Abílio Raimundo – A man made at LAM 

He faces the camera, crosses his arms, a shy smile on his face and a whitish crown on his head. The hair is less the colour of the time lived and more of winding genetics that began to reveal itself at 18. The smile betrays the shyness that we find while talking, but the folded arms are just a pose. Abílio Raimundo, 55, has never been one to sit back. “When I lack orders from above, I always try to investigate more, to learn more about the area in which I am.”

The first contact with Mozambican Airlines takes place during visits to his older brother who worked in the former Directorate of Exploration of Air Transport. He stayed close to the planes that, in the Inhambane of his childhood, he only saw at the height of the birds’ flight. “I really wanted to know what planes were like inside.” But more than being on board, it would help to effect the processes that allow take-off.

It was a six-month internship, after a typing course taken at the Escola – now Instituto – Comercial de Maputo, which would place him in the LAM secretariat, in 1986. But, at the end of the internship, he decided to go to the Seminary, in Beira, to be pastor of an Adventist Church. Halfway through the course, financial difficulties return him to his starting place. In the name of his efforts during his internship period, he was hired at LAM as a clerk, in charge of taking luggage from check-in to the planes. “I wanted to work. It didn’t matter in which sector.” An internal competition took him back to administrative work, as clerk C Class. Two years later, he changes category and becomes B Class. He followed a career as a clerk until he became administrative in the Directorate of Operations, a role he continues to perform.

Three years after retirement, he realised that while he was growing as a professional, he was also growing as a man. “I joined LAM as a boy. Now, I have my home and my family. I am a grown man.” A man made at LAM? “Yes.”

Issue 73 May/Jun | Download.