The countdown begins (but who’s counting?) and the people who make it worth it

Written on May 3, 2012:

Hey everyone,

Well, I’ve done it again... it’s been over two months since I last blogged. Not quite as bad as the three month hiatus of fall 2011, but still shamefully delinquent. Desculpa.

I have no real excuse this time, other than the fact that Mabote doesn’t have electricity anymore. You might remember that we used to get three hours a day from a generator, but it’s been really erratic since about October or November, and pretty much nonexistent for about the past three months. So when I do have a charged laptop I usually use it to do work watch movies. Plus, the whole “oh my god I live in Africa!” thing wore off long ago so it can actually be quite hard to come up with anything interesting to say, hence the blog post in January about doing laundry.

But anyway, excuses excuses. So happy May! I hope you’re all enjoying what I imagine is lovely spring weather. Our seasons are opposite so we’re on our way into the cool, dry season... not that we had much of a rainy season this year. It only rained a small handful of times in Mabote. My friend Angela was visiting this week and my colleague Teresa and I took her to see my favorite spot: what some lovingly refer to as “praia” de Mabote (Mabote “beach”).

But alas, we found that what used to be a lush field with a large pond where kids swam and animals drank was nothing but a sand pit with a hole of sun-baked, cracked mud in the middle. Guess I haven’t been there in a while. Angela, Teresa and I entertained ourselves by staging a photo shoot at the “beach” (dirt hole). It was so Mabote. Clearly, though, a near-drought is not all fun and games since a lot of crops failed this year...

But enough about the weather. So the last time I blogged my dad was about to arrive in Moz and we were all set to have a father-daughter, trans-generational Peace Corps adventure (he was a Peace Corps volunteer too). And we did! It was a great trip, for a lot of reasons. Not least of which was that I got to hear him compare and contrast 1970s Guatemala and present day Mozambique, Santa Cruz Barillas and Mabote, bush Spanish and bush Portuguese, his agricultural work and the random assortment of projects I dabble in, etc etc. It was good perspective, and a great chance to spend quality time with my dad and show him my life here.

So. Not that I’m counting down or anything... but perhaps some of you have been thinking that I sure have been here a long time. And you would be right. But guess what: I only have FIVE MONTHS left! I am excited about that for a couple of reasons. First, even though I’m really glad I’m here, every day is hard. Obviously I try not to whine on my blog, but I’d be giving you a false impression if I didn’t put it out there.

The heat, the bugs, the bucket baths, no electricity, little privacy, always fighting to define my role and figure out how to add value, the language barriers, transportation challenges, being far away from family and friends, being a total misfit and stared at/asked for things/proposed to, all of the inevitable challenges of living in a culture that is polar opposite from my own. There’s no getting around it... that stuff is hard and it wears on you. So yeah, I know it will be bittersweet – after all, Mozambique feels like my second home now – but I also know I will be ready for a change in five months. Oh so ready.

Which brings me to my second reason for being excited: I’m planning an epic round-the-world adventure post-Peace Corps. Though it’ll be sad to miss yet another Christmas at home, already being in Africa is too good of an opportunity to pass up. My plans are a work in progress, but right now I’m thinking I’ll go overland through a few other southern African countries and then up to east Africa ending up in Kenya, and then fly to Asia (South Korea to see my friend Kristy, and then Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand). So if you have any interest in visiting any of those places (minus Korea), hit me up! I’m kind of intrigued by the idea of traveling alone, but I’d also love company. Maybe I’ll start a new blog when I’m traveling: Letters home from ????

So between fantasizing about my epic adventure, needing to apply to grad school before I leave, and the fact that a new volunteer will be arriving in Mabote in a mere THREE MONTHS to replace me, sometimes I get all riled up... “I’m almost done! The end is nigh!!” And yet, it’s not. When I have a bad day or a bad week (see above list of “things that are hard”)... five months can still seem like a long time. But I’ve got some pretty awesome people and perks in my life to keep me going during those times. In short, living in Mozambique is teaching me the importance of community. For this individualistic American, it’s an important lesson.

So who is my community? I’ve got my ladies in Mabote: several colleagues who I’ve gotten close with over the months who consider themselves my Mozambican family. They take me to church and the machamba (farm) with them, visit me when I’m sick, and – most recently— comfort me when I need it. For the record, I try not to complain to them because, well... compared to them, what could I possibly have to complain about, right?? All of my basic needs are met and then some, and I have more opportunities in life than they or their children ever will.

But the other day I was having a bad day (bad week really) and ended up crying in front of them despite my best efforts not to. And what did they do? Not surprisingly, they gathered around me, patted me and told me everything would be okay. I felt very mothered. They started telling me stories of hardship from their lives and even though their stories absolutely DWARFED mine, they didn’t seem to see a big difference.

They just saw the commonality: mainly that they were upset at the time but that it eventually passed (“graças a Deus”... “by the grace of God”), and so would my troubles. It was good perspective. I was touched, as always, by their kindness and was left with a new appreciation of the fact that despite what sometimes seem like insurmountable differences, we’re all pretty much the same when it comes down to it. There’s a Mozambican phrase I like that sums it up nicely: “Todos nós somos humanos” (“We are all human.”)

Who else is my community? I don’t know if I would have made it here without my Peace Corps people. Even though I am essentially maintaining long distance friendships with all of them except for my Mabote site mate, Mandy, that can sometimes be a perk. i.e. Taking a break from Mabote, or seeing it through the new eyes of a visitor, is sometimes the perfect reboot.

This past week has been quite a social one for the Peace Corps community. Try not to judge me for what I am about to tell you, but last weekend I was in Vilankulo with 50+ other Peace Corps volunteers for an annual event known as “Beer Olympics.” The name really says it all so I will leave the rest to your imagination. But my friend Jama and I decided that if we’re going to attend a college frat party weekend as mature women of a certain age, we’d at least do it with a little dignity. So we brought our own wine – complete with fancy wine glasses (well, fancy for Moz) – and rented a cozy beachfront bungalow instead of camping or sleeping in the dorms at the hostel. It was a good call.

What’s going right: stories from the human village

Written on February 29, 2012:

Hey y’all,

Happy leap day! Hope all’s well up there where it’s almost Spring. Here it has finally started to hint at the fact that it will eventually cool off… as in, lately at night I can actually put a sheet over myself comfortably. A real treat.

The big news here is that I am gearing up for a momentous occasion: my dad, the Brick Man himself, is arriving in Mozambique in less than three days! I still don’t quite believe it… it’s a bit like worlds colliding to imagine anyone from home being here in Mozambique, in Mabote, in my hut. Eeee!

I have a very exciting itinerary planned for us here in Mabote, which includes such activities as looking at old photos at the secondary school of Samora Machel (Mozambique’s first president) and Fidel Castro slapping each other on the back; having a capulana shirt custom made for him by my local stylist; showing him the factory (okay, “factory” is a bit of a stretch) where they make liquor out of local fruits; and of course visiting and cooking over firewood with friends and colleagues. Some of the women are even planning to “receive” him at one of the associations with dancing and singing. I hope Mabote is ready for a tall, grey-haired mulungu to arrive speaking Spanish and asking to go hunting for bush meat with them.

Aside from that excitement, things here are up and down. As always, ten things go wrong for every one thing that goes right. But when something does finally go right it sure does feel good. I won’t go into what’s going wrong because, well, I’m in too light of a mood to attempt to spin my frustrations into entertaining anecdotes and lessons learned. So instead I’ll just tell you about what’s going right.

English classes started again this week and this time we are much more legit. We even have a name: The Community English School of Mabote. It was a bit of a rocky start last week when only two people showed up to the planning meeting and we had to reschedule, only to have my co-planners not show up to the second meeting. To be honest I wasn’t sure it was going to happen, but then this week I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who not only showed up to the first class but actually paid money (a big deal, considering) to help cover the cost of materials. It’s still a small group but that’s fine with me. It felt good to know people really are interested enough to follow through and even contribute money.

I’m also more excited about things this time around because I have a slightly better idea of what I’m doing. In addition to now having some experience from last year, I’ve also been reading a great book* about using a dialogue approach in adult education. It’s a challenge to do here because of people’s experiences with the formal school system, which is so rigid and anti-dialogue. But the concepts behind it – borrowed from such diverse sources as quantum theory and the work of Paolo Freire, a Brazilian social activist and scholar – are very powerful.

Here’s a passage that I underlined as I was reading because it resonated with what I perceive here as a deep-seated dependence on outsiders and an automatic deference to – and even fear of – those in power (chefes): “When we do not use dialogue and instead ask learners to be passive, they do indeed learn. They learn how to be passive, to be ‘good’ employees. They learn that they have no power, except to obey.”

So not to imply that fifteen people making a “hopes and expectations tree” out of post-its by lantern light is the start of a revolution or anything… but it felt good to see them breaking out of the schoolhouse mode and becoming a cohesive group. One person wrote on his post-it that he wanted to learn English “because it has advantages in the human village.” If I had laid out a list of good reasons to learn English to try and motivate people, I would never have come up with that. And how awesome is that?

In addition to English classes, my collaboration with the new community association I’ve started working with is also going pretty right. We designed a pig-raising project last week that will hopefully be funded by their INGO donor as income generation for the association and its members. I feel a bit like a double agent because the original association I was placed with is also starting up a pig project. I assumed they knew about the second project – small town and all – but apparently they didn’t and I let it slip. (Whoops.) The first association is worried there’s not a big enough market for them both but the second association thinks there is. Who knows, maybe this can be a teaching moment on market research.

The other thing that’s going right with the new association I’m working with is that they’ve embraced an idea that my first association never seemed to be very excited about: pill organizers like the plastic ones you can buy in drug stores in the U.S., but made out of used matchboxes glued together. Maybe it sounds unsanitary, which is what the hospital said last year, but it’s not like pills are being kept in sterile conditions anyway once they get to people’s houses. And a colleague from my new association’s INGO donor is on board and suggested putting the pills in little plastic bags they give out at the hospital if they’re worried about it.

To back up, a lot of people have adherence problems with ARVs (AIDS medication). Anyone would have trouble remembering to take a pill twice a day, but it’s only compounded here by things like the low level of literacy and the intimidation that many people feel when interacting with hospital staff (again, fear and deference to those in power). People I know – even those who are community health workers at one of the associations – will often tell me they went to the hospital for something and are now taking pills but they have no idea what the pills are or why they’re taking them. Asking questions of medical staff at the hospital is not encouraged, and I’ve heard similar stories from other volunteers who work more closely with the hospitals. It’s sad.

But it would be great to finally see this idea take off. We’re planning a trial of 5-10 patients in the near future, and they also might come up with a song to go along with it to help people remember how to take their medication and why it’s important. Maybe it’s too early to add it to the list of things going right, but at least it seems to be attracting new interest. Here’s a picture in case you’re curious.

Wow, it’s now midnight… Happy March! I can’t remember the last time I was up this late in Mabote. I should sign off since I need to get up early tomorrow to do laundry before I leave for Vilankulo to meet the Brick Man. I’m going a day early for some meetings and to have a little dual-birthday dinner with my friend Safiyya. She’s another volunteer and Vilankulo regular and we’re using our combined birthday power to get a little group together.

But in case you’re worried that my dad will be sitting in Mabote the whole time missing out on exotic beach adventures, don’t be. After a few days in Mabote I’m planning on taking him down to Tofo beach where we’ll go snorkeling with whale sharks (among other sea creatures) and get knocked around by the waves in the surf capital of Moz. Not too shabby.

Tchau,
Julie

*The book is Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults (Revised Edition) by Jane Vella. I think it has implications for any educational/training setting and even management.

Doing the laundry rain dance and packing bush meat in my carry-on

Written on January 21, 2012

Hi everyone,

Happy belated new year! Maybe it’s a bit late to be saying that, but here things are just getting back into full swing after the festas (holidays). School just started up again this week, the market and stores around town are still reopening and replenishing, and some government and NGO employees are still trickling back into Mabote from the bigger towns and cities.

I myself am a major desaparecida (literally: disappeared person) from Mabote these days, having taken a long holiday break not too long after I got back from my Great Northern Adventure. Mozambicans love to accuse each other of disappearing whenever they haven’t seen each other in a while, and I’m about to do it again tomorrow because I have yet another conference to go to in Maputo, the capital.

In preparation for leaving again, I did laundry this morning. It’s been overcast and raining on and off for a few days now, so while drying my laundry out on the clothes line usually takes less than an hour in Mabote’s parching heat and brutal sun, today it was not so simple. Hanging your laundry out to dry during the rainy season is always a gamble, and sometimes calls for doing the laundry rain dance: running back and forth to the clothes line as rain threatens and then clears.

But doing laundry today was even more interesting, thanks to my meddlesome neighbor. At first it wasn’t raining so I put my clothes out on the line, but then when it started sprinkling I moved them onto my covered porch, where I have some strings rigged for just this purpose. But then my neighbor, who was also doing laundry, started telling me how I wasn’t going to get good air circulation on the porch. So we spent the better part of the morning debating on and off about whose clothes were going to dry faster: mine hanging on my covered porch, or hers out on the line getting periodically sprinkled on. To me is seemed obvious: why would you hang your clothes out in the rain?

When it finally looked like the sun was coming out I moved them out to the line, but then she marched over and started re-hanging all my clothes, telling me that the way I had hung them was not optimal for the fastest drying. I know she was trying to help, but it’s my damn laundry! Even if I had to go to Maputo tomorrow in damp clothes, what does she care? Living in such a close-knit community has its joys and frustrations, and maybe it sounds petty (ok, I know it’s petty), but today it was mostly frustrating.

I tried to imagine a similar situation happening in the states: what if I were doing laundry at my old laundry mat in Harlem and looked over and told someone they were folding their socks wrong? Doing something like that would probably earn you a dirty look, if not expletives, or worse… I once saw a fight almost break out over who was using a rolling laundry basket first. And in suburban Birmingham, you’d probably never even have a chance to tell your neighbor they were doing their laundry wrong because everyone is so insulated in their own houses. But even if you had the chance, you’d probably be too polite to say anything.

I finally decided it wasn’t worth fighting over, especially when she was, after all, trying to help me. So I relented and just started following her instructions like I was a child learning how to tie my shoes. She had me leaving each article of clothing out on the line until it reached a point of being mostly dry from being washed (even if sprinkled with raindrops), and then bringing it onto the porch to finish drying completely. I hate to admit it, but I did eventually see the sense in her process, even if it had me running back and forth doing the laundry rain dance more than I would have liked. But I’m sure I will be grateful tomorrow when I’m sitting on the plane to Maputo in dry clothes that don’t smell mildew-y.

Speaking of my trip to Maputo, and of this neighbor, she has asked me to take a couple of things to her family there. It’s very normal here to ask someone to transport things for you, or bring things back, when they’re traveling. In fact, I’ve also been asked to bring back a certain brand of soap for another colleague, and another Peace Corps volunteer said someone once asked them to take a loaf of bread to an extended family member living in New York.

But what she’s asked me to take to Maputo is slightly more noteworthy than a loaf of bread or a box of soap. She’s asked me to carry two butchered gazelle legs onto the airplane. (Gazelles are referred to as carne da casa, or bush meat, and are slightly smaller than deer.) When she asked me I had to stifle my laughter as I pictured the look on my fellow volunteers’ faces when I show up at the airport in Vilankulo with two gazelle legs in tow. I immediately agreed, thinking this opportunity was too good to pass up… when else will I ever have freshly slaughtered bush meat as my carry-on?

But beyond laundry woes and bush meat deliveries, things here are going pretty well this week (my first real “work week” since the festas). I met with a neighboring association to explore the possibility of the next volunteer placed here working with both my association and this other one, which has very similar projects. I already knew several of their members and there are a lot of family and social connections between the two associations, but I hadn’t ever sat down with them in a work-like context.

As it turns out, they had been harboring a lot of jealousy about the fact that I only work with my association, which I was placed with via a Peace Corps partnership with our NGO donor. But the other association said they are very interested in having the next volunteer be a dual-placement, and even starting to work with me now.

Seeing as how I’m always scrounging for productive things to do, I’m kicking myself for not making more of an effort with them sooner. But to be honest, attempting to work productively with my association is pretty frustrating a lot of the time, and I wasn’t sure I wanted twice the frustration. But based on our meeting yesterday, I think working with this other association might be a different experience. We shall see, but I’m looking forward to potentially having two opportunities to implement some things I’ve been hoping to do.

Other than that, my friend and English class co-organizer and I have been getting ready to start the next round of classes in February. This time we’re trying to make them more official and are planning to have tests and give out certificates at the end, with the idea being that they can then put on their resume that they are “certified” at a basic or intermediate level.

Six months ago I would have thought it unnecessary, but Mozambicans put a lot of stock in officialdom. I was once told at the post office that a letter of permission I was trying to turn in so that a friend in Vilankulo could pick up my packages for me wasn’t acceptable because it hadn’t been stamped by my employer. The fact is, any organization or enterprise here that is at all legitimate has their own official rubber stamp, so I suppose we’re going to have to get a stamp made to use on the certificates.

Another work-type update is that I’ve started helping this same friend start a small business. He’s relatively educated, motivated and very active in the community, but as it turns out, what I thought was his main job of working at the courthouse is actually an unpaid apprenticeship. It was supposed to lead to a paid position but I recently found out that he’s been working there without pay for the past three years because of the continued promise that this apprenticeship was leading somewhere. He’s taken the official test to be a court worker and has followed up several times, and each time he’s been told that they are processing his paperwork.

He’s in a tough position because if he quits now then he will have “wasted” those three years, but how long can he just keep working for free and hoping that one day the powers that be – the wizards behind the curtain – will one day deliver him the means to make a better life?

So he’s starting to look for other options, like this business of selling women’s beauty products in the market. Even if we don’t accomplish what I’d like to in the next ten months at the association, I feel like the things I’m doing with him will at least be something I can look back on and feel good about.

Anyway, I’m going to leave this blog shorter than usual since I spent too much time on laundry today and haven’t even started packing. Next time I promise I’ll write about something more entertaining than laundry.

Até a proxima (until next time),
Julie

The Great Northern Adventure, the un-making of this American, and ceremonial wailing

Written on December 19, 2011

Ahem. Hi, everyone.

So it’s been... almost three months since I last blogged?? Whoops. Please forgive my long silence. My excuses are as follows: I was studying for the GRE, which I took in November; I was traveling for almost three weeks around Thanksgiving; and Mabote hasn’t had electricity in two months, so it’s a rare occasion when I have a charged laptop. As I type this I’m keeping an eye on the battery meter and racing it to 7%, when my computer will beep and go dark.

So, beyond apologies and excuses… Merry Christmas! I hope you’re spending it surrounded by your loved ones and feasting on delicious food. Like last year, I will be hanging out at the beach in Vilankulo with some other volunteers. The house where we’re staying has beds/couch for six or seven, and there are nine of us staying there. So should be cozy, but fun!

The most interesting thing I can report on is my big – no, epic – trip north in November. First I spent two days traveling by chapa down to Maputo (the capital) for the GRE, and then I flew up to the northern provinces to spend Thanksgiving with friends who live up there in the wild west of Niassa province (bordering Malawi) and the final frontier of Cabo Delgado province (bordering Tanzania). It was the longest I’ve been away from Mabote since I arrived, and also the first time I’ve been north of Inhambane province (where I live), which is in southern Mozambique.

And man, that’s where they keep the beautiful landscapes! Sure, the beaches of Inhambane look like a Corona commercial and all, but the north has mountains! We took a twelve hour train ride through the most gorgeous scenery I’ve seen in Mozambique. The mountains are called inselbergs and they look prehistoric, like they should have dinosaurs roaming around in front of them. There are some photos in my new facebook album: The Great Northern Adventure (though they really don’t do the landscapes justice)

In addition to beautiful scenery, there are some other Thanksgiving shots, including me and a chicken I’m holding simultaneously freaking out. We killed and ate said chicken for Thanksgiving dinner and it was my job to do the killing, but I couldn’t bring myself do it in the end. I was afraid of a repeat of the time when I was four and my dad made me clean a fish at the lake and I cried my way through it. That sort of thing is slightly more embarrassing when you’re no longer four. I did, however, help pluck and clean it. I’m getting more Mozambican all the time.

Also while up north, my second* biggest Mozambique fear was realized: I had a gastro-intestinal emergency while on public transport. I’ll spare you the details, but I owe my friends Nathan and Jama a goat dinner for taking care of me. My consolation is that it happened so far from home, so I never have to see all those strangers again who witnessed my roadside vomiting and other things. I blame a dirty mango.

Anyway. I’ve been back in Mabote for just over two weeks now, and since I’ve been back things feel different. The trip was like a symbolic divider between Years 1 and 2 (also quite literal since the halfway point of my time in Mabote was right around Thanksgiving). Now that I’m solidly in Year 2, the idea of me leaving Mabote has suddenly gone from seeming theoretical and so far away that I might as well not think about it, to seeming tangible and real.

And that has made everything else clearer to me. Like the fact that what’s most important about this experience is the personal relationships I have with people and what we learn from each other. Not to downplay projects and productivity, but there’s nothing like the realization of, “Holy crap I only have eleven months left – which is only like three months American time – to ‘do’ something” to make you realize what’s realistic.

Confession: I secretly harbored hopes of doing Big Things in the Peace Corps. I thought I’d come in and be able to use the advantages and experiences I’ve had in my life to spot easy wins and take advantage of them. But there aren’t any easy wins here. There are a lot of things that need doing, but none of them are easy. I can only hope that during the next year I will be able to keep contributing in small ways, even as I continue to climb this steep learning curve and attempt to get below the surface of a culture that is still so foreign to me.

So in light of my newfound realization that people matter most, in the last couple of weeks I’ve been hanging out with neighbors more and making up more excuses to passear around town. Passear is an oft-used word in Mozambican Portuguese that there’s really no equivalent for in English. It means: to walk around aimlessly with the intent to see what’s going on and socialize. That’s probably not exactly what the dictionary says but that’s what people here mean when they say it.

And passear-ing is like the #1 Mozambican pastime. Or perhaps #2, behind conversar-ing. To conversar is to idly make conversation, which often means actually saying nothing at all for long periods of time. But just the act of sitting there and being together, idly talking – or sometimes not – is conversar-ing. Obviously I am at a distinct disadvantage in conversar-ing since most of the conversas here happen in Chitswa, but I can zone out like a champ when they’re all speaking Chitswa and then chime in and ask some inane question in Portuguese when there’s a lull. (I’m no good at small talk in English either, but at least now I have an excuse.)

Things have also been pretty dead at the association and around Mabote in general as Christmas and New Years (the “festas”) get closer, so it’s been as good a time as any to not attempt any productivity whatsoever and instead passear, conversar, and just generally let go and stop being so American. I also had a better verandah built on my house and have been spending hours at a time sitting out there reading or playing the guitar. And with no electricity at all I do more cooking during the day and go to bed at like 7:30 or 8:00. In short, I’m savoring the simple and embracing the slow. Like I said, I’m getting more Mozambican all the time.

One of the advantages of more conversar-ing and passear-ing is that you get the news and gossip sooner. The Saturday before last I was sitting in my yard with a few neighbors and heard that the son of one of my closest colleagues had died in a well-digging accident the day before. I was really shocked and sad to hear that so I called a friend of mine who’s a member of the association and within two hours, we were sitting at my colleague’s son’s house participating in the grieving ceremonies.

I’d been to several funerals before, but usually I don’t find out right away so I’ve only been to the later ceremonies when people have known for a few days. This first ceremony was very different from the quiet, rather boring, ceremonies I’d been to before. When I got there, all the men where on one side – some sitting in all of the available chairs – and all the women were on the other, sitting on the ground on mats, or many lying down with their heads and bodies completely covered with capulanas (multicolored wax fabric).

I sat down with the women and for about an hour and a half we just sat there in total silence. Then a woman entered the yard who was visibly distraught and crying and that set off all the other women into ceremonial crying – more like wailing. I sat there surrounded by the wailing and, even though I’d never even met my colleague’s son, I had to struggle not to start crying myself because it was so powerful. I had heard of ceremonial crying but for some reason had expected it to be more, well… ceremonial. But it felt very real and inconsolably sad. The woman who had started off the crying was lying right beside me on a mat and was thrashing around, wailing, as other women held her.

Afterward, my friend who had gone with me asked how it compared to funerals I was used to in the U.S. I tried to explain how a lot of times we try and keep our emotions in and are embarrassed to cry in front of other people, even at funerals. He just listened and tried to understand, but I couldn’t help thinking that their way is healthier: to just let loose and be supported by your family and friends.

Well. I didn’t mean to make this post a downer. It is my Christmas post after all. But being Christmas, I think the image of being surrounded by family and friends – even if it’s for support during a hard time – is an appropriate one.

My battery meter is now at 11% and falling so I better wrap it up.

For New Year’s, I will be heading down to the biggest New Year’s party in southern Moz in the beach town of Tofo (one of the Corona commercial beaches) and camping on the beach there for a few days with some friends. Rough life, I know… never feel too sorry for me out here “roughing it” in Africa. I’ve heard that some of those poor suckers doing Peace Corps in landlocked African countries call us “posh corps”. :)

Boas festas to you all!

Love,
Julie

*For the record, my first biggest Mozambique fear is that a camel spider will touch and/or bite me.

What do I know?

Written on September 26, 2011

Hey y’all,

Happy almost fall! It’s been more than six weeks since I’ve written anything new, so I decided to take a break from my GRE studying – which is what occupies most of my free time these days – and attempt to say something coherent despite the fact that my brain hurts from relearning how to factor equations and drilling myself on the upper end of the multiplication tables. (Where’s Number Munchers when you need it?)

It must be beginning to turn all cool and crisp there about now, at least in New York. I know that because I remember it was just barely starting to hint at fall when I left last year. I’ve been thinking a lot about this time last year in the past few days, because it was one year ago today that I moved out of my apartment in Brooklyn. And on Thursday of this week, it will be my one year anniversary of arriving in Mozambique! That is so weird.

Also, the new group of health volunteers arrived in June and they’re looking at us like we Know Stuff. At first that just seemed ridiculous. “I’ve been here like five minutes longer than you,” I told a new friend of mine from that group. But having spent a little more time with a few of them (and my friend having pointed out that eight months is actually kind of a long time), I’m suddenly realizing that I’m not fresh off the plane anymore…. and what’s more, maybe I actually do Know Stuff!

I remember when I first got to Mabote, I felt completely overwhelmed and the two years in front of me seemed like an eternity. In those first few weeks and months, sometimes even the simplest tasks seemed confusing and impossible. (Perhaps in this blog I failed to mention all my near-meltdowns and existential crises??) Anyway, I remember longing for “one day” when I would wake up and realize that I actually spoke Portuguese, and knew what was going on, and had a real life here.

I know now that it will never be as ideal as I imagined it being, and I will spend my entire two years trying to actually speak Portuguese (well), and figuring out what’s going on and how I can contribute, and building a “real” life here. But despite the inevitable gap between expectations and reality, lately I have been feeling like that “one day” which seemed so far away has actually arrived. “I DO Know Stuff!” I realized. “Woohoooo!! Look at me! Livin’ the dream!” Or something along those lines.

Then one day last week I had a planning meeting scheduled with a couple of people at my association for a food security project we’re hoping to do (teaching people to plant and maintain vegetable gardens at home year-round). A colleague and I started planning it at a Peace Corps project design conference a couple months ago but it had been a few weeks since we’d touched base about it.

I was feeling like the project was lacking direction. What exactly was the problem we were trying to solve? What was our strategy? That’s what I wanted us to clarify, so I spent a couple of hours the day before thinking it through and preparing for the meeting.

I thought it might help if we spent some time analyzing and thinking critically about the situation we were trying to resolve. Something I’ve become convinced of in my time here is that critical thinking is actually a learned skill, not something any of us are born knowing how to do. “Why do you think it’s like that?” “What do you think about this, and why?”

Those seemingly simple questions are hard to know how to answer if you’ve never been asked “why” before. Or if you’re used to being told what to do and made to feel stupid if you dare ask a question. Or if you’re told that there’s only one right way to do everything and that different is bad. Things are rapidly changing, but the vestiges of colonial oppression still loom large, and the rote memorization style of teaching in the schools certainly doesn’t help anything.

So as I prepared for the meeting, I picked out a couple of simple analysis tools to use with them. One is the problem tree, where you draw a tree and write the problem you want to analyze on the trunk. Then you fill in the roots, which are the causes of the problem, and the branches, which are the consequences. The other is the seasonal calendar, where you go through a cyclical period of time like a calendar year, school year, etc. and note when specific things happen in order to analyze and plan.

I had the meeting pictured in my head… me facilitating this analysis and brainstorming session, them walking away feeling all empowered and confident in their ability to analyze and problem solve. It was a beautiful vision of world peace and friendship*… let me tell ya.

That was the plan anyway. But then despite my attempts to explain the benefits of taking the time to think through the problem and our strategy, they weren’t too enthused and seemed to be wondering why we couldn’t just plan the project already. But they humored me and patiently answered my questions about when the fields are planted, and when the rains come, and how long the harvested crops last.

Then as we were looking at the gap on the calendar between the time when the crops from the fields and seasonal vegetable gardens start to run out, and the time when next year’s harvest is ready, I wrote in all caps “TIME OF HUNGER”. They corrected me by saying that hunger exists all year round, but that this was just the time when it was most widespread. “We’re activistas, so we can get food in the shops and pay at the end of the month when our subsidies (from our donor) arrive, but other people aren’t activistas so they go to bed hungry. Lots of people go to bed hungry.”

It may sound obvious, but that moment was the first time it really hit me what we were talking about. We were talking about people in Mabote, in 3 de Fevereiro (my neighborhood) – people who I know and that probably live within 100 feet of my house – going to bed hungry.

And meanwhile, the food I have in my house would probably look like a grocery store to a lot of them. I suddenly felt very self-conscious. Here I was, having spent a couple of hours planning and with my problem tree and seasonal calendar thinking I was going to come in and teach them something. But I’ve never known hunger. They didn’t always have their activista subsidy, and at any time our donor could pull out and they’d no longer have it. They don’t need me to help them locate hunger on a calendar… they know it very well.

It did seem to spark one new idea, which was that my colleague suggested that we should do the trainings in February or March even though that’s the end of the rainy season and only one or two months before the time of year when people plant their seasonal vegetable gardens anyway. The reason was that he said we’d never get people to try something new during the peak time when they were working in the fields. And he thought that once they saw that they had extra income from selling their produce when no one else’s was ready yet, that they’d want to keep it going all year. I hope he’s right.

After we were done with the things on my meeting agenda and I felt sufficiently humbled, I stopped trying to lead the meeting and just let them plan, only interrupting every now and then to ask what I hope were helpful questions.

In short, my meeting did not go as planned. I left feeling like I had learned much more than they had, and like I had been naïve and maybe even arrogant to have been thinking of this as “my” project. What do I know about hunger? Or agriculture? Or how things work here?

As far as me Knowing Stuff, I think one of the main things I know now that I didn’t know a year ago is how much I don’t know. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to contribute, but it does mean I need to know my limits and appreciate that I am not in a good position to be leading anything here. But that’s the whole point, anyway, isn’t it? For THEM to be leading. So when I put my ego aside, I can see now that it was actually a pretty successful meeting.

Anyway, the power has long since gone out so I’m off to bed. Last day in Mabote tomorrow before heading to Vilankulo for the weekend! Lately I’ve been leaving Mabote about every 2-3 weeks, which seems more doable now that I feel at home here and have gotten somewhat used to the harrowing trip down the very long dirt road. (Though I can’t promise more frequent blog updates.)

Speaking of Vilankulo, my friend Camila is losing her house in the CARE compound on the beach – my home away from home – so we’re all in preemptive mourning (especially her) and wondering what her next house will be like. I’m guessing not right on the beach… sigh.

Step on a crunchy leaf for me, if you happen to be near one.

Julie

*I invoke “world peace and friendship” because, believe it or not, that is actually Peace Corps’ stated mission. I know… it sounds like something that should be pulled out of a hat at a beauty pageant. But you have to put in the context of the Kennedy Camelot era.

Things that go “moo” in the night

Written on August 10, 2011

Hey everyone,

Happy end of summer! I hope it’s starting to cool down in your corner of the world.

I’ve been back in Mabote from my two weeks of travel for a little over a week now, which is usually how long it takes me to get back into the swing of things. This time though, I had more than usual to recover from. For one thing, the pick-up truck I rode back in on was also carrying a giant drum of gasoline, which turned out not to be very well sealed. It sloshed all over my bags so I had to give everything I was carrying a good hand washing.

In addition to being travel weary, I also came down with a pretty intense stomach bug on the last day of the conference. I spent an extra night recovering in Maputo but it was hardly restful. There was some confusion with the hotel reservation and I ended up sleeping in the bedroom of the hotel owners which also doubled as storage space. And there was no private bathroom (as in, they walked in on me).

It’s too bad I was sick during my extra day in Maputo because I didn’t end up getting to hang out there before the conference either because Mozambique’s discount airline, LAM (stands for Late and Maybe), canceled my flight. So instead of my big city get-away, I spent another day and a half in Vilankulo, staring out at the ocean from my friend Camila’s backyard and trying not to be a brat about the fact that I was “stuck” at this beach-front paradise.

But despite those “oh yeah, I live in Mozambique” annoyances, it was still a good trip. When I visited my friend Anne’s town, Fidel Castro, we spent a day hanging out at nearby Xai-Xai beach and the other day at a lobolo (bride price ceremony). It seemed pretty much like a Mozambican wedding reception without the wedding, except of course for the part when they laid out all of the goods the groom’s family was offering to the bride’s family. That included new clothes, shoes, household items and cash (maybe somewhere between $100-200, which is a lot of money here).

I was interested to hear that the price was higher than it otherwise would have been because the bride and groom already had a kid together. I’m not sure whether the higher price was due to the groom’s family now having to “pay” for both the bride and the kid, or whether it was because merely having the kid was evidence that the bride was fertile, which is a big deal here. I’ve heard that women are sometimes encouraged to have at least one baby when they’re young and unmarried to prove that they’re fertile and make them more attractive for marriage. (How’s that for the opposite of Western wisdom?)

I wasn’t sure beforehand how the ceremony would seem to me; I was worried it might feel like the bride was being bought, like a commodity, and that I’d spend the day angry. But it didn’t feel like that at all; it just seemed all in good fun, with the bride taking a very active part. She seemed proud, inspecting and showing off all the loot. And really, is it any weirder than some of our traditions? Like, for example, the tradition that the bride’s family pays for the wedding. What is that, homage to the dowry? And isn’t a dowry in essence the exact opposite of a bride price… a groom price? Is that any better?

Anyway, I think my favorite thing about Anne’s house is that her outhouse has a mother hen and chicks roosting in it every night. It was pretty amusing trying to hover over the latrine while being eyed by the nervous mother about a foot away, as the baby chicks peered out from underneath her protective bulk, curious to see what was happening. If you stayed in there for more than about one minute she got increasingly agitated and started squawking at you to hurry it up.

The morning I left it was about 4am and the chicks were already starting to mill about. Not having them protected underneath her, she was more nervous than usual and suddenly charged me. I had a moment of panic before I remembered that I was the bigger animal and shooed her out. Nothing like getting into a pissing contest with a mother hen… literally.

Speaking of close encounters with farm animals, they seem to be after me lately. I know that sounds paranoid, but judge for yourself…

So on Sunday afternoon I was doing some cleaning when suddenly a frantic chicken came tearing into my house through the slightly ajar door. My new neighbor had bought it in the market and its feet were loosely tied, but that didn’t keep it from getting away from her, hopping like mad. It took us a good five minutes to get a hold of it and escort it back outside. (Well, she got a hold of it; I tried to push it toward her with a broom.) It was a good neighborly bonding activity, anyway.

But what’s weird is that this week I’ve had not just one, but TWO farm animal home invasions. The second one happened last night. I woke up to find that my house was surrounded by a herd of cattle. Maybe that doesn’t sound as scary as it felt at the time, but keep in mind that my walls are made of reeds and my bed is right against the wall. So even when you’re inside with the door closed, it doesn’t really feel like there’s much of a barrier between you and the outside. Plus I was still half asleep and I’d just taken my malaria prophylaxis the day before, which gives me night terrors.

So I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of hooves stomping all around me and the vague sound of large bodies moving. I just lie there with my heart pounding, afraid to move, trying to make sense of what was happening. I think that went on for about two or three minutes (so, forever in my panicked state) and at one point it sounded like one of them was right outside my door stomping on the concrete of my porch.

After the herd moved off and I had calmed down, I got out of bed and opened the door just a crack to shine my flashlight outside. I didn’t see anything, except for solid (well, liquid) proof that one of them had indeed been right outside my door. It had emptied its bucket-sized bladder onto the porch. The concrete is slightly tilted and has a raised border, so there was this giant pool of urine, trapped with no hope of draining.

I guess it could have been worse… in those first startled and sleep-addled moments, I had irrational visions of a burglar on horseback with a machete coming through my wall. (Gotta love that malaria prophylaxis.)

So those are my farm animal adventures from this week, and it’s only Wednesday.

But it’s good to be back in Mabote… it finally feels like I have a little life carved out for myself here. My tomato plants are sprouting tomatoes, and I’m still trying – unsuccessfully so far – to grow a pumpkin in time for Thanksgiving. I’m also feeling pretty busy at work, which is to say that I’ve learned to stop expecting my “job” to remotely resemble a Western workplace. So my feeling busy/productive is probably due to some combination of me having more realistic expectations, and also learning how things get done here (i.e. just because things don’t happen like I might expect them to, doesn’t mean they’re not going to happen).

It’s been hard for me to strike a balance between pushing too hard and inevitably driving myself crazy, or just deciding that it’s not worth it and checking out. So for the moment, I’m managing to keep pushing but be equally okay with plans falling through multiple times or not being able to see any progress for weeks at a time. Because at the end of the day, sometimes I have to just appreciate this experience for the rich cultural exchange that it is… to be able spend the day dancing and singing with my colleagues at the association, and call it a workday. What could be more awesome than that, anyway? I’m sure someday I’ll look back on this and wonder why I couldn’t just relax and enjoy it. So that’s what I’m trying to do, one day at a time.

But seeing as how I’m supposed to be a community health volunteer, yet find myself mostly doing organizational development-type stuff, I started thinking that maybe I should do something more directly related to HIV. After all, the HIV situation in this country (and the whole region of southern Africa) is nothing short of an emergency, even though it feels more like an ER waiting room than a fire fight in progress.

Mozambique has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world: officially ~12% of the population, though it’s estimated to be as high as 15-25% in some areas. So I’ve started talking to the district education service about helping support their student HIV/sexual health activist groups. So I hope that works out.

Well that’s the news from here. What about from there? I love getting emails from home, even if takes me forever to respond. (And I will respond!)

Hitahonana ni chikate, (until later, in Chitswa)
Julie

Babel babel babel

Written July 11, 2011

Hey everybody,

Tudo bem? (Everything well?) Seems like I just posted a blog, but I’ll be coming out of Internet hiding early this month because next week I’m headed to a conference in the town of Boane, just outside Maputo (the capital).

I feel like it’s nothing but conferences these days. I just attended another one the last couple of weeks here in Mabote. Our donor organization and some other outside partners were training fifteen new home-based care volunteers for our association. I asked to sit in, but by about day three (out of twelve) I was kicking myself for that. It’s not that I didn’t get anything out of it, but it was hardly worth it to have to sit through session after session where they mainly spoke in Chitswa (or, in the trainers’ cases, Changana and Chopi, but they’re close enough to be able to communicate with each other). By day six I had come down with a cold that turned out to be quite debilitating, so I had to miss a few days. The timing was uncanny, I tell ya.

So in case you were wondering how my Chitswa is coming, there’s your answer… it’s not really. After a couple months of beating my head against the wall, I think I can say with some certainty that this is one language barrier I will not be overcoming. As it turns out, learning Chitswa is nothing like learning Portuguese. I think I’ve mentioned before that Chitswa isn’t really a written language. But in addition to the lack of written materials, the other challenge I’m finding is that no one knows how to explain the grammar. Even having a tutor just turned out to be frustrating (for both of us, I think) and unhelpful.

People will just say to me, “This is how you ask for water, ‘babel babel babel.’ And this is how you ask someone how they’re feeling, ‘babel babel babel.’” And that “babel babel” part is actually made up of really long and hard-to-pronounce words. Like, for example, today is July 11th. The word for eleven? Khumeniyinwe. The word for July? Malatacikwinyani. And I can’t just memorize a bunch of sounds for everything I might want to say… I need rules! Patterns!

Having recently started teaching English, I can commiserate with people not knowing the rules of their native language. “It just is!” I want to say sometimes. “That’s not right because it sounds wrong!” When I first started, I didn’t think I’d need a book. After all, it’s my language… I know it in my bones. But as I’m now seeing, that can be both a blessing and a handicap when you’re trying to teach it. So even though it drives me crazy that no one can explain Chitswa to me… I get it. They don’t even have books or rules they learned in school to rely upon. Like me with English, they just know it in their bones.

People often tell me that Chitswa is easier than Portuguese and that I’ll pick it up in no time (though they say that less and less these days…). One Sunday several months ago I was at church with my friend and colleague, Amina. The service, of course, was all in Chitswa. She translated for me for about the first ten minutes and then stopped. I assumed she got tired and I didn’t mind at all. But then an hour or so later she turns to me and asks, “Do you understand?” I was confused at first, wondering if they started speaking Portuguese after I’d zoned out. But they hadn’t, so I told her, “Of course not, they’re speaking Chitswa!” She looks at me, kind of perplexed, and says, “Open your ears!!” As if it were that easy.

I feel bad that my Chitswa isn’t getting much better because I know it would mean so much to people if I could speak more of their language – their real language. When Mozambique chose Portuguese as their official language after independence from Portugal in 1975, it was a pragmatic decision. They needed a language to unite them as a country, to start to form a national identity. I’m told that up to that point, and even after, many people identified more with their ethnic/language group – some of which cross national borders – than with this outline on a map called Mozambique.

Now, it seems like there’s a divide between more educated, cosmopolitan Mozambicans from larger towns and cities who speak Portuguese on a daily basis, and the large number of rural farmers who, if they speak any, only speak enough to get by. Just how little Portuguese many people in Mabote speak was driven home to me during the training these last two weeks. It actually started off in Portuguese but then it became clear that most people just weren’t following, even though one of the requirements to be a home-based care volunteer was that they could speak Portuguese.

But if you’re a subsistence farmer barely getting by and an international NGO says they want to pay you a monthly subsidy to work in the community, but only if you can speak Portuguese, then you obviously aren’t going to write “barely speaks Portuguese” at the top of your resume. People don’t like to admit they don’t speak Portuguese very well because they feel like they’re supposed to know it, even though many people here, especially women, haven’t had much of an opportunity to learn. It’s like there’s shame in only speaking Chitswa, which is sad to me. Why should someone have to feel ashamed for speaking their own language?

In fact, my closest volunteer neighbor, Mandy, told me that a friend of hers in Makwakwa has decided that she doesn’t want her baby to speak Chitswa at all, only Portuguese. In reality, if she stays here, it will be impossible to keep her daughter from learning Chitswa from other people. But it just goes to show how local languages are sometimes looked down upon.

As much as it’s inconvenient for me as an English-speaker to have to attempt to learn two new languages to live in Mozambique, and – from a practical standpoint – as inefficient as it is for one country to have so many different languages, I hope they hold on to their local languages even as globalization and development spread. It’s hard for me to imagine a Mozambique without them; it seems like such an important part of their cultural heritage.

And I don’t see why there’s not room for multiple languages. Even with the burgeoning demand for English, I can easily imagine Mozambicans speaking their local language, Portuguese and, if they want to, English (some already do). As it is now, students study English and French in school in addition to Portuguese. One thing that I’ve been impressed with here is their comfort with, and even thirst for, being exposed to other languages.

I’ve seen people keep their cell phones in English even when there’s a Portuguese option, and I’ve also seen people watch movies in Chinese, with English subtitles. One of my host families in Namaacha was doing that one night and they seemed to be enjoying the movie so much, laughing and carrying on, that I started to wonder if, somehow, they actually spoke some Chinese. When I asked, my host mom said, “No, but listen to how funny they sound!!” And then she tried to imitate someone speaking Chinese and everyone cracked up, especially me. So wrong, but the irony of someone whose primary language is Changana – as “funny-sounding” as it gets to my ears – doing an impression of someone speaking Chinese… priceless.

When it comes to openness to foreign languages, I like their attitude. We could use some of that in the U.S., where some people seem to think that the influx of Spanish is something to be feared and stamped out. (Did you catch the “This is Alabama; we speak English” ad from last year’s gubernatorial race?) People here just don’t get it when I tell them that before I came here, I pretty much only spoke English. “But besides English, what else did you speak?” “Just English.” “Not even French? And what about your local language… what do you speak with your grandmother?” “Just English.” They just look at me weird, not quite believing.

Anyway, I hope you’re all enjoying your summers and having some fun. I’m excited to be hanging out for a couple days in Maputo before the conference. Whenever I spend time in Maputo, it feels almost like I’m on a little vacation back to my old life… eating in restaurants, taking hot showers, and maybe most of all, that glorious feeling that I used to take for granted of being anonymous... i.e. no one gawking at me or calling me mulungu.

And the feeling of being on vacation is amplified because the city is a convergence of so many diverse influences that you don’t quite know where you are. It’s a port city and some parts are beautiful and feel almost Mediterranean. Yet there’s also plenty of communist-era square concrete architecture that makes you feel like you’re in Eastern Europe. And on top of that you never really forget you’re in Africa, with the aggressive street vendors and taking chapas (jam-packed minibuses) as public transport.

Incidentally, being in Maputo also makes me feel like my Portuguese sucks, whereas in Mabote I sometimes get lulled into thinking that I’m practically fluent. Just goes to show, again, the rural-urban language barrier. And I’m pretty sure if I arrived in Lisbon or Rio de Janeiro tomorrow, I’d be totally floundering.

After the conference I’m going to visit my friend Anne’s town, Fidel Castro, in Gaza province. (Yes, that’s actually the name of her town.) She’s invited me to go with her to a traditional lobolo (bride price) ceremony. Should be interesting!

Fica bem, (Stay well)
Julie