Language: German Subtitles: English / Portuguese Format: HD, 5:33 min
Excerpts from the play:
I miss our books! The German language! When I am here, after coming back from Germany, I think “beautiful”. I am back in my Africa: the peace, the friendliness of the people, the weather, the rhythm of life here… But after a year at most, it starts to be too much, I’ve had enough, and I cannot take it anymore. Then I have to visit Germany again: where everything works – where everything is as it should be…
Friends, I do not find it so easy to make deep friendships with Mozambican women my age! This can take years in Germany too… It is always about work, or you are treated in a privileged manner! Also, here family is just more important than friends! But not me! I want to remain an individual! What belongs to me, my husband, or our children does not belong to the whole family! The family is huge, who really is a part of it?
This is exactly the strength of this place: that everything can coexist peacefully. For centuries, many cultures lived here peacefully, side by side. Bantus, Portuguese, Muslims, Indians…and now Chinese people as well! A cultural melting-pot like this really only works if everything is not just ‘either’ – ‘or’. In Germany everything is always ’either’ – ‘or’. Germans are absolutists! Here, many things can work in tandem.
Eckehard Fricke, deputy director of GIZ (German Society for International Cooperation), has adopted two Mozambican children who are now studying in Europe. Near retirement, he lives with a Mozambican woman in a house he built himself on the outskirts of the city.
While he and his dark-skinned son (who considers himself 90% German) talk in his office about the way his time in Mozambique has influenced and changed him and how German he still feels after all these years, we see him at a Sunday church service. The church is empty, but Eckehard and the pastor still hold a traditional German service, complete with organ music from a laptop.