Child shepherds in Mozambique

Child shepherds in Mozambique

Almost a third of the children in this African country do not study and child labour is no exception. They are engaged in illegal trade, helping with family chores, with livestock or in the fields.
In Mozambique, child labour is no exception. Almost one-third of children in Mozambique do not study. According to a study conducted by the local University Eduardo Mondlane, 44% of children and adolescents are forced to work in the illegal trade, 14% to help the family and 11% in family camps.
Julinho Josías Mulhanga lives with his maternal grandmother, who works in the machamba (communal cultivated land on which the people who belong to the community feed).
In Mozambique, the minimum age for employment has been set at 18; however, the Labour Law provides that, exceptionally, work may be carried out from the age of 15.
Batista lives with his father and mother. It was his father who taught him from an early age how to contribute to the family economy.
'Xibalakatsa' in the xichangana dialect or 'fisga' in Portuguese is the name given to the main hunting tool next to which these shepherd children spend the day. With it, they usually hunt little birds that serve as food on the long days of grazing in the countryside.
Another of the basic tools in the life of any Mozambican living or working in the countryside is the catana. In this case, 14-year-old Guilherme Carlos Buquê is responsible for carrying it. It is a multifunctional tool and they use it to defend themselves from the attack of other animals, as well as to cut wood and prepare the fire, open coconuts...
Leonardo Baptista Cossa, is the eldest of this group of shepherd children. He has just turned 17 and has never set foot in a school. The inability to read and write perpetuates the cycle of intergenerational poverty and reduces the country's long-term economic growth.
Julinho and Chissano have been since they have memory next to the cattle and don't know how to do anything else. They would like to improve their living conditions, but having had no access to education, they are now 15 years old in a very difficult situation to access any training. According to recent UNESCO data, illiteracy among adults in Mozambique is 45% and affects twice as many women as men. The phenomenon is more frequent in rural areas, where 57% of them live, compared to 23% who live in cities.
Batista Adélia Chemane is 13 years old, doesn't study and has never been to school, but she handles cattle with the same skill that her peers can add and subtract at school. The Mozambican government has denounced the presence in the country of around 1.5 million child workers because of poverty and at a wage below the minimum established in the country, according to data from the Fides Agency.
Mozambique has about 30 million people, of whom almost two million are orphans and a quarter of them are AIDS orphans, according to UNAIDS.
Each child usually has a dog that helps them in the work of shepherding as faithful squires. Depending on the amount of cattle they have to move, some even have two. Batista goes out every morning with about 15 cows that he grazes alone with his dog. Julinho, on the other hand, moves more heads of cattle, about 35, he almost always goes alone with his two dogs, except on special occasions when his cousin, also a minor, helps him.