Post/photo – Janado Nazare Cher
We are celebrating the month of the worker and I am sharing with you the story of Eduardo Tembe, a native of Maputo province, who is an electricity technician in the Business Services Department of Gorongosa National Park. At 59 years of age and with 15 years of experience, he tells us how he became part of the Gorongosa Restoration Project.
It all started in 2007, when he applied for a job opening for the Park, and because of his previous experience he was asked for an interview and was selected to start working. Since then, Eduardo has worked on the construction site installations, on the control and maintenance of all the electrical systems that cover the Chitengo camp where the hotel services are located; Mapombué where the Coffee Production Plant is, and at the Community Education Center where the Park’s different programs receive people coming from the communities to participate in training.
During all this time, Eduardo has also trained many young people from the Sustainable Development Zone, who today are technicians and part of his work team.
“One of the big challenges we have overcome is the power cuts caused by strong winds, as was the case with Cyclone Idai, where we had to work tirelessly to restore electricity to the camps and the costs were very high because we had to use the generator for a long time.” said Eduardo.
Eduardo also stressed, that they work hard in times of fires, to prevent the electricity poles from being consumed by flames. He and his team guarantee the cleaning of the areas and do a complete monitoring of the electric lines, and in case of any event they lift the poles and replace the lines in order to guarantee the normal supply of energy.
My work requires a lot of concentration, because a small failure can compromise the functioning of the installed equipment, and everything that we do is registered on maps, to allow those who come to work with the electrical system in the future to know where to start and continue with the work.