Maputo (Fides Service) - Sister Dalmazia Colombo a Consolata Missionary tells of her experience in Mozambique.

"Twenty six of the thirty six years I spent as a missionary in Mozambique were years of war: ten were years of struggle for independence from colonial government and sixteen for liberation from a Communist regime which took over from the European colonialists. As a woman I experienced these long years in which far from abating, violence became ever more fierce.
The first memory of woman-war was on the 30 day voyage by boat from Lisbon to Nacala province in Mozambique where I had been assigned. Travelling with me were Portuguese women, some of them even with children, on their way to join a soldier husband, or son or fiancee…they told me that after shedding many tears they had decided to collect their belongings and take the risk of a life "overseas". (Some reached Mozambique but never found the person they sought).
When I arrived in Cuamba I was horrified to find myself in a vast morgue, funeral vans were coming and going: there had just been a fierce battle with many dead. The first wounded soldier I assisted was Mozambican. He had been picked up by his companions in a state of delirium. I managed to calm him down. When we speak of war we always refer to men, but war affects also women. It kills women, wounds women, puts to flight many, many women.
I will never forget a girl who had come to Mitucue to buy her wedding dress and to see the home of her dreams: a mine blew off both of her legs.
Women refugees and their children are a chapter apart. These mothers would want their children never to grow up because once grown up they would be torn away from that piece of land which was their home, often a home without walls, and only branches for a roof. Up rooted for what, to be child soldiers, "objects of pleasure": and the mothers and the little girls knew this. I saw hundreds of these women return from exile in 1992-1993 after the peace agreement.
I remember meeting a group from Malawi, about a hundred almost all women, many children and a few old men. They had been walking for several days back to Mozambique after ten years of living as fugitives with bundles on their heads and pots tied around their waist.
I remember stopping to ask where they were going, They gave the name of a place. I said they had already passed the village. They knew this but that land was so covered with blood and violence it was no place to live in peace and so they were going elsewhere. I insisted that the area had been de-mined, there was the well, mangoes, their fertile land. They said nothing and continued on their way.
I found them a few weeks later camped on the edge of a forest where with great difficulty they were clearing a piece of the bush to make a home. It was nearly Christmas. They asked me to pray with them. Those women had made a place where Jesus could be born: a corner of the forest cleared of trees, a cross in the centre and tree trunk seats all around. I think that the Christmas I lived with these families, mostly single parent, families of mother and children was one of the most memorable in all my missionary life" PA (Fides Service 14/2/2003 EM lines 41 Words: 607)