Sugar, Gin, and Xima

Saturday February 20th, 2010 – 2 weeks till my birthday!
This morning Marcelino, an “activista” at Nauela’s hospital, and I went to a church gathering in the neighboring community of Mehecane (Me-Hey-Kan-Ee), about a 30 or 45 minute bike ride out of town. Mehecane is a unique oasis that you can easily spot from far away, even from my house now that I know what to look for, because of the tall eucalyptus trees that line its main walkway. In a village of no more than 200 people, there are 3 water faucets with a never-ceasing stream of water pouring out onto the ground below and irrigating the nearby gardens. Many of the community’s houses are even outfitted with glass windows, tight fitting doors, and cement floors. It is a diamond in the rough to be sure, but one needs not look past the center of the town to see where all of this relative wealth comes from. Indeed, towering above the rest of the town’s constructions, only to be out done by the decades old eucalyptus trees, is the town’s Igreja União Baptista.

The small village of Mehecane has a rich history, deeply rooted in the rise of the protestant churches of Zambezia. Its running water and many of the other housing improvements, are largely funded by the donations from international religious based organizations and in the past decade, missionaries who made home in the rural village. A tremendous amount of effort has gone into making Mehecane what it is today. The running water is thanks to over 3 kilometers of piping that starts all the way at the springhead on Mount Malapa, the same mountain that Wilson and I climbed a few weeks earlier. Additionally, the town’s large religious centerpiece is a result of 10 years of construction that required the town to be very creative when hauling in materials because the roads leading up to the town are suspect at best. Despite Mehecane’s current appearance, it is still just a shadow of what it was decades ago.

Rolling into town on my bike, dripping from head to toe and panting like a dog, the first person to greet Marcelino and I was the local União Baptista pastor, Vicente. In a matter of minutes, he courted me around the entire village, eventually leading me to his house for a cup of tea. While sipping tea from his seemingly old-of-place, ornate tea set, Pastor Vicente was kind enough to entertain me with stories about Mehecane’s troubled history. Having grown up in the area and experienced its ups and down, he conveyed the story with an incredible amount of passion, pride, and sorrow. Facing the old colonial era school house pointing, he informed me that it was the only building left standing when we came back to the area after the war in the early 90’s and became the starting point for the reconstruction effort that has begin going on ever since.

I could see him reaching back in his memories as he began to recount his childhood, trying to give me a better idea of what tremendous destruction happened during the war. Before the civil war, he told me, the area surrounding Mehecane was a mecca of agriculture production (there used to be tractors, farm equipment, etc), commerce, and education (Mehecane, despite its rural location, was home to a seminary that educated most of Zambezia’s first protestant preachers). What a huge fall, but also a great recovery thus far, I thought.

As a matter of fact, Mehecane’s recovery has been largely a result of people like Pastor Vicente who have refused to give up on the community. He is a great example, yet sadly an exception, because he left the rural community to finish his education, but returned after finishing his studies to come back to help out where he grew up. And he’s far from done!

As we hungrily stuffed down our white rice and pinto beans served up for lunch, his eyes lit up with passion while talking about the plans that he has in the works for the community. A youth group that teaches kids life skills through sports and arts, an expansion/improvement of the primary school, and a woodshop to raise money for the increasing number of local orphans due to HIV/AIDS… Needless to say, I hope to be working with him in the near future.

On a random side note, and as a complete coincidence, I happened to visit Mehecane on the same weekend that the former local missionaries were back in town visiting (imagine a town of 200, in the middle of nowhere Mozambique, getting a visit from two sets of foreigners on the same day… Crazy!). Thus, in the afternoon, Pastor Vicente made sure I had the opportunity to visit with them at their old house to sit down for a while and chat. As it turns out, the two missionaries, Steven and Joanna, are from England and have two young children that they are carting all around northern Mozambique with them. They are now stationed in Cuamba in the Niassa Province of Mozambique, but are taking an extended holiday from their site to visit old acquaintances and making deliveries to some of the rural churches along the way. I briefly lamented to the them about the difficulties of learning the local language, Lomwe, and they obliged by agreeing to drop off some learning materials for me in Gurue with a missionary there named Foster. One of their side tasks while visiting the area was to provide new Portuguese/Lomwe hymnals to the União Baptista churches, so as I walked away from the meeting, I did so with a book in hand and future visit to Gurue in mind.

On our way back to Nauela from Mehecane, Marcelino continued the history lesson where Pastor Vicente left off by casually informing me that the city of Nauela used to not be known as Nauela at all. It was the colonizing Portuguese, who didn’t really understand the locals when they first arrived, who missed the actual name of the village (Muheewa) and simply named the post after the closest mountain called Nauela. Marcelino went on, letting me know that the small mountain of Nauela was actively used as a fort during the civil war. When I showed interest in all of this new information, Marcelino turned around his bike and insisted that we go up the mountain to make a quick visit. Sure enough, when we climbed to the top of the mountain we found some empty, old ammunition shells and large scraps of metal used for makeshift barracks. Marcelino, seemingly uninterested in historical significance of site, kicked at the rusted metal and tossed several of the empty shells down on the ground. We watched as they rolled off the side of rocky mountaintop to the corn fields below, and I thought to myself that it’s such a shame that a site like this is being left to waste. Regardless of his interest in the site, I know that the mountain is representative of something that had such a HUGE impact on Mozambique’s recent history (especially in this area) and I hope that the local people are able to remember and appreciate that for generations to come. We’ll see!

Sunday, February 21st, 2010 – Only 13 days till my birthday!
This morning, my church congregation visited the other União Baptista down in Eiope to participate in a joint service in order to kick off the local youth week. Great, right?! Well, yes… the only problem being that I didn’t even know about it until I showed up at my church’s doorsteps seeing it completely deserted! After asking around, I found out about the impromptu change of plans and decide to hightail it down the road to the other church. I quickly ran home, threw my bible and new handy-dandy hymnal in my day bag and jumped on my trusty “made in India” Hero bike to try and make it to the service before it started. Now let me give you a glimpse into one of my growing pains thus far here in Nauela… the perception of distance… while the trek from Nauela to Eiope may not seem long if you are in a car, or biking leisurely, but when you are peddling in a hurry (even going downhill most of the way) it is quite the trek! Oooh Mozambique!

In typical Mozambican fashion, the service started and ran late (that allowed me to get there on time but I don’t know if it was worth it because the service didn’t end till nearly 2pm!), granted it was largely because of the hassle of getting everyone crammed inside the small church and having ALL the representatives from BOTH churches sing and speak to the large audience. I usually don’t mind the longer church services, the music is beautiful and, when they go off on long speeches in Lomwe, it gives me down time to reflect. Today, however, I was hungry –my stomach said it was starving, but it’s weak- and the pastor of the home church was giving the second sermon of the day in Lomwe (the pastor of my church had already given his sermon). To make things worse, as he rambled on he showed no signs of slowing down, much less stopping. Looking back, it was probably not a good thing the think/feel, but everything (even the audience’s laughter) seemed to incite a growing annoyance that was building up inside of me. “Why can’t it just end already!”, I thought. I contemplated simply getting up and walking out of the service like so many Mozambicans do, but I figured that my departure would be more noted than that of a normal churchgoer. In the end, I kept my butt planted on the cement bench, defeated, with my mouth closed, trying to think good thoughts.

The service finally ended and the sardine-packed churchgoers poured out of the church relieved and quickly fled back to their houses to prepare a late lunch. I no sooner had left the church than had mounted my bike was off, back uphill, on the way towards Nauela. I was sailing along and felt pretty good considering everything, but about halfway home I ran into Beljour, one of my favorite students, and stopped to chat. As we wrapped up the conversation, he pleaded with me to give him a boleia . I deliberated, “GAH! Starving and having to ferry a relatively heavy boy on my bike, uphill?! No way!” Something in the way he asked me though caused a momentary lapse of rationality and I somehow agreed. Needless to say we didn’t make it too far, though I must say that I held my own for a while!

Thursday March 4th, 2010–Sunday March 7th, 2010 – Happy 24th Birthday to me!
I just got home and I can barely keep my eyes open, so I know I’ll be writing this entry over the next several days. I just want to get a few of my thoughts down before I nod off to sleep and forget some of the awesome things that happened to me in the past several days… Before I start, I just wanted to say that, I got to check the internet today and I saw all the love you guys sent me. Thank you so much! It really made my day! You are all so awesome :-) I wish I could have been in the states with all of you to celebrate, but at the same time I want you all to know that I had a great time here and if you continue reading on, you’ll here exactly what I did…

Well for some time now I have heard numerous stories about the fabled Mount Namuli located in the neighboring district of Gurue, just outside the city of Gurue . To the everyday tourist visiting Mozambique, a trip to Mount Namuli, being the second tallest mountain in the country surrounded by arguably the most beautiful, rich countryside in all of Mozambique, is a must. The mountain isn’t easy to reach, however, and is also a very important symbol in the traditional folklore/beliefs of the area thus it’s an important destination for the trailblazing explorer and/or local as well.

The night before my trip to Gurue to climb the mountain, my friend Wilson described to me how many people in the area believe(d) that all human beings can trace their ancestry to Mount Namuli. It was there, they say, that humans evolved from monkeys and later dispersed in all directions, speaking the different, yet similar, languages of the region. For that reason and more, the mountain ascent is surrounded by a shroud of traditional beliefs regarding the spirits/ghosts who live on the mountain. In fact, in order to climb the mountain, one must bring sugar, gin, and xima to the Queen of the mountain and ask for her to perform a traditional ceremony (using those three elements) to give you the right to hike up the mountain.

Chapa Time
On the morning of my long awaited birthday trip to Gurue, I woke up to the sound of rain beating down on my house’s tin roof. I’ve never heard a machine gun in real life, but I couldn’t imagine that one would be louder or faster. You see, there is no ceiling between my house’s metal roofing and the interior, so I often feel as if I’m inside a large drum when the rain is pelting the rooftop. In fact, the tremendous echoing noise within the house often misleads one into thinking that it is actually raining significantly harder outside than it really is. Regardless, it DEFINITELY was not raining lightly and that signaled that it was going to be a rough ride later in the day on the muddy road to Gurue.
By the time the late morning rolled around, the rain had stopped and the clouds directly overhead even show signs of dispersing a little to let the sun come out and dry up some of the mud on the road. The motoristas must have also been as optimistic as I because eventually they started coming in bunches from Moloque towards Gurue.
The chapa ride started fine, I might even say pleasant for the first several miles, because I got to sit down inside the truckbed on a sack of rice. Not 15 minutes outside of Milevane, however, the weather took a turn for the worse as it started drizzling, then raining, getting progressively harder as we continued along. The passengers in the back of the truckbed immediately formed an intimate bond as we found a plastic tarp and huddled closely together in the back of the open back chapa. Looking around at the faces only a foot or so away from mine, I felt like I was a kid again playing “fort”, but in an weird/awkward situation where for some reason we were all remaining silent.

So try and picture this: here we are sitting in the back of a pickup truck, covering ourselves with a plastic tarp while the rain is coming down harder and harder, when all of a sudden, the truck jerks the right, then overcorrects to the left and we’re brought to an abrupt halt in the deep, muddy roadside ditch.

The motorista tried in vain to get the car unstuck without any help, but in the end it took all the passengers getting down and pushing (along with the help of 40 or so kids from a nearby elementary school who fled their morning classes to see what all the commotion was about...) to get us out of the ditch and straightened back out on the road. Momentarily standing up in the back of the truck, I waved goodbye to the kids and took the photo below as we started up the engine and headed out. The kids were happy, we were happy, it was a one of those warm, fuzzy instants that corny movies always end on. The magical moment didn’t last too long, however, because about 100 feet down the road the truck lost traction on a muddy incline and we came sliding back down to almost exactly where we had begun moments earlier! At that moment, every person involved had their own opinion of what we should do to fix the problem, but nothing we did could rid us of Mother Nature’s wrath taking form as an endless supply of mud filling up the road. Eventually someone from above must have taken pity on us because the rain began to slow and before too long stopped all together. After the road dried a little, we were able to shovel (where the heck did the hoe come from you might ask? I don’t know!) some of the accumulated mud out of the road’s worn tire trenches and, with the help of everyone (including the school children again), we finally made it up the hill and were on our way.


The group of elementary school kids who helped get my chapa out of the mud.

I arrived late in Gurue, clothes still wet from the rain and caked in the mud, but was able to prepare a pretty schnazy guacamole mix served up with freshly baked bread before calling it a day and laying down on the esteira that Camille and Aditi set up for me on their living room floor. I know that may sound rough, sleeping on a straw mat on the floor, but looking back on it, it probably just better mentally prepared me for what lay ahead for the next several days during the hike up Namuli.

To make a long story short, we (Noemi, Yohko, and I) didn’t actually get to climb to the top of Mount Namuli, but it was still a very beautiful, albeit tiring, two day hike to the mountain’s base and back. That said, what’s fun about making a long story short?! Plus, this way you’ll have some text with all the photos I’m about to show you! So here it goes…

Noemi, Yohko and I met up with our local guide, known to all PCVs as Rambo!, just after sunrise and were out crossing the famous tea fields surrounding Gurue by 6 after having bought our 3 day food rations on our way out of town. Heading towards Namuli from the city, you pass through the tea fields via a main corridor that acts as a highway for people coming into Gurue from the surrounding countryside bringing their products to sell in the city. We hadn’t even made it halfway through the fields by the time we realized why Rambo wasn’t so worried about having enough snacks for the trip. We were constantly coming across people carrying bananas, pineapples, oranges, avocados, beans, peanuts, you name it into the city. With all the agriculture production, it’s easy to see why Gurue has grown so big (in addition to the tea company’s investments) and why the city has such a diverse and plentiful market.


A group of people coming into Gurue from the surrounding countryside. PS - the mountain pictured in the back is not Mount Namuli.


Farmers carry 50lbs bags of pinto beans into the city of Gurue.


Yohko fording a small river while passing through the tea fields.

As a side note, the tea fields seamlessly stretch out across the valley farther than the eye can see (see panoramic below), but they are actually divided by invisible property boundaries between 6 different owners. That said, the owners all pool the products together to make the well-known-in-Mozambique brand “Cha de Gurue”. Apparently, though, the Gurue tea leaves also serve as fillers for other larger tea companies around the world.


A sweet panoramic view of the tea fields just outside of Gurue.

Hiking up through the mountain pass to get to Namuli, you are welcomed into the next valley by the dark black, fertile land all those passing farmers are blessed enough to grow their crops on. A beautiful sight indeed! Once you make it through the pass, however, a bummer is the fact that the mountains block Gurue’s cell phone tower and thus for a majority of the trip I’d have to be without cell phone service (not usually a big deal, but sad because I wouldn’t have service on my birthday, thus separating myself from my friends and family back home…)


Noemi and Yohko hiking through the mountain pass.


Yohko, Rambo and I taking a break right after making it through the mountain pass.

Despite the mountain’s proximity, when you are in the city of Gurue you can’t actually see Mount Namuli. It’s not until a good hour’s hike after the mountain pass, in fact, that you get your first glimpse of the towering peak. It was such a good feeling to see it for the first time (almost a high as if we’d already climbed to the top if it)! That feeling, however, turned into one of anxiousness as the mountain seemed to always remain just out of reach, even after hours of hiking through the foothills surrounding it. As a matter of fact, after first seeing Mount Namuli it took us 5 more hours of intense hiking before we made it to base camp to spend the night. Before entering the compound, we snapped a few half-hearted victory photos of us with the mountain in the background just before it was swallowed up by the incoming storm clouds.


Noemi, Yohko and I being so happy to finally see Mount Namuli. After a long morning's hike, we thought we were so close, but we were actually so far!


Noemi and Yokho eating some cooked sweet potatoes (I think?). Trying to get those carbs in...


A community of crazy ants on a bridge we passed. They are forming a "highway" on the outside for other ants to be herded through on the inside.


Yohko and Noemi play fighting on the way to base camp. Sooo tired, yet so much longer to go!


Me resting and hanging out on a large boulder enjoying the mountain stream.


Noemi, Yohko, and I just as we are arriving to the base of Mount Namuli.

We finally arrived to the Queen of the mountain’s house just as the sun was setting (it took us about 10 hours to get to the base, while Rambo says he can usually make it in 6!). Coming up to the compound, we were greeted by an excited, red eyed, drunk man who hurried us along into the queen’s kitchen (where we’d be spending the night on esteiras laid out on the floor). We sank to the ground exhausted, letting the dirt floor absorb our burdening day packs as we all proceeded to literally pass out from the day’s taxing journey.

I woke up an hour or so later and noticed that the drunk man had left us (all passed out asleep) and my first reaction was to check and make sure all my things were still with me. I was still rummaging through my backpack when the queen finally came in and greeted us by bringing some dinner (xima made from cassava topped with a matapa sauce).

All night long the storm clouds never let up, pouring rain down on mountain. When we woke up the next morning, the Queen refused to let us climb the mountain (saying she’d feel guilty if any one of us got hurt while trying to climb the wet rocks). That said, she was very apologetic and assured us that if we came between June-August (the dry season) we’d have a much better chance of being able to climb the mountain. I think that on the surface we were all bummed to be turned away after so much work, especially right at the base of the mountain. Deep down though, we didn’t fight too hard with the Queen because we were all already extremely sore and knew we still had to make the journey back into town.


A morning look at our sleep arrangements with Mount Namuli covered in rain clouds in the back.


Yohko trying to sleep in at the base of Mount Namuli in Queen's kitchen on an comfy esteira.

In the end, things turned out for the best. We packed up camp after a quick breakfast and started toward the city in the light rain. After a few hours the sun broke through the clouds and the weather remained nice for the rest of our journey home. As we climbed back down through the mountain pass, I picked back up cell phone service and surprised several people with birthday phone calls. The last leg of the journey, making it through Gurue back to Camille and Aditi’s house was definitely the hardest past of the whole trip. We were so close and yet so far! We took breaks every 10 minutes and a leisurely walk through the city that normally lasts 20-30 minutes took nearly an hour! Regardless, I got to be in Gurue for my birthday and the Gurue girls + Kat made me a card and a cake, decked out with ICING! Despite my exhaustion, I was content and felt so loved!


Noemi, Yohko and I standing at the mountain pass with the Gurue in the background.


Looking down at the Gurue valley from the mountain pass.


Gurue is so beautiful and I am tossing in my two cents by saying that this could be there new postcards!