Betty Purcell is the editor of Divided World, a monthly programme on RTE 1 which looks at the issues which divide our planet - financial, social and religious.
We've just come back from Mozambique, where there was a civil war for about 20 years. The war only ended about six years ago and Mozambique is now one of the poorest countries in the world. They have such an enormous debt to the West that they are paying as much on servicing it annually as they spend each year on their healthcare programme. While we were there we visited an Irish aid programme which is working to help free up the debt. Personally I think the debt should be cancelled by the West, which on the one hand is still lending money, while on the other hand taking it away. However, we have done interviews with the Minister for Finance in Mozambique, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, NGOs (non-governmental organisations) working at the coal-face and ordinary Mozambiquan people, so the audience will have a range of views and be able to make up their own minds.
We took a five-person team over for a week. Travelling around was very difficult. It is a vast country, with hardly any roads, and a frighteningly high number of landmines. On a typical day we got up early in our relatively comfortable hotel in the capital, Maputo. Nearby, a 10-year-old was selling three bubblegums, two chocolate eclairs, a mango and two oranges. They sell whatever they can to make money. That day we flew 700 miles up the coast to the north, to a town which had been devastated by the war. The ruins of some of the original building are there, but people mostly live in bamboo huts around the town now. We filmed some of the work of the Irish aid programme - which mostly concerns itself with education centres and de-mining the area.
When they find a landmine they stick a little red flag up to indicate where it is. Near the town we saw a typical little African village with children and toddlers out playing. The whole pathway up to the village was marked with red flags.
After that we drove around looking at rural communities and talking to people who had built schools with their own hands. Although the rate of illiteracy is down from 90 per cent to 60 per cent in just six years, it is very difficult to get children to school because their parents need them to work to earn money.
After that we had a mad dash back to the airport, which closes at 5 p.m. We were seven minutes late - so we were fined $100!
I think of all the place I've travelled to, India is a particularly shocking continent. The poverty there is so grinding. Coming back from Mozambique you feel a sense of change going on, which is quite heartening. Where development is going on, people feel there is hope for a better future for their children.
But sometimes countries find themselves in a situation of ongoing marginalisation and poverty which is very hard to break out of, and it is very depressing.
The main objective of a programme like Divided World is to inform and educate people about interdependence and the global community. The majority of people in the world live in poverty, which is an unacceptable situation. It is something we should all know about, and do something about. Television brings images of life the world over into people's living rooms, so that we can all be properly informed about what is going on.
In conversation with Jackie Bourke
The next Divided World programme, which looks at democracy in Burma and the rollback in positive-discrimination programmes in the US, goes out on Sunday, November 22nd, at 11 p.m.
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