Before the Mozambican civil war, Gorongosa National Park was among the top destinations in Africa, with a higher concentration of animals than on the famed Serengeti Plain. But during the war, soldiers and other poachers killed these vast herds, planted landmines and destroyed the park's infrastructure. By the 1990s, the park was all but abandoned.
How to Help
Published April 23, 2007
Stephanie Hanes, for the Pulitzer Center
Gorongosa, Mozambique
This is a really important – and difficult – question. But I think it's an essential one to ask, and I hope you guys take some time thinking about it and maybe even debating it in class. I know my friends and colleagues do a lot of that here.
I'll post my thoughts on this, but I also asked Vasco, at Gorongosa, what he thought about this. Click to see his answer...
From Vasco:
Well, honestly I think that the best thing they could do would be to convince their parents to come to Mozambique for holidays... that's one of the most needed things this country needs: tourists that spend money here...
I asked him to explain a little bit.
If everybody comes here to help, usually with short term projects, this nation and its people will be always with their hands open and faced upwards waiting for donations and volunteers.
In my point of view the biggest asset of this country has it is is beauty. So tourism is one of the main industrial activities to be developed.
In order to become a normal country, now that there is no more war, this country needs to create jobs, in order that mozambicans can receive salaries and pay taxes, enabling the government to provide for basic needs (education, health and infrastructures: water supply, electricity, roads, ...) without the need of donors.
The New York Times today covered East Africa's biggest new development: Plans are underway for
By Bob Shacochis, USA Today Opinion
Grantee
Stephanie Hanes is a freelance reporter whose work has appeared in more than a dozen national publications, including Smithsonian Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, Africa...
