White person hair, 20 questions and watermelon

Written on February 22, 2011

Hey everybody,

How goes it? Still freezing? Thought so. Still hot here. I’m realizing that I’ve started to adopt the Mozambican habit of starting all conversations by commenting on the weather…

So, what else? Anyone watch the Superbowl? Believe it or not, I watched it live from here! Well, not here exactly (I’m sitting in my hut in Mabote at the moment) but from a gas station in the town of Massinga – about 4 hours away. This is no ordinary gas station, clearly, since for reasons I don’t understand it has satellite TV. Leave it to Americans to somehow sniff out what I would bet is one of the only publicly accessible satellite TVs in the whole country – at least north of Maputo. So there we were, 20-odd Peace Corps volunteers spending the night in a gas station convenience store, middle school lock-in style (the game was from 2am – 6am our time).

In other updates, there’s a new kitten in my life. Sadly, he’s not really mine; he kind of belongs to the whole quintal (yard/compound) plus the adjoining one. I think what he does is shop around for the best meal, charming us all in the process… pretty savvy for a kitten, but I suppose that’s why he’s still alive when we don’t exactly have Meow Mix for sale in the market. He has the pathetic cry and the contented purr combo down to a science, even convincing me to open my last can of tuna yesterday. So seeing as how he’s not really mine to name, I’ve just started calling him Wena (“you” in Chitswa). He also answers to Kitty Pants. For those of you who share my love of cats, I’ll add some photos to my Mabote facebook album. I’ll also add some of Toby, my pet spider who lives in the outhouse. I’m starting a menagerie it seems.

But enough about animals. What about the people I spend my time with? Things are actually starting to pick up on the work front, thank god. I don’t know how much longer I could have just sat around twiddling my thumbs (err, building relationships). Last week I helped them do an organizational SWOT analysis and today we started talking (during a visit from our donor organization) about designing a monitoring and evaluation mechanism for their home-based care work. There’s a lot I could say about the challenges and the rewards of being involved in this type of work in this type of setting – and in a foreign language for us all. But I think I will save that story for another day, when it becomes more of a story. But suffice it to say I’m learning a lot, and I’m feeling like I’m in exactly the right place and am excited for the work ahead.

But there’s so much more to life here than work. I think my small, day-to-day interactions with people are what I am enjoying the most and also learning a lot from.

Like…

I was walking to the market the other day and to get there from my house, I cut through the primary school. There are always tons of kids milling around and I obviously get a lot of attention. Thankfully, the shouts of “mulungu! mulungu!” are slowly turning to “Tia Julia!” (Auntie Julia). Most of them are intensely curious about me and I usually get a few who follow me all the way down the road to the commercial area of town, whispering and giggling behind me. The other day was no exception, with a group of three pre-teen girls about two paces behind me. I turned around and started trying to talk to them as we walked; they were shy but enjoyed the attention.

To backtrack a little, people here, especially kids, have a fascination with white people’s hair – more than my skin, it’s my hair that is so foreign to them. So one of these girls plucks up the courage to, ever so slyly, reach out and touch my ponytail, trying to do it behind my back so that I wouldn’t notice. Well of course I did. At first I wasn’t sure what to do. What do you say when a stranger pokes you like a science experiment? So without a word, I just reached out and touched her hair right back. Well, it was a rare perfectly timed come-back of sorts (that never happens to me… I usually think of what I should have done or said on the way home). They exploded into laughter and seemed to get it… “Oh, she’s just like us, she just has a different kind of hair.”

Then there was Monday when I showed up to work for a meeting with my boss, Teresa, and another colleague, a guy who’s my age and who I’ve become friends with. Teresa wasn’t there yet so as he and I waited, we started speaking English so that he could practice. He’s very motivated to improve his English, having already learned some in primary and secondary school. I decided to teach him 20 questions in English, the game where one person thinks of a famous person and the other can ask 20 yes-or-no questions to try and guess who it is. Simple, right?

So I thought. The thing about playing 20 questions, especially when the two people playing aren’t from the same country, is that first, you have to both know who the famous person is. I was as shocked that he didn’t know that Barrack Obama was the president of the United States as he was that I didn’t know who some world-famous Mozambican runner was. Note: He had heard of Barrack Obama. (In the market right now you can buy flip flops with the American flag and President Obama’s face.) He was just fuzzy on the specifics. Second, the strategy behind the game is to first ask general questions to narrow it down, like figuring out what continent the famous person is from. Therein lies the second problem: you have to know some basic geography.

I fully realize that I’m living in a country where a huge chunk* of the population – especially women and people over a certain age – didn’t get to finish or even attend school due to harsh living conditions and colonial and civil war, and the fact that there just weren’t, and still aren’t, enough schools to go around. Even now, school attendance and graduation rates are low and quality is, shall we say, spotty.

I have heard stories from education volunteers about widespread cheating and grade inflation/changing – spurred on by No Child Left Behind style repercussions for schools whose students don’t perform well. And the most common teaching method here, like in many parts of the world, is rote memorization. Also, I recently saw a primary school geography book with a map of Africa that was wrong – not outdated, just plain wrong (unless they’ve moved Eritrea and Djibouti inland and both are now landlocked).

But even though I knew all of this, I still didn’t fully grasp what it meant. In our game of 20 questions, he thought that being from the United States meant that the person could still be Brazilian. Because Brazil is in America – South America. And who is the president of South America? he asked. And he didn’t know that France was in Europe – I discovered this after asking if his person was from every single continent only to be told “no” seven times.

This is a smart guy who wants to become a lawyer, speaks good Portuguese, and finished high school – already considered educated. And yet, playing 20 questions turned out to be pretty hard. I was left with a new appreciation for the advantages I’ve had in my life, and wondering how much of what I’ve accomplished had anything at all to do with me, and how much was just handed to me, pre-packaged in the form of access, means and expectations.

After 30 minutes, we gave up on our game and instead I started drawing a giant (misshapen) map of the world in the sand with a stick, trying to explain how North America and South America are continents, and that the United States of America is a country in North America, and Brazil is a country in South America. And that even though they are both located on continents with the word “America” in the name, they are actually not close. When you put it all together like that, you can see how it would be confusing…

And then there was today, when I shared a watermelon freshly harvested from the machamba with Mamá Marta and Mamá Tanieta, the president and another founding member of my association. They were surprised that we also had watermelon in the U.S., and I showed them how we eat it: cut into slices. Then they showed me how they eat it: break it open with your fist (which works surprisingly well) and scoop out the insides with your hands, leaving a neat bowl behind. They also just call it the equivalent of “melon”. So I explained that we call it “melon of water,” which they thought was strange.

I thought about trying to explain how we have seedless watermelon, but then I realized I have no idea how we get the seeds out and I knew they’d want to know, given that they are all farmers and life here is deeply rooted in agriculture. I had it narrowed down to genetic modification or some kind of laparoscopic watermelon surgery machine. Both possibilities seemed too hard to explain so I didn’t bring it up. Looking back, I wish I had. Just the look on their faces as they pondered how and why we’d grow watermelons without seeds would have been worth it.

This is the stuff of everyday life here, where even the smallest encounters can end up being fodder for discovery.

Okay, I’m off to bed. The power went out over an hour and a half ago and I’m sitting under my mosquito net in the dark, and it’s way past my bedtime. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to post this, but hopefully it’ll be in just a week and a half when I go down to Zavala/Quissico, my friend Angela’s site in the very southern end of Inhambane province (I’m in the northern part). I’m told there’s a lagoon! But I don’t know if there’s internet. Fingers crossed.

Tchau,
Julie

*Huge chunk = I don’t have any current statistics (and don’t have Google handy) but a government report I have saved on my computer with census data from 1997 says that at that time my district had a 19% literacy rate (13% among women and 9% among people over 45). And only 20% had attended or were attending primary school. I’m sure it’s better now, but I don’t know by how much.

Also, Mabote only has school until the 10th grade. I hear there are plans in the works to change that, but right now if people want to finish high school they usually go to Mapinhane, 3 hours away; Maxixe, 5 or 6 hours away; or the provincial capital, Inhambane City, which is even farther.

P.S. Sorry, longest post ever, I know… but just wanted to add that all this talk about the Mozambican healthcare and educations systems is making me feel like I’m pretending to be some kind of expert, which I’m obviously not. So I added a “personal disclaimer” to my blog (top right).

Swatting flies and telling lies

Written on January 25, 2011:

Hey everyone,

Well I’m still here! By the time you’re reading this, it’s been almost six weeks since I was last online, and I can tell because my running list of “things to google when online next” has spilled onto two pages. I never realized how accustomed I’d become to having the answers to my every last ponderance right at my fingertips… I am just dying to know how far short waves go (cause where is the French radio coming from?) and whether the fruit of the cashew is considered poisonous in other parts of the world (seeing as how most of the Americans here seem to be allergic).

Anyway. I wrote another blog entry earlier this month which I’ll post at the same time (below this one) but today is January 25 so it’ll still be a little while before I’m in Vilankulos again.

So I guess it’s pretty much the dead of winter up there in the northern hemisphere. Hard to imagine as I sit here sweating, and tanner than I’ve ever been in my life (which isn’t saying much)… though the modest dress code here is giving me ridiculous tan lines that will probably take years to get rid of. I hope you’re all making it through the winter, cozy by a fire somewhere in thick socks. I’m also curious to hear whether the state of Alabama produced the football national champions two years in a row (War Tide?).

I was just re-reading what I wrote at Christmas and appreciating how different Mabote feels to me now that I’ve settled in a little more. For one thing, I’ve had the chance to visit some of the more rural locales outside town, and Mabote “sede” (the town itself, as opposed to the whole district of Mabote) practically seems like a metropolis in comparison… even if it is “out there” by paved road standards.

We had a big day last Monday: following several days of pruning and preparation, the governor of the province of Inhambane arrived in Mabote. He and other government officials made lively speeches outlining how we will soon be a bastion of development and technology, drinking cold beer and eating ice cream in our air conditioned houses. (I can’t wait!)

It was fun to see the local dances, and there was also lots of singing and fist pumping. (Mabote hoy-ay! Inhambane hoy-ay! Presidente Guebuza hoy-ay!) My boss, Teresa, and I hitched a ride and followed the caravan to the next town in our district, the town of Mussengue, to sell the association’s cashew products: nuts, jam, syrup, brandy.

As we rode shotgun in the front of an industrial flatbed truck bumping along tiny sand roads through the real mato (bush), Teresa told me how our town has the only hospital in the district, but that the other towns have health posts stocked with basic things. She also said that in a lot of places in Moz there might not be a hospital for 70 km.

When I was in the town of Makwakwe this weekend, where my closest Peace Corps neighbor, Mandy, teaches at the secondary school, I saw what I think must have been a health post like Teresa was talking about. But it looked more like a tool shed painted white with a red cross on the front and Mandy said she’s never seen it open. So like I said, I’m learning to appreciate living at the bustling crossroads of Mabote sede.

Our association has several activistas (home based care providers) in Mussengue and the nearby town of Tessolo, and as we drove, Teresa went on to tell me how hard it is for the people there to get to the hospital. They have to either get a ride with someone with a car (I don’t know anyone with a car except NGOs or the government) or have money for a chapa (minibuses or pick-up trucks that serve as public transport). People living with HIV/AIDS, like a lot of our association’s patients, have to come in to the hospital to get their ARVs (anti-retroviral medications) so it’s a hard situation, to say the least. A lot of people just don’t come and die in their homes.

The first time I was in Mussengue was the week before last when I tagged along on some check-in visits to patients’ homes with a couple of activistas and a supervisor/nurse from our donor organization, International Relief and Development (IRD). I’m still amazed at people’s openness to having visitors show up at their house here – especially when they’re sick. In one family’s house, we ducked into a small mud hut when it started to pour down rain. I had been told that both the husband and wife were HIV positive, but that only he was on ARVs, and she hadn’t been to the hospital in a while.

I listened as one of the activistas translated for the supervising nurse from IRD because he’s from another area of Mozambique and doesn’t speak Chitswa. He was trying to get the man to commit to taking his wife to the hospital with him when he goes in for his next batch of ARVs. The man explained that he didn’t have money for (her) transportation, but that he would try. I just listened and tried not to judge – he doesn’t seem like a bad person, but why can he find the money to get himself on treatment but not his wife?

But in less depressing news, I can report that I’ve been pretty impressed with our hospital. Don’t get me wrong, compared to UAB, the state-of-the-art medical center where I worked in college, it’s like a country clinic. But when I had to go in to get a re-fill of the prescription drug from my medical kit that I used up during the worst of my cashew allergy, I was in and out in less than 30 minutes and only paid 5 meticais (about 13 cents) for the whole visit, including the prescription.

From what I can gather there are two doctors, one who runs the hospital and another who treats patients. I also go there every week with someone from my association because we meet with technicians, nurses and other activistas as part of the ARV committee. They discuss patients who are starting ARVs or who have missed doses or abandoned treatment so that they can make a treatment plan, or so that the home-based care activistas can follow-up with them.

So all in all, there’s a huge problem of access, and I’m sure the facilities are hit or miss (I heard stories during training of hospitals running out of ARVs) but it’s not all bad news. I see a lot of committed health workers and community activists doing good work with limited resources. I hope in my two years here I can play some part in helping them do more.

Wow, didn’t really mean to go on about the healthcare system in Mozambique… hope I didn’t just bore or depress you all. But I assure you that it’s more interesting than the topic of “what I do everyday” which is what I had been planning to write about. But just so I don’t leave you in suspense, I’ll sum it up for you: lots of sitting. Peace Corps calls it “building relationships” but I essentially sit around at my association a lot of the time, swatting flies and telling lies. Which is to say that I’m finally learning how to small talk, and learning to slow down and just enjoy people’s company. We laugh a lot, and one of my favorite topics of conversation is when they start asking me questions about the U.S. Favorite questions so far: Are there black people there? And do they speak Portuguese? Also: You don't have capalanas in the U.S.?? Well, do you have blankets?

I’m also sewing a messenger bag out of a plastic feed bag and a capalana. And I’m gathering materials to start my compost pile and vegetable garden (I’m hoping it will segue into a nutritional education project but first I have to not screw it up… and I usually kill houseplants). I’ve also named the spider who lives in my outhouse and we have regular check-ins. His name is Toby. And I photograph any interesting critters I come upon (see frog at top). Haha, am I losing it?? I hope not, but you’ll have to forgive me if, when I get back, I am easily entertained and overwhelmed by too much activity.

That’s all for now. I fell asleep last night when I was writing this so now it’s the next morning and I have to go take a bucket bath and get ready for the big day of sitting that I have ahead of me. Maybe we’ll even get what I used to think of as “real” work done. Wish me luck!

Julie

P.S. In case you’re wondering about whether I adopted the kitten I mentioned at the end of my last post… no. No, I didn’t. In fact I’m suspicious that my neighbors eat cats and I haven’t seen him lately. When I asked a Mozambican friend of mine about it he said it’s possible… some people here think cats are “good meat.” That’s one type of bush meat I will not be trying.

I make one terrible Mozambican

Written on January 8, 2011:

Hey y’all,

It’s January 8th and I’m writing this from my cute little hut in Mabote, so I won’t be able to post it for a few weeks. By the time you’re reading this, it’s probably a little late, but I hope you all had a good New Year’s in NYC, Birmingham, Montgomery, Orange Beach, Davis, Denver, Denton, Tahoe, Champaign or wherever you celebrated.

I had a pretty tame New Year’s Eve (sadly, parties in Mabote don’t hold a candle to the ones in Namaacha). But I spent New Year’s Day eating and hanging out with neighbors and colleagues. In honor of my New Year’s resolution to be fearless, I ate the grilled caterpillar I was served at my neighbor’s house. It wasn’t bad. If I didn’t know what it was, I would have just thought it was some kind of grilled vegetable: tough and chewy on the outside and potato-y on the inside. (green potato) And speaking of eating noteworthy things, I also tried the grilled gazelle from a roadside stand on my way back to Mabote from Vilanculos after Christmas. It was delicious.

But I have a confession to make, which you may have already suspected: aside from eating caterpillar and bush meat, I make a really terrible Mozambican.

First of all, I’m the Mozambican equivalent of a 98 pound weakling… and let’s face it, I’m not much more than that by American standards (insisting that I’m “scrappy” only gets me so far). I made a show of helping my host family carry water during training, but what I may have failed to mention is that I was huffing and puffing and spilling it all over the place, all while resisting their attempts to make me stop helping… not something I want to do everyday for the next two years. So I pay my 18-year-old neighbor, Anabela, to do it for me, and when she’s not around she gets her little 8-year-old nieces to do it. That’s right, I’m being put to shame by 8-year-olds!

One day I was watching Anabela carry a giant jerry can of water on her head the way all the women do here, and stupidly asked, “It doesn’t hurt?” I thought, since they’ve been doing it since they were six, they must have developed neck muscles like the Incredible Hulk and the equivalent of a titanium plate on the top of their heads. Well, apparently not. “Of course it hurts!” she replied. (Duh.)

They all treat me like I’m a delicate flower that might shrivel up and die if I do any heavy lifting, or if I don’t sit down in a chair in the shade to rest, or go home to eat when all of them are just drinking tea or munching on cashews. One day this week I was sitting with Teresa, my boss, on the ground under a shady tree shelling cashews, something you see women doing all the time here. After they roast them in the fire, they’re all black and charred and you have to hit them against a rock with a heavy stick and pry out the nut inside. It’s slow and messy work; after three hours I only had a small pile of (mostly broken) cashews, and my fingers were coated in thick, black soot. Teresa, who never wanted me to dirty myself in the first place, gushed over what a good job I was doing. Meanwhile, her pile was much bigger and had a lot more whole cashews.

Anyway, as we were sitting there, a pickup truck full of people rode past and all started pointing and laughing at me (more than the usual amount). “They’ve never seen a white woman shell cashews before,” Teresa laughed. Well, they may not ever see it again, because not only are my hands now warped and peeling from being chemically burned from the soot, but apparently just handling cashews exacerbated my recently-developed cashew allergy and I’ve once again broken out in an itchy rash all over my body. Eh-pah!*

So, compared to women in Mabote, who get up at 4 or 5 most mornings to go work in the fields, and who spend the better part of the rest of their day pounding grain, carrying water, killing chickens, and cooking over firewood in the yard, I have to admit that a delicate flower is exactly what I am, no doubt about it.

In addition to being a weakling, which I’m forgiven for, I’m also a loaner because I like to spend time alone at home sometimes. There’s a group of little kids in the neighborhood whose new favorite game is What’s the mulungu doing now? (I’m the mulungu.) My windows, which have to stay open during the day to let the light and the breeze in, are the perfect, kid-level height. I’ll be lying on my bed reading, or crouching over the stove making beans and rice, or folding my clothes, and all of a sudden I hear giggling and whispering and look up to see seven or eight pairs of eyes just watching me, giddy with anticipation to see what I’m going to do next.

Following Peace Corps advice that playing with kids is a good “integration” activity, in the beginning I tried throwing the frisbee around with them, but given that most of them don’t speak Portuguese (they speak Chitswa) that got old, at least for me, pretty fast. The next few times they came around I lent them the frisbee to play with in front of my hut, but eventually they tired of that and went back to just watching me go about my business. Here I am folding a shirt! And now I’m boiling water! Then I thought, maybe if I just ignore them they will start feeling as awkward as I do right now and go away.

Nope. I’m learning that the concept of awkward does not translate culturally. To them, you don’t necessarily need to talk to be with other people, because they spend all of their time with other people. (Aren’t you scared?? people here ask me when they find out that I live alone.) They really are adorable kids, but this morning I just couldn’t take it anymore and told them – as nicely as I could – that no, I don’t want to play right now, I want to rest. And furthermore, sometimes when I’m at home I like to be alone, like right now. They ran off and of course I immediately felt like a terrible person, but 6-year-olds are not the boss of me!

And it’s not just the 6-year-olds. Here people will just walk up to your house at any time and yell licença! (like permission) and keep yelling it at 3 second intervals until you come out. In a lot of ways, it’s really nice to be part of a community that doesn’t need a reason or an appointment to talk to each other, and who spends a good chunk of their day wishing each other a good day, and asking how did you sleep, and how are you?

It’s a far cry from the fancy subdivision we moved to when I was in fourth grade, where the most regular interaction we had with our neighbors was usually a wave and a smile as we drove past, right before hitting the button on the automatic garage door opener. But the American in me just wants my privacy sometimes, to just sit here and drink my coffee and read my book in peace. I’ve heard other volunteers who have been here longer say that they will sometimes pretend they’re not home, but they must not live in a one room hut with a (usually open) window directly next to the door.

So like I said, I make one terrible Mozambican. But I’m learning that I just have to try and own the fact that I’m a freak here (thanks, Esther, right on) and stop feeling bad about it. And thankfully, real Mozambicans are incredibly generous and accommodating. Não há problema! (no problem) or Não faz mal! (it doesn’t matter) they always say. After two years here I still won’t be Mozambican, but maybe I’ll be a little less American.

That’s all for now. I have to go kill all the bugs that flew in as I stood on the porch talking to neighbors who came yelling licença! twice during the writing of this letter. And a kitten also slipped in through the crack in the door… if he’s still in here somewhere I’m going to take it as a sign that he wants a new mommy. Stay tuned.

Julie

*Eh-pah! is one of my favorite Mozambican phrases… it’s means, roughly: Ohh man! But it’s all in the tone of voice and facial expression (I’ll have to show you when I get back.)