Sal do Mundo

Looking back, one of my biggest disappointments in PC Moz has been my own failure to get the proposed orphan mentoring project off the ground. While I can at least find partial solace in the fact that I tried my hardest, this still does little for a person who was both unhappy with his primary job and was having lingering doubts about being here in the first place. For that reason especially, I was more than elated when I stumbled across a project that went above and beyond what I had imagined and, more importantly, that needed some outside help.

Sal do Mundo (or Salt of the Earth; see Matthew 5) is a project run by the Methodist Church in Chicuque, a town right next to Maxixe, and provide many necessary services for local orphans and vulnerable children. Not only did Sal do Mundo provide food for 200 children and their poor adoptive families, but they also gave uniforms and materials for school, gave money for healthcare, and offered health and hygiene classes. If that weren’t enough, according to Guambe, the Pastor’s husband and the man in charge of the project, there were hopes to start sewing and carpentry classes for the kids to pick up some basic marketable skills.

Over the past few months then, Sal do Mundo has had to adapt to having depleted funds, which as you can imagine, had a rather difficult effect on most of the aspects of the program. What’s inspiring, however, is how despite not having money to get paid the activists still go to visit the families in order to at least make sure things are going alright. In fact, they have reportedly been going so far as to pay for treatment out of their own pockets when the children are sick.

My hope, then, having seen what they have already done and what they are capable of doing is to help resurrect various aspects of Sal do Mundo. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I have access to a variety of grants that cannot cover all of the expenses of the project, but can at least support small portions. I’m also attempting to assert the value of having health classes again, while trying to focus on the developmental aspect of the program so that the focus is on projects that will not run continual costs, but will see some concrete, permanent effects in the community.

Thus far, we are in the early stages of reviving Sal do Mundo, Guambe has already asked me to check on the viability of bringing back the food distribution and healthcare aspect as well as the possibility of starting up sewing classes. While I await confirmation from Peace Corps, I am also looking to help in any way without being invasive and hurting something that has already been running so well.

In the meantime, all I can do is to wait, but I remain encouraged that the wheels are indeed in motion. Here’s praying that we can get to that point sooner than later though and that (if I can make a bad pun) the salt does not ‘lose its taste.’