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(3) Maputo, leukaemia and the son of the president

(3) Maputo, leukaemia and the son of the president

28/05/2006 by Arjen Africa

The next day I was travelling from Johannesburg to Maputo overland. A 500 kilometer journey that took me almost 15 hours when I travelled by train and mini bus last year, but the the comfortable long distance bus would bring me there in only seven and a half hours.

On the way I met a Mozambican guy who just fired from hospital after two years. ‘I’ve recovered from leukaemia, and I am happy to go home.’ The last two years, he had spent in a private hospital in Johannesburg.

His family was not even aware of his arrival. He showed me a picture of one of his friends in Maputo. ‘Do you know who this is?’, he asked me. Of course I did now know. ‘This is the son of the president’, he said. He also stays in South Africa.

This guy was in the privileged position of having good health care in one of the poorest countries in the world, with, I learned one of the fastest growing economies and in a much more privileged position than the white young couple I met at Park station the day before.

I also learned that the president of this country send his family to South Africa to live there although a lot of people that I talked to wanted to leave that same country because they did not see a future.

(2) Begging white man
(4) Chinese gelly and growth on Lenin Avenue

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