The Mozambican Mark Twain, Still Waiting For the Conditions To Cue His Entrance

Tonight after District Presidency meeting, I was talking in the car with President Domingos and Armando and João about books and asking them if there were any great Mozambican novels or authors that I should look into, and as much as in retrospect I feel like it maybe shouldn’t have struck me so strongly, it really did surprise me how few names came up. The conversation turned to literature and books in general, and how ridiculously hard it is to even afford to BUY a book here, much less one by a Mozambican author. As we talked, a number of people started coming to mind, friends of mine that I’ve met through work and church who have proudly talked about having many books at home, and their having said that took on a new level of meaning—even the act of owning multiple books here is a status symbol, almost irregardless of what books they are. I thought of how many great minds there must be here in Mozambique for whom the only reason they aren’t scholars or writers or educated statesmen is a lack of means for them to get there, both financially and intellectually speaking. There isn’t a public library in Beira, either—as I thought and thought, I realized that I probably have more books in my room that I brought with me in my luggage than 98% of this city has in their homes. Again flooded over me the abundance-of-riches shame that comes when you realize how ridiculously over-privileged you are in relation to so many of your just-as-worthy brothers and sisters. Again flooded over me the motivation that made me want to go into education in the first place, to do whatever is possible to reduce that gap.