extrmely delicate work requiring a great deal of patience. We also run
the FREDIMO orphanage, which not only cares for orphans, but also children
separated from their parents due to the war. Some of our women are
trained in first aid so that they can help the medical assistants in
the health centres. Many of our women are also working in the Department of Education in their literacy campaigns and in the primary schools.
Here again we have to overcome the Outdated prejudices of fathers and
husbands regarding the idea of education £or women. But we are gradually winning the battle for they realise that a literate and educated
woman can make a far more constructive contribution to the revolution
than an ignorant one. We now have many girls in our schools, some
of whom have female teachers, and some of these girls are already
participating in literacy campaigns for the older people.
Thus, apart from its strictly military functions the women's detachment
has important political duties on two levels. At one level it is
charged with the mobilisation and education of the people, to increase
the effectiveness of their participation by developing their political
understanding of the war. This we do for everyone, irrespective of sex,
although we have a unique opportunity to reach our own sex that is
denied to our male comrades.  Once this has been achieved, we work at
the next level of encouraging even more active participation by inviting people to follow our example, to leave their homes and train as
fighters, nurses, teachers, etc.  In this way the size of the women's
detachment has increased considerably since that first experimental group
and the point has now been reached where some of those first recruits
have gained enough experience and knowledge so that they can become
political and military trainers for their own detachment, and also assist
their male colleagues in the bases to instruct elements of the population.
At the last meeting of the Central Committee in April, 1969, it was
decided that the Mozambican Women's League (LIFEMO) should be completely
fused with the women's detachment and we are still in the process of
integrating into the army all the activities formerly carried on by
LIFEMO. During its existence LIFEMO did some useful work but with the
development of the struggle, the demands of the war inevitably required
that all its efforts be concentrated inside Mozambique and hence be Condudted
by the women's detachment in the interior.
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