Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
suggested other people to talk to, took me to their houses and the houses
of family and friends to learn more about life on Quirimba and showed
me their allotments (
machambas
) and their other daily work. The informa-
tion presented in the results is therefore assembled from a large number of
mainly informal interviews with a wide spectrum of people in the commu-
nity. The key informants are acknowledged at the end of this chapter.
Some biological information about the women's invertebrate i shery
was collected in the i rst year of the project and has been presented in
Barnes et al. (1998). Additional social and economic information about
these i sheries was collected through informal discussion with women in
the village, by accompanying them i shing and through two workshops.
Workshops were organized with the local OMM (Organizaçao da Mulher
Moçambicana - Mozambican Women's Organization) representative in
the village. The workshops were conducted in Portuguese, Makua and
Kimwani. Most women in Quirimba were illiterate and many did not
speak Portuguese so it was important to use visual methods that were
accessible to all participants.
Results and discussion
Quirimba during the study period (1996-97)
Quirimba village has a good system of water pumps from wells through-
out the village. There is a medical clinic staf ed by a trained nurse, but no
doctor, a small school, a market selling a very limited range of goods, a few
small shops and a bakery. The houses in the village are fairly large (two to
four rooms), and well built with a mangrove structure i lled out with mud
and rock. Most have traditional
mecute
(woven coconut palm) roofs but
there are some stone or cement houses with corrugated iron roofs. The
houses have large yards where cooking is done and also small toilet and
washing shelters. There is no sewerage system in the village. A few houses
have shelters with a 'long-drop'-style toilet but many people still use the
beach or mangrove area. There is no electricity supply to the village. A
few residents have oil-powered generators for their homes, used for a few
hours each day. There is a mosque in the village for the predominantly
Muslim community.
In Kumilamba in the south of the island, the residents have
macham-
bas
, small allotments used for mainly subsistence agriculture. Houses in
Kumilamba are of a less permanent nature than those in the village, and
generally smaller (typically just one room). The people who live in the
machambas
have easy access to their agricultural land but they are a 6km
walk from the village where they have to go to get drinking water. Also,
many children who live in the
machambas
do not go to school because
