The information vacuum stage

Most respondents reported that immediately upon arrival in exile, there was effectively an information vacuum. The vacuum existed for three principal reasons. First, the initial concerns of most respondents, before that of seeking information about Mozambique, were with coping with the disorientation of exile and the logistics of registration, plot allocation and house construction. Second was the understandable reluctance of many to

even want to know about conditions in Mozambique while the momentum of movement was away from Mozambique.

A third reason was that flight patterns often meant that information was not immediately available. Many respondents arrived in small groups which had become separated from a larger group which originally fled the village of origin:

’RENAMO attacked Mtende by night...most of us fled that night, but we got lost in the bush in the darkness...my group arrived in Malawi first, and we waited for a few weeks to see if the rest would follow...most did’ (C:32)

For respondents such as the one from whose interview the above excerpt is taken, the immediate post-arrival period was spent in anticipation of the arrival of kin and friends who had become separated en route. Even when relatives did not flee Mozambique, most did nevertheless leave the village and hide in the surrounding countryside for a period of time:

’I came with my Grandmother...my parents and brother decided not to come...I don’t know why...but they hid in the bush for several weeks until they were sure RENAMO had left the village’ (C:68)

As a result of the initial physical dislocation of communities engendered by flight, most respondents apparently recognised the futility of efforts to find out information about their relatives or about conditions at home immediately.

The information vacuum which resulted from these three processes was quickly filled as co-villagers or people from neighbouring villages arrived, and relatives who had stayed in Mozambique began returning to their home villages. The following excerpt is from an interview with a Village Chief:

’Although we all fled together, many got lost on the way. I arrived with the first group. The others hadn’t arrived after several months, and some of us thought that it must be safe to go back and started talking about going home. But the others arrived shortly afterwards, and they brought news of more fighting in the area. No-one went home’ (C:136)

There were no examples where entire villages arrived at the same time, so many respondents reported a similar receipt of information from co-villagers who arrived after them. Another source of early information was new arrivals from respondents’ neighbouring villagers, who brought information about the region, and who in some cases had passed through the respondents village en route:

’In the early days I used to hear about Chiponde from people who were fleeing the RENAMO attack in Chempwina and came through Chiponde’ (C:73)

Information also came from relatives who had stayed in Mozambique, and returned to their home villages after a period of hiding in the bush or temporarily living in a nearby village:

’When RENAMO attacked, we all fled. My mother and sister were in the bush collecting firewood at the time, and I couldn’t find them, so I came alone. At first I was worried because I thought RENAMO might have captured them, but after about six months they sent a message with a trader to say they had returned and were safe’ (C:67)

The above excerpt is unusual because the relatives were able to send a message with a trader. In fact most trade did not start until at least a year after the arrival of the majority of the refugees.

The majority of respondents received information during their first year in exile. This is in contrast to the minority who were still receiving information after four or five years at the time of the interviews. These initial, fledgling information networks had characteristics which were different from those of later networks.

The majority of early information networks did not conform to the ’model o f a repatriation information system’ described and depicted in Chapter 3. That model envisaged a distinct transmitter, agent and receiver of information; the three interlinked by flows of information with quantitative and qualitative characteristics. In contrast, the information which most respondents received during their first year in exile had not been transmitted by a particular person or institution, nor was it directed towards any specific

receiver. Rather, the information was based on the observations of other fleeing refugees. Several respondents reported that at this stage unsubstantiated rumours based on the reports of new arrivals abounded. The information flows had neither the quantitative characteristics of density and range, nor the qualitative characteristic of directedness. The general impression was therefore one of a flood of unsorted, unspecific and undirected information filling the initial vacuum.