One day when I was at the pub with a friend I asked her about the living situation of the poor people here. I have seen several camps here and also you see people building their own very simple houses everywhere along the roads between the cities. What I wondered was if they are living there illegal like the Roma people in Europe, or if they own/rent the land. What she told me was astonishing!

How it works here is that you go to the old people of the area you want to move to and ask them if there is some free land there. Then they will give you a land for free, but only if you build a house there with the intention to live there. You can also go to the government and ask them for a not specific place to live, which will result in you getting land at a random place, again for free.

The catch is that if the government needs the land in the future, for example if they are going to build a road, you will need to give back the land to them. BUT you will be given a new place to live, and also some money to replace the house you have built on your old land.

I am really interested in the lives and complications of the Roma people and wish that they could get a deal like the poor here in Mozambique. Also people here don’t look down on these people, which leads to them easier getting a job and not getting excluded from the society as the Roma people often are.