Disclaimer

The views expressed here are mine alone, and do not represent the views, policies or intentions of the U.S. Peace Corps, the United States government, or the University of Florida.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Staying busy, but feeling lonely... such is the life of Standfast!

***
Hey everyone!

I just wanted to tell all you back at home who are trying to call me that you should look into trying to use Google Voice. I’ve heard from other PCVs that the program is very similar to Skype but costs only ~13 cents a minute to call Mozambique (as opposed to Skype’s 40 per minute rate). I hope this helps! I really appreciate all your support…
***


Wednesday September 1st, 2010 – 11 months in Mozambique!
Reclining back at Mocuba’s chapa-stop bar with smoke streaming from the corner of his mouth, the worn down man across the table glances at me for a moment before taking another deep drag from his quickly disappearing cigarette. My mind drifts... I can’t help but think about how I’ve never really liked the smell of cigarette smoke… I hate it actually! (A childhood obsession, I guess, that has persisted until today rooted in numerous bad experiences while frequenting a friend’s house whose parents were chain smokers.) I resolve to stick it out at the bar though, not because of the ambiance or cheap drinks (they weren’t that cheap and I don’t drink anyways), but rather because it’s a damn interesting story that he’s been telling me and it hits home with everything I’ve been doing back at site.

To make a long story short, Sam is a trafficker… of what? A) Bodies B)Drugs or C)Other. Have your guess…

After making mine and then getting into an extended conversation with the laid-back, English speaking middle-age Mozambican, turns out the answer is usually logs, but on any given day the answer could be any number of things including being an unlicensed chapa driver (which, I guess, is technically bodies!).

In a country where any job opportunity is coveted, Sam is special and sought out because he has a truck… quite a hot commodity in this country. On a normal day, Sam helps clearing plots of land for farmers by hauling away logs and then selling them to lumber yards for a profit. Sounds honest and helpful enough, right? WRONG! Sam and his brother are just two of Mozambique’s many under-the-table small business workers/owners. Although these interactions are commonplace and arguably necessary for Mozambican society to function the way it does, all money earned is done so illegally because they don’t have a permit and don’t pay taxes.

The existence of permits and red-tape affects so many things in Mozambique, even in the administrative post of Nauela. In Mehecane, for example, the União Baptista church is trying to legally, with permits, start a carpentry project to benefit the entire community, specifically local Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs). But the church is really struggling to be competitive with the surrounding makeshift carpenters because the church’s supplies cost more than those who go illegally into the bush and just chop down trees willy-nilly.

At a higher level, the legal issue also affects things in Morrumbala with the large-scale wood-cutting missionaries, Jim and Eileen, and on an international scale with China’s insatiable desire for cheap wood. How quickly one can get a permit, how much trafficking the permits allow, how much the penalties are for breaking the rules, etc. are all issues that everyone is dealing with now.

Talking about all the problems that are going on in Mozambique regarding this, Sam agrees that it’s one big mess. He was born in Mozambique buy refuses to call himself Mozambican. When hard pressed, he slyly asserts that he’s from “Earth”. He even goes as far to describe why he “hates” Mozambique… because, in his mind, the only way to make a living in this country is do so illegally. Ouch! Going on, he insists that even if you try to bust your butt and go through all the legal hoops, there is always some greedy politician in the end demanding his cut of the profits.

Is his case totally valid? Definitely not. To say that “it is just not possible” is probably more cynicism and laziness than anything else. But does he have a leg to stand on? Definitely so. Case in point: the publicized financial battle between cell phone carriers Vodacom vs Mcel. The foreign-owned Vodacom had to pay about $15 million USD upfront just to get permission to enter the market as a competitor to the governmentally owned Mcel… and who knows how much since then... one wonders, if Vodacom is still making a profit, how much money are the Mcel owners making?!

Although one might say… “Give em’ a break!” or on the other hand “Why don’t they just get a permit then?...” It’s a tricky situation! Indeed, getting permits requires extra start up money that a lot of people don’t have and/or red-tape that some people would struggle to navigate. Thus, strict enforcement of the regulations would keep a lot of small businesses from ever starting up. Meanwhile, if the government doesn’t implement some sort of regulatory system over these small businesses they are running a risk of being negligent of preventing some disaster in the future (ie- car hijacking, traffic accidents, severe deforestation, etc). Albeit they are currently understaffed to properly regulate ALL the informal businesses…

So what to do?... what to do? Well… what do you think?!


Friday September 3rd, 2010
It doesn’t take a genius to discover that “É normal” in Portuguese literally translates to mean “that’s normal”. Funny thing though is that more often than not the saying is used in a negative context here in Nauela. Something bad happens, or doesn’t happen at all, and pretty soon you’re ears are ringing with that response. Language norms are always an interesting insight into cultural attitudes – although there are definitely a variety of opinions out there, I’d say that a lot of people in Nauela, especially from the older generations, are pretty cynical and fatalistic.

***

Gender struggles…
So… my early assessment is that the push to recruit female head coaches, and subsequently female athletes, for the Lurdes Mutola Foundation’s soccer program has largely been a FAILURE! :-( Four months after the initial training by the foundation, only 1 female coach is still actively coming to our monthly coaches meetings and even she has relinquished most of her coaching responsibilities to a local male counterpart because the young male players (the female players aren’t being allowed to come out/ just aren’t coming out) won’t listen to her. As for the other 3? No one seems to exactly know what they did with the balls and…. the women themselves have sort of vanished… humm!?!

That’s not to say there haven’t been small steps in the process though. Although many people/families are refusing to let their children, especially the young girls, play, several areas with male coaches have female or coed teams that regularly meet and play.

There are a lot of issues at hand… the traditional division of labor resulting in girls being expected to be very accomplished at domestic work, girls having a perceived risk of being taken advantage of sexuality by unknown male adults, girls not having/not being permitted to wear the proper sports attire (shorts, bra, shoes, etc), the list goes on and on…

As a male, I find myself in a unique position to help battle as an ally for gender equality here in Nauela by speaking to the other male leaders, but it’s definitely a process. Traditional beliefs, held by both genders, and educational gaps don’t go away over night. Indeed, even when working with the new generation of females, I know that no matter how hard I push them, their reality is very different than mine and I’m just a small instant in their lives. Their decisions that I influence will have lasting impacts on their lives that will likely reach far beyond my short stay here (ie - family and community support, educational opportunities, marriage prospects, etc), while what I do or say has very little risk on those areas for me. So I need to be sensitive to that and not make someone act in such a rebellious way that would push them too far outside societal norms for fear of ostracism.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I was in Mulevala a few weeks ago for the natural medicine training (***Side note – I just updated my last blog post with pictures at the end if you wanna go back and check it out) alongside 7 other female PCVs. Although I never thought about it till then, it took me coming to a rural village in the middle of Africa to finally find myself the noticeable minority! (Even though I am the only white person in Nauela, it’s not too noticeable because people generally treat me better because of it…) To say the least, it was a rough, eye opening time. Although I definitely enjoyed the week as a whole, sometimes I felt ganged up on, left out, and rather marginalized… and this was all from interactions with friends nonetheless! (Before I go on, I want to make sure that you understand that a lot of it wasn’t intentional or even centered on my gender, but gender was always a factor and the experience was eye opening none the less.) In a world that is largely run by men, is this how women always feel? I hope not!... but I have a creeping feeling it sadly just might be...

As I discovered, gender norms can be a sensitive subject because it can quickly become an “Us” versus “Them” discussion/debate with everyone jumping on the defense for their own “side.” Trying to remove myself from my “side,” I like to say that when interacting with people around me I don’t see “male” or “female”, “black”, “white”, or “Hispanic”… I just see that person for who they are. But I’ve come to realize that point of view in itself is a little elitist. I’m unaware of those things because I’m typically put in situations where I am in the majority seat and don’t have to be aware/suspicious of the little nuances that occur from day to day. I need to start realizing that this isn’t the case for everyone and do something about it!

So where does these realizations and new mindset take me? I’m still exploring that. I know that I can’t just continue on as before as if I learned nothing, but I also don’t believe I should try to dissect and analyze every social situation based on gender, race, sexual orientation, etc… for me, I think that’d make me too worried, uptight, and not as loving… so maybe somewhere in between :/ Luckily, I’ve made a lot of great PC friends here in Mozambique who have been/are willing to talk to me about all this and I’m really grateful for their patience and love :-)

Thinking back on how this all plays out in a Mozambican setting like Nauela, it’s very apparent there’s a lot of progress yet to be made. I have hopes that the area residents will expand their traditionally narrow views on gender roles in the years to come. While the governmental institutions are already paying gender equality homage with their mouths... maybe someday in the near future people will start doing it with their actions.

Below are some pictures from this month’s meeting with the coaches from the Lurdes Mutola Foundation:


José Henriques, one of the active coaches in the area of Niharipa taking a break from the discussion to pose for the camera.


Fernando Jamal, the leader of the coaches of the Lurdes Mutola Foundation in Nauela, discussing some of the groups difficulties thus far


Orlando Francisco, another coach from Vehiua, with attitude that Tyra would even love ;-)


Not all moments are easy when trying to organize the different teams to play against one another. Here is our co-leader Isac Marrengula, a coach in Guilherme, trying to take a moment….


Professor Macua, the only Nauela coach who was trained last year by the foundation in Moloque, giving his time-tested opinions


The last remaining active female coach in the administrative post of Nauela, sometimes Martência Paulo can feel a little excluded from the discussion topics.


A nice composite of head shots of some of the active coaches in Nauela


A group shot of the Lurdes Mutola coaches from one of the previous month’s meetings


Martência and Fernando serving up a post-meeting pot-luck style lunch for the coaches who live far away…


Everyone lickin’ their chops to get their hands on the food!


Martência serving up the rice and beans




Tuesday September 7th, 2010
Holidays alone are always tough! Especially so when in Mozambique! First, Monday was the U.S.’s Labor Day where I constantly found myself stuck imagining friends and family back home setting up camp on a nice Florida beach. “Can’t get any worse!”I remember thinking… Then, here comes today, which turns out to be Mozambique’s Commemoration of the Lusaka Accords (the peace agreements between Mozambique and Portugal after the war for independence), and I feel even more alone because I’m the one in town who is not spending the free day with friends/family.

Caveat: A lot of people in Nauela can’t really spend the holiday relaxing… instead they get the whole family together and work on some project… like brick making for their house! Here’s a few photos of Wiado and his family as they spent the Mozambican holiday:


Olympio loading up the pile of bricks with wood to burn.


Once the wood has caught fire and there is enough inside, they will cover up this whole and let the bricks burn for 3 days


Salimo taking a break from his “work” with the bricks and looking pretty smug about the photo opp


Wiado helping out with the wood stuffing process


The guys stepping back from a job well done. Now all that’s left is to wait, stuff a little more, then cover it all up.


A look at their run down house that they’ll be hoping to repair with the 800 or so bricks they are burning.



***
I REALLY wish I could leave site to be with my PC friends… but I can’t because of standfast, a temporary no travel period mandated by PC. The whole standfast ordeal was prompted because of protests last week in Maputo that killed several and left hundreds more injured. So I definitely understand the logic behind it all and I guess I see the danger… clearly there is a potential for things to get ugly in the big cities and no one, especially Peace Corps, wants the responsibility of that… but sometimes I feel like Maputo is a WORLD away from Nauela/Zambezia and there is no risk here…

But then things happen…

Like what just happened in Lesotho with former UF student/PCV Tom Maresco being killed and it’s a smack in the face screaming “Be as cautious as possible! This world can be dangerous!” (Or maybe that was just take home message of my parents/family/friends barraging me with texts messages saying the like…) Seriously though, for all you out there reading this, please keep Tom and his family in your thoughts/prayers… but try not to worry too much about me!


***
Last night was full of dreams from both ends of the spectrum, but all surrounding 1 thing: Amanda being able to come and visit me. Is it not enough that my cell phone batter is dying and I can only be able to talk with friends and family for a little bit? Must it also be unsafe to leave site and to have someone visit me? It’s not so much that that stuff isn’t happening, it’s that that stuff can’t happen. An island fever of sorts. I hate feeling caged up! The knowledge of simply being able to move around would be enough.

To exacerbate things even more, I quickly got into a funk today because I thought I was going to pick up my solar panel this morning only to find out that because of the holiday weekend, the Nauela shop owner won’t be able to buy it till tomorrow and then deliver it to me tomorrow afternoon (probably too late to even have energy tomorrow night). I know I’ve gone 9 months with limited or no energy… but still!

Oh well… Patience… learn it, love it!

At any rate, I gotta realize that having energy isn’t going to make everything good all of a sudden. In all honesty, the root of the problems is that I am lonely. Even when I’m surrounded by people I rarely feel connected to them in Nauela. The relationship between men and women in Nauela/Mozambique is almost never thought to be purely plutonic… So I have to be cautious of those friendships even with girls as young as 13 or 14 because of community perceptions… pretty sick, right? And generally speaking I don’t connect with a lot of the men because their ambitions, view on the world, what they are looking to get from me is oftentimes not in line with me and my ways.

It’s sad... really… to think about my friends at site and how some of my best one’s are the people that HAVE to interact with me (ie - my neighbors, the breadmaker, my house helper, the owners of my house, the hospital workers, people in the various organizations/associations I work with, etc). In fact, I can’t really think of any adults (young or old) who have sought me out just to hang out with me. Maybe there are a few who just want to learn something as innocent as English or chess, but they still want something! Granted this constant yearning to milk something out of me has a lot to do with the fact that everyone is living by the skin of their teeth and have families to take care of… but still! It’s upsetting/a downer.

Below are some photos of the small chess club I’ve started up:


Rogerio, my rapaz, in the white shirt participating in my informal chess club


Big decisions… Seriously though! Problem solving, planning ahead, and strategy are difficult concepts for the kids.




Wednesday September 8th, 2010
Well, I am still feeling depressed/down, but I’m working my way through it by praying and reading some poetry:

Poem by Hafiz from the book “The Gift”
translations by Daniel Ladinsky - pg 143

“When You Can Endure”



When
The words stop
And you can endure the silence

That reveals your heart’s
Pain

Of emptiness
Or that great wrenching-sweet longing,

That is the time to try and listen
To what the Beloved’s
Eyes

Most want
To

Say.



So what DOES the Beloved’s eyes most want to say to me here and now? Maybe I gotta endure some more silence ;-) Don’t worry… I’m sure they’ll be PLENTY more where that came from! So, we’ll definitely see… listen up Michael!


Thursday September 9th, 2010
TRIUMPH! VICTORY! After days/weeks/months that all seemed like millennia, I finally got my solar panel this morning! And remember how I said that it wouldn’t solve all my problems?! Well, it doesn’t. BUT it sure does feel good right now at least!

So here is how it all broke down: I woke up early (anticipating good news) and heard from Wiado that Nunes, the shop owner, had arrived back in Nauela late last night. SCORE! Jumping on my now decrepit bike with deflated tires, I tried to make it to the market, but had to stop and ask someone along the way for a pump because my bike was… struggling! When I finally make it there, I didn’t have a good plan as to how I was going to get the panel back home so I just improvised and decided to carry the solar panel back in one hand while navigating the bumpy, dirt, mountainous road with one hand gripped tight to the handle bars. Good plan right?! Not so much?! Well… at least it worked!

Running into my house, I jerry-rigged the solar panel set up, but had to run because I had already arranged with the church in Mehecane to train a group of women in art therapy to later teach the area OVCs… but not before leaving the solar panel charging my battery! Thinking about my new regular supply of energy and loving what I was doing, I had a great morning teaching the group of 4 older women. It went really well and we even agreed to meet next Saturday to teach kids! Yay! Can things get any better?!

Sadly… I got back home in the late afternoon after the sun was well on its way to setting and discovered the solar panel cables had been hooked up incorrectly and didn’t charge the battery :( As an awesome consolation prize, the standfast has been lifted so Amanda is coming tomorrow afternoon! So hopefully I’ll have all the kinks worked out for her arrival :-)

Later that same evening, I am finishing up dinner, listening to the BBC World Service, when all of a sudden I hear Gainesville, Florida mentioned in passing. I had tuned out the broadcaster until this point, but immediately gained a renewed interest in his droning ons. Turns out this radical pastor in Gainesville was trying to burn the Qur'an to commemorate 9/11. This is the SAME pastor whose congregation had posted a sign stating that “Islam is of the Devil” on their church property and even went so far as to send several children to public school wearing t-shirts saying the like. The kids were forced to change shirts and the commotion surrounding the sign (after being defaced a number of times) eventually calmed and the small church fell out of the news… until now!

Listening on, I find out that the pastor’s proposed actions have already been denounced by General Patreus and President Obama (to name a few)… Gosh! I hope that this is not what Gainesville, my hometown, becomes remembered for! We are such a loving, accepting community… it’d be a shame if everyone got that opinion from the actions of a small minority of people….

**Side note – I heard later from a number of people that the pastor didn’t end up burning the Qur'an… Whew!


Tuesday September 14th, 2010
Amanda just left and I’ve been trying to not be too sad by keeping my mind occupied cleaning up around the house… but that’s just not working… so, instead, I’m just going to write out some of my thoughts and see how that goes!

In short, we had a really good time! Which, GAH!, makes the goodbyes that much harder. One gaffe right off the bat (which turned out to be fine in the end) happened when we woke up a little too late to go visit the HUGE Saturday market in Carmano… turns out 6am is too late and thus missed the main transport from Nauela to the market and subsequently ended up spending the morning in Mugema before heading back to Nauela with our tails tucked between our legs after the morning’s weather turned out to be far too cold and rainy. That was ok though! It was a really nice day just lounging around the house and cooking and then later walking around Nauela when the weather got better.

Maybe that first day set the tone for the rest of Amanda’s visit, because most of the days were pretty chill :-) Once, we walked all the way to the market (a 3 or 4 hour adventure mind you!), but most of our time was spent playing chess, watching Modern Family on my laptop (because the new solar panel system is working well now! YES!), cooking, exploring and appreciating Nauela’s natural beauty, and just talking/relaxing… Good times that definitely help recharge the ol’ batteries!

On Amanda’s last full day at site, Renato and Mariana, both new employees for FGH in Alto Moloque, visited Nauela. Renato is the new district coordinator and Mariana is replacing Rocha as my new counterpart. They wanted to see a little of what I do in Nauela so we hopped in a car and I led them to Mehecane to meet Pastor Vicente and then we later met with the President of Muretchele at the hospital. We had a heart to heart conversation about a lot of my frustrations with working with FGH and they seemed pretty open and excited to work with me/support me. I’m REALLY glad I get to start new with FGH! Although I already have my hands full with my own projects now… Hopefully things will go smoothly :-)


Wednesday September 15th, 2010
I made the long bike trek to Mehecane this morning for the monthly pastoral meeting to meet with the higher-ups and discuss their carpentry project. (BTW… it’s getting hot again… not even 8:30am and I was sweating through my shirt!) Finally there though. All good! Oooor not. Unfortunately, when I show up things are busy… pastors are in high demand by visitors and the pastor specifically in charge of project hasn’t even showed up yet :-/

I end up getting a few minutes with Pastor Vicente, but things were… rough! He earnestly explained to me how all the project needed was a little more money to buy motorized equipment and I had to kindly disagree with him, insisting that they had to improve the way they are working right now before trying to really speed up the process. Let me explain: right now, with every piece of furniture they make, they are actually losing money and having a hard time even selling those products to boot… although buying machinery might save some money in production cost, it would also magnify the current problems. In my humble opinion (seriously! my business background is… zilch!), they need to work on their foundations (finding a cheap, dependable supply of wood and carpenters who will work for a reasonable rate) before trying ramp up the production.

Despite this rough conversation, Pastor Vicente took it all in stride and grudging agreed with me… I guess he saw that I wasn’t budging and he was in a hurry to attend to other people’s business. But that didn’t keep him from posing for a few pictures before we wrapped up for the day ;-) I also took the liberty of snapping a few shots of the actual carpentry project at work.

Check ‘em out below:


A rare rest for Pastor Vicente’s infamous bucket hat that keeps his balding scalp from burning in the unrelenting African sun :-)


A hymn book in Lomwe/Portuguese and other loose papers in the pastoral office


Skilled, weathered hands in the making of a chair back…


Plaining a board the old fashion way


Oops! Letting the tool slip and getting a little too close to the camera for comfort!


Still not perfect…..


Slow but steady sawing… it’s therapeutic!


Doesn’t fit quite right… take it apart and try again!


It may not look like much, but this is our carpentry… and will a lot of work and a little luck it’ll make a world of difference the community: making doors, windows, and chairs for the general population, teaching OVCs a skill, and making money to help fund other programs for the OVCs and give them school supplies! YAY!


The man behind the magic: Pastor Vicente!


Despite the first, more serious photo, Pastor Vicente is always smiling and laughing


Smiling and laughing… or drinking coffee!