Life in the liberated areas is a simple life, marked and inspired
by the Revolution. The morning starts at about 5 am. The people
go out for their work - to the shambas, to carry water, to pound
maize, to peel off the cassava, to build storehouses, to cut
wood, to chop timber to build houses, etc. The guerrilas and
the militias go to patrol work. The children go to schools.
The conscience of the Revolution is present in all the work, and
manifests itself in the force put into all activities by the peo-
. pie. There is an immense number of cultivated fields in the Liberated areas. In some areas, as in MMACHUDE (Cabo Delgado) and
NGAZELO (Niassa) about BOfo  of the land is cultivated. In some
other areas production is less, due mainly to the lack of rains
and to the monkeys, which devastate the fields, as for example
in CUERO. But the people v/ork with intensity, with perseverance.
V/e know we are producing for ourselves, and not for the Portuguese colonialist "boss". And this gives us a new spirit.
There is, it is true, the problem of air-bombings. The Portuguese,
unable to conquer our guerrilla forces, take revenge on the civilian population, bonbing all the villages they can spot. However,
the harm caused by those air-bonbings is now less than at the
beginning of the v/ar, because the people know how to build antiaircraft shelters and to camouflage themselves. The crops wore
destroyed by air-bombings in some areas. Our people accept this
situation with a revolutionary spirit and optimism. One peasant
told how last year an aircraft dropped one bomb in his field
drying up the earth in an area 20 meters in diameter. "That place
where the bomb fell was the one which produced the most"- he said.
In the field of education - there are in Cabo Delgado Province more
than 6,000 students in the FRELIMO schools. There are only primary schools as yet, many of them in the open air. There is lack
of teachers - in many zones, for example in NAMAKABA-CHINDE,
there is only one teacher for more than 120 students. Material
for teaching is almost non-existent? the students have to write
on a blackboard with dry cassava as chalk. Instead of paper or
slates they use a piece of wood, which they later scrape with
a knife to erase what they v/rote. Many of the students have to
walk several miles to the nearest school. On the way they often
have to hide themselves from aircraft. However, the number of
students increases, in spite of all difficulties, and the progress they make is considerable.
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