Mozambique Stories

Warning, these stories involve people being shot at and exploded by bombs.



I've got a friend here, he's 22, and one of my only friends who's around my age. It's nice because he's at a totally different stage in life than most of the Zambians I know. He's trying to find a career, but he needs to try a few different things first. One of those things was gem trading between Mozambique and Zambia. I don't know if it was illegal or not, but either way it wasn't as serious as some of our neighbouring country's blood diamond trade. Anyways he would go to Mozambique, find some stones, buy them and bring them back to sell, probably in the capitol Lusaka. Not diamonds or emeralds, but semiprecious stones like amber and stuff.



He had been a few times before and was starting to get the hang of things, but so were the Mozambiquans…
"They don't want to do a straight deal with you. They want to get your money and then get the item they sold you back. As soon as they figure you out that's when they start plotting. We had just made the deal, I had given them the money and my backpack was filled with stones. I was sitting on the floor when my friend came up and said 'I don't think it's good to be here.' As soon as he said that there was a knock at the door and it was the police. They were working with the stone dealers to get everything from me. What they do is just take your stuff and throw you in jail and don't tell anyone and you just become a missing person."

This is true for Zambian prisons and probably for much of Africa, if you go to prison for very long, you won't survive, or will die of disease soon after leaving.

"I just grabbed my backpack and started running, I didn't even have time to put my shoes on. As soon as I got outside that's when I started hearing bullets flying around me. I ran down the hill and into the bush." Not a physical bush, but "The Bush" the same term we have in Canada for virgin land without people. "I think it must have been about 100km walking before I reached Zambia. I just walked through the bush the whole time, just coming to the road sometimes at night to buy some food or drink water. It took about 7 days because I got lost for a while."

Red Mercury

If you don't know what "Red Mercury" is, take a minute and look it up. It's a fictional substance that lots of uneducated people don't know is fictional and lose thousands of dollars on it. They think you can extract it from bombs and sell it for tens of thousands of dollars per mL. Mozambique has lots of bombs and land mines from their wars so there is a trade in undetonated bombs. There is of course two parallel trades, one in fake bombs to idiots and one in real bombs to complete idiots. I'll tell the story as from my friends perspective.



"He bought a bomb, it was about the size of a watermelon and very heavy. He was told not to open it because it would explode, of course he planned on opening it to get the Red Mercury to sell. He brought it back all the way from Moz. and paid ZMK10,000,000 ($2,000) for it. He carried it on his left side, held as far away from himself as his arms would allow, even on the minibus. People asked him "Are you very okay?" and he'd just say "Yes" and keep carrying it like that. When he got it back here we sat down and opened it. As soon as he started to pull it apart he herd something fall inside of it. He slammed it closed and smiled 'Did you hear that? That's it!" I told him to keep opening it and he did…Inside was a very old clock. Not only was it not a real bomb, but it wasn't even a working clock. He lost everything and now had to work for the people he borrowed the money from to pay it back"



"My friend took the bomb he just bought to the place where they open bombs. They were going to use a grinder and open it. Everyone was really excited, but I told him I don't think it's a good idea to grind open a bomb. He and another guy were too excited to see what's in it so they decided to grind it open right here and now. I told them that I didn't think it was safe so I'm going to stand away. I went a ways back and they started grinding the bomb. After a few minutes they had removed some parts and that's when it went off. I just heard the explosion and saw the flash and then the three of them were lying on the ground there. My friends intestines were coming out and he was trying to put them back with his hands. I went up to him and he just looked at me and didn't know what to say so he said nothing. I didn't know what to say either so I didn't say anything. They all died right there."