Parque Nacional da Gorongosa Moçambique

 

 

Leonel Francisco Barreto Martins 

 

Infrastructure and Equipment Coordinator

Beira (Mozambique)

My name is Leonel Francisco Barreto Martins. I was born in the port city of Beira, the capital of Sofala Province, on the 25th of September, 1975.

In 1995 I completed the10th grade in the Samora Machel Secondary School in Beira.  In 1999 I completed a professional training course in civil engineering at the Industrial and Commercial Institute of Beira. My wife Aretha and I have one son, Edgar.
Before coming to Gorongosa National Park, I worked as a civil engineering technician from 1999 – 2000 for GATTEC, in Chimoio.  From 2000 – 2002 I continued in this line of work with SOGEL in Beira.

In 2007 I began working as a civil construction technician here, rebuilding Gorongosa National Park.  Two years later, I now find myself promoted to taking on the role of Infrastructure and Equipment Coordinator. As much of this Park’s infrastructure was destroyed during the Civil War, my dream is to see it all reborn and improved so that our visitors will enjoy their stay to the fullest.  I hope to achieve all of this with the help of our great team here.  Although we all have different personalities, we come together to work for a common cause.  We are indeed a team of motivated professionals, ready for a challenge and full of progressive ideas.

Paulino António

Apprentice Plumber

Vinho (Mozambique)

Paulino António had six children to feed and put through school.  He had no job.  He worked with his wife to grow his family’s food in a small garden plot along the margins of the Pungue River across from Gorongosa National Park‘s Chitengo Camp.  He didn’t have the money to buy the uniforms and supplies his children needed in order to attend school, so they stayed home.  But he knew that his children had no hope for a future without an education.  So, in desperation, he sought out another solution to his predicament.

He learned he could make good money selling game meat hunted illegally from Gorongosa National Park.  While he knew this was illegal, he didn’t know how else to earn the money his family needed.  Like many in the local communities surrounding the Park, he lacked practical skills necessary to obtain a job, and the area supported few employers.  So he started poaching, setting traps and snares furtively in the Park to kill bushbuck, waterbuck, and other animals for sale.  He had to work carefully to avoid the scouts who routinely patrolled the Park in search of illegal hunters.  But one day early in 2007, his luck ran out:  he was apprehended by Park scouts and taken into custody for his illegal hunting.

His capture marked a positive turning point in Paulino’s life.  Park managers, recognizing that many people were driven to illegal hunting in order to combat the poverty in their life, offered Paulino a job instead of shipping him off to prison.  Paulino was hired by the Park to work as an apprentice plumber in the Park’s Infrastructure Department.  He is now being taught work skills that will enable him to find and keep employment in order to support his family.  He is earning money to send his children to school.  And he is a good worker.  “Paulino is working hard to learn his new trade.  We expect that one day he will be promoted from apprentice to full plumber once he has the necessary experience and skills.  We are happy to have him on our team.  And we are even happier to have permanently removed one poacher from the Park to show him a better way of life,” says Luis Felipe LeBoeuf, Infrastructure Department Manager.

Paulino is happy with his new life.  He makes the trip daily across the Pungue River to Chitengo Camp to work, and returns home in the evening to his family. He is proud to be learning new skills and to be setting a good example for his children.  And he is proud that all of his children will now be able to attend school and have a chance at a better life.