. But in Ireland these temperatures would have been equivalent
to the hottest on record with daily temperatures touching 40 degrees
C.
I loved attending mass every week, not least because Africans
really know how to sing and dance. Though a service can last for
anything up to three hours and I couldn’t understand a word
(Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique), it was one
of my favourite pastimes. And no, being the only white person at
mass didn’t bother me, I always received a warm welcome.
But Mozambique is a developing country and life here is hard.
I will never forget attending the wake of my cleaner’s daughter.
It was a Sunday afternoon when I was told that the baby had died
and that Isabelle wanted me to come over to the house. Isabelle’s
own mother had just died four weeks previously and our office guard’s
son had recently been murdered at the hands of a Maputo street gang.
Death knocks frequently on Mozambican doors.
In spite of all this, Isabelle is one of the lucky ones because
she lives in a cement block house with a tin roof. Most Mozambicans
live in straw houses. I sat with Isabelle, her neighbours and her
family in the bedroom (four cement unpainted walls, a straw mat
for a bed – no other furniture). A candle burned to give light.
It was 38 degrees C and there were no fans, the room was like an
oven and my shirt was soaked with sweat. I learned that the child
had not received any medicine at all in her four short months, and
that she had died due to infection. The situation was heart breaking.
Isabelle worried that the child, who had been removed to the local
hospital, would not be in a cold room. In Mozambique, it is not
uncommon for the deceased to be left on trolleys in hospital corridors.
With temperatures of up to 40 degrees C, she was worried that the
body might not be preserved. We took Isabelle and her sisters down
to the hospital to make sure that the child was in the cold room.
She was, and the body was being treated respectively. The funeral
took place the next day and GOAL loaned Isabelle a vehicle and driver
to transport the family to the service. This was my lowest point,
and I still think about Isabelle and wonder how she is coping.
The six months flew past and it was soon time to leave the country
I had come to love. I still miss many of the people I met in Mozambique,
especially colleagues. But I took a lot from my time there,
learning about other cultures and lives, and I still feel a great
sense of satisfaction knowing that I have truly helped others. I
was touched by the gratitude I received from the Mozambicans I met,
though many of them had difficulty understanding why anyone would
give up a good job to volunteer thousands of miles away from home.
They didn’t understand that I was more than rewarded for my
time, and that I will always have the memories.
My time in Mozambique gave me a great sense of perspective. I
have a new appreciation for the things I would otherwise have taken
for granted; electricity, a functioning telecommunications system,
hot water, a good road network, a health care system, family.
I would strongly recommend volunteer work to anyone. It was one
of the best experiences of my life.
GOAL always needs accountants and if you’ve ever thought
about doing some charity work to help the poorest of the poor, why
not become a GOALie? For details contact GOAL’s personnel
department on (01) 280 9779 or log on to www.goal.ie/jobs
to view current vacancies.
Damian McCallion currently works with PricewaterhouseCoopers in
the Cayman Islands. He spent six months working as Financial Controller
with GOAL Mozambique between April and October 2005.
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