Mozambique and Gianni's Helicopter

 

Looking back to July 1977 - Mozambique's Minister of Health and the Italian Embassy had very different ideas of what I was supposed to do in the country.  The Minister summoned me to his office the second night after my arrival. He had looked at my CV and decided that I should go to Chokwe as Chief Medical District Director of Limpopo. On the other hand, according to the Italian Ambassador and Professor Pampiglione, who had recruited me, I was to remain at the University of Maputo teaching Primary Health Care.  The Minister, Dr. Helder Martins, however, was adamant and unmovable - either go to Chokwe or leave the country.  

While waiting for the two sides to reach a decision,  I got a fast-track ‘training’ by Professor Ruas in tropical medicine and training by Dr. Gregorio Monasta in frontline anaesthesia, or what and how to do it when short of staff. 

After a month-long  power struggle between, the Minister won and the Italian side had to give up.  I left for Xai-Xai to get my introductions to the provincial health authorities and from there to Chokwe a few days later accompanied by Dr Bernardino. 

As I would realize later in life, the Minister’s decision was a life defining decision—my life. Memories of that time will remain deeply etched in my brain and heart forever, till I die. 

Cheli's brother and family praying

This past February 2023 I was on a return visit to Chokwe.  Two nights before I was to return to Italy via Maputo, Daniel and Cheli came to visit.  

Cheli is a now a retired certified nurse.  She worked with me from 1977-81 as a paediatric ward nurse and as my skilled anaesthetist in the surgery theatre.  Daniel is the youngest brother of Cheli and the owner of the house where I had stayed for three weeks. Daniel is now  a high level official in the Ministry of Agriculture.  Cheli, being older, brought him up. He owes her his position today.

That night, the three of us had a simple chicken and brown potatoes dinner that one of his nieces had prepared.  We ate on the veranda burning anti mosquitos coils to protect us and had a nice conversation touching on the country's economy, agricultural production and his own application to join a Rome based UN agency.  

Cheli did not talk much. Daniel was pleasant and entertaining and smiled continually. He said that he had always wanted to get to know me.  At one point he said that he would send his driver to take me to Maputo but I had to promise him that I would visit Aldeia da Barragem, literally the Village of the Dam.  The dam had been constructed by the Portuguese on the Limpopo river to divert its water to the irrigation canals and rice paddy fields some 30 kilometres to the south, just past Chokwe itself. 

I promised I would go to Barragem without thinking or asking why. After dinner he proposed a visit to his birthplace. We took the paved road to Massingir and soon after the bifurcation to Aldeia da Barragem, we left the road and drove what seemed to be paths, unseen to me, untill we reached a cluster of two or three houses. It was magic. Out of utter darkness, Daniel’s relatives, his eldest brother and his wife, his nephews and nieces, came to greet us and offered maize cobs grilled over an open fire and maheu, a thick maize-based drink. The house was lighted by the car headlamps. 

Cheli and Daniel

First, we had to visit the house under construction as Daniel wanted to show me the different rooms. In one, he said, he would like to assemble mementos of his family. We then sat down under a dim light perched on a side wall of one of the houses and stayed for more than one hour in conversation while savouring simple food and drink under starry skies.  

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Aldeia da Barragen was the site of heavy fighting on September 5, 1979.  The battle was between South Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe, and Mozambican forces in what was then called Operation Uric.  The Rhodesians wanted to cut supply lines to the Freedom Fighters led by Robert Mugabe who would be elected the first President of Zimbabwe a few months later. 

The hospital where I was working at that time in Chokwe was a mere 30 kilometres to the south of the frontline. Many South Rhodesia’s helicopters invaded the area, some landing infantry men south of Chokwe. 

Casualties were huge even among civilians. Three hundred injured people were transported to my hospital in less than 24 hours. 

As I learned much later in life, a Rhodesian helicopter was downed by Mozambican fire on the first day of fighting. One severely injured white person remains in my mind. He had firearm entry and exit wounds to the abdomen and his back just below the lower right rib. He was lucid but he did not respond to my questions in French, English, and Portuguese. He had no documents to indicate his nationality or his name. He was in military fatigues and anxious. We took him to the theatre. The bullet had done extensive damage to the intestine and the right kidney. We stopped the haemorrhage, wherever we were able to find it, tried to do some repair, removed the right kidney and did all we could to ensure his survival for the next 48 hours till he could be transferred.  Felipe was my assistant, while Cheli did the anaesthesia. His name or nationality remained unknown to us; he died a day after surgery. 

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The driver was punctual, the road was smooth and recently paved, the fields around were green with all sort of vegetables. Two former nurse colleagues joined me. After about half an hour drive we did turn to the right as  the road reached a roundabout. In the middle of the roundabout was the tail of a helicopter, in memory of those who died fighting for their freedom in September 1979. Suddenly, with a pang in my stomach, I was painfully  thrown back more than some 40 years and to that night and following days when I was doing all I could hour after hour, day after day to save as many as I could. But the Unknown Soldier of that night remains imprinted on my mind, like an old black and white photo, yes, fading a little but substantially remaining the same over time while it is being kept in the same pocket.  Was he a mercenary? Or was he in the downed copter? This latter hypothesis did not stand, as no one would have survived  the impact. Was he a Russian military adviser? We will never know, 

I guess this is what it means to be a doctor. One never forgets. And questions remain unanswered. 

The following morning, Daniel and I had coffee together in Maputo. I asked point blank if he had any reason to send me to the Aldeia. He laughed. He did not answer.  I felt embraced, consoled, as if I were one of them. I feel I left a mark.

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