The Interview: - 2 -
CFM:  Could you give one example or incident which symbolizes what FRELIMO
* is all about?
Bob V.: Well, one theme that developed while we were inside the liberated areas,
quite without design, was the fact that we witnessed a trilogy of transplants,
three transplants that FRELIMO was involved in that really tell a great deal about
the movement.
The first of these involved the children who are the seedlings of the revolution,
the "continuadoras" which is a Portuguese word which doesn't translate very easily
into English; literally it means the "continuators." And the comrades of the present generation, the older generation, told us that they don't expect to see all
of the fruits of their labors, that many of them will die or be killed as the
struggle progresses, and that, therefore, it's up to the young children, the
"continuadoras", to continue the work that has been begun by the present generation. And these children, these seedlings of the revolution, will receive a revolutionary education and will sprout the ideology and develop the political line of the
party, as they grow older and are placed in different places of the country.
The second was a cultural transplant where FRELIMO has adopted the slogan,"to
die a tribe and born a nation". None of the songs and dances that are traditionally
performed by the people of Mozambique belong to any one tribe or any one region.
They are part of the new national culture and belong to all of the people. As a
result the guerilla army has carried the songs and dances of all of the tribes of
the liberated areas and so you see people from different regions performing the
same songs and dances now.
The third transplant is an agricultural transplant where,for example, the
cashew nut tree which originally grew only in Cabo Delgado has been carried by
members of the guerilla army --or rather the seeds have been carried to other
liberated areas. You can find the cashew nut tree growing throughout the liberated
areas and this transplant is demonstrated by the fact that every guerilla carries
seeds and when not engaged in fighting or practicing reading and writing and other
things is engaged in agricultural production.
So those transplants tell a lot about FRELIMO as an institution in the lives
of the people,
CFM: It sound like an exciting way to promote unity among the people. Did you
have an opportunity to visit the children's nurseries or schools where these
children as transplants are?
Bob F,: Yes, we visited a place called the "Infantarillo Josina Machel" which
is the nursery school where children whose parents have been killed by the Portuguese stay.  It's also a day care center where the parents who are militants of
FRELIMO can leave their children and go out on missions if necessary. We saw the
children in relationship with the militants for a couple of days. We saw them
playing, we saw them studying. We also saw, incidentally, their having to draw
in the dirt to learn how to count and to learn their ABC's.
One of the&ings that we noticed, too, was the teacher, the role of the
teacher. He was, one, a militant, a combatant, but, two, he was more than a
teacher. We saw, at one time after we were attacked that there was a regrouping,
a setting up of provisional villages, and we noticed that the teacher that we had seen
in the schoolhouse before was going around the various villages talking to the parents
and saying that it was kind of important, you know, that school kept on going. And
they set up schools out in the bush, out under the trees, and we realized that there
was something really important there when we think about the teachers back here and
the kinds of things that t&Wkers don't want to do and don't find themselves doing,
and the aggressive way that teachers take responsibility for children there.