Before They Fly
I had lunch with fellow interpreters and delegates from the UMC General Conference (official meeting of the United Methodist Church, akin to a regular constitutional congress). We were speaking of transportation around the world, and a question was raised about transportation in Mozambique. An interpreter from there began addressing the difficulty of transportation outside of the cities. When Mozambique gained independence in 1975, war for independence gave way to a civil war. As a child in this war, this interpreter saw 6 of his brothers gunned down. Like many others, the family fled their rural home, heading to the relative safety of the cities for survival. The cities offered the hope for jobs, for survival. Soon, returning home to their rural subsistence farms became impossible, due to a proliferation of land mines. Those lands that once supported life now promised death. War. How can we talk about the glories of war when we pause even a moment to consider