We have just come through that horrible and terrible time that the Mozambicans call the ‘Queimadas’ or the ‘Burnings’.
This is the time when the Mozambicans gleefully set fire to the entire countryside and burn everything to a crisp, and this often includes their fellow humans. Two years ago, they burnt fifty people to death. Young children were among the dead.
As these burnings take place at the end of winter and coincide with the breeding season, many young animals and birds too young to flee or fly are incinerated, leading to more extinction.
The excuse used for these burnings is that the fields are being cleared for planting. This, however, is not altogether true. Uncultivated areas of trees, grass and bush are often set alight in order to flush out animals and then to kill them with machetes or bows and arrows.
For the animals that do manage to survive, it’s a difficult time. Dislocated by the fires, they are also without food, as grass, leaves and seeds have all gone up in smoke.
The cost to the country must be enormous. In the past, I have seen several farm barns burnt down during the Queimadas, as well as a field of grazing for a herd of cattle. One of the houses we were renovating lost its roof during one of these fires and several of our workers’ huts were burnt down, along with their meagre possessions of sleeping mats, blankets, clothes and identity documents.
People involved in tourism lose their animals and the thick pall of smoke that hangs over us for weeks must surely be much more of a threat of lung cancer than smoking cigarettes.
There is never compensation for these losses.
This year, people set fire to our little forest three times.
One of the fires along our eastern boundary was particularly dangerous despite our firebreaks and it took Douglas and our workers over three hours to put out, using water from a little stream. If the stream had been dry, our trees would have turned into an inferno and during the ensuing chaos, our animals would have fled straight into the waiting machetes of the hunters.
As far as I’m concerned, the Queimadas are an abomination and should be regarded as a crime against nature.
Val.
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