Time for a break from the kids' letters for a look at current events. I post these from time to time, and they usually tend to raise a few eyebrows. Please be assured that I am not cherry-picking stories to make a point. There are so few news sources, and I'm taking all I can get.
The ones aren't here are all the news stories full of political rhetoric and telling people to just hold on a little longer because it will get better. Some people think that I pick the news to make it look like everybody involved has the intellect of Barney Fife, but these are about the only stories that are about anything at all.
Witchcraft Killings in Sofala Province – 16 women were killed having been accused of witchcraft. Often times when literally anything happens people will accuse one (or all) of their grandparents of cursing them. This could be their wife leaving them, a child dying, a car accident, or crop disease. You laugh, but people here really do witchcraft for bad things to happen, and then those bad things happen. This story reminds me of another one I posted earlier where the village chief was lamenting that there had been 12 lynchings last year in his village. He only authorized 7 of them and wanted to know who was responsible for the other 5.
The Republic of South Africa has announced it will be looking into the death of Mozambican President Samora Machel and is prepared to fully cooperate with Mozambican officials. President Machel died when his plane crashed in South Africa near the border with Mozambique. In 1986. Yes, he crashed in 1986. Thank you for your quick and timely response, South Africa.
A representative from Microsoft was on hand in Maputo to announce their continued support of computer literacy in the third-world and to check of the construction of what was originally supposed to be a computer literacy education center as well as the 9,500 computers they donated to the aforementioned center. I say it was supposed to be a training center because shortly after Microsoft left the representative from the government referred it as the the home of the Mozambican Space Administration. At the announcement of using the computer for a space program instead of job training and education, the twenty-five percent of babies in attendance that will statistically die of malnutrition/disease/malaria/bad water before they hit the age of 4 walked out in protest (or at least should have).
The only Mozambican airline is still banned from flying to Europe as well as basically anywhere that's not Africa. The reason is that their safety and inspection record is horrible. People in-the-know (like me) know its because there was an egregious amount of drug trafficking going on using the planes, and so Europe just straight banned them.
The central bank just announced that GDP grew by over 7% this year. Then the World Bank came out and said that the number was unadjusted for inflation, and said that that inflation is over 10%. Then I noticed that neither take into account population growth. I conservatively figure that the economy shrunk by about 5.1% last year. Hooray for bad math, Mozambique. Maybe your new Space Agency can help with that.
(As a side note, the economy of Mozambique has grown by almost the same unadjusted 7.3-7.5% margin every year for like the last four years. This means the economy is either remarkably consistent and unstoppable, really really bad at math,or (spoiler alert) like that Chinese company in The Dark Knight that was really just a front for money laundering.
A government health inspector released a report saying that, in a study done early this year, 64.4% of moonshine is “not fit for consumption”. Tests were done on over 140 samples. The country responded with a collective shrug of the shoulders and said, “Meh.”
(Other studies have shown that over three-quarters of adults in the country drink uncontrollably at least once a week.)
And finally, in a bit of sadder news, North Korean leader King Jong-Il passed away last Saturday. This prompted the leader of ruling party to issue a statement: “Considering the relations that exist at the state level, we also feel this loss. We have commercial partnerships with North Korea and know that Pyongyang gave its' support during the civil war”. Let's just hope that 'commercial partnerships' is not code for helping with Mozambique's space program.
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