“I set off with a lot of doubts but also with a willingness to bury the images in my head as deep as possible, somewhere in my suitcase underneath the Imodium, the sun cream and the long-sleeved T-shirts to protect against malaria-carrying mosquitoes...,” Keteleer writes in her new book De brug van dromen: Onderweg naar het nieuwe Mozambique (The Bridge of Dreams: On the Way to a New Mozambique).

The book, published this month, was commissioned by the Flemish International Cooperation Agency (FICA) to mark the 10th anniversary of cooperation between Flanders and Mozambique. Keteleer said at the launch last week that one of the challenges of writing the book was combining the fascinating stories of the people with factual information about the development projects. It’s a challenge she pulls off well.

The journey starts in the capital Maputo in the south, continues on to Tete, a town in the north on the banks of the Zambezi River and returns to Maputo at the end. The book’s structure follows the same chronology. Written by Keteleer and her partner Emiel Vervliet, the book is packed with stories of the people they meet, both Mozambicans and Flemish aid workers. Woven into the text are details about the history, the culture and the economy of Mozambique, such as the influence of the Portuguese, who arrived in the early 16th century and stayed until independence was declared in 1975. Accompanying the writers were photographers Marc van Vaek and Veronique Schotte, whose images of the people and places form an important part of the book and help evoke the atmosphere of the country.

For Keteleer and her team, the bridge across the Zambezi in Tete was a focal point of their journey: in fact, it gave the book its title. On and around this “bridge of dreams”, they talked to doctors and teachers, Red Cross volunteers and village heads and priests, as well as shoemakers, bicycle repairmen, prostitutes and money changers. Through these encounters, they start to understand the people’s ways of life and see with their own eyes the dominance of the informal economy and the need for more education, health services and infrastructure.

Flanders is just one of many international cooperations with Mozambique. Like many governments, Flanders focuses on its areas of expertise. Health and education have been the contribution of the Flemish for the last decade, and they will remain so in the future. As Flemish minister-president Kris Peeters said at the book launch, which took place on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the 10-year anniversary in no way marks an end to the cooperation with Mozambique. In fact, an agreement has been signed to continue the partnership for “at least the next five years,” he noted.

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, but aside from poverty there is also a lot of hope and energy. As Keteleer says, a large proportion of the population is made up of young people, and with youth come dreams. Rubio, a 21 year-old football fan, works as a shoe repairer but hopes to become a doctor or an English teacher. Elena, a young mother who works at a food stall, wants to train to be a nurse. Ismael, 16, dreams of becoming a customs officer because he has heard they earn a lot of money: in the meantime, he sells cans of cold drinks to truck drivers.

“What struck me was the country’s energy and dynamism,” Keteleer told me. “Of course there’s still a lot of work to do, but Mozambique is on the right track.”

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