Mozambique Into The War Zone, Not!

 

There have been lots of wars, civil unrest, hostilities and general tension in countries between the north and south both in history and currently. Apparently, I’m in one of those countries right now, Mozambique.

Who knew? You certainly have no feeling or knowledge of it here in Xai-Xai, southern Mozambique.  And it took me a bit of digging to find much media attention on it, but here’s a link to the UN’s take on things and an The International Business Times update.

The general gist is that the government, the Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo) in the south and the opposition fraction, Renamo in the north are not happy with each other due to ongoing discontent resulting from the 2014 election.  And from what I’ve learnt by word of mouth, the recent discovery of energy resources in the north is also a bone of contention.

And from the mouth of a fellow traveler who’s recently driven down from the north. There really is disturbances and volatility going on as he experienced first hand. This was his update:

Travelers are having to move between towns by armed escorts in a convoy. He drove past a truck that was very obviously abandoned on the side of the road due to a mortar attack that appeared to have happened a decent length of time ago according to the rust. Past the next road block he saw another truck on its side with food supplies strewn everywhere, no driver in site and still smoldering. This one had been set alight.

*”Don’t Panic Mr Mainwaring!”

So the good news is even though the very north of Mozambique looks amazing and fellow traveling bloggers have been there-done that, it hasn’t been recently.

And I certainly wont be going any further north than Vilankoulos which is safely miles from the unrest and shenanigans.

 

 

∗ This saying comes from the BBC tv series “Dads Army”.

Here’s a snippet of the 1960-1970’s series if you’re interested, click on the image: