A Gator in Mozambique

2011-07-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

Wiado Ibrahim, 39 - Baker

Whether the daily schedule is full or not, my watch’s alarm goes off at 7am on the dot. While that may sound early, or at least normal, for some of you back at home, that’s incredibly late for many of Nauela’s residents who are up before the sun at 4am sweeping their dirt patios and pumping water. And even though my drooping eyelids are always pleading for a few more minutes of shuteye, I usually feel too guilty to stay in bed any later than that. Although I have never gotten completely used to this daily program, there’s always a carrot dangling in front of me that keeps me from snoozing for too long. You see, at almost precisely that same morning hour, most days Wiado leaves his house for the market carrying in tow a basket full of precious goodies worth their weight in gold: freshly made bread.

And it’s never a good feeling to start the day by just missing the baker as he rides away (cute rhyme, right?!)

After over a year of conditioning, my body seems to have adapted, programming itself to jerk awake just before the alarm goes off in order to ensure that I don’t miss out on my window of opportunity. Rushing through the house and swinging my front door wide open, I often peer out across the street to see if there are any signs hinting that my neighbor has been busy this morning making bread: smoke rising through the kitchen’s thatch roof, a large bread basket outside waiting to be filled, his kids anxiously darting back and forth across the yard awaiting their share of the morning’s haul – one glorious pãozinho not five minutes removed from the clay oven.

If there are any of these signs or not though, on most days I’ll likely make the two second journey across the road to see if Wiado is baking his locally-famous bread (arguably the best in town due to its generous portion size and slight tinge of sweetness, as well as it not being too dense or under/over-baked). Unfortunately for me, there have been a lot of things that have kept him from making bread these days (i.e., tending to his machamba and repairing the area water pumps) and I’ve either had to simply go without or make the three kilometer trek to the market in order to buy some subpar substitutes from another vender.

It just isn’t the same though.

When you buy the bread in the market it is at least several hours, if not a full day, old. And anyone who has grown used to eating fresh bread knows there’s just no comparison - the weight and substance of bread combined with extreme fluffiness and warmth… if you crack it open and slather the inside with peanut butter and honey, the combination tastes better than any pretender ever could.

Today I’m lucky and triumphantly return home with 10 fresh fist-sized pãozinhos, most of which I devour instantly.

***

Born just outside of Quelimane in the administrative post of Maquivale in 1972, Wiado enjoyed a relatively peaceful childhood alongside his five younger brothers. He attended school until finishing 7th grade and was a familiar face at the local mosque’s Qur’an studies (he can both read and speak basic Arabic). All that changed, however, when Wiado was forcefully enlisted into the army to help supplement FRELIMO’s depleted ground forces in their war against RENAMO. Having just turned 16, it was determined that Wiado was old enough, i.e. strong enough to hold a gun steady, to enter the heat of battle. His younger brothers meanwhile, still too small, were spared and left behind with their parents.

Almost immediately, Wiado was sent up to the Nauela region where he would be stationed for four long years. Although there was regular crossfire, the FRELIMO military strategy in the area was largely defensive. Wiado’s division made camp on top of Mount Nauela (a glorified hill really) and created a protected village at its base for as many local residents as possible.

Food, clothing, and water were precious commodities in the makeshift village, but it was far better than living outside its imaginary walls. “They [the people in the bush] lived like dogs, always running away from something with no clothes on and nothing to eat” reflects Wiado’s wife. Indeed, with the help of the FRELIMO army, the protected villagers ate regularly and had at least some ragged clothes to wear. Even when supporting forces were slow to provide the garrison with their food rations (coming from Gurue or Molócuè), the area soldiers would band together and go out into the night to steal food from the fields of nearby RENAMO farmers - a practice that has deepened hatred between the sides to this day.

It was in this war-stricken scenario that Wiado, a young lonely soldier, fell in love with and married his current wife. Kept in close proximity throughout the war, the couple never spent more than a few hours apart after having first met in base camp. That said, they lived completely different lives during those first few years. While Wiado thrived off adrenaline, busily marauding around shooting off various weapons (e.g., bazookas, AK 47s, etc. ), his wife and the other civilians simply had to endure the long, drawn out waiting game that the war had become. Periodically, the FRELIMO stronghold would receive national updates about the war from radio broadcasts that would provide some hope. Ultimately, however, all anyone was trying to do was survive the present day and all its hurdles.

Upon the fall of the Soviet Union (one of the main financial backers of FRELIMO), FRELIMO was quickly forced to the negotiation table, putting an end to the war with RENAMO (heavily financed by South Africa and the U.S.) in exchange for the promise of democratic elections. Even after the war officially ended though, people were hesitant to be at ease. After all, roaming bands of gunsmen were still prevalent throughout the countryside. Soon, however, various peace keeping entities partnered with the UN began appearing in the area to help with the process of disarmament. The foreigners offered good money to buy up various weapons and the small militias, short on ammo and desperate for cash, quickly handed them over.

In the months that followed, Wiado traveled back home to Quelimane to let his parents know he was still alive and well. This visit was brief though because he needed to quickly return to Nauela to start building a post-war life around his new family. For several years, Wiado’s budding family lived just down the road in Eiope where they tended to their machamba. During this same time period, Wiado sought out extra income by frequenting Nampula City in order to buy capulanas and sell them at Nauela’s marketplace. When the family eventually decided to move closer to town though, Wiado looked into another profession: bread making.

Approaching an elderly woman who had made bread during the civil war for the soldiers, Wiado asked if she would be willing to teach him the business’s ins and outs. At once the lady obliged because she had long since grown tired of the all the hard labor the bread making process required and was looking for someone to pass the baton to. Truth be told, in order to make bread in a rural setting without electricity, the actual preparation of the dough is the least of one’s worries.

First you must spend several days or weeks constructing a brick oven. No easy task… it’s like building a mud house, but smaller. Once that is finally completed, the day before making a batch of bread, you need to go buy and lug a sack of flour (~45 lbs) back to your house (Wiado routinely bikes 20 miles (!) to find flour at a reasonable rate). Then, right before evening time, you can’t forget to go out into the bush to collect a huge stack of firewood to heat up the oven the next morning.

Having not prepared any bread yet, you can finally rest easy… but not for long!

The next “morning,” around 2am, you wake up to start a fire in order to heat up your newly built clay oven. While the wood burns inside the oven, you can busy yourself preparing the dough. Next, as the wood’s embers begin to cool, you remove and set them aside, all the while cleaning the oven’s bottom surface where the dough will soon be placed. Although the embers have been taken out, the clay oven retains so much heat that it is easily able to cook 200+ pieces of bread.

With careful management of one’s time, and a little bit of luck, you can make it to the market and start selling around 7am, the time when demand for bread is the greatest. You wake up at the obscene hour mentioned above because if you don’t get your bread out early enough, you will likely spend all day trying to sell it in a slow market. If you are able to sell it all early however, that will enable you to relax a little before going out and searching for more firewood for the next day’s haul (a sack of flour will last you two or three days of bread making).

Even after all this work, the profit margin in the stingy market is very thin and seemingly hardly worth the effort. Depending on market variables, a sack’s worth of flour will produce a profit of about 300 mets (only $10!), but requires several days of work. Yet somehow bread making is one of the most reliable sources of income in all of Nauela. This is mostly due to the fact that people in Mozambique have practically become addicted to bread, or pãozinho, a tradition brought in by the Portuguese.

When Wiado first started as a baker in the years immediately after the civil war he was the only one for a long time in the area who made bread. Now after having five kids (two girls and three boys), he has to support a large family and the market is flooded with new start-up entrepreneurs. Along the way, due to his hard work ethic and reliability (as a Muslim he doesn’t drink alcohol), Wiado was appointed to be local water pump mechanic (a semi-skilled job that can earn him upwards of 200 mets a day). Now, between bread, his fields, and water pumps, he never gets a break… but that’s just how he likes it. Not only is he making some good money, but he’s also supporting the community around him.

***

Today, Wiado’s parents are still alive and well living in Quelimane. His younger brothers, however, are now spread throughout central Mozambique (Tete, Chimoio, and Zambezia provinces). Luckily, he was the only one in his immediate family who was ever enlisted into the army and had to fight.

That said, it’s still hard for me to imagine that this fun-loving man was once a soldier shooting and killing his “enemies.” I put quotation marks back there because most people didn’t choose sides but were forcefully coerced into fighting for one side or the other. Nowadays, however, these feelings have been validated by numerous transgressions by both sides during the war. Even today, when people go to their respective political rallies here in Mozambique (which are numerous and well attended), they are simply reverting back to their sides of the battlefield. Most people can’t tell you much about FRELIMO and RENAMO’s political philosophy except that they are communists (RENAMO’s outdated response even today) or that they are terrorists (FRELIMO referring to RENAMO’s destructive war tactics).

Sadly, both opinions are simply antiquated propaganda of the war time era. Although they might be off base and not well expressed, ultimately the comments reflect a sharp societal divide, a huge scar that has not yet fully healed. Although it’s hard to think that sometime in the near future Mozambicans will be able to put this war behind them and move forward, I have hope seeing people like Wiado making incredibly positive strides in the community.

2011-06-29T15:31:00.001-07:00

I know that I said that I was done... well I am! But I also wanted to update the blog's other elements and draw your attention to them. Over the next several weeks I'll be working on a few stories to finish up the "Working Hard in Mozambique" page, so if you like this story and want to read more, check out the link on the right.

Velosa Vasco Freitas, 53 – Teacher

While observing village life in Mozambique, one easily notices that most women are socialized from a very young age to be relatively timid and reserved, especially so around their male counterparts. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising to discover that there are not many leaders in the whole administrative post of Nauela who are females. In fact, the large majority that are present here are not of local talent, but rather young, bright-eyed teachers that have been recently imported from urban centers across the province. Velosa is an exception. To say that she stands out only because of her accomplishments in regards to her gender and origins, however, would be false.

All the while remaining culturally respectful to the opposite sex, Velosa holds quite a presence wherever and with whoever she may be. Although she is not an official community leader (a position normally reserved for elders who are no longer working), her accolades are no less remarkable. Now going on 35 years of teaching at the primary school level, Velosa has been at her profession as long as Mozambique has been an independent state (how many people in the world can say that?!). That relatively uninterrupted work schedule includes years spanning the civil war where she continued to teach even in the thick of battle. Thriving in the years since the peace agreements, having been skillfully molded by her life experiences, Velosa now stands as a beacon of hope and an example for all of Nauela and Mozambique.

***

Like so many Mozambicans during colonial times, Velosa came from a poor, yet plentiful lineage. Born in 1958, just a stone’s throw from her current residence in Nauela, Velosa was her mother’s third child of eight (two brothers and six sisters). Both of her brothers passed away at a relatively young age and none of her sisters had interest in doing anything other than what their ancestors had already been doing for as long as anyone could remember – living off the land as a subsistence farmer.

While her sisters and other peers hop-scotched back and forth, in and out of school, Velosa was academically determined from a young age. Unlike so many of her female counterparts growing up, Velosa had almost no interest in getting married young. Indeed she had much bigger plans: a dream of one day becoming a teacher (back during colonial times, only a select few educated Mozambicans were allowed to become teachers).

Working to attain that goal, Velosa attended school at the catholic mission just outside of Nauela until 1973. At 15 years old, an age by which most local women had long since been married, Velosa had the privilege of being able to say that she had completed 4th grade - the maximum level of education available in Nauela at the time. Had she had the money, she would have liked to continue studying in Molócuè, Quelimane, or Nampula until 10th grade or beyond, but that just wasn’t financially feasible for her money-strapped family. At this point, with no jobs open, a looming war in sight, and no more educational opportunities to be had, things stalled for the anxious Velosa.

In the years that followed, many of the affluent assimilated Mozambicans who were Velosa’s classmates at the Catholic mission were sent off to fight for the Portuguese army to combat the growing disruptive force FRELIMO. Some of these men returned home after the war (known as the War for Independence after FRELIMO dethroned the Portuguese colonial government), but several notables weren’t immediately heard from again, leaving doubt as to their fate.

After Mozambique’s independence in 1975, an opportunity arose when a cousin of Velosa’s became the newly appointed local government secretary. Knowing that they’d be looking for many more teachers to accommodate for the sudden influx of Mozambican students, the secretary asked Velosa if she would be able to start teaching adult literacy classes just down the road in Eiope. She quickly accepted. After giving several literacy courses over a year’s time, the young Velosa was eventually invited to join others in taking an official teaching exam that would be held the following week at her old stomping grounds, the Catholic mission. Studying intently for the entire week, Velosa passed the exam with ease. Velosa could now be integrated into the budding public education system, fulfilling her childhood dream at only 18 years old. In total, fifty-plus individuals took and passed the teaching exam that day, only 8 of them were females though.

Things were looking up for Velosa. Mozambique was now an independent state which allowed her many new freedoms and consequently she was finally realizing her dream of becoming a teacher. Almost at this exact same time, her family received an unsolicited letter from Francisco Janeiro asking for their daughter’s hand in marriage. Unheard of since he had been sent away to fight for the Portuguese against FRELIMO, Janeiro was the son of a wealthy farmer (he had several field laborers who actually did the work) in Nauela and also one of Velosa’s classmates back at the Catholic mission.

Turns out, Janeiro had moved to Beira after fighting in Tete province for the Portuguese, but was now interested in marrying a woman from back home. As Janeiro wrote the card that would ultimately guide his life’s destiny, he tried hard to remember any specific names of girls he had found alluring back in his younger days at school.

As fate would have it, the name that jumped out above the rest happened to be: Velosa Vasco Frietas.

Surprised, yet interested in the marriage proposal now after having finished school, Velosa wrote cards back and forth with Janeiro for some time before he came and officially visited her in Nauela. After a few more years of getting to know one another via correspondence and sporadic visits, Janeiro and Velosa were officially married in Nauela on October 2nd, 1978.

Velosa, Janeiro, and some neighbors posing with me for a photo

Throughout the courtship, starting in February 1976, Velosa began teaching kids, 1st through 3rd grade, on a yearly rotation between the area’s various primary schools. She started in Eiope (where she had been teaching the literacy classes), next moved to the catholic mission, then on to Maloa, and finally back to Eiope. Even though she had a job, her life at this time was not glamorous or posh. In fact, she never even had a permanent residence at these schools. Instead, she would live in makeshift housing or with relatives while she moved from place to place. It’s important to note that Velosa didn’t teach at the big school in Nauela during this time though because the wife of one of the white Portuguese merchants was still teaching there even after the Portuguese government had long since been disposed of (many Portuguese didn’t leave the area until the communist government nationalized everything in 1977-78).

After their wedding, Velosa temporarily left Nauela and travelled to Sofala province where Janeiro still lived and worked as an agronomic chief for a large farm called Mafambici (spelling?). Only 6 months later, however, a very pregnant Velosa was forced to make the trek back home alone - after all, it’s against local tradition for a woman to give birth to her first child away from her home. In 1979, their first of four children, Augustinho (now working as a primary school teacher in Morrumbala) was born. After giving birth, Velosa stayed put in Nauela for 6 months, allowing herself and the child to grow strong and healthy before making the trip back to Sofala (a full two day trip because one night had to be spent awaiting transport following the boat crossing on the Zambezia river - this was before civil war wreaked havoc on the country’s roads and transportation) in order to show the healthy baby boy to the father.

Practically no sooner had Velosa and the infant made it safely to Sofala, than they turned around and came back to Nauela. Despite their marriage, Velosa and Janeiro knew that they were lucky to both have reliable jobs and neither could afford give that up… even with the terrible inconvenience of constantly having to travel back and forth between provinces. Thus it was decided: the couple would spend the next several years leading up to the civil war separated, visiting one another only sporadically for two weeks or so at a time but still managing to have three kids nonetheless.

Around 1986, as the civil war really started getting serious in northern Zambezia, Janeiro cautiously made his way back to Nauela. Not long after having made it home however, RENAMO entered and sent cards out to the various leaders in the area requesting their presence the following afternoon. Janeiro was one of many who received the dreaded invitation, but fearing the worst, he left his wife and three kids with her parents that same evening and fled, walking from Nauela to Molócuè - a distance stretching over some 30 miles.

Arriving in Molócuè the next morning, Janeiro had to think fast. He sought out the help of an affluent Portuguese family who were good friends of his father and, upon hearing Janeiro’s predicament, the wealthy merchant gave Janeiro eight sacks of corn to transport and sell in Nampula City. With the money he raised from this rapid commodity transaction, Janeiro was able to buy a plane ticket back to Beira, but unable to inform his family directly about his plan.

Janeiro spent most of the next seven years within the confines of the relatively secure city of Beira. His wife and family, on the other hand, weren’t as lucky. Like so many others in Nauela, they were stuck. Upon RENAMO’s arrival into the community, the troops forcefully recruited Velosa and others to join their ranks – giving them a rather unappealing alternative: join the other side and we’ll kill you. Velosa was an asset as a teacher and thus was instructed to continue to give lessons. Even as the war raged around them, Velosa continued to teach classes inside makeshift grass and mud huts. To help sustain Velosa and her family, students brought whatever they could scrounge up: corn, beans, and field mice. Deprived of even the most basic learning tools, the students and teachers used twigs to write notes on available banana leaves. At some points, RENAMO soldiers brought writing pads that were no doubt stolen from who knows where. Sometimes Velosa and others would come across teachers and students who had been massacred and left to rot in the bush because they supposedly hadn’t been teaching things the soldiers liked. It was all incredibly unnerving, but especially so for Velosa.

When the war finally came to an end in 1992, Janeiro cautiously began his journey back to Nauela. Though he repeated received assurances from war-torn refugees that his family was still alive, there was always doubt because the news was typically several months old. From Beira, Janeiro first stopped in Quelimane and spent nearly a month asking around to see if anyone had any up-to-date information regarding his family. Although the news was inconclusive, he got bits and pieces hinting that most of the fighting in the Molócuè area had stopped, albeit there were still some roaming bands of fighters.

He decided to risk it.

After several days more of travel, his caravan pulled into Alto Molócuè where he spent an entire week before making the final leg of his journey. Eventually he was able to find a friend who believed Janeiro’s family was still alive and was willing to accompany him out into the bush to look for them. Arriving in Nauela, they had no trouble locating all of his family minus his middle child who had grown sick and died during the war.

Even after undergoing this tragedy, Janeiro was reluctant to permanently move back to Nauela and Velosa was unwilling to move away. In the years that followed, Velosa gave birth to one more child, Dulce, as things began to return to normal. The country had their first democratic elections in 1994 and the new government called for the former public service employees to enter back into the work force the following year. Soon after this, Janeiro finally agreed to move back to Nauela permanently as a community judge to help settle civil disputes. When Janeiro relocated to Nauela, Velosa and the children packed up and joined him at their current housing plot closer to the village’s administrative post.

Velosa presenting her daughter Dulce with a gift at the girl's Mwale ceremony.

Both employed and successful, Velosa and Janiero didn’t rest on their laurels. Velosa completed a year-long continuing education course in Mugema held weekly on Saturdays to refresh her mind and increase her pay level. Janeiro, meanwhile, went back to school in 2005 starting at 6th grade and is currently on track to finish 10th grade this year. As of 2011, Nauela’s secondary school only offered up to 10th grade, but if they were ever start an 11th or 12th grade Janeiro says he would continue on studying. Likewise, Velosa says that if Nauela were to ever get electricity, she would teach during the day and do night school… but for now that will all have to wait on the back burner.

Even though she is successful and highly esteemed doesn't mean she's exempted from the daily chores.

***

To give some more perspective on the education situation in Nauela, one must understand the educators’ mindset: disgruntled. Currently, Mozambique’s public education system practically demands that new teachers be sent to fill spots in the least desirable locations. Mozambique’s talent is highly magnetized toward the cities and thus rural placements, such as Nauela, are considered by many to be at the bottom of the barrel. Newcomers are oftentimes counting the days, weeks, months, or years till they escape. To complicate matters though, unless you successfully bribe a high ranking government official, a new teacher will be stuck at their first teaching post for at least five years before being able to even request a transfer. In spite of all this though, Velosa is one of the few home grown talents who is still around.

Largely because of the recent stretch of the destructive civil war, Mozambique’s rural teaching force is not a normally distributed curve of experienced and inexperienced teachers. There are the few who started teaching before the civil war and those who started some time after (i.e. – a decade or so later). Most are the latter. Thus, compounded with the transfer rules, even some of the most long standing teachers in Nauela have been here for only 5-10 years – this severely cripples within-staff mentoring. That said, of those who started before the civil war and who still remain active in the work force, none are as willing to help or support other teachers as Velosa.

Sisa, one of the new and upcoming female teachers in Nauela, is intimately mentored by Velosa since she lives next door in a small house owned by Velosa and Janeiro

And this is the end :-)

2011-06-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Saturday May 7th, 2011
Now that it’s winter here and the sun doesn’t start coming up until the long-overdue hour of 5am, I’m stuck in the dark, feeling my way around the nightstand for my headlamp. I normally avoid these predawn awakenings, but today there’s no choice: it’s market day at the famous Carmano.

Grabbing a backpack and stuffing it with an assortment of supplies for the day – a wad of cash (~$20), digital camera, snacks, water, PC meds - I’m unsure exactly what the daytrip will entail and thus what will be required. When am I coming home? Will there be some food or a good water source there? Will there be any unique crafts or food items to buy?

All these questions and no answers, only anticipation.

Still rubbing my sleepy eyes as I step out of the house and onto the clay patio, a puttering, beat-up pickup truck already packed tight with other passengers comes to a rolling stop on the dirt road just feet away. Even to my well-trained eyes, it doesn’t seem there is space to get a body in edgewise in the back, but luckily my friend Zecas has saved me one of the two coveted seats up front in his prized vehicle (I’d been planning this trip for weeks and so I told Zecas the day before to reserve me a good spot).

Despite the early bird departure, the packed vehicle is no surprise. Indeed, most locals have long since started their daily routines. Since one goes to bed early and, because (whatever they call a) “bed” likely isn’t that comfy or warm to begin with, most healthy individuals are eager to get up early too. Looking around, I notice that this chapa entourage isn’t like most. Of all 20+ individuals, I am obviously the only one who is going to Carmano for pleasure. The rest of the truck’s occupants are all simply trying to make a buck by selling goods at the bush market, a market assembled in the middle of nowhere, its location set simply because it’s a center point between three decent size towns (Gurue, Molócuè, and Malema).

Arriving after an hour and a half safari through the beautiful country, I can confirm this: there’s NOTHING else there!

In the complex labyrinth of branching narrow paths leading up to the open-air market, there are no road signs indicating the presence of any noteworthy structure or event nearby. You turn right here at the tree, left there at the shrub, left again after the rock, cross a collapsing bridge made from tree trunks and then all of a sudden you’re there (more or less… you get the point)! In fact, the only hint of the market’s existence as you approach it is the ever increasing foot traffic lining the road’s edge. You can rest assured that you’re going the right way by simply following these individuals’ bearings because everyone, carrying whatever good they hope to sell on their heads from miles out, is surely headed to the same destination.

From what was once a vast abyss void of any human life, arises an anomaly, a huge burst of vitality occupying a half-mile stretch carved out in the shape of a large “T”. The road is now lined on both sides with cramped, makeshift thatch stalls where vendors are busy setting up for the day’s haul. The narrow corridor in between is completely packed with buyers, most arriving on foot from as far away as 4 hours to save on transportation costs, yet our slow moving truck magically passes through as the crowd parts and rejoins fluidly around us.

A long panoramic at the market’s ‘T’ intersection point

We’ve arrived late today.

When Zecas pulls up to his welding stall on the opposite end of the market, passengers immediately jump down from the truck bed and are off to set up and tend to their stalls to meet the morning rush. Left alone in the truck’s cab, I’m a bit overwhelmed and out of my element in this new, hectic environment. Gawking at the spectacle as I walk the market’s length, I’m amazed not by the diversity of the items that are being sold (there is none), but by the quantity. Generally speaking, what’s for sale here is the same Chinese junk that can be found at any other day market in the cities of Molócuè or Gurue, but the rural context is what makes it remarkable.

Zecas welding a bike frame back together

In a terrain where fancy footwear is highly coveted, we’ve hit a gold mine: shoes upon shoes upon shoes

The market’s main corridor crowded with people

A rural Mozambican parking lot - bikes parked, waiting for their owners to finish shopping and come claim them

Cabbage, one of the few things I found at the market tempting to take home

Motorcycle mechanics offering up their services at the day market

Traversing Carmano’s main alleyway trying to get a feel for what is being sold and for what price, I notice that many of those same women who we passed a few miles out which were carrying goods on their heads have already arrived and set up shop (i.e. – laying a small blanket on the ground and sitting alongside it).

In a way, the sight is quite comical. Many of the women have only brought a few items and will spend all day sitting in the hot sun “trying” to sell (for example) one pile of four(!) tomatoes. The clustered women are all talking amongst themselves and seem rather annoyed by any potential costumer who dares to come interrupt their fun. The whole scheme is quite a ruse. Most of the women aren’t even trying to make money… for example, several times during the day, as soon as I buy something from them, they send their child off to buy a snack to bring back and share with the family. Really, the obligatory selling is just subsidizing their socializing.

***

The name “Carmano” actually comes from an old regulo, a Mozambican community leader, that, until his death just a few years ago, was in charge of the local surrounding population. Carmano was first appointed to the position by the Portuguese (a divide and conquer class system, pitting Mozambicans against Mozambicans), but continued to function under the new Mozambican government (when FRELIMO came in to power they adopted many of the colonial governments practices to maintain hierarchical order and keep them in power). During his reign, Carmano kept a registry of the people living in his area, resolved conflicts, determined land rights, etc and for his trouble he was grant a high social status and a relatively large house.

It was around this house that the first “Carmano” market was held back in 1998. Although it had never been a large site for markets before, it proved to be a good central meeting point between Alto Molócuè, Gurue, and Malema (Nampula province) for merchants to buy produce and sell their goods to the rural population. Zecas and many others have been frequenting the site ever since the first Saturday market.

Despite its present day size, the Carmano market hasn’t actually been here (centered around a ruined Portuguese farmer’s house) for more than a few months. Even though the stalls and merchandise are numerous, the construction is all very provisional and can be dissembled/reassembled somewhere else overnight. The move to its present location (about 10 kilometers south of the old market) happened during the end of last year because the new owner of Carmano’s land started charging the venders an extra tax (10 mets ~30 cents) in addition to ones imposed by the government’s tax collectors – rendering several of the smaller vendors unable to break even. In response, one Saturday the venders collectively decided to move to the present day location where the current land owners are absent.

As I hinted earlier, the Carmano area is quite far from the nearest “main” street where cars normally pass. Currently, there are no big businesses or farms here, ensuring regular supplies and cash flow, as there once was during colonial times. Due to this lack of transportation in and out of the zone, the only way local residents can make actual money (as opposed to simple bartering) is by transporting things on their head/strapped to their bike four kilometers out to a slightly bigger road or sell them at the market on Saturdays. During my market wanderings, a lot of area residents approached me thanking me for coming here to start rehabilitating the Portuguese farm... I repeatedly had to inform them that I sadly had no such intention… They need someone with capital, good business sense, and some morals out here who can bring money and goods into the area while turning a modest profit. Let’s hope it won’t be too much longer of a wait for them!

That said, it probably won’t be. I mean, the real reason that this market thrives is because there is a high demand in the area for imported goods and there are plenty of food resources to offer up in exchange. Merchants from the cities easily fatten their wallets by buying agricultural products from these rural farmers who are all too eager to sell their crops. Pinto beans from local farmers go for 18 mets/kilo (~27 cents/lb), corn 2.5 mets/kilo (~4 cents/lb), which is good money for the farmer and cheap enough for the businessmen.

***

Tax collectors
Growing up in Sunday school bible studies, I never really understood what was so bad about being a tax collector… yet the Bible routinely rails against them. At the Nauela market, however, I daily witness the extreme sleaziness of tax collectors that the Bible’s writers must have grown to despise. First off, they freely take food and other goods that venders are selling at their whim… keep in mind that these are people who are making next to nothing and yet there’s no mercy shown. Many are selling things like a cup of boiled peanuts for 3 cents a pop or a pile of tomatoes for 15 cents – think about all the work that went in to producing this miniscule profit and then someone demanding a large percentage off the top. It disgusts me. Secondly, although I don’t have any direct proof of this, I’m confident that the tax collectors either pocket a good portion of their earnings or are paid a handsome sum for their services judging by the size of their houses... gah!

***

Growing a little thirsty and having run out of my liter of water, I hunker down at Baptista Biriati’s tea stall located at the end of one of Carmano’s exit points. The stall is far removed from the chaos of the market’s center which allows me to have a long chat about the area’s history with the stall’s owner over a cup of his hot tea and fresh bread.

As the story unfolds, I discover that Biriati used to be one of the guards for Miguel Agosto Morgado, the old Portuguese man who used to be the owner of this property. Back in the heyday, thanks to the indentured servitude of the Mozambican locals and the fertile soil, Morgado was quite a successful farmer. He amassed wealth in the form of an enormous house, a general store, several vehicles including a large truck and tractor, a tobacco curing barn, a granary, herds of cattle, and water tank with a pump pulling water from the nearby river.

Morgado lived with his wife and son, but the wife died after undergoing a surgical operation in South Africa one year. He and his son, Mario, continued to live in Mozambique after her death with the son eventually also becoming quite successful on his own farm just up the road. Some time later, the older Morgado died and the younger fled the country as the new Mozambican government sought to nationalize all privately owned enterprises.

The subsequent years, without any new capital investments and a civil war raging on in the surrounding countryside, were hard times for the farm and the area residents that had grown to depend on it. The buildings, supplies, and machinery were all looted and locals were subjected to harsh conditions and cruelty by roaming bands of soldiers. Indeed, Baptista claims that he spend nearly 17 years deprived of even the most basic of luxuries, going the whole time without so much as eating even a grain of salt (RENAMO forces during the civil war maintained control of the bush and prohibited people from eating salt saying it was a sign of having sided with FRELIMO – FRELIMO forces were known to hand out supplies to their allies).

These war years hardened the middle-aged Biriati, now 75. After the peace accords, Biriati sought out any way possible to earn a living. The market in Carmano provides some hope, but he’s a little too old to regularly complete all the required physical labor to make headway for a budding small business (at one point he was having to bike 50 kilometers each way to Molócuè and back to buy supplies at a reasonable rate). At one point he came up with the idea to jerry-rig a broken-down bicycle with a metal-cutting saw blade to sharpen knifes and machetes, but once the contraption was replicated by several other area young men he was out of a job again. Nowadays, Biriati just sells tea and bread in a little grass hut at the market’s fringes, hoping and praying for someone to give him a job - not something too different than how many feel in today’s U.S. job market, I guess….

Fernando Jamal and others at the entrance of Morgado’s old house

Morgado’s living room is now a dining hall

The hallway is home to idle women and children trying to escape the sun’s rays

The kitchen is still one, but more of a self service cafeteria

A look at the back of Morgado’s house with his water tank to the right

***

Med man from Malawi
Dolling out ambiguous amounts of unmarked pink and white pills by the spoonful, he is the rural African pharmacist. Sometimes not even meeting the actual patient, but rather having to diagnose an illness based on another family member’s account, he also acts as their physician. He is their alpha and omega… the only one in the market who is providing this service and possibly the only one within 50 miles who has this product.

He’s in a hurry. The waiting line is already big and it’s growing.

Impatiently, the medicine man, casually outfitted in jeans and a faded brown jacket with a navy blue baseball cap, listens to the symptoms being rattled off by a patient’s husband. Pretty soon though he’s compelled to interrupt in order to complete the lightening-fast consult quicker. “What exactly is your wife feeling?” A cough, stomach and head pains. “Does she have fever?” No. “Has she taken any other meds?” No… Okay, that’s enough information.

He reaches for the supposed antidote, quickly scribbling basic dosage instructions on plastic bag that are barely legible, then the patient is taught how many pills to take (1 or 2) and when to take them (morning, night, or both) – not for how long, mind you. That part is understood no matter what anyone else says… you take them until you feel better. If you were to take any more afterwards, that’d be a waste of medicine (never mind issues of resistance…).

Obviously there is no credential verification process involved with these transactions and that is no problem for anyone who is lining up at his table. Thing is, medicine isn’t highly regulated in Mozambique anyways. You and I can go to a pharmacy and ask for whatever pills we want (without a prescription, mind you) and as long as the meds aren’t intense pain killers (which they often don’t have anyways) you’ll get what you are asking for if you have the money to pay for it (generally not too expensive ~$3 USD or less).

That’s just it though, there are no set prices in this black market. Since he’s the only one in the area, he can charge an arm and a leg if he wants. “How much will it cost?”, the customer asks. Long pause. This is always a tense moment because the medicine man is sizing up how much the guy wants it and how much he’d be able to pay. In this case, it’s two packs for 20 mets. Whew! There is an air of relief among all parties as the desperate husband is able to pay for the medicine for his ailing wife.

My inquisitive presence at the stall worries the buyers and seller alike because even though everyone at local level knows people go to other neighboring countries (i.e. - Malawi) to buy large quantities of medicine to sell here, it is still illegal and high up government officials might have to act if things go public. Admittedly, no one at the booth has any formal training, but there’s a paradox because people in Nauela need a regular supply of medicine.

And we all know the hospital isn’t providing it!

For example, if all you avid blog followers remember, just this past Christmas the granddaughter of the owner of my house in Nauela died because there was no medicine available to treat her. This problem is not uncommon and thus people come to the market and stock up in case of emergency because, not sonly are the hospital’s medical supplies sporadic, oftentimes when one is sick it is most difficult to go seek medical treatment.

After witnessing the ever-lengthening line here at the impromptu clinic, it now makes a little more sense to me why my friends and neighbors here always ask about my family’s health… it’s because theirs’ is always in doubt.

Understandably, the medicine man from Malawi is really worried about me taking pictures. It took a lot of convincing just to let me take this picture of laid out meds on the table... Notice that two of the more prominent medicines pictured above are birth control and malaria treatment pills, definitely needed, but hard to find here in Nauela.

Monday May 9th, 2011
Today I’m finally feeling a little better so I decide to go to Mihecane to meet up with Pastor Vicente. It’s a Monday, which is always a stretch to meet with him since he is normally working both Saturdays and Sundays, but I don’t have anything better to do and I could always use the exercise on my bike. I arrive at Mihecane finding the church office’s doors shut and no one being much help in answering my questions. Before turning around and calling it a day though, I decide to take a breather and read some.

Sitting in front of church office for an hour or so, I discover the Mihecane primary school to seemingly be in permanent state of recess… which is understandable in some ways because teachers don’t get paid that well and, more often than not, the school directors aren’t there to provide any supervision. My unexpected presence in Mihecane eventually makes the teachers scurry the kids inside where they’ll wait until I’m gone to at least put up the façade that they were educating these children (it’s always like this when I arrive and Vicente isn’t around)…

***

Later that afternoon I get into an interesting discussion with Velosa (the owner of my house who is also a primary school teacher in Nauela). She explains to me that nowadays school is public and the government runs it. Back in Portuguese times, however, the Catholic mission ran all local schools in Nauela. At that time, even the select few Mozambicans who were really dedicated to getting an education only attended school till 3rd or 4th grade max. Oftentimes, however, those students left with a better education than many kids nowadays who study until 8th, 9th, or 10th grade.

She can’t emphasize it enough: back then, only the people that were really motivated to study went. Nowadays almost everyone goes.

In Mozambique this stretches financial and personnel resources incredibly thin and severely limits the amount of student-teacher time that can happen since class sizes often range from 80-100 students. In many ways, the class dilemma mirrors a societal problem that starts with the family. Nearly every family has 6+ kids so there’s very little 1-on-1 parental coaching. Although many of the younger generation’s parents didn’t study what these kids are learning (due to collateral damage to schools during the civil war and thus would be much help with the advanced curriculum), even the lost non-academic individual learning experience must be critically detrimental to a young child’s future.

As an example of the learning struggles, a few weeks back I went to a 9th grade Portuguese language class and several students couldn’t correctly spell elementary words such as “Por favor” (please) or even “Não” (no): very discouraging to say the least!

I’m not saying that the teachers, students, or anyone for that matter are at fault. But I also refuse to accept the lame argument that this is just a matter of growing pains, that things will simply get better over time. With the current system teaching blanket curriculum to an incredibly diverse population of individuals across Mozambique who have markedly different economic resources, and thus future possibilities, I think many rural students fail to see any applicable nature in their education and simply go to school because it’s mandated, free, and something to do. These kids pretty much only want to play the day away and disrupt the class’s academic education plan as a whole. On the other hand, those select few who do excel academically and continue on into 11th and 12th grade in Molócuè, Gurue, or Nampula are much less likely to return to benefit rural areas, such as Nauela, where there are no salaried jobs available.

I think that instead of force feeding everyone a general education, the government should try to recruit and retain small numbers of motivated students to teach them very basic math, science, reading and writing skills and then go to a technical education (agriculture or animal midwifery) afterwards if desired. The other mandated curriculum (i.e. – advanced physics, biology, chemistry, etc) that most students never grasp and/or are never even interested in should be available, but taught as a higher level elective instead.

I haven’t made my mind up on all this, but it’s just my two cents as of now…

***

More Technology = More Pornography?
My neighbor Ditosa comes up to me on front veranda today as I’m fidgeting with my phone in one hand and happily states “Let’s watch the pornography on your phone!” Wha-wha-what?! is my obviously stunned reaction. “Yeah, this phone has it right? I’ll show it to you… every fancy phone in Mozambique comes with pornography on in it.”

After showing her that my phone definitely DOES NOT have pornographic videos on it, I try to get into a conversation about the subject with her since she brought it up, but understandably she gets embarrassed and runs away. Throughout the day I speak with several other friends about the thought process of it and ultimately it appears that it’s not really about the content at all. It’s more so about just being able to experience the technology of watching a video on your phone… and pornography just happens to be the most widespread video content available in Mozambique… imagine that :-/

Thursday May 12th – Tuesday May 17th, 2011
Even though Peace Corps doesn’t know this yet, Amanda’s and my Peace Corps days are now officially numbered. May 15th was the commitment date for medical school and even though I’d long since decided in my mind that I’d be returning home “early” to start medical school at the University of Florida this Fall, now it’s official. So that’s not really news for most of you out there who know me, but what is news is that Amanda will be joining me in leaving early to go visit California for a month or so before moving to Gainesville and starting her state residency process with the goal of going back to grad school in Fall 2012. I’d been eyeing July as my end date, but since she’ll be leaving in early June for her timeline… I figured, hey, why not leave with her?! Right now we’re looking at June 6th as the date to call Peace Corps to start the leaving process (only 3 weeks away!), but that could always change…

With that new leave date in mind, Amanda came to Nauela this week to say goodbye to my neighbors and her almost (because she’s been here so much!) second PC home. Although her final visit was brief (I’ll explain why in a sec), she went out with a big bang because she gave thoughtful presents (her lightly used clothing) to all of the girls and women who she had grown close to during the past year and a half. While it’s still up in the air, tentatively it looks like I’ll be going to Morrumbala at the end of May (~2 weeks from now) to say goodbye to her friends and neighbors there who I’ve gotten close to.

***

I feel like a broken record saying this, but life can become very unpredictable and difficult when having to rely on public transportation in Mozambique. Take, for example, today. Amanda and I are ready to leave my house for Gurue at 11am (a drive doable in 2 hours), but not a single car passes during the whole afternoon. We remain vigilant though and are finally rewarded for our efforts with one slow moving truck that passes at dusk. Glancing at one another for a moment, searching for a sign of approval, we decide to jump on knowing that we might not be able to fit the hike up Mt. Namuli in our cramped schedule if we don’t leave Nauela tonight.

It’s not until very late that night that we arrive safely, albeit tired, in Gurue. Despite our exhaustion, we remain determined to stay on schedule and start hiking to the base camp the following day. After making some frantic midnight phone calls to our guide (Rambo – same guy as last year), we coordinate a midmorning start time without discussing any other logistics.

The late start allows Amanda and me to scurry around Gurue buying supplies: sugar, xima, and gin to appease the mountains spirits as well as some peanut butter and bread to fill our stomachs. (Lost in all the hubbub is me remembering to bring the money to pay for a license to hike up the mountain… luckily, I decide to bring my wallet and whole travelling allowance with us rather than safe guarding it in PCV friend’s house in Gurue... it turns out to be just enough, whew!) Also, randomly, an expat we meet right before we leave town lends me a GPS device to carry along with us to map the trail route … it’s an interesting little gadget… He says he wants to put the trail’s GPS info up on Wikipedia or something… and if he is true to his word he’ll give me credit for it! That’d be cool, but I’m not hold my breath :-)

Although Amanda might scoff at this, in my opinion the first day’s hike from the city of Gurue to the mountain’s base is a lot quicker and easier this year. Last year Noemi, Yohko and I hiked the trail during the rainy season where one must stick to the main road rolling up and down along the mountain’s highlands. This year, on the other hand, Amanda and I are able to make a short cut through the low-lying valley on a relatively flat path - almost cutting 2 ½ hours off the first day’s journey. To make matters even better for me, for whatever reason, the tendonitis in my right knee that plagued me for most of the hike last year never acts up throughout the entire journey this year. Yay!

Having just made it through the tea fields, Amanda and I are ready to head up to the first mountain pass on our way to base camp

Just look at her, she loves it! Amanda taking a break with her sugar cane in hand...

The cloud-covered Mount Namuli as a rewarding backdrop for a good morning's hike

Amanda precariously crossing a river as we take the much-advised short cut to the lowlying valley path

We arrive to base camp at the foot of Namuli (pictured above) just as the sun is setting

Arriving to the Macunha village, where the Queen of the mountain lives, not much has changed since the year before. From what I could tell, no new houses had been constructed and no new faces had appeared. One thing that is noticeably different, however, is the food availability. Last year even though we arrived in the middle of the lush rainy season, no real produce was available yet; everything was still growing in the fields so we ate xima and dried fish. This year, however, arriving at the start of the dry season, we eat like kings: xima with pinto beans… a pleasant surprise and a definite step up!

Despite her general hospitality, the Queen doesn’t have many blankets to offer up to keep us warm during the bitterly cold, windy night - only one in fact, an extra small twin blanket for Amanda and I to share and a mere bedsheet for our guide…. Needless to say, we all suffer. Even though we are dead tired, the brutally low temperatures and a never-ending, subconscious battle over the blanket keep Amanda and I awake for most of the night. As we fade in and out of sleep, our bodies’ instinctively grasp and tug for more covering. Unfortunately, the blanket couldn’t fully wrap around us unless we were both on our sides and tightly spooning (very uncomfortable on the woven mat sprawled out across the bumpy, dirt floor) - and even then not really that well.

At one point during the night, I give up on the fight over the blanket, roll away from Amanda and welcome the cold in. Unbeknownst to me, she’s wide awake and deeply hurt by my gesture, even shedding silent tears. I don’t entirely appreciate the gravity of the situation, but mentally recover enough to understand that I need to retreat back to embracing Amanda in our moment of frustration. A few hours later, desperately wanting to be warm again, I anxiously peer out of the hut hoping to see some sign of morning light. Checking my watch, however, I’m brought crashing back down to reality: it’s only 12:45am so there’s still plenty more cold to endure before any having relief.

The next morning we all practically run out of the hut at the first hint of light. We aren’t necessarily organized for that day’s mountain hike yet, but know we are ready to be out of that cold death trap. Before we can ascend though, we have to complete a ceremony to appease the mountain’s spirits and ask for our safe passage. The ceremony was simple enough, the queen and a local male leader saying some words in the local dialect as they offer up two plates of freshly-ground corn mill we brought from Gurue.

After the ceremony wraps up, we start the assent at a leisurely pace. After hiking for an hour through an overgrown path of tall grass and starting up the exposed rocky mountainside, we ask our guide if it’ll take us much longer to reach the top, being generous I suggest two more hours… it’s just right there after all. He smiles. “It’ll be more than two hours for sure. We still haven’t done anything yet.”

I doubt his assertion, assuming he is just trying to play some mind games with us (Why? I don’t know…). But in the end he was dead on. It would be another three hours before we’d finally summit. When we reach a point after having climbed for two hours, already having had to crabwalk/crawl across smooth, slippery rocks with impending death below, our guides inform us that this is only the halfway point and the hardest part is what lies ahead of us. “Are you kidding me?” At this moment, Amanda and I second guess ourselves and the whole trip in general. “Maybe we should just stay down here... no one will know if we say otherwise.” Eventually we convince ourselves to at least try the final climb (literally vertical at points) remembering that other PCVs we know have made it up. We continue upwards, me, however, all the while silently thinking “Supposedly! But who’s to say they REALLY made it to the top?!”

Seriously though!

Amanda at the half way point… with the hardest part yet to come!

I can’t emphasize it enough: the final two hours leading up to the mountain summit are relentless 60-70+ degree inclines with no artificial handholds or safety devices. It’s only us and nature. Gazing out at the surrounding countryside it makes it look even more frightening than it probably is, but still… Our primary saviors, the only thing between us and tumbling down the mountainside, are these steadfast strands of long mountain grasses that somehow have taken hold and burrowed deep into the centimeters of dirt sporadically across the large rock face. If the plant gives way at the root or the individual grass leaves break under our weight, we will be sliding down the slope towards who knows what. We aren’t even to the top yet and in the distance I can already pick out the unique mountain peaks located just outside of Alto Molócuè, a good 70 kilometers away.

Here, you really are looking down on the Earth from the heavens.

During the last stretch it’s actually scarier to think about going down than it is to continue going up. So you must stay in the moment and keep climbing ever higher. The final main obstacle is a rock crevasse where one must boulder 10-15 meters almost straight up wedging oneself in small cracks and grabbing on to any rock out pouching with all one’s life force. You are almost done. Tired and wasted, but motivated strongly by the desire to reach the final destination after having come all this way.

The final stretch, just have to shimmy up that vertical crevasse...

Then suddenly you’re miraculously there. The crevasse gives way to a pleasant walking assent to the summit’s highest point. You are welcomed in grand style: the mountain rewarding its determined pilgrims with a natural water source that doesn’t ever leave the mountain top. Cold fresh water never tasted so good!

We can’t stay for long on top. We enjoy the moment, the view, the conquest of a real challenge. 2419 meters or 7936 vertical feet, but that doesn’t even begin to tell the story because there is also the 60+ kilometers going and coming from Gurue that must be overcome on foot. Wow! We take pictures, snack, chat, and laugh. Listening to the various myths about the mountain from our guides while looking out across the lowlands, it’s not hard to see why this spot is so scared in Northern Mozambique’s folklore. “This is the spot where locals place offerings to the spirits, down there are fossilized footprints of ancient human beings and animals (we weren’t permitted to go over and see them), during the rainy season one can see mysterious gnomes who live on the mountain, Mount Namuli is the starting point of all civilization, etc… one mountain, but the stories go on forever and ever…

Amanda and I embracing at the top! So pretty!

Jumping for joy! Yay!

Nothing above us but clouds…

Heaven under our feet :-)

The “hike” down the mountain doesn’t really happen per se. No, it quickly morphs into more of a scoot down on our butts and all fours. Trying not to look too far out or down at the daunting task ahead of us, we inch our way down almost as slowly as we came up. My jeans, already stitched up in the back from a previous accident, break fully open again and are left hanging down for the remainder of the journey home. Before we know it though, we are at the bottom of the mountain and that which lay ahead of us doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as the thought of spending another night in the cold mud hut. It is 2:30pm and despite our guide warning us that we’d arrive late into Gurue, we quickly scarf down lunch (some more xima and beans) and head out back towards town.

Amanda and I with the Queen of the mountain after the climb

Amanda’s hip had begun to bother her during the descent from the summit and as we are on our journey back to Gurue a pain in her outer right knee has her thinking she won’t be able to make it. That was before we had even hit the mountain pass – still a three hour trek from the Gurue city limits when you are going at a good pace. Amanda, with some encouragement, makes it step by step down the dark, rock filled path bearing the terrible pain for seemingly endless hours. As we approach the final stretch through Gurue’s famous tea fields, we telephone Joe, an American friend of ours working in the area, and he is able to arrange a last minute tea field rescue mission for us. Although it is dark and the paths in the fields are numerous and largely indistinguishable, we are eventually found and whisked safely back to the comforts of Julia’s house.

We spend the entire next day recovering from our adventure then go our separate ways – her to Morrumbala and me back to Nauela. In so many ways the trip, although extremely difficult, was a great success! That said, I’m not sure if Amanda will ever forgive me for this one ;-)

Thursday May 26th, 2011
Upon my arrival back in Nauela, I start spreading the word to inform people in surrounding communities that I don’t see daily about my quickly approaching departure date. Sadly, this includes Pastor Vicente in Mihecane and Fernando Jamal in Malapa, the two individuals who I’ve worked most extensively with during my year and a half in Nauela.

Looking at my remaining days in Nauela, I reason to go out and visit Pastor Vicente today in order to say goodbye to all the church leaders and community before leaving for Morrumbala. Although I wasn’t sure what to expect of it, the farewell trip turns out to be way better than I ever could have expected it to be. Everyone who I’ve worked with in Mihecane during my time in Nauela is there, all the pastors, the mothers who helped with Art Therapy, and even the head carpenter for the carpentry project.

I take several pictures with church leaders and they prepare an impromptu goodbye luncheon inside the old missionary house just for the occasion. Before the meal’s blessing, Pastor Vincent gives an extended thank you to me recounting all the things, to the best of his memory, which I’ve been involved with at the church and then asked me to say a few words. It was all very genuine and touching… Definitely one of those heart-warming, “Glad I did Peace Corps!” moments :-)

Friday May 27th, 2011 - Gaining the Competitive Edge
Normally, I think it would be a good thing to promote some healthy competition into the business markets in Nauela. That said, turns out that when you do it with chapa drivers it is a very distressing experiment! Imagine this: two over crowded, large vehicles speeding down a winding, bumpy dirt road constantly leapfrogging one another as the other stops to pick up passengers. It’s all enough to make my balding head lose a few more hairs, GAH!

Another interesting observation regarding competition in transportation is that people which are normally the foundation of passengers on an open-back chapa (i.e. – people with a lot of baggage or produce) all of a sudden become marginalized because they now are considered to take too long to load up. Meanwhile, others who are often neglected are now gold mines, women with children – the babies can be noisy and annoying, but oftentimes the women don’t tend to openly complain, are quick to jump on board, and pay 1 ½ price.

All of this competition is due to a new kid in town – an enclosed mini bus daily running the Alto Molócuè-Nauela-Gurue route. The enclosed bus is generally much preferred by passengers and veteran local chapa drivers are having to get creative to out maneuver the new competition.

Although I’m not sure how I feel about the Nauela 500 that is resulting, I (think) would like to see more competition in other businesses in Nauela. Right now, practically everything here is a commodity good. There’s absolutely no differentiation between any products. Markets, for example, routinely look like this: five tables set up next to each other selling the exact same salt, crackers, and vegetables. One of the only differences is the quantity of product that a vender has available to sell. It really is a testament to their patience that business owners are able to stay open for any length of time. I know I could never do it! That said, some progressively-minded individuals are starting to use solar-powered music systems to lure people in to drinking establishments and sell their commodity goods on the side… good initiative, just wish the effort could be used on something more beneficial to the community :-/

Saturday May 28th, 2011
This weekend, a movie crew is in Quelimane to finish shooting Tatu, an artsy European film that depicts a love affair back in colonial Africa. The film crew has actually been shooting in Gurue for the past three months or so, but for this last scene they needed a lot of white people for a colonial-era party scene. After dancing our hearts out and having a lot of fun the director informs us that they hope the film will debut in the 2012 Cannes film festival. Can’t wait to see if I actually get any screen time! :-)

BTW, you can check out this website for more info on the movie http://www.komplizenfilm.de/e/tabu.html

Monday May 30th – Wednesday June 1st, 2011
After being star struck by the possibilities of the glamorous movie life ;-), I reluctantly pass up my Hollywood calling to go to Morrumbala in order to say goodbye to Amanda’s neighbors, the Save The Children office staff, and the local missionaries. I’m not there for long unfortunately because I need to run back to Nauela to get myself packed up, but one of the biggest highlights was definitely going to prayer night with missionaries on Tuesday. We prayed about a lot of things, two of the biggest concerns being Amanda’s ever-present bug problem and my mom’s pending diagnosis about a possible reoccurrence of her brain tumor (*note - in the end, both prayer requests were heard!).

Thursday June 2nd, 2011 - Conflicting signs
I arrived back into Nauela late yesterday afternoon following a GREAT day of transportation. Seriously, all the way from the Morrumbala to Alto Molócuè there was nothing but a whole lot of really good boleias, or free rides... the last one going straight to Mugema (only 14 kilometers from Nauela) so I didn’t even have to wait in Molócuè (that’s NEVER happened before!)

Since I didn’t really get to explore the neighborhood yesterday evening before dark, I wake up today to discover the Vodacom tower having a new addition: a BIG antenna that supposedly will allow the tower to start functioning within the next week. How ironic!?! As soon as I’m about to head about to America it’s finally ready to start working! That said, we’ll see if it actually happens or not. Even though it looks pretty complete, people have been saying it’ll start working ‘soon’ for the past several months!

With both these instances, it’s almost like Mozambique is saying, “No Michael! Please don’t go! I’ll be nicer” ;-)

On the other hand, the nearest water pump, located just across the road from my house, broke down during my trip to Morrumbala and they aren’t sure if they’ll be able to fix it without outside help. Luckily, there is another water pump located just 100 yards down the hill from me (comparatively not THAT far away). Unfortunately though, one must carry the water UP the hill after pumping it... Nothing better than having to cart a lot of water up hill on a post-travel laundry day! Gah!

Maybe it IS time for me to get going after all…

After washing my clothes, I start taking down, cleaning up, and packing all the things that I’ll be bringing back with me to the States. Because of Amanda’s persistent bug problem, we’ve decided to move up the date to call the Peace Corps to Friday instead of Monday so I’m a little crunched for time. I eventually need to rest though so I stroll down the road to my cell phone spot in order to talk with Amanda and check the internet.

It’s crazy how much an instant can change everything.

Moments before arriving and checking my phone, I vividly remember happily meandering over to the cell phone spot while making chitchat along the way with friends and neighbors. As I passed the crew working on the Vodacom tower, I hoped out loud that it would be functional before I left site in a few days. At the same time, I was worrying about calling up Kristie, my Peace Corps supervisor, the following day to tell her that Amanda and I were resigning. Eyeing my post-PC future, I contemplated whether it would be smart to try and invest in a condo when I got back to Gainesville and, of course, what med school life would be like especially with Amanda joining me in Florida :-)… my mind was scattered everywhere and although there was some worry it was a whole lot of excitement!

Then I turned on my phone and checked my email.

The inbox was fuller than normal and the first message that caught my eye was from my friend Carmen because she doesn’t usually write me. Scanning her email, I was confused… “Wait, my mom isn’t sick…” then it hit me, there had been another email that I had skipped over because I thought it likely was just a “Hey! How things going?” email... It wasn’t. It was actually my mom informing me that her primary care physician and radiologist had tentatively determined that her brain tumor from over 30 years ago was reoccurring and she needed to be transferred over to see a specialist.

Standing next to the infamous pole in front of Nauela’s primary school (my current go-to location for cell phone calls) I suddenly broke down sobbing as the possible ramifications of the message hit me. “Will my mom undergo chemo? Is she going to have to have surgery? If so, what’s the chance she’ll suffer nerve damage from the procedure? Is there a chance that she’ll die?” all these and more are questions that weighed heavily down on me. While a few onlookers gawked at my public display of emotion – no one, especially a man, cries in public - I stood hunched over, leaning on the pole totally unaware.

After having experienced that feeling, I now confidently say that there must be few things in the world worse than that overwhelming helplessness of being too far away to reach out and comfort your loved ones in their time of need… it just plain sucks!

In an instant, I call Amanda to tell her what has just happened and inform her about what I’m going to do. I need to get home as soon as possible and am going to tell Peace Corps that now. Hysterically, I call Kristie and before I even know what has happened, it’s done. The wheels are now turning and, although we haven’t left our sites yet, we’ve already officially begun our journey home.

Details are fuzzy, but initially it appears that Amanda and I will be busing to Nampula on Saturday to do our exit medical exams and then flying to Maputo on Monday before eventually heading back home some time later next week. Not sure of the exact schedule yet, but I hope to surprise both of my parents when arriving back in Gainesville! I really hope it lifts my mom’s spirits… especially after reassuring her that I didn’t leave early just because of her. I can’t believe it! Literally, it was the day before I was going to call Peace Corps anyways… Crazy!

Saturday June 4th, 2011
And that’s it. I look through my emptied house and I can’t even begin to grasp what it means. For as long as I can remember I wanted to serve in the Peace Corps and now, having lived here for over a year and a half, this part of my life is over. Although I’ve long since considered a career in international health, even then who knows how close I’ll ever come to living in rural context quite like this, building intimate relationships with neighbors that largely consider me an equal.

It’s these precious relationships that I’m going to miss the most.

Fittingly, the owners of my house and Wiado’s family are there at the end. I swing open my front and back doors just as the sun begins to overtake the horizon. It’s not that I’m in a hurry to get away, but I must catch the first chapa out of Nauela to assure that I get to Molócuè in time to meet Amanda on our way up to Nampula. Inviting Janeiro and Velosa in, I hand back over their house, relinquishing the keys and giving them instructions about a few items I had promised to give to individuals and have left behind.

As the sputtering sounds of the chapa near, everyone stops their morning routines and comes to give me a final hug goodbye. Janeiro, Velosa, Dulce, Wiado, Olympio, Sara, and Machel are all there – the only one missing is Salimo who is hiding behind his family’s house crying. I don’t go after him. I simply way goodbye as he sneaks a quick look around the house’s corner. If I did much more, I believe that it would just cause him more trauma… even his dad leaving to go to the market for the day causes a stir with him so I can’t imagine what he is feeling now. In fact, general speaking, people in rural Mozambique are not used to saying farewell. Even if someone happens to leave the area, they almost always do so with a plan to return home soon.

After I’ve loaded up all my luggage, two suitcases and a backpack, the driver informs me that he’s actually heading back to Nauela’s marketplace to get a few more passengers so I can delay my departure a few minutes if I’d would like to. I elect to stay on though, not only to avoid having a long, drawn-out goodbye but also because I’m ready. I came to Peace Corps to do many things: serve to the people of Mozambique to the best of my ability, gain a cultural appreciation of the way people here live, learn another language, travel, gain perspective guiding my future career endeavors, building friendships, etc and those expectations were not only met, but in many ways exceeded.

As I hunker down in a comfortable spot on top of some sacks of corn in the back of the truck, I wave goodbye to the people I’d grown so close to over the past year and a half. Up until that point I had surprised myself, caught up in the logistics of the morning, by not having been too emotional. Seeing Velosa tearing up though as the car started to move, I completely lost it. My eyes began gushing, not out of sadness of having to leave this all behind, but because of a huge joy welling up inside of me of how wonderful it has been. Despite the general hardships and conflicts over work issues, I loved the experience and wouldn't trade it for anything.

My last memories of Nauela were somewhat a highlight reel of my experience as a whole. The victory lap set in motion by the chapa carried me back across the length of the village, allowing me to witness, for the last time in the foreseeable future, the houses of my friends (Janeiro, Wiado, Albertina, Joakim, Nunes, Ali, Fernando Jamal, Portugal, etc) where I had spent many an afternoon hanging out, Milevane where the Catholic priests and nuns hosted Amanda and I, Mihecane where I fell in love with a church community, the marketplace where I regularly scrounged and bartered for food, Mount Nauela, Nepo and Tutu which I all climbed, the water pumps where I carted all my crystal clear water from, the health post, schools and administrative buildings where I regularly held and attended meetings, the pole and the mango trees where I struggled daily to telephone from, the Vodacom tower that never was, and one last glimpse of the bamboo-fenced in house that I called home for my entire Peace Corps experience.

Appropriately, as the chapa finally drove by my house on the way out of town, everyone had already jumped back into their morning work and things seemed normal again. Although I know my presence will be missed by those that had grown close to me, I also realize, and am happy, that I was no savoir for any one individual or group and that no one will now be unable to continue doing what they’ve been doing without me there. I see so much promise in the people of Nauela and wish nothing but the best for all those here that I’ve grown to love and care for so much. I can’t wait till I return one day and rejoice in their successes.

Working Through the Pain...

2011-05-28T05:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday April 7th, 2011
It’s 3am and I’m wide awake.

This time it’s not the loud pelting rain, stagnant humid air, or wild yelping dogs that regularly interrupt my sleep... no, this time it’s a totally different monster; one that’ll wreak havoc not only on my sleep tonight, but, unbeknownst to me, will continue to haunt me for the rest of the month…

Slumped down, sweating, and staring at my living room’s patched cement floor, I mentally debate about whether or not I’d have time to get up, reach the front door, and open it before spewing out whatever foul concoction is rumbling in my stomach. Before I even have time to act on the possibility though, my body lurches forward as my abdomen intensely contracts. At the moment, it felt like the world’s strongest man was trying to wring every last drop out my stomach… but surprisingly, and rather unsatisfyingly, nothing was there to squeeze out. The tainted food that I had stuffed in my mouth only hours earlier had sunk deeper into my system than my body, or I, had suspected, leaving me to deal with the consequences the hard way – wait for it to pass.

Although you can’t ever be 100% sure here in Mozambique what exactly got you sick, in this case it’s pretty obvious:

I shouldn’t have eaten those day and a half old, unrefrigerated coconut beans. Definitely shouldn’t have eaten ‘em.

Just the thought of my last meal makes me revert into more fits of dry heaving - my body searching for a release, but always coming up just short. I eventually gather the courage and make a break for it. Hurriedly I unlock my front door, unlatch the steel grate further impeding me, and rush out on to the breezy veranda. On most nights, Nauela’s sky is quite a marvelous sight. When the moon isn’t too bright and there’s not any cloud cover, your wide-eyes witness every constellation mankind has ever imagined and then some. But tonight is different. My mind is withdrawn from all that beauty as I try to simply absorb more of the cool night air that is slowly encompassing my body and calming my stomach pains.

I sit and rest outside my house for over an hour, feeling horrible and not wanting to move, but with my heavy eyelids pleading for a release all the while. Despite my illness begging me to stay put, I reason that nodding off on my open veranda isn’t the best idea. Thus, I grudgingly retreat back inside and almost immediately pass out, tightly curled up on my bed.

While the sunrise brings a clatter of noises from the neighboring houses, I can’t even bear to think about leaving my bedroom, much less pass outside the front door. Laying comatose in my bed as the sun and wind battle to heat and cool my tin roof, I spend the daylight hours absently listening to the sound of the torquing metal being reshaped again and again all the while wondering… How long will this feeling last?

I don’t have any idea.

And maybe that was for the best… because sometimes when it rains, it pours, and no matter what you do or what medicine you take, that heavy, aching feeling just won’t go away. And in the meantime, the common illnesses that your body is constantly coming in contact with here in Nauela can now easily overrun your weakened defenses - assuring that things are sure to get much worse before they get any better.

***

Now that I think of it though, eating some of the local termite delicacies might not have helped the situation either….

Even with a not so good stomach, I just HAD to try ‘em… everyone was doing it!

Sunday April 10th – Monday April 18th, 2011
Rushing to the bathroom every few minutes or simply setting up camp, lounging on the toilet because the bowel movements don’t seem to ever stop – it’s under these conditions that I must try to work/live/survive here in rural Mozambique when sick. Even simple things though can get complicated.

Take, for example: my bathroom.

In one sense, I’m lucky because I have a “normal,” Western-style toilet that’s inside my house (opposed to an outdoor latrine). Without running water however, that same luxury can quickly become quite a hassle. Lacking any house helper, sick or not, I must go wait in long lines at the community borehole just to be able to pump and carry water back and forth between my house. As one can imagine, it can become quite a time consuming and laborious process the more one needs to flush the toilet. And because whoever installed my bathroom didn’t put traps on the sink and shower drains, the pungent aroma stubbornly remains even after a thorough flushing.

Luckily though, these days are numbered because FGH has conveniently scheduled a meeting for us PCVs in Quelimane on Monday. Thus on Sunday morning the FGH crew comes and whisks me away in their private vehicle. In the matter of a few short hours, I’m comfortably sprawled out in an air-conditioned hotel room with a private bathroom equipped with running water… Oh the amenities that impress me now.

Surprisingly, I’m feeling pretty good by the time the next day’s meeting rolls around and don’t outwardly show any signs hinting at my sub-par health. Thus, after sitting at a roundtable discussion with FGH higher-ups for half a day talking NGO jargon about the importance of improving food security all over Zambezia, it’s no surprise to me when my provincial supervisor insists that I visit both Morrumbala and Mopeia this week to do Permaculture trainings with local associations that are partnered there with FGH. Despite my teetering health, I didn’t put up much of a fight. After all, I’ll take any opportunity to make an extra trip to Morrumbala where the love of my life is :-)

First up is Morrumbala.

Everything goes well with the training. The group of 25 or so participants is a mixture of leaders from several local associations. Many people seem interested and it’s encouraging to me to see how gung-ho some individuals are about the new agriculture knowledge. I just hope they actually put it to use after the training (Sadly, I visit Morrumbala several weeks later and, although the FGH staff says people have begun implementing the techniques at their houses, the demonstration plot has gone almost completely untouched since I left). As the training wraps up, I feel a little tired but overall I’m holding up well physically.

Interestingly enough, in Morrumbala I find myself reunited with Rocha, my former Alto Molócuè FGH counterpart who was transferred here some time ago. Unimpressed with his work performance in the field back then, it’s remarkable to see him go at it now. When he started as an AIC (Community Intervention Assistant) it was one of the lowest, most ambiguous positions on FGH’s totem pole. Now however, after countless rounds of hirings and a tremendous organizational restructuring, suddenly the AIC position sits practically as second-in-command at the district level. Rocha now efficiently and ruthlessly manages five area Community Facilitators (other FGH field workers). The added job responsibilities, although largely undeserved in my opinion, suit Rocha well because he can sit in a comfortable office all day checking emails, writing reports, and not have to actually get his hands dirty in the field. Every once in a while, after letting some underling organize an event, the high-ranking position also allows him to swoop in, say a few words as a capstone, and claim everything as his own baby. Which is just what he’s good at! Glad to see things working out for him… %-)

Next up, Mopeia! (and this is where things start to get rough…)

Finishing up the Permaculture training in Morrumbala on Thursday morning, I have exactly 10 minutes to gather my belongings before traveling two hours along a terribly bumpy road to Mopeia in order to start another training that very same afternoon. The transition day takes a lot out of me, but I’m still going strong after having gotten a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. The Mopeia group, while interested in the material, is very moody and skeptical. It’s understandable though because, due to some miscommunication with FGH, the group of 29 individuals had been incorrectly informed twice about the starting time and date of our training. Thus, when I appear on Thursday afternoon and begin the session, many people have already been waiting around a day and a half for my arrival.

During the second day of the training in Mopeia, my body finally succumbs to the external forces long acting upon it and I take a sharp turn south. I begin feeling it a little after lunch - fever, stomach pains, a sore throat – by night time it has progressed to an all encompassing illness with flu-like symptoms.

If I haven’t said this before, I’ll say it again: It’s tough in this country to accurately diagnosis illnesses.

What I mean by that is best seen in this example: if you walk around Zambezia and ask someone who is sick what they have, they’ll probably say “Malaria”. That statement can mean many things, but most likely doesn’t imply they actually did the clinical test that confirms their malaria diagnosis. Coincidentally, Malaria can produce many of the same symptoms that the common cold or flu would. However, the medical treatment for malaria, being caused by a parasitic infection, is significantly different than that for the persistent cold or flu, which are both caused by viruses. Thus a correct diagnosis is pivotal for a relatively quick, successful recovery. What makes the diagnosis problematic though is that malaria tests can be hard to come by and a lot of times the tests don’t give conclusive results. Despite all the attention surrounding HIV/AIDS, Malaria is ever present and still the number 1 annual killer in Mozambique - a fact I’m very cognoscente of now.

Aided by an entourage of multi-colored pills, I manage to finish the training in Mopeia and retreat back to Quelimane for the weekend to lick my wounds and rest up before eventually making my way back to Nauela.

The following are some views from my agriculture teaching moments in Mopeia:

Me talking to talk to talk to talk to talk….

Me trying to get down and dirty with a hoe.

Me doing what I’m actually best at… supervising ;-)

A good view of the permagarden plot

Double digging it up…

The Mopeia training group after completing our permagarden…

Amanda and I smiling wide for camera

***

The trip home is going well. FGH has been kind enough to take me all the way back to Alto Molócuè in their car, but I’m on my own from there.

Next thing I know, I find myself somewhere between Alto Molócuè and Nauela squatting down in a field of cassava with my pants scrunched up around my ankles while something sharp and prickly is sticking me in the rear. I’m not sure what exactly is causing the sensation, but that’s the least of my worries at the moment. Staring through the tall grass at the idling truck 20 meters away, my oscillating health status is an accepted, mute point. All I am concerned about now is the fickle motorista possibly driving off, leaving me to fend for myself in the wild, African bush as the sun is dipping low in the sky and, worse yet, takes my backpack (and my computer) with him.

In the 30 minutes leading up to this impromptu chapa stop I had been mentally debating about whether or not to signal to the driver. But in the end, the force building up inside of me couldn’t be held captive any longer. The driver promptly complied to the request (probably having been in my situation before) and was patient up to this point, but now he is revving his engine, obviously in a hurry to get to Gurue before it’s completely dark…

No one likes driving at night here in Mozambique. It’s much too dangerous. After all, if the treacherous roads, sketchy vehicles, or ever-present thieves don’t get you, the evil spirits surely will.

Tuesday April 19th - Friday April 22nd, 2011
Back safe in Nauela finally, I’m totally spent from the journey.

Most of the next several days are passed hanging out on my veranda, teaching chess to the area school children. Even while just sitting around outside though I get tired and must almost hourly take refuge in my comfy bed. Turns out, whatever illness that has taken over my body is quite reluctant to relinquish it to its rightful owner. The raging battle over my body’s cells isn’t tipping in my favor at the moment and my body must be calling for reinforcements, saving all its energy for fending off the infection.

It’s in this semi-catatonic state that the visiting FGH workers from Quelimane and Molócuè find me on Thursday morning. They are here to meet with Muretchele, the local association partnered with FGH, and the União Baptista Church in Mihecane. Rather than taking pity on me though, they quickly instruct me to get cleaned up and accompany them on their day’s adventure through Nauela. I’m so out of it and exhausted I can’t protest too much, so instead I simply tuck my tail and obediently follow the orders.

***

The death and birth of an association

What happened next was terribly predictable and illustrates perfectly some of the many field problems with NGO work here in Zambezia. The FGH workers show up relatively unannounced (supposedly the AIC that lives in Molócuè left a card with a random girl last week to inform the association to meet with FGH sometime this morning – they frequently do this but then don’t actually show up themselves), become offended by the fact that so few community members have bothered to participate, and start the conversation openly discussing how little work ethic this group has.

It is quite the sight. Sitting across from one another on the benches outside the rural health post in Nauela couldn’t be two more distinct sets of individuals: one group whose hands are heavily-calloused and suffer from overworked, decrypted toenails, don simple tattered rags, but present haggard smiles, the other group, meanwhile, with their perfectly manicured features and fresh set of business attire, are all frowns.

Rendered all but completely helpless by the mounting pain, I witness this interaction up close, sitting as a passive intermediary alongside both groups. Angrily lecturing the few, nonresponsive association members, it doesn’t take long for the Western-minded NGO workers to lose their patience and want to be done with the entire situation. Suddenly and unanimously it has been decided, “This association must die!” Not in such a harsh manner, just dissolve really. The NGO workers had already dismissively left their seats before taking a step back and firmly instructing the association members to write up and sign their own dissolution letter to be presented by FGH at the district government’s office - a public recognition of the association’s failure aimed at separating any lingering ties between FGH and Muretchele.

In my opinion, should the association dissolve? Yes. But who is suffering and being punished? Not the right people. These are the few individuals who are persistent/naive enough to have stuck it out with the absentee NGO that FGH is. Meanwhile, the person who founded this group, sowing fictitious thoughts of grandeur and profit among the early members is long gone and being held completely unaccountable (as I recently discovered he transferred to Morrumbala and actually received quite a promotion of sorts – see earlier post).

Then, the FGH workers and I pile into their car, them feeling borderline jovial now that they have ridded themselves of some serious baggage, and leave behind a group of disenchanted locals who never even saw it coming. Seconds later we’re back on the road speeding toward Mihecane to start a new FGH partnership with the church there - a little messed up if you ask me.

There’s no doubt in my mind that eventually FGH will form some sort of partnership through a newly proposed association with the church here. The longstanding mission is already incredibly active in the community and is relatively independent in their actions - exactly what FGH is looking for because they’ll likely provide very minimal support but claim all the credit for the results. I really do hope this budding partnership will work out better than the last for both parties. I really do. I can’t wait for us to visit Mihecane and get going… turns out though, I’ll have to wait a little while longer because, first, the car must stop at the Nauela market to allow the NGO workers to buy some flashy bras that caught their attention. While they absent-mindedly peruse some of the other merchandise the grass stalls have to offer, I sit in the car reeling back and forth with a colossal headache, unsure now if it’s being caused by my illness or simply the irony of it all.

***

Random reflections:

Although so much positive is said in the NGO world about creating community associations that work together towards a common goal, I have now had the displeasure of witnessing the other side of the coin – the sudden abandonment of a group of individuals who couldn’t meet an NGO’s lofty expectations.

Founded by my former FGH counterpart Rocha, I’ve always believed that the association members in Nauela had long been misled into thinking that, after starting an association, FGH would give them “lots” of money (in Nauela lots of money could be less than $10). Having long seen the manner in which NGOs operate, the way they can throw around so such money, many people jumped on board without even knowing what the association’s purpose was. In their minds, when Rocha said key words such as the association will be “financed by FGH” and the members will be “trained” in various things. One thing came to mind: Money.

In the past, NGOs would do their trainings in cities and be required to give all the attendees per diem ($15-20 a day to help cover the cost of meals and incidentals). Nowadays, the trainings for community volunteers often happen on-location so people are fed well (a snack and lunch at least) but left to fend for themselves outside the training without any per diem to line their pockets. Thus, even when Muretchele completed a small, on-location training back in October about medicinal plants, the association members unhappily received no benefit other than the knowledge they were able to retain (something I was ironically very happy about at the time).

Oftentimes, FGH workers criticize community activists for only seeking out financial gains, but, in reality, Don’t you think the whole system is a little bit hypocritical? The NGO workers definitely are making a pretty penny and most are seeking to help the project’s beneficiaries in words only. At the end of the day if they could get paid without lifting a finger, I believe that most of them would. Furthermore, the local participants are dirt poor and living by the skin on their teeth. Don’t you think it’s a little ridiculous to expect them to try and volunteer their precious time towards some ambiguous cause that even FGH can’t tell you what it is?

Even with microfinance projects where the objective is to make money and be “sustainable” (all the rage in the NGO world nowadays), beyond addressing the limited math and business skills that most possess, there exists a far bigger problem: - a great cultural conflict of sorts. For better or worse, people in Africa share… Everything! If you are ever in need, you go to your neighbor and ask, don’t worry, it’s not considered rude. In fact, oftentimes even dirt-poor individuals give something when asked because they know that some day in the future they might be down on their luck and have to turn around and beg their neighbor for help. There’s very little incentive to strive and achieve more for those capable because at the end of the day, even if you succeed, friends and family will likely notice your good fortune and hit you up for all you’re worth. And you, not wanting to burn bridges, can’t turn them away unless you are willing to risk social isolation.

Saturday April 23rd – Tuesday April 26th, 2011
April 25th is quickly approaching and what does that mean? I, along with several other PCVs, need to hightail it to Morrumbala for Amanda’s Disney-themed birthday party. Yay!

Despite my lingering illness that is keeping me coughing and feeling fatigued, I successfully make the arduous, day-long journey down from Nauela without incident. My health regresses a little bit because of the stress but, with the help of some strong med dosages, I am able to suck it up and enjoy the festivities :-)

Yohko and Amanda getting ready for the evening’s festivities.

Feijaoda lunch… yum!

Amanda and I acting our parts: Abu from Aladdin and one of the Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp :-)

The full group in their Disney costumes

Amanda and Mica blowing out their candles

***

After the birthday brigade came and went, Amanda and I went out into her neighborhood to take some pictures with her friends and colleagues….

Friday April 29th – Monday May 2nd, 2011
Thanks to the mandatory flu shot PCVs are required to get annually, Amanda and I get to meet up with Dr. Edson (the Peace Corps Medical Officer for Northern Mozambique normally located in Nampula) this weekend in Quelimane to talk about some of our various nagging health problems. Upon completing the consultation Dr. Edson worries aloud about my prolonged illness possibly being a result of malaria. When the field test comes up negative however, the only thing left to prescribe is a high dose of general antibiotics to see if that’ll do that trick (After 10 days of medication, vitamins, eating well, and some R&R I feel normal again for the first time in nearly a month!).

Random shots from the weekend in Quelimane:

Panoramic from a shot from the top of Hotel Chuabo in Quelimane

Amanda and Jordan enjoying the Chuabo view

Amanda and Jordan after making a wonderful French bread pizza from (almost) scratch!

***

All this medical talk reminds me… during my last trip to Quelimane I had the pleasure of visiting and saying goodbye to the Hiltons (they’ve been in Quelimane for over 17 years working with World Vision but are finally moving to Australia to be closer to family). As luck would have it, the Fosters from Gurue were staying with them on their way to Maputo for a biblical seminar and we all got to chatting about our experiences in Mozambique and abroad. Stuart Foster eventually mentioned his brother’s work as the resident surgeon at a mission hospital in Angola and the night ends with them promising to introduce me to their various international medical contacts via email, including Stuart’s brother.

Since that fateful meeting, the Foster’s have sent various emails to people from all over the globe and I’m looking into the possibility of visiting Angola next summer (as a Portuguese translator for expat doctors all the while doing some medical shadowing)… we’ll see how the logistics (timing and money mainly) go, but regardless… the possibility is exciting!

***

On my way back up to Nauela on Monday I discover two bits of news:

1) A Moz 15 health PCV who was placed in Quelimane in December 2010 has decided to go home. Why? According to him, it’s because the organization he has been paired with was not giving him any work to do – seems to be the general story for Moz PCVs in the health sector.

2) Osama Bin Laden’s death – The headline spurs surprisingly a lot of talk amongst Mozambicans even in a rural place like Nauela (people get the news via community radio stations). The narrative that seems to be widely circulating here is the same one the Western media is favoring (Bin Laden was a terrorist, not a freedom fighter). Interestingly enough, with this bit of information everyone I’ve talked to about it here in Nauela has said that, since Bin Laden is responsible for the deaths of other people, he deserved to die too… in their opinion it’s as simple as that… Or is it?

Tuesday May 3rd - Wednesday May 12th, 2011
Largely because of this waning (finally!) illness, it appears that a lot of my last memories at site will be of teaching and playing chess with the area secondary school students. Most of my other work involves hours of biking and, even though I have moments of strength, in general I always feel pretty weak. Sadly though, even as I’m teaching the basics of the game to eager participants I am having serious doubts that anyone will continue to play after I’m gone. My most avid students, for example, admit to not having practiced at all while I was away – to their credit, they have no board, no pieces, and few people to play with… but it’s still a glimpse into the near future, post-Michael.

I have hopes that chess can gain a presence in the area before I leave, but I just don’t know if it can. Right now, many people are stuck on playing checkers (they actually call it damas, which has slightly different rules), but (and no offense to those of you out there who are avid checkers players) I feel like that game is pretty straight forward and doesn’t involve too much advanced strategy or outside the box thinking – something young aspiring students could really benefit from being exposed to at an early age. Having all these grandiose ideas about how chess can help develop kids’ ability to strategize and plan for the future is good and all, but at the same time I realize that, for most, just learning how to move the pieces is an accomplishment.

Salimo, one of my youngest, but most promising students

***

Random happy views from a Nauela sunflower field:

***

As I lounge around Nauela playing games with kids, several individuals with some large machinery are running around every which way making a huge impact on the lives of local residents. Yep, that’s right! The next, long-awaited Afrodrill campaign has arrived. You might have never heard of Afrodrill before, but they are a company based out of Mocuba that is being sub-contracted by various organizations to go around Zambezia drilling boreholes for water pumps.

This year, the operation is focusing on reaching out to more distant communities in the administrative post that they weren’t able to get to in previous years. Mugema, Guilherme, Vehiua, Cololo, and Mohiua (household names for you all back at home, right?) are all slated to be dug this year, with only one, near Nauela’s market, being located in somewhat close proximity to me.

With all the hubbub, I just had to go bike over to see the magic happen in person… Once there, the workers informed me that the pump is actually made it in three phases: first drill the hold, then set a surrounding cement slab, finally install the pump mechanism. At this moment these workers are here only to complete the first stage. Others will be close behind them to finish up the job.

As you can see from large crowd gathered around in the pictures below, the digging process was definitely the day’s biggest event in Nauela:

2011-04-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

Arlindo Alpin Paulino, 25 –
Carvão maker

Not even to the morning’s final destination, yet I’m exhilaratingly exhausted. My tattered jeans are weighed down by the amassing dew being collected from passing corn leaves while my exposed forearms are shredded by the overgrown sawgrass. To me, our path seems uncertain: a sharp left here, a random cut there. But, no worries, my guide is an expert and has made this journey many times before. It’s only 6am and I’ve already biked 30 minutes up and down narrow mountain trails, cut through thriving machambas, and rumbled along on overgrown “paths” eagerly following the footsteps of Arlindo, one of the many area carvão makers.

Now I’m soaking wet, pants rolled up past my knees, sandals in one hand, a 5-liter jug of water in the other, as I slowly ford the murky Mucipine River. It’s a precarious balancing act for me as I feel my way across the muddy riverbed. Sizing up my companion’s situation though, I definitely have it easier. Sure enough, next to me ready to show me up, there’s Arlindo with his 3 year-old baby girl capulana-ed across his back, shoes in hand while also lugging a sack full of axes and food for the morning’s activities.

We cross the river safely. “Now we’re really in the middle of nowhere…” I think. No houses to be seen in any direction, only a rarely used path urging us ahead. Once we put our sandals back on, there’s only few more minutes of hiking, before, all of a sudden, Arlindo stops and points at some trees, indicating that this is where we’re going to be working today. Looking at the plot of sparse trees, I immediately have some grand idea that we’ll be cutting down acres today, but that’s before I see how hard the hand labor is… with dull axes nonetheless!

Arlindo is an oddball of sorts in the area. Unlike most local residents, he was actually born a good distance southwest of Nauela in the district of Namarroi back in 1986. With the early death of his father, however, he left home at the age of 6 and moved to Gurue to live with his uncle, a successful honey farmer. Eventually, Arlindo migrated with other family members over to the Alto Molócuè area and soon after, having completed only 7th grade, had to stop going to school because he could no longer finance his studies without the help of a father/uncle. Lacking anyone insisting otherwise, Arlindo reasoned to drop out and start planting rice fields in the fertile valleys just outside of the city. Although the rice grew plentifully and provided an immediate income, Arlindo’s dreams of one day becoming a primary school teacher or medical technician were thrown to the wayside and left behind before really even having a chance to take shape.

Looking to settle down, Arlindo met and married his wife, Esmerelda - a Nauela native, two years later in Alto Molócuè. Soon thereafter, however, she became very ill with a mysterious disease causing pains in her stomach and back and leaving her extremities inflamed. With minimal access to Western medical treatment, her condition persisted for 3 years as the newly married couple sought out curandeiros, or traditional healers. After finally being attended to at the hospital in Molócuè though, she eventually recovered. Almost at the same time Arlindo became “sick”, but with a so-called traditional illness. According to him, he had been doing relatively well financially (farming success allowed him to open a make-shift movie theater – AKA a closed hut with a tv, dvd player, and speakers )and thus people were allegedly going around wishing bad things upon him which in turn made him act “muluku”, or crazy. To remedy the problem, he regularly saw a curandeiro over a 2 month period… leaving with a “healed-spirit” but destroyed finances (traditional healers can be rather pricey!).

***

Rather than deterring people from seeing traditional healers, the pricey-ness of these treatments actually make people feel as if they are investing in their health when going and spending all that money (compared to the national health care system which is largely free). In fact, just recently their baby boy was sick and the first place they took him was the traditional healer. Only after a weekend of the illness persisting did they take him to the hospital. It’s not a matter of convenience, either. The traditional healer they use is actually located past the hospital. The parent’s opinion is that the child has malaria. But what is “malaria” really? It’s confusing because most people say “malaria” here if it’s what we’d describe as flu-like symptoms. Thus there’s a common misunderstanding that the hospital should give anti-malaria meds to a patient with any kind of fever.

Observing Arlindo’s daily surroundings - fire, wood, and ash – all have been incorporated into his preferred traditional medical treatment of common illnesses. It’s no wonder he’s so hesitant to go to a place that is going to tell him to take a white pill that seems so foreign and different to everything good that he experiences on his healthy days. While out in the forest chopping wood with me, Arlindo seeks out a special kind of tree whose root’s bitter juices are mixed with water and ash to avoid manchas, or marks, on one’s skin. He prepares a batch for me, I try it, and he beams as my entire face puckers at the extreme sharp taste – “That’s how you know it works” he says and resumes his chopping.

***

After their illnesses, Arlindo and Esmerelda found themselves poor and without hardly any food to sell or eat. Desperate, Arlindo sought out and learned a new profession from some of the older community members in Molócuè: how to make carvão – partially burnt wood that is preferred for cooking due to its quick-catching nature and the lack of smoke it produces while burning. Although the work is physically taxing and requires long days, Arlindo discovered that the stream of money that comes in is good and relatively secure.

When they elected to move from Alto Molócuè to Nauela 2 years ago to be closer to his wife’s family, they entered into a similar situation as before – moving during the middle of a growing season and being granted a plot without forgiving, fertile land. Without hesitation, Arlindo restarted his carvão business to be his family’s primary source of income. Although he once had had lofty dreams to continue studying and start a real profession, he now just hopes to earn enough money to be able to get some better land (in Molócuè or Nauela) and continue to support his family as a farmer/carvão maker.

Arlindo and Esmerelda have been blessed with two kids, a girl that’s 3 years old and a boy that’s 1 ½ years old. Unfortunately though, he and his wife are both orphans of one parent (Arlindo lost his dad and Esmarelda lost her mom when they were still kids). This is especially devastating because the grandmother on the mother’s side is supposed to help out a lot with the grandchild rearing in Nauela’s matrilineal culture. Arlindo’s mom is still alive and well in Namarroi but the area’s tradition is to stay near to where the wife’s family is. So here they are, doing everything they can to raise their two kids largely unaided… which is quite a feat anywhere, but especially so in rural Mozambique.

Pointing at a large clearing to our left, Arlindo proudly informs me that in only 2 months work he was able to make 6000 meticais (~ 30 mets a day = $1 dollar a day) by cutting down, burning, and selling off the produced carvão. It’s crazy to think about that math – I mean, I remember always hearing those NGO commercials saying “For just a dollar a day you can help feed and clothe a child in Africa…” Well that’s sort of true… except that’s for an ENTIRE family! To be fair though, Arlindo’s cash earnings versus expenses don’t reflect the fact that his family largely eats and drinks without paying (they get water from a neighborhood well and eat what they grow in their field). In reality, (although some is spent on things like cooking oil, salt, sugar, and alcohol) most of the cash-money actually is stored away as savings for non-daily expenses (like buying a new bicycle, a tin roof for the house, traveling, buying new property, etc).

After just one day of working alongside Arlindo, I’ve started associating his income with the amount of work that is required to get it. When reflecting on a recent purchase it’s like “Wow! Are those crackers I bought in Quelimane really worth 2 days of hard labor?” Definitely not! But then again, life is very different for me 1) my work is not “hard labor” and 2) I’m getting a salary (~7000/month or ~$6 dollars a day) so no matter what I do, save get fired, I’ll get that money. Very different mentality!

In order to make good carvão, you have to cut down certain types of tree. If you use the wrong type (i.e. - mango trees), they simply won’t burn as well. After cutting down the trees, you need to further chop them up into meter-long logs, to facilitate later stacking, and then let dry for 2-3 days. Once you’ve waited for the logs to dry a little, you pile them up, cover them with cut grass and then sand, all the while leaving a small hole to place a fire inside. Once the fire is lit and going strong, cover the hole, and let the logs char for 3 days or so, checking periodically to make sure that too much smoke isn’t coming out (if a lot of smoke is coming out, then that means the wood has not stopped in the carvão phase but is instead completely burning to ash). As the logs and grass are charring, the sand will fall down and put out the fire before completely burning the log. As stated before, these partially burnt logs (carvão) are nice and convenient because they are quick to light and don’t give off a lot of smoke when used.

Environmental conservationists say this practice contributes to the area’s deforestation, but in Arlindo’s case, he is SLOWLY cutting down trees (with a dull axe!) that will one day serve as the crop field of a neighbor (who has given him permission). It works out for both parties because Arlindo is able to make carvão to sell and the farmer gains a cleared portion of his field. Personally (granted I might be biased now after having worked alongside Arlingo), I think the bigger worry for environmentalists should be the foreign companies, mainly Chinese in Zambezia, who come into Mozambique and remove large quantities of unprocessed, fully-grown trees in an instant with chainsaws.

Granted, the burning process does take a lot out of the soil where the fire pit is located...

Other farmers don’t take advantage of making carvão while clearing their fields for two reasons 1) it is highly labor intensive and not worth the effort when you have lots of land with good soil – for those lucky ones it’s better to simply put your time and energy into getting the most out of the available land rather than investing it in clearing less desirable land and 2) many area people don’t know how to make carvão and don’t use much of it in their house. Indeed, even relatively wealthy families like Wiado’s only use freshly cut logs to cook food and make bread. The main consumers of carvão are actually people in bigger cities who are driving through the area or Nauela’s high-rollers (i.e. – government employees, teachers, hospital technicians, and me).

Getting ready to held out to work, child in tow...

1 tree up, 1 tree comin' down...

The hard collisions did a number on my joints, but Arlindo is unfazed.

A real hard working man...

Measuring out the cuts with his estimating stick...

The tree trunk should be cut into ~1 meter long pieces to facilitate later stacking...

Collecting slightly burnt logs to place on bottom of the pile and quickly catch fire...

Assembling the burn pile...

Nothing is easy about this job, even gotta work to haul the grass to cover the wood...

Placing freshly cut grass on top of the logs...

Covering the grass with soil...

Starting the fire...

Once it is completely covered, you gotta make sure too much smoke isn't coming out of the burning pile...

Carvão - The finished product all bundled up and ready to sell

Me looking like a pretty sexy, wanna-be carvão maker!

Working Hard - Ali

2011-04-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

Ali “Zambia” Momadi, 54 – Curandeiro/ Bike Repairman/Guard

Entering what is left of a colonial-era store in Nauela’s marketplace and noting the scratched and faded light-green paint that gives way to patches of exposed brick behind, you catch a glimpse of the past. Indeed, when closing your eyes, you can easily imagine what it must have been like just a short 40 years ago: clean and fully-stocked stores with open kitchens daily serving up hot plates, a well-maintained road with private cars frequenting the nearby Catholic mission or the tea barons in Gurue, and sanitary public bathrooms with running water conveniently located in the business-owners’ lush courtyards to serve passing travelers. To sweeten the deal, commodities were plentiful in the fertile agricultural area during most of the year and luxury items regularly flowed in from Nampula via Nacala, Ilha de Moçambique, and Angoche. Life must have been good…

All these comforts and more would have been available in Nauela 40 years ago to foreigners like you and me… just not to the native residents themselves. And thus, rightfully so, it didn’t last.

Flash back to the present and you start to notice new marks amongst the old: boarded up rooms and a new tin roof for an improvised food storage area, amassed soot where indoor fires are regularly made, and torn clothes strung out across the patio to dry - an impoverished existence in the midst of historical luxury.

This is the reality of Ali, the hired guard of a ruined store in Nauela, who moonlights as a bike repairman (the original reason I’ve come to see him) and, as I’m soon about to find out, a curandeiro, or traditional healer.

With a pointed stick and spinning animal horn in hand, Ali asks me to sit down and chat before starting to work on my bike. Smiling and laughing the whole time, with his browed forehead pushing up on the Kufi cap sitting on top of his head he tells me his story:

Some of the old stores in Nauela's marketplace

Born in the small port town of Angoche, Nampula in 1957 to the son of a prominent Mosque leader, Ali was 1 of 15 (!) children (5 brothers and 10 sisters). Due to the small nature of the town, the young Ali played and grew close with all the area kids his age, including the child of the local Portuguese administrator at the time. When the administrator decided to move to Zambia in 1961, he asked Ali’s father if he could take the 4-year-old Ali with them to keep his child company, to which Ali’s father conditionally agreed. Thus it was decided for him: almost all of Ali’s memorable childhood would be spent in a foreign land with a family that was not his own.

The years passed by quickly though, with Ali playing with and taking care of the Portuguese family’s children. He made the most of this time, learning various skilled tasks around the farm that would later prove quite useful. In 1973, at the age of 16, Ali’s father finally called for him to return home and the Portuguese man obliged, personally escorting him all the way back to Angoche. Only 4 months after having been reunited with his family though, Ali had had enough and took off for Nampula City.

One day soon after, Ali found himself wandering the streets of Nampula when a local shop owner sized him up and offered him a job driving a tractor on his farm in Mohiua, Nauela. Shrugging his shoulders and figuring “Why not?” he accepted the offer. In short, work and life at the time in Mohiua was calm. Even during the War for Independence that soon followed, things there stayed relatively peaceful and unchanged. As a matter of fact, the local population seemed completely oblivious to what revolutionary actions were underway in other parts of the country. Even after the War for Independence was over and the Portuguese owner had fled the country, Ali continued to work as a tractor driver for 10 more years as the owner managed the business from abroad.

Thinking back on these years as a tractor driver, vivid details about the work or the day’s activities don’t come to mind easily. In Ali’s memory, it all just seems to blur together. Something that does stand out, however, was a particular visit by the Portuguese business owner to check on the farm’s operations. Aware they were being watched, everyone was out to do their best that day. Barking out orders, the owner refused to communicate directly with the field workers like Ali. Instead, he issued commands through the appointed field captain. This went on for a while, the owner shouting and staring down the laborers while the workers stole interested glances back at him. As Ali took a moment to admire the odd foreigner, he was astonished by the fact that the Portuguese man had so much arm hair (most Mozambicans have almost none) that he couldn’t read his watch without brushing it aside… “Sort of like yours!” Ali ends as he reaches out and admires my bushy forearms… Great :-/

During these years in Mohiua, Ali met and later married a young woman named Maria who would, over the years, bear him 6 children. After saving up some money, Ali proudly brought her to Angoche in 1983 to meet his relatives and see if she’d be interested in moving there. She loved it! Coming back to Mohiua to inform her family that they intended to move to Angoche, the civil war broke out, however, and any plans they had of moving would have to wait.

That day never came.

The civil war was particularly unkind to Ali and his family. As it was for everyone else in the area, food, water, clothes, and other necessities were hard to come by. Then, one fateful day, Maria went out to gather firewood as she always did, but after several hours of waiting for her return Ali discovered that she had been attacked and killed by roaming RENAMO soldiers.

Desperately needing someone to help take care of his 6 children, Ali quickly remarried. But even the best wife he could find at the time was a poor substitute - a known local drunkard. His second marriage didn’t last long though, not even through the civil war, because after having drunk excessively one night she fell ill and passed away within a few days.

As fate would have it, Ali’s family would have to make it through these tough times with only one parent.

During these intense years near the end of the war, Ali and his children were too scared to plant crops and, instead, relied entirely on his income from being a curandeiro to the area population. Although his practice didn’t pick up until much later in life, he reportedly received his “powers” at a very young age from his grandfather who had also been a curandeiro. According to Ali, after his grandfather’s death when Ali was 2-3 years old, he became very ill. During this time, Ali experienced dreams where his grandfather would appear and explain the different medicinal properties of various roots. Ali defends his late start as a curandeiro stating that it would have been impossible to start any earlier since he had spent most of his childhood living with that Portuguese family in their house that was painted all white and thus warded off the evil spirits that give him power.

“The devil isn’t accustomed to entering a house painted white” Ali calmly explained.

Expanding this idea about keeping unwanted things out of one’s house, Ali actually tried to protect his family during the war by making a circle around his house with a special kind of root so no one would bother them. And apparently something worked because RENAMO soldiers reportedly passed on all sides of his house but never once actually approached them.

Adjusting to life after the war was rough. All of Ali’s skills surrounding the use of machinery meant next to nothing with no working farm equipment to be found in the area. Instead, Ali resorted to becoming a subsistence farmer and tried his best to provide for his family while still working on the side as a curandeiro. He eventually remarried again and started regularly attending the Friday worship at a reconstructed mosque in Malema, Nampula province (a 2 hour bike ride each way).

To facilitate his Friday worship time, Ali left his wife and children (now 8 in total) behind farming in Mohiua and moved to Nauela in 2003 when its mosque was completed. Being so close to the new mosque, he’s actually able to go there every day to pray and thus has built up quite a relationship with fellow area Muslims. Three years ago, upon the strong recommendation of Nunes, the mosque leader and only current store owner in Nauela, Ali secured a job as a live-in guard for a recently bought colonial-era store. The new owner currently lives in Moloque, but bought the property and just hasn’t had the time or money to fully rehabilitate it yet. Until the time of rehabilitation comes, Ali’s relatively task-free job is secure and allows him to continue being a bike repairman and curandeiro.

Boldly, I ask Ali what people at the mosque think about him being a practicing curandeiro, especially since he keeps referring to it as being the power of “diablo”, the devil. He insists though that everyone at the mosque knows and, although they’ve never come to be seen by him, they’ve never rebuked him for it.

Focusing in on the actual work, Ali informs me that each curandeiro has his/her own specialty – i.e. predicting the future, casting spells, telling you about the unknown, producing natural medicines, etc. Ali allegedly knows how to treat various illnesses with medicinal plants and can use a spinning animal horn filled with money and special roots to respond to questions you need answers to.

Ali’s going rate depends on what exactly you want him to do. The standard is 10 mets for a yes/no question (i.e. – Is my soon-to-be-born child a male?). Supposedly the horn will rotate clockwise if the statement is false and counterclockwise if the statement is true. If you want to know the answers to open-ended questions, however, the price is double (i.e.- Who robbed my house?). In this case, the spinning horn supposedly talks to Ali and he communicates its message to the client (this practice seems pretty dangerous to me!). On the other hand, the medications he dolls out can range from 20 to 50 mets ($1-2 USD) depending on the severity of the illness. A 20 met medicine can supposedly cure things like fevers and headaches while a 50 met medicine can allegedly cure things like a lack of appetite, aching body, hernia, etc.

Although a lot of curandeiros or traditional healers are promoting unstudied or counterintuitive methods of healing, people continue to seek out their treatment today. Historically, there hasn’t been much access to Western medicine in the area and so generations of people have gone to these self-proclaimed healers as their only hope for improvement. Even today at small hospitals and health posts in rural Mozambique, health technicians frequently run out of medicine and can only limitedly help patients (just as it’s tough for a patient in the States to accept that a doctor can’t do much to remedy his/her common cold, it’s tough, perhaps even more so, here since there’s very little understanding of the Germ Theory). This further encourages people to continue to seek out traditional healers who are hard-pressed to identify any illnesses their elixirs supposedly can’t cure.

Working Hard - Pastor Vicente

2011-04-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

Pastor Vicente Alberto, 59

Waiting on a long, wooden bench set out on the church office’s front veranda, I hear the familiar echo of Pastor Vicente heavily striking the worn keys of his antiquated typewriter. The methodical sound, combined with the pleasant smell of eucalyptus leaves wafting in the air, lulls me into a trance. I’m still profusely sweating from the hour-long bike ride to Mihecane, but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying the moment. Staring out at the local primary school students happily playing soccer on their haphazard, dirt field while occasionally greeting passing farmers who are hauling this year’s crops from the surrounding mountains to sell in Nauela, I can’t help but feel that these are the moments that I came to the Peace Corps for.

Eventually, I’m pulled away from my reflections by a soft, yet commanding voice calling me into the dim room where Pastor Vicente, the head of the local União Baptista church, is. After letting my eyes adjust to the contrast in lighting, I now see him sitting comfortably, in typical fashion, with hot tea set out in front of him and a smile stretching across his face. Although the room is filled with many individuals, including other area pastors, Vicente has an air about him that immediately draws all of one’s attention.

Looking around the room at his humbled colleagues, it’s not hard to see that this operation, for better or for worse and like so many others in Mozambique, is a one man show.

It wasn’t always like this though. Vicente has only been the head local pastor for a little over a decade. Before that, Mihecane had a longstanding missionary presence dating all the way back to the turn of the 20th century, but with the advent of Mozambique’s struggle for independence, civil war, and rehabilitation efforts since, the previous hierarchy has been tossed out the window and those who immediately filled the power vacuum are largely still hanging on to that position today.

Sitting down over freshly made tea, the hot water fogging my glasses, I try to delve into the details surrounding the church’s carpentry project designed to help local OVCs. But today, Vicente is not in a work mood. Growing up in an incredibly tumultuous time in his country’s history, he has already done his fair share of development projects and right now he just wants to enjoy his tea and chat…

The local União Baptista church headquarters in Mihecane with it's eucalyptus trees swaying to the side

Born in 1951 to a polygamous father, Vicente Alberto grew up living out of his mother’s house on the banks of the Malapa River working as a farmer. Poor and black in a wealthy Portuguese-dominated society, Vicente’s only opportunity to receive a formal education in his early years came from the nearby protestant mission’s Sunday school which he attended regularly. Thus, at a very early age, the bond between future pastor and church was forged strong.

In order to better understand Pastor Vicente’s place in history with the area church, one must first step back in time to the beginnings of the União Baptista Church in Mihecane, Nauela. All the way back in 1913, Scottish missionaries initially founded the protestant mission in Mihecane dedicated to evangelizing to all of northern Mozambique (now the provinces of Zambezia, Nampula, Niassa, and Cabo Delgado… a HUGE region with literally millions of people in it). Over the next several decades the name of the mission changed several times and eventually settled on African Evangelical Fellowship. In addition to the church, the mission opened a school that went from 1st to 3rd grade, had a Sunday school bible study, and an orphanage. During these early years, many missionaries from Great Britain and Malawi came and went. The school grew and had peculiarities such as a piano, bells, and other musical instruments. During the First World War, the mission was actually attacked by some roaming Germans, killing one of the missionaries, but the mission’s presence in the area continued on through all obstacles and thrived.

It wasn’t until 1959, when Vicente was 8 years old, that the protestant mission in Mihecane was forced close by the Portuguese government because of a series of unfortunate events:

It all started when a new foreign evangelist named Cornelio arrived from Great Britain and started visiting the surrounding villages claiming God had given him supernatural powers. He started associating with many of the area curandeiros, speaking in tongues while praying, and even tried his hand at miraculous healing. Eventually, Cornelio wanted to prove his abilities and reasoned to throw a baby into a fire claiming he’d be able to save the child through the power of God. When he failed to resuscitate the child, however, he and the mission got in a lot of trouble with the local government.

Around this same time, a Mozambican named Ernesto who was working as a tax collector in Alto Molócuè robbed a large sum of money from the Portuguese government and, while fleeing the country, tried to hide with a friend in Mihecane. His friend didn’t feel comfortable taking him in to his house though and, instead, presented him to the head pastor of the mission at the time, Henry Gordon Legg, to turn him into the local authorities. Legg refused, knowing that if they took the man to authorities the fugitive would be killed and the man’s blood would be on his hands. Soon afterwards, the robber fled safely to Malawi and the friend immediately informed the area government about what had transpired with the pastor.

As one can imagine, the Portuguese government, already upset by the recent burning, was infuriated with Legg for not turning the robber in and consequently decided to close the mission (including the church, school, and orphanage… everything). Going a step farther, they also prohibited the local congregation from using the buildings as a punishment. Legg was eventually sent back to England, but, before he departed, he left the entire mission in the hands of a Mozambican named Martino Campos. Under the direction of Campos, the church’s headquarters migrated from Mihecane to the neighboring village of Eleve.

From 1959 to 1961, Vicente stayed at home because there wasn’t another school within walking distance for the young boy. However, in 1962, being a little older and having grown substantially, Vicente began making the daily trek to attend school at Nauela’s Catholic mission. During this time, in addition to going to school, he routinely helped out around the house of Pastor Campos; And while he might not have realized it at the time, seeds were then being sewn into his mind guiding him towards his future profession.

Although it took a while, on July 11th, 1968, at the age of 17, Vicente finally finished 4th grade - which was the highest grade a non-assimilated Mozambican was permitted to complete under Portuguese rule.

It’s important to note that during colonial times a Mozambican man could actually buy an assimilation card, a paper ID, stating that he considered his nationality to be Portuguese rather than Mozambican (this caused quite the controversy when the FRELIMO army later came through to push out the Portuguese during their War for Independence). The card cost 120 escudos, a lot of money at the time for a poor, rural Mozambican, but offered several advantages to its holder. An assimilated Mozambican, for example, was well known in the community and could attend all of the local Portuguese parties as well as go to school with all the Portuguese students. Once done with 4th grade, an assimilated Mozambican could even continue studying in Alto Molócuè or Nampula if he had enough money - Vicente’s family didn’t. Instead, Vicente bought a card with his hard earned money to take advantage of one thing: the parties!

One Portuguese party that still stands out in Vicente’s mind was a celebration surrounding the birthday of the Chefe do Posto during Vicente’s teen years. In the weeks leading up the event, invitations were sent out to all the assimilated Mozambicans instructing them to arrive in the village center at a certain time and date. During these years, there were between 30-40 Portuguese in the area and all of them promptly showed up at the said time and date with their family’s large contribution to the potluck-style dinner: chicken, potatoes, corn, wine, champagne, etc – the party was on!

After an hour or so, the food was still being divvied out, but wine bottles were empty and several Portuguese men were already drunk. And that’s when things got ugly! Yelling across the room at one another, a white store owner finally crossed the line when accusing a white farmer of being so uncivilized that he regularly eats field mice (something poor, rural Mozambicans did). Next thing Vicente knew, an all out war had erupted in the dining area. Vicente and his friends froze and watched in amazement as the white men took slugs at one another. They quickly recovered, however, and hurried back home with their mouths full of new, juicy stories, but little food having actually made it to their bellies.

When Vicente completed 4th grade in 1968, it was obvious that his family wouldn’t have enough money to enable him to continue studying in Molócuè. So, instead, he started working as a “Hey! Boy…” (a do-whatever-he’s-told helper) for a man named Gaspar - one of the six Portuguese store owners in Nauela.

It was at about that time that the church headquarters led by Campos really started to take hold in Eleve. After a difficult, slow transition the church finally began constructing a new sanctuary in Eleve in 1969. After two years of hard labor, the church in Eleve was finally inaugurated on November 11th, 1971 and quickly began to thrive. As the headquarters for all of northern Mozambique’s protestant churches, Eleve benefitted greatly, receiving financial support from all its congregations spread throughout the four-province region. Thus they were able to quickly construct several more buildings in the church’s immediate vicinity, including a seminary with attached dormitories, a church office, a head pastor’s residence, a guest house, a primary school, and a small health post.

The church in Eleve and the remains of the seminary

Amidst all this construction, Henry Gordan Legg returned to Maputo and pushed for the joining of several protestant denominations to form Igreja União Baptista de Moçambique. Although many followed his lead, including Campos, several church leaders broke off at this point and separately founded their own churches (this division would later cause a huge struggle over land rights to the mission’s original property in Mihecane). Around the same time, the Portuguese government actually lifted the ban on the protestant mission’s use of Mihecane, but Martino Campos, having already started constructing so much in Eleve, reasoned to wait for things to settle down for a while before making the move.

From 1972-73 Vicente lived and worked in Eleve as teacher at the church-affiliated primary school. Outside his official teaching schedule, Vicente became an appointed church evangelist to try and reach out to the local children. For a brief moment, things in Eleve were going well and comfortable for all!

The brewing War for Independence in the North didn’t impact Nauela till 1973 when the assimilated Mozambicans, including Vicente, were forced to enlist into the Portuguese army. In an instant, the newly recruited soldiers were uprooted from their calm, rural lifestyles and sent off to be trained for war at the fort on Ilha de Moçambique.

After basic training, Vicente found himself stationed in the province of Manica as a heavy arms specialist shooting canons and mortars. During his down time, Vicente became a hack-electrician, wiring barracks and houses for the Portuguese army in Chimoio, a trade that would pay him much dividend during his life. Even while looking out at the enemy, it never occurred to Vicente that he was actually fighting against a force, FRELIMO, that would soon free and govern the country he grew up in. As the Portuguese forces finally retreated, however, FRELIMO stumbled upon Vicente with his Portuguese assimilation card on hand. Noting his Portuguese citizenship, the freedom fighters dared him to flee to Portugal with the rest of them. Vicente obviously couldn’t, so, instead, he trashed the card and pledged his allegiance to the new Mozambican government.

On September 7th, 1974 the fighting for Mozambique’s independence ended successfully having kicked out the Portuguese colonial government. By the start of the next year, Vicente had arrived back in Eleve and resumed his role as teacher and evangelist at the local primary school. Within weeks of moving back home, on January 17th, 1975, Vicente Alberto married the woman he had long since been committed to, Arlinda Enriques, and before the end of the year, on December 15th, 1975, their first child of 10 (!) was born.

On June 25th, 1975 Mozambique’s government signed the Lusaka Accords (??) with Portugal officially acknowledging its hard-fought independence. Although there had been a change of government, life in Nauela remained startlingly similar for several years to come. Even while most of the area’s white residents had fled, a stubborn handful remained. It wasn’t until 1977, when the communist government moved to nationalize everything: land, schools, religious institutions, hospitals, businesses, etc, that things were really turned upside down.

In a day’s time, Mozambican soldiers invaded Eleve, ransacking it far worse than the War for Independence ever did. It was a free-for-all with soldiers removing the town’s generator, maize mill, farming equipment, etc, and, going a step further, seizing the dormitories for the students, the school, the health post, all the improved housing, and all church buildings except the sanctuary, which the communist government mockingly allowed the church to keep.

In the face of this tragedy, many people, including Vicente and his growing family, dispersed from Eleve. Looking for stability and a future, they moved to the city of Gurue where Vicente found work as an electrician for the Mitilile tea farm. Even as the civil war began and raged outside the city limits, in the heavily protected oasis that was Gurue, Vicente flourished while working his way up the ranks over a 15 year span, eventually becoming the head electrician for the company’s five tea plants.

Not all people were so fortunate, however. Around 1985-86, the civil war between RENAMO and FRELIMO picked up in the Nauela area. RENAMO, heavily financed by regional and world capitalist powers (i.e. – the U.S. and South Africa) trying to rid the world of communism, led an attack aimed at destroying infrastructure and disrupting everyday life. Schools, hospitals, farms, and roads were obliterated while mines and troops were scattered throughout the country to paralyze the people.

Although their presence was felt before then, in 1986 RENAMO finally attacked the agriculture center of Nauela attempting to cripple one of the key food suppliers in the country’s northern region. The outnumbered FRELIMO forces fled the area, leaving behind many civilians, including Vicente’s parents, who were caught and forced to march with RENAMO to the rural post of Molumbo where they were left, scared and disoriented in the bush.

This was the beginning of a series of attacks and counterattacks in the Nauela area by RENAMO and FRELIMO. The losing side would typically run away from the battle in order to look for more supplies and troops (Renamo would normally go looking in Nampula, FRELIMO, on the other hand, Gurue). Then they’d come back and attack again. At one point, FRELIMO told area residents to come build makeshift houses around the base of Mount Nauela so they could better protect them. However, pretty soon after witnessing the back and forth nature of the battles, civilians in the area went into hiding out in the surrounding forest. People would do their best to avoid death – moving about carefully during the day, making clothes from tree bark, only cooking indoors at night – without doing too well for oneself (i.e. – if RENAMO caught you with salt you were assumed to be associating with FRELIMO and thus killed).

Not an uncommon occurrence at the time, one of Vicente’s sisters who had fled into the bush was doing her best to bear the cold one winter night, bundling up in that infamous, heavy, abrasive tree-bark cloth, when something tragic happened. Earlier in the evening, she had made a fire inside her mud hut, in order to not give away her location to RENAMO soldiers, and had fallen asleep huddling close by the fire to benefit from its warmth. She woke up in a state of panic hours later, her baby crying and an intense sensation of pain coming from her lower body: the tree-bark cloth was on fire! In fact, the dry material must have made for excellent kindling as it was already engulfed in flames. Heaving the cloth aside as quickly as possible, it had already severely burned a large section of her upper thigh and, to make matters worse, she knew she wouldn’t be able to seek medical attention on her own.

Lydia Duarte donning a replica of the tree bark clothes commonly used during the civil war. Lydia is about to be appointed as one of the local “regulos”, community leaders. A rare feat in rural Mozambique for a woman.

Luckily, she was able to send a compassionate neighbor to Gurue to find Vicente and beg him to help transport her on a stretcher to Gurue (~60kms) in order to be treated by a doctor. Due to Vicente’s demanding work schedule as a company electrician he wasn’t able to personally make the trip (although he desperately wanted to), but sent four family members who were able to safely get her to Gurue in 3 days time (1 day there and 2 back), walking mostly at night since they were afraid of being caught and murdered by RENAMO troops. When Vicente’s sister finally arrived in Gurue, she was attended to by 2 surgeons from Doctors Without Borders who were working there temporarily to help with the war relief effort. In the short time it had taken to seek medical attention, the wound had begun to rot and the doctors debated whether or not to amputate the leg. In the end, they thoroughly cleaned the wound and let it slowly heal. Vicente’s sister is still alive today, albeit she has a limp, thanks to the courageous rescue efforts and the aid of the foreign doctors.

The story above isn’t the only area’s heroic act in these years during Mozambique’s civil war however. No, in fact, there are many more. At the time, there were actually still two foreign businessmen left in Nauela (1 Portuguese and 1 from Goa). Hearing about them, RENAMO soldiers wanted their blood. Before they could get a hold of them, however, Pastor Campos drove them in the church’s Landrover to Gurue in order to escape. When interrogated about the foreigners’ whereabouts, locals informed RENAMO forces what Campos has done. Instead of killing him for his rebellious acts, the soldiers reasoned to punish Campos by burning the car and made him stand at attention the whole day, from 9am-3pm. He came away from the encounter with inflamed legs and an aching ego, but ultimately suffered more when they later demanded he, along with a group of area pastors, march from Nauela to RENAMO’s base near Morrumbala by foot – the one-way journey took 30 days back then!

During the return, the aging Campos couldn’t go on and was left behind on the trail. Luckily, a nephew got word of his poor circumstance and carried him on his bike the rest of the way back home to Eleve. Campos didn’t fair the worst of all though, yet another pastor actually died during the return and was hastily buried in an unmarked grave on the banks of the Lua River. Even after his return, Campos wasn’t free from persecution. That same year he was deported to the Gurue area and later Quelimane. Soon after his arrival in Quelimane, he became very ill and died there in 1987. Eventually, however, his body was transported back north and was properly buried in a place of honor in Molócuè.

Within the safe confines of Gurue, Vicente received word of his parent’s involuntary relocation to Molumbo. Thus, in 1990 accompanied by allied soldiers, Vicente journeyed through the active warzone to seek out his parents or word of their fate. After arriving and asking around, he was actually able to locate them and safely move them back to Gurue to be with him and his family. At about this same time, the new local head Pastor Elias Guimarãnes traveled from Gurue to Maputo for a nationwide church conference where he was instructed to return as soon as possible to the original mission plot in Mihecane, instead of staying in Eleve since their buildings there were now in ruins.

Almost as soon as the civil war peace agreements were signed, construction started back up in Mihecane in March, 1992 under the supervision of Pastor Elias Guimarãnes. Looking for another church man from the area that he could trust as an auxiliary, Guimarãnes offered the new position of church secretary to Vicente (he had continued his work as an evangelist in Gurue for the church during the war). With the Gurue tea factories now failing, having been hard-pressed throughout the war, Vicente thought it an opportune time to officially join up with the church and finally head back home with Guimarãnes.

Slowly, Vicente gained more and more responsibilities in the church and eventually went back to biblical school (he had also attended biblical school in Eleve from 1971-73) with the idea of one day becoming a pastor. Under the supervision of Mihecane’s first post-independence missionaries, an English couple named Steven and Joanne Whitley who arrived in 1995, Vicente attended classes twice a week and completed a correspondence course. After a year or so of study, Vicente officially became a pastor in 1996 and when Elias Guimarãnes announced that he would soon step down as head pastor due to his declining health, there was little doubt as to who would be his successor. Indeed, in 1998 Vicente Alberto was voted to be head pastor of the local União Baptista Church, Costa Custodio to be the pastor treasurer, and Samuel Selvestre to be the pastor secretary.

	The current group of church leaders, Pastors Selvestre, Vicente, and Basilio (replaced Custodio) from left to right.

In addition to the Whitleys, there was suddenly an influx of post-war foreign aid in the area, including a Canadian couple, Dr. Mark Nelham and his wife Joanne, sent from Doctors Without Borders/Red Cross, Meli Wisbon (or Melanie Wishbone?), an American nurse who had previously been working in Zambia, and a shipping container full of donated clothes. Although Mark and his wife would usually only visit for brief periods (they had a house in Quelimane), the Whitleys and Melanie lived in Mihecane for several years. Melanie eventually left Mihecane as the health situation stabilized in their years following the war, but the Whitleys would have likely stayed many years longer if not for the fact that all the missionaries with the União Baptista church were kicked out of the country in 2001 by host-country-national church leaders.

The sudden expulsion of all the missionaries associated with the União Baptista church in Mozambique was pushed forward by João Vivente Ichaua, the national leader of the church at the time. In 2001, during a routine nationwide meeting in Alto Molócuè, the head leader vented to the mixed gathering of Mozambicans and foreign missionaries, claiming he had no way of making future plans for the church because he was being held completely unaware of the church’s finances. Inspired, he was roughly quoted as having said “Give us 10 years without any foreigners leading this church and see if we’re not better off.” You see, at that time, most, if not all, international financial support was funneled through the foreign missionaries before being presented to the church. If nothing else, this caused a bad perception because Mozambicans would see missionaries traveling around the country in their nice cars, building large houses for themselves, and then not giving money for every whim of the church.

The Whitleys' house in Mihecane.

The house in Mihecane where the nurse Melanie lived.

When the dust settled, all (about 30 in total) missionaries had been kicked out of the country by the church’s national direction so that Mozambicans could take control of the money and their church. Although this decision pleased the Maputo office, many grassroot level churches, including Mihecane, were both stunned and deeply disheartened by the move that ripped their loved and very dedicated companions away from them.

This sudden vacuum in leadership caused the local congregation to lean that much harder on Vicente. During his years as pastor he has had to handle conflicts between area churches over land - who owned what, fight adult illiteracy, mentor other potential pastors in biblical school, grow the church congregation, handle various development projects, not to mention care for and raise his family. He’s now been working with the church for 18 years, 13 of which as a pastor, and is getting excited about the idea of finally retiring. He’s tired and wants to rest. Who can blame him? He’s done an incredible job. The only real thing left for him to do is help transition the church over to the next leader. I’m sure he’ll be up for it.

Green Water, Rice and Thumbs

2011-03-31T04:42:00.000-07:00

Sunday March 13th, 2011
I take advantage of being in Quelimane for computer purposes to make a weekend trip over to Morrumbala for an early St. Patties Day celebration with Amanda, Mica (her site mate), and some other PCVs. Highlight: definitely preparing and chowing down on some all-green-sushi rolls. [BTW, a special shout out for Patrizia: Happy Birthday! :-)]

Amanda in front of our impromptu St. Patties Day sign sporting her ice cold, green water :-)

Yohko, Choi, Mica, and I taking a break from the sushi rolling to smile for the camera

Choi, Amanda, and Yohko stoked because the sushi is SOO good!

Amanda making her very own personal cucumber and avocado roll

The site mates, Mica and Amanda, goofing off :-)

Monday March 14th – Wednesday March 16th, 2011
Surprise! This week the remaining Peace Corps-FGH Volunteers – Josh, Melissa, Katie, and I – find ourselves uprooted, dropped off, and leading an impromptu, FGH-inspired Permaculture training in Maganja da Costa (the home of fellow PCV Josh) with Ovilela, the local PLWHA association… but, knock on wood, things are actually going shockingly well!

Josh and I are heading up the training, me being more of the information guy and him more of the community relations guy, and although things are a little fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants… it’s going smoothly. The flow of the training is pretty seamless, and there’s a good mix between theory and practice. My Permaculture test runs in Nauela are definitely paying their dividends! I feel like I am really connecting with the audience… joking with them, asking questions, involving them. It’s great!

Some association members dancing to kick off the morning hands on sessions

Everyone all smiles after the singing and dancing

Me instructing the group on double digging techniques

Let's start the REAL work...

More double digging... BTW, the Mozambican participants are a lot more impressive when using a hoe than PCVs :-)

Some association members taking a rest as we tag team it up.

Us standing over our completed permaculture garden! YAY!

In the end though, is it really making a long-term impact? Will these people go home and start implementing at least some of these agriculture techniques? Far away in Nauela/America, I probably won’t ever know the answer and, since I don’t believe there is a monitoring and evaluation plan, I’m not sure if anyone will. I mean, it doesn’t seem to be anyone’s priority is to go check and see if the participants are actually putting the knowledge to work.

Honestly though, from people’s initial reaction and enthusiasm, there are some of the bigger principles that I really hammered home that I naively hope will stick… 1) not burning crop refuse, instead putting it back into the earth and 2) water control. The rest – planting pattern, plant spacing, double digging, composting, seedling transplanting – can go to the wayside without me feeling like the training was a failure.

Sunday March 20th, 2011
I just discovered the other day that with my new cell phone I can get internet at my site through mcel whenever I go to the spots that have cell phone service (Amanda had tried this in the past with her internet phone and it didn’t work for some reason…). Using this new revelation to the fullest, I have avidly followed the Gator’s run thus far in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament… Sweet Sixteen here we come baby! Go Gators!

***

On a side note, during my last trip to Quelimane I got a ride from a young Mozambican man who was playing a mix CD of some of the country's up-and-coming musicians... including a guy named Duas Karas who covered Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind, but did it up Mozambican style. Check it out:

[BTW my vote for the song's LEAST flattering line about Maputo is: "todas fazem teste de HIV, mais nunca pasa-la" (Translation: "Everyone takes HIV tests, but never passes them")... Gah!]

Monday March 21st, 2011
All excited and energized because of last week’s successful training, I call up Gaspar, my FGH provincial supervisor, today to ask if we can start planning the week-long Permaculture training-of-trainers that we discussed at the end of our time in Maganja da Costa - 3 days learning the method and 2 days to practice teaching a local association. He’s not sure though (i.e. – probably not!) because planting season is almost over and many of the FGH ground workers who would be trained are going to be spending 15 days in Quelimane next month in a training on “community activism”.

SERIOUSLY!?! Sounds about 14 days too long! How typical… at least a lot of money will be spent and it’ll produce some high numbers though… GAH!

Regardless of what Gaspar ends up deciding, it makes me not want to have a Permaculture training with those guys anyways because A) the people would only be coming because they’re being told to by their boss and royally compensated for it B) the next latest and greatest training would surely be soon to follow and whatever plans I’ve made with the workers will quickly just be a distant memory (exactly like the December nutrition training is now!) and C) these “highly-trained” workers need to actually spend some time in the field at some point and I don’t want to keep them locked up in just another training for one more day.

***

End of Summer/Autumn Harvest: It’s the most wonderful tiiiiime of the year! (cue background music…)
1) There’s food: Chilling outside Wiado’s house as the sun sets behind the distant mountains, Sara and Olympio roll in on their bikes, fresh off a long day in the fields, with a large sack full of fresh corn and oranges. The image in my head still gives me goosebumps: everyone in the family, even the stoic Olympio, is happy, smiling and laughing, playing around, snatching from the tall mound of fresh oranges to snack on. There is lustful discussion of preparing the corn for breakfast tomorrow. The family is huddled around in a circle with full bellies… and hope!… because they all know that this is just the beginning. Indeed, there’s plenty more to come!

2) There’s money: I walk out of my house this morning to find my absentee next-door neighbor finally cleaning up his overgrown yard. Apparently, he’s about to restart the construction on his halfway constructed house now that his fields of feijão manteiga are ready to be harvested and sold. He currently lives far outside of town, but has been making slow progress on this house since my arrival in December ‘09. Last year he put a tin roof on the house. This year he’s going to level the floor, put in windows and doors, and maybe cement around the outside of the house to protect against harsh weather. According to the owner, if things in the fields go as planned, he’ll have enough money to finish up and move in this year.

Friday March 25th, 2011
Lately I’ve been working a lot on storytelling project that I’ll eventually be posting on the Working Hard in Mozambique page on my site. Soon to come: traditional healers, carvão makers, and me with an axe! Stay tuned for updates and make sure to check it out periodically because I don’t think it shows up on the email feed :-)

Saturday March 26th, 2011
Families: We all have ‘em. We all want ‘em. Now what are we going to do with ‘em?! (Anyone get the Jimmy Buffet reference? – play on quote from “Fruitcakes”)

Although family dynamics are quite different here in Mozambique than they are in a “typical” American home, there is one thing that is a staple around the world: family drama! And with the average nuclear family size here surpassing 10 people… things can get crazy and out of hand pretty often! Take, for example, the latest Nauela family fallout:

Arriving back from Amanda and I’s trip to the States in late February I discovered that the gang at Wiado house was one member less than what it used to be. At first I didn’t think anything of it, assuming they had just slept over at another family member’s house or at the lean-to near the family machamba, but after a week or so of having not seen them I blurted out the obvious question, Where is Angel?!

The mom sighed and looked down at her own bandaged arm and recalled the story…

Turns out, during my absence, Angel, the oldest daughter, secretly stole and gave away the dress of Sara, the younger daughter, to a close friend. When Sara discovered what had occurred, she immediately ran crying to their mom in appeal. The mom jumped into action, grabbing Angel’s arm and demanding she go retrieve the dress at once. But Angel, upset and in panic mode, yelled out and bit down hard on her mom’s arm (until she bled, mind you!).

When Wiado arrived home in the afternoon, he immediately got an earful from all accounts about what had transpired earlier in the day. After hearing the story out, he didn’t strike his daughter (as many other parents might have), but simply informed Angel than she now had do all of her mom’s chores (a mother’s list of daily tasks in Mozambique alone is practically endless!), in addition to her own, until her mom got better. Relieved to escape a worse physical punishment, she quickly accepted without thinking about the deal’s ramifications. The first few days were beyond exhausting and by the end of the first week Angel had already made up her mind: she was going to run away from home. The next day, she left home heading South carrying with her only the clothes on her back… and they hadn’t heard from her since.

It’s been over a month now.

***

That was the story we all knew up until today when Fernando Jamal and I biked out to Niharipa (Mozambicans would say that’s “La!” => 2-3 hour bike ride each way) to see some area youth soccer coaches who I’ve been working with through the Lurdes Mutola Foundation.

A harmless snake we came upon hanging out on the side of the road

Despite repeatedly asking directions, we got lost during the journey there and ended up in Mitxaiane - the place Amanda and I had visited with IBIS almost a year ago. On a good note, all the improvements there are pretty much the same as they were a year ago... except now they have this nifty sign :-)

After a final grueling uphill stretch (pushing my bike the whole way), I arrived in Niharipa drenched in sweat and promptly made myself comfortable sprawling out on a local family’s esteira, drinking dirty well-water, and snacking on apple-bananas (they are bananas… but taste like apples! How crazy is that?! Do we have these in the States? If so, why hadn’t I tried ‘em before!?!). The family sends their son to go seek out the area soccer coaches who are working in their machambas and I am content just chilling for awhile. Things were pretty calm and normal laying there on the esteira when all of a sudden a familiar voice calls out “Mi-kel! Mi-kel!”

Angel!

Beaming as if she’d never been so happy to see a familiar face in all her life, Angel ran up and settled down alongside me. We catch up for a bit, her shocking me with the news of her *recent marriage* and newly-acquired *husband* (turns out while Amanda, Yohko, and I were climbing Tatu the day before my birthday we were very likely looking out into the distance at Niharipa totally unaware of Angel’s-spur-of-the-moment wedding that was taking place), but then heads off to prepare some lunch for me when the coaches finally arrive.

Fernando Jamal and one of the coaches' moms with her family's raised granary in the back.

Our host insisting on making a special treat for the occasion

A heaping scope of milled corn for the xima preparation

Mixin' up some xima for our lunch

Some recently stored corn inside the granary

The disappearing act herself: Angel!

Partly my own fault due to the exhausting trip, our meeting is rather uneventful and anticlimactic. Sure we talked about some problems (the school apparently won’t let them play on their soccer field during the week because its proximity to the open-air classrooms is distracting to the students), made a game plan for the next few days/weeks and watched a little of their practice, but the real success of the day was definitely the adventure of just getting there and interacting with some new community members.

Salvador and Arsenio, the two area coaches laughing off some of their recent problems

Fernando Jamal looking over his record keeping

Salvador and Ansenio's soccer team

A local soccer stud showing off his ball handling skills

After meeting with the soccer coaches, I went back towards the local primary school and sat down for lunch with Angel and her new husband. He’s nice and all… but the whole time we’re sitting there I can’t help but think about how weird and different this feels. It hasn’t even been a month since she’s left and, although she didn’t say this, I can tell how much she misses her family. Longingly staring at a young neighborhood child approaching me to shake my hand, she sighs and explains how much the child reminds her of Salimo, her youngest brother - I definitely know the feeling of missing one’s family and not being able to be with them. I eventually leave, but before I go she instructs me to send her best to the family back in Nauela and to tell them that she’ll try to come home and visit this upcoming weekend.

The return trip back to Nauela doesn’t take as long –still 2 ½ hours though - since I know my way and I don’t take any pictures. As soon as I pull up to my house, I take a quick bucket bath and then immediately head over to tell Wiado about what transpired during my trip. I find him in the back portion of his yard building a latrine, and insists we talk while he finishes up for the day. As I relate the news concerning Angel he still refuses to stop, pretending to be uninterested and indifferent, but you can tell he’s hurt.

He didn’t even know she was married yet.

From his come words like “Good for her”, but anyone can tell he doesn’t mean that. In fact, just as soon as he’s done with that thought out comes accusations that the new husband is a thief for not having come and asked for the right to marry his daughter. Sizing up Angel’s promised visit, he doubts she’ll actually come around anytime soon because he believes she’s too scared to return home after having left on such bad conditions.

Oh drama… :-(

Americaland - Before and After My Trip

2011-03-10T08:31:00.003-08:00

Last blog post - November 30th - Humm! Where to begin? Where to begin? Well let’s start with the fact that I just went to America and back! YAY!

Now you tell me… How CRAZY is that?

And while the trip by itself doesn’t excuse me from not having posted in so long, I figure the fact that I DID get to see so many of you just a few weeks ago while Amanda and I were in Gainesville/Orlando makes up for it a little, right?! :-)

Either way…. now, without further ado, a 3-month recap (albeit a few parts are being left out to not be TOO long… email me if you want the additional blog posts)!

***

Friday November 26th, 2010 – My first wedding in Mozambique!
My foot is almost out the door to start my latest trip (heading to Mocuba for a belated Thanksgiving dinner with PCVs before eventually continuing on to Quelimane in order to renew my visa), when Pastor Vicente swings by and invites me to come to his son’s wedding in Mehecane.

I can’t resist :-)

To put you all at ease, the wedding came and went without a hitch. Daniel and his wife got married and, from what I witnessed, had a great time with all the arrangements (it’s hard to tell though because in most formal events in Mozambique the participant’s faces aren’t supposed to be very expressive). The ceremony was relatively Westernized (the bride wearing a white dress, rings exchanged, the typical vows said…) with a few note worthy exceptions: 1) The bride and groom both started the ceremony in their dressing chambers waiting to be called out in song by the crowd. First the groom came out, then, with some coaxing, the bride. At that point, everyone ran to their seats and, once in place, the bride and groom followed, walking down the aisle together followed by the bride’s family. 2) The ceremony doesn’t end with our famous phrase “You may kiss the bride!” In fact, the couple barely even holds hands during the event. Instead, the climax of the ceremony is when the whole congregation leaves their seats to come up and hug/kiss the newly married couple. 3) Since the area is traditionally matrilineal, the ritual centered around the bride’s family… i.e. - the parents stood behind the soon-to-be-married couple during the entire ceremony, the couple sat with the bride’s family during intervals, and the first people to sign as witnesses to the wedding were the bride’s parents…

After the ceremony was complete, everyone poured outside the church and accompanied the newlyweds to the reception at the bride’s family’s house (a few miles away!). Since there were no cars to be had though, everyone was forced to walk. Onlookers were actually assigned to hold umbrellas over the couple’s heads for the length of the journey due to the combination of the midday heat and stuffy clothes. To celebrate and keep spirits high despite the hardships, everyone sang and, since the walk would be a long one, people had even brought along tape players to blast music when the crowd tired of singing…

Crazy, huh!? Below are some pictures from the special day :-)

An usher waiting outside the groom’s dressing room before the ceremony begins

Women singing for the bride and groom to come out and wed already ;-)

The priest escorting the bride and groom down the aisle follow by the bride’s family

The bride and groom at the altar

The pastor reading from I Corinthians 13

The wedding band – it’s official!

The newly married couple with her parents getting ready to leave the church.

The newly married couple leaving the church through the makeshift archway under the cover of umbrellas.

Also, here are some pictures from Thanksgiving in Mocuba…

This is a random, yet priceless, chapa pic taken on the way to Mocuba. 3 goats and 1 chicken (all alive!) tied to the car’s roof… oh Mozambique!

Yohko cooking up some veggies

Noemi and Amanda stuffing the turkey

Amanda with the spread before her

Noemi, Jordan, Yohko, and Amanda posing for the camera before taking a seat

The whole Thanksgiving dinner crew sitting down and enjoying our meal

Noemi, Amanda, and I pigleting on some awesome chocolate cake

Thursday December 2nd – Thursday December 9th, 2010
“Why am I here again?” is the question I’m asking myself on the 8th day of FGH’s nutrition training here in Quelimane. I’ll admit that the training material is interesting, but it has been drawn out for WAAAY too long. Something that probably could have been summed up for me in a long afternoon or a 1 day lecture has for some reason been dragged out for 10 days. And I’m NOT lifting myself up on a pedestal here! Trust me, it’s not like I’m the only one who feels this way… looking around the room, literally NO ONE is paying attention. Almost all the other participants have their laptops open and are on the internet/email or are completely zonked out, gazing off into space. This is no rare moment either… it’s been like this for days now…

The kicker though, comes later that day as we are polled by the presenters, now that we’re almost at the end of the training, What could be improved for the next training session? Silence. Finally, the head presenter calls out someone from the audience and he thinks hard… after a long pause, what does he come up with? “I think the main problem with this training is that it is TOO SHORT!” Immediately the crowd wakes up and erupts with support. “Yes! For a training of trainers, it should have been AT LEAST 15 days!” being the general consensus.

Gah! Now we’re finally arriving at the crux of the problem, aren’t we? This whole training isn’t actually about teaching anyone anything (I personally doubt that we’ll ever even end up training anyone on the ground level about this stuff). Sadly, just like a lot of the other NGO stuff, this training is all about the money…

What do I mean? Well, in order to fully explain that question, I first have to tell you who is actually in the room, what they do, and what their motivations are… There are three general groups of people participating in this training. 1) PCVs 2) District-level NGO ground workers 3) Provincial-level NGO office management. The first two groups, the PCVs and district-level NGO ground workers are relatively similar. We work on the community level, but come to these meetings because we “have to” (you probably could get out of them if you have something else important going on back at site) and more importantly because we get a fat per diem check, sweet lodging, lots of free food, and an excuse not to do any “real” work for the duration of the trip (you can usually sit around in an air-conditioned room checking your email for days on end if you just keep your mouth shut)... oh, and I guess we come to these meetings to learn something too, right? ;-) The provincial-level NGO office management meanwhile are in these meetings… well I’m not exactly sure why… partly to provide some sort of supervision or insight (although they usually only impede the progress of the other lower ranked workers)… partly because of the free food I’m sure… possibly avoiding doing other work… possibly because there’s nothing better for them to do... or possibly because they are trying to inflate the training’s overall numbers.

That last point, although not necessarily valid (I don’t know if the management counts themselves in the final numbers or not, but I’d be willing to bet they do even though they’ll never be implementing the material), starts to touch on the overall, systematic problem we have here in Mozambique which is: These over-funded NGO’s in Mozambique (thanks to funds coming from USAID or PEPFAR), in general, have way more money than they know what to do with. After a year of working here, I honestly believe I’ve seen enough to assess that the capacity of the system is just too low to be efficient with all this funding and the targets are too high. Both of which lead to problems.

To me, it seems that many NGO’s struggle to even be able to doll out their money fast enough since they have to do it in a semi-legitimate fashion. In Zambezia, the general consensus (because it’s not done by just FGH!) must be that the most efficient/least corruptible way of spending money quickly and producing a numerical result is having all these trainings where employees are shipped in from all over the province to be given meals, expensive lodging, and handed per diem. In a way, it’s actually a perfect system: bringing together a lot of people that can’t wait to get their hands on money (I’ve said before that working for an NGO in Mozambique is one of the most sought after jobs) with a business that can’t wait to give it to them.

Results are demanded for all this money spent though, so they must bring in a lot of people or have a lot of trainings so that numbers can be high. And now, with the year quickly coming to its end, the pressure is high to perform to the max.

So here I am… learning my lesson the hard way.

***

As a side note, in other provinces, instead of doing all these trainings (or in addition to all of them) many NGOs have elected to subcontract out most of their work to Community-Based Organizations (CBOs)… Which basically amounts to seeking out an organized group of ground-level workers, who are actually from the community where they’ll be working, and then building up the local capacity… Sounds promising, right?! Well, unfortunately, the over-funded NGOs are oftentimes so busy frantically looking for new partners to give money to that they don’t generally have time to go back and really monitor/evaluate the work that these small CBOs are doing. Indeed, I know of several PCVs who have witnessed the leaders of these CBOs simply taking their organizations allotted sum of money and building themselves a new house and/or buying a new car.

***

Other thoughts about NGO’s in Mozambique and possibly around the world

-Oftentimes international NGOs start at the top and work their way down. Their first hirings are for management staff and, even years later, there are few actual community workers. Even those NGOs that have ground workers, the practices that they employ are typically thought up in some executive board room somewhere without being ground tested and proven first. In fact, I’ve seen that a lot of NGO’s spend most of their time switching from one strategy to another because they can’t ever figure out something that really works and sticks in their communities.

-The best evidence of “work” being done by an NGO is the main office’s comings and going – phone calls, faxes, copies, cars, etc… very little is actually getting done in the communities even when the workers do get out there.

-Because of the bidding process of how to get funding (as it has been explained to me), NGO’s are pitted against each other and end up having to try to bite off more than they can chew. Ex. - one NGO might tell the donor that with the 5 million dollar grant they can train 5000 trainers and thus help 100,000 people. Another NGO then comes up and says with the same money they can train 6000 and help 200,000. Yet another NGO… (you get the picture)… I don’t know how they even come up with these numbers, but it just gets a little ridiculous in my opinion. NGOs end up committing to serving an entire province without having any infrastructure at the ground level. Furthermore, since projects normally only last a few years, by the time they’ve made their hires it seems the project is already almost complete and the process starts all over again.

***

Other random thoughts while sitting through the training

-So often we spend SO MUCH time talking about helping the absolute WORST case scenarios (one example we spent 2 hours discussing: a single mom with several kids who is HIV positive, sick and unable to work, non-compliant and possibly resistant to available HIV meds, a social outcast, and already used upher allotted food support from the government/NGO… now what do we do?!). Which begs the question, Should aid be FOCUSED on going to the MOST needy? I don’t know, but it reminds me of my time working for ASP when we actually had to turn families away because their house was too much work (not exactly the same situation, I know… but still). Like I said before, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this thought yet but maybe we should start spending more time trying to help those whose actions hint that they are up and coming and just need a tiny hand up, not just a handout. It’s a fine line though because I know you CAN win over these “lost causes”… but it requires the right set of people coming with a lot of sustained effort… and a lot of times something that isn’t typically involved in NGO help: God.

-At the beginning of the nutrition training we all went around and introduced ourselves. Randomly all the men, without prompting, openly bragged about how many children they had from the SAME woman (i.e.- that they hadn’t had many children from many different wives)… it caught me off guard, that’s all.

-Last comment, the new Moz 15 PCVs arrived in Quelimane this week. FGH only received 1 PCV, Angela, this year. Hope things will go better with her than they’ve been going with our group.

Friday December 24th, 2010 - Christmas Eve
Here I am in Quelimane all excited and getting ready for an expat Christmas party tomorrow, totally unaware of what tragedies are transpiring back in Nauela… (I’m informed when I get back to site a few days later)

Early in the morning, the 3 year-old granddaughter of Janeiro, the owner of my house, wakes up crying and sick with what everyone pegs as a simple high fever. The family takes the child to the medical agent’s house (no one was at the hospital at the time because of the holidays) but, regardless of the symptoms, all they have available to give her is aspirin. The family graciously accepts the medicine to administer back at home only to see the granddaughter’s health condition quickly worsen. In fact, within hours she begins vomiting mysterious black liquids. At that point, the family knows something is wrong, but, without any highly trained doctor or specialized medicine, there’s not much more that can be done besides pray that the illness passes. The child loses consciousness during the night and, consequently, the community moms come over and pray till morning. At this point though, the local medical staff comes over and pronounces the child dead :-(

This situation is a just a peek into the causes of Mozambique’s high under-5 child mortality rate, 163.7 (per 1,000 live births), compared the U.S.’s which is 7.8 (per 1,000 live births). Although NGO’s and governments will often ask for money to help solve these problems, oftentimes the solutions that I see to these problems on the ground aren’t always to throw more money at it. Indeed, I believe that, without importing foreign aid workers, it’s simply a matter of waiting it out, hoping that modest levels of foreign aid, political stability, and education can improve the capacity of the local workers and systems to deal with these crises.

Saturday December 25th, 2010 – Merry Christmas!
Amanda, Bern, and I walk into the house, take one whiff of the fresh-out-of-the-oven turkey, and immediately feel at home: Americans popping out of the seams, presents under a decorated Christmas tree, and food galore… sure does sound like a good ole’ fashion Christmas back in the States. Odd thing is though that this party is actually going on right here in Quelimane courtesy of the Hiltons, an American/Australian missionary family that have lived in Mozambique for more than a decade (Brian, the dad, works as a provincial supervisor for World Vision’s agriculture projects).

The party goes late in to the night with all kinds of festivities: devotional time, group Christmas carols, a white elephant gift exchange (Have I been in Mozambique for too long when even the gag gifts are looking pretty sweet to me?!), a huge potluck dinner, and a few rounds of cards with the Hiltons to finish up the night; hands down a better Christmas experience than last year’s (i.e. – when I was stuck inside the house by myself in Nauela while it poured down rain outside).

Amanda showing off the Christmas decorations that we made in Morrumbala

Ethan, a PCV in Quelimane, on Christmas morning all excited because our ghetto Xmas stockings are full!

Amanda and I about to empty our stockings on Christmas morning

A group of expats singing Christmas carols at the Hilton’s house

Amanda, Sally, and I with our presents after the gift exchange

Amanda and I so happy to see a decorated Christmas tree!

Despite all the fun though, I still miss you all back home like crazy! Merry Christmas to you all! Hopefully I’ll be seeing you soon when I come to Florida in January/February :-)

Tuesday December 28th, 2010
Back at site again and, Guess what?! … I’ve officially called Nauela “home” for 1 year now. Crazy!

No better way to celebrate than me restarting my garden today by planting the seedling flats. Hopefully the seeds will germinate in time for me to transplant them before I head to America! Let’s keep our fingers crossed…

Thursday December 30th, 2010 – Monday January 3rd, 2011 – Happy New Years!
Standing on the side of the road on the outskirts of Nampula City being harassed by two wandering policemen, I can’t help but think about how the smallest action can have such a profound impact on everything following it. If we had just arrived a few minutes earlier or later… caught a slower/faster ride here or sat down to have a bite to eat there…. things could be totally different. Ironically, as the police pester me, I am lamenting the fact that things weren’t different, when, if I could see into the future, I would be counting my blessings.

Gritting my teeth while re-explaining to the underpaid police officer that everything IS, in fact, fine with my passport/visa when he keeps insisting otherwise, it becomes blatantly obvious that all he wants is a bribe… and anyone who knows me well, knows that I’m far too stubborn to give into THAT! Meanwhile, Amanda has given up on the discussion, deciding it best to just continue flagging down rides. One car stops and talks to Amanda. Another car passes, turns around and pulls up. Assessing the situation (white people being harassed by corrupt police), both drivers quickly step out to see what’s up.

“Don’t say anything. Let me handle this!” says the middle eastern-looking man in his broken English. And handle it do they. Before Amanda and I even know what’s going on the first driver has paid off the cops (200 mets ~ $6USD – what a deal!) and we’re being escorted into a minivan by the English-speaking Pakistani-looking man. His 6 person family is already squished in, but there’s always room for 1 or 2 more, right?

The whole series of events has Amanda and I unnerved and a little frazzled. Where are we heading? And possibly more importantly, Who are these people we’re with?! Our worries are calmed a bit though as we’re offered sodas and crackers by the children before even having time to catch any names, including that of our day’s savior… turns out he’s Hanane (Huh-na-nee).

We promptly learn that Hanane and his family are on their way to Chocas to celebrate New Years and, before they even know where we’re heading/what we’re doing/who we are, they offer to take us with them. Caught off guard by the hospitality, we politely refuse their generous offer, insisting that we already have plans to go to Ilha de Mozambique to meet up with some fellow PCVs. En route, however,I receive a text informing me that all of our Zambezia friends are tired of traveling, so they’re dipping out on us last minute… “but have a great time!” they say… thanks guys ;-) We vocalize our letdown and immediately Hanane renews his offer to take us to Chocas... “there’s even an extra room for you!”

We’re sold.

***

Chocas was everything it had been billed to be… and more (!) since we got to spend our time here with an awesome family and because we didn’t have to pay for a thing!

Me and Hanane’s son chilling at the beach house

Amanda and I in front of Chocas’s beach

Hanane and I getting ready to hit the water for an evening swim

Me and the girls posing on New Year’s Eve

Despite the fact that Amanda and I were staying at a beach front condo, one of the highlights of the trip actually had nothing to do with the water or sand. No… in one word it was: Lemurs! Ever since we had arrived in Chocas, a constant crowd of locals had been huddled outside the condo trying unsuccessfully to sell the family random things like mangos, fish, necklaces, etc. This time, however, someone caught the young girls’ attention when offering up 2 lemurs for sale (only 60 mets each ~ $2USD). Although I morally objected to the purchase, I didn’t feel I was in a position to argue with our host… that and they REALLY were the cutest, most docile, adorable little creatures ever!

To be honest though, Amanda nor I are really 100% sure they were Lemurs (if so, they were a particularly small variety), but Chocas/Ilha is very close to Madagascar so maybe. Whatever they were (Hanane’s family kept calling them “squirrels” in Portuguese), they were really fun to play with and the best part is that they escaped from their makeshift cage in the night, so everyone came out a winner :-)

Amanda loving the lemur on her shoulder

Another pleasant, unexpected surprise during the trip was that our fellow beachgoers in Chocas went all out and put on a very impressive, personal fireworks show to bring in the New Year. Although one in America might think that fireworks on New Years is nothing special, I definitely wasn’t holding my breath expecting to see anything more than a sparkler.

***

Interestingly, my Lonely Planet guidebook says this about Chocas: “an agreeable day trip or excursion, except during holiday weekends when it’s completely overrun”. Sure enough, arriving in Chocas for New Year’s weekend, the small beach town is packed. One thing the guidebook failed to mention though is the nuance that literally ALL the visitors are business owners in Nampula City of Indian/Pakistani heritage. I’m not hating. On the contrary, it made for a surprising and intriguing cultural experience while interacting within this small social niche.

First thing to know about Chocas when overrun by the Nampulanites… there are 3 streets in the town and if you want to go anywhere fast, don’t go down the middle one. Seriously, it becomes a parking lot with everyone in their tricked out rides (Landrovers, H2s, ATVs, etc) honking their horns pretending like they’ve got somewhere to be when the town’s so small no one really needs to be in their cars anyways.

Watching this madness unfold while sitting by and chatting with some of our host’s friends, I pondered out loud “How in the world local business owners can afford these cars here in Mozambique?”… I mean, I know there is profit to be made here, but THAT much, really?! Without really expecting an answer, someone chimed in and informed me that almost all the cars and ATVs here in Chocas have actually been allegedly “stolen” from their original South African owners who really smuggled them into Mozambique and sold them on black market then claimed the insurance on them.

“That’s just the way things are done around here. If you try to do things legally, the government will be the one’s robbing you” says the family friend trying to assuage me… huh, apparently so…

***

On New Years Day Amanda and I wake up early and leave Chocas so we can finally make it to our trip’s original destination: Ilha de Moçambique (Mozambique Island). Although only one of our PCV friends will be there, we don’t know if/when we’ll be back to these parts and we really want to make the visit not because of its beaches, but rather because of its significance in Mozambique’s history.

Amanda and I crossing the bridge to Ilha in the back of a pickup truck

To all you back at home who probably don’t know this, Ilha de Moçambique was actually the first capital city used by the Portuguese to govern and trade with the area during colonial times. The country of Mozambique lends its name from this tiny island which, although no one is certain, is possibly derived from the the name and title of an area leader at the time “Musa bin Mbiki”. Ilha had been relatively uninhabited up until the Portuguese founded Stone Town on the island because of its lack of fresh drinking water (they relied heavily on collecting rainwater in large cisterns back then… water is pumped in today from the mainland, however). In spite of this obstacle, the Portuguese choose the island for the advantages it offered in trading and navigation.

In its heyday, Ilha was a huge navy base, missionary center, and trading point where ships would load up on goods from all over the mainland (ie - beads, ivory, wood, etc), but was especially infamous for its thriving slave market. Slaves were brought from all over the east coast of Africa and sent off on packed ships to the East.

During our two day stay in Ilha, Amanda and I met up with some other PCVs, toured the historical sites of the island, and even snuck in some time at the “swimming beach” (I’ll explain later…). The island is basically divided into two parts: the historical Stone Town and the relatively newer Makuti Town.

Stone town is located on the high-sitting part of the island where the Arab and Portuguese traders long ago oversaw the construction of the large stone buildings that still exist today. The fort is the largest and most impressive building still intact on the island today, but other buildings, such as the former Governor’s house, have been rehabilitated and are in use or open to the public.

Amanda and I in front of some old port entrance

The historic governor’s house, where Mozambique was originally governed from by the Portuguese

The island’s old catholic church

Me getting ready to eat a snail… chewy… but not too bad with some lemon and spice :-)

Amanda, Megan, and I in front of Ilha’s fort

Me looking out of the Governor’s window inside the fort

Amanda, Alyssa and I manning the fort’s canons

Our tour guide showing us where/how the Portuguese would execute people. Turns out, they’d have them stand where he is and simultaneously shoot at the prisoner from positions all around.

The historic slave market, now memorial garden, where slaves were once brought in and sold to the highest bidder

Happy New Years! I’m making the face I am, BTW, because the sign also says “Boas Festas” which translates to “Happy Holidays”, but usually a phrase someone says to you when they’re really just asking of money.

On the other hand, Makuti town is located on the low-setting part of the island where the majority of today’s native islanders live. The height differential from one side of the island to the other is especially so because the Portuguese ordered slaves to dig out and lug over all the stones to construct Stone Town from the other side of the island, largely uninhabited at the time. Makuti town is now very much over populated with almost no space in between any of the shacks. Thus, there is little room for amenities such as bathrooms. Instead the locals must resort to using the largest toilet in the world - the ocean. In fact, it is very common to see someone openly popping a squat alongside one of the islands coastal areas leaving little doubt as to what he is doing. Therefore, many of the island’s beaches are recommendable for swimming.

This is a view from street level. Notice how low the houses and close together are?! And they aren’t in the best of shape either…

That said, in Stone town, where most of the tourists stay and visit, amenities are plentiful. During our visit we heard from numerous sources that there’s already serious talk of tearing down parts of Makuti town to build more tourism accommodations. They say they’ll relocate the people to who knows where with promises of them receiving better lodging too… but we’ll see about all that!

As you can see, although Ilha is a tourist destination there is still significant poverty and struggles in the area. Thus, there’s actually a Moz 14 PCV who lives and teaches at the secondary school on the island. Tough job, but great location :-)

Wednesday January 5th, 2011
On my way to Mehecane today I was pushing my bike up a large hill when I came across a disabled woman whose crippled legs hung below her in “Indian-style” as she moved down the mountain, swinging on her arms in a monkey-like pattern. While I was panting and exhausted, she passed me on the treacherous mountainous path in relatively good spirits, not even breaking a sweat (with a baby tied to her back nonetheless… the baby was also crippled so I figure it’s a genetic disorder). Man!, here I am grouchy about biking all this way and she’s pulling herself up and down mountains on her hands without any complaint whatsoever.

If I hadn’t figured it out already, it’s confirmed later that day that she’s actually quite a capable woman. Not only is she able to get around, but she also works in her field planting and harvesting crops as well as pounding and cooking her own food. Turns out she used to be quite social, but then withdrew from community institutions (like the church) because she had developed a harsh attitude that turned a lot of people off.

Unfortunately, I’m told that the young woman is all-too-frequently located at one of the area bars and can become very aggressive if she has drunk too much. At one point, she even reportedly attacked and tried to strangle a passing truck driver who demanded she (drunk at the time) get out of the middle of the road to let his car pass. Although she has settled down and gotten married recently, most of her children are from other men she’s slept around with.

It’s incredibly depressing to me that she has worked as one of the local prostitutes for a long time likely because she saw it as her best and only option to be able survive during hard times….

I mean, Who can really judge or blame her? It’s not like there are any social services or infrastructure out here that can support someone in her condition (i.e. - even if they gave her a wheelchair bike, she wouldn’t be able to use it too much because of the steep hills and rough terrain). As the son of Special Ed teacher and a brother of an autistic teen, if I wasn’t before, I’m especially aware and grateful now for all the opportunities, services, and support that America offers those with disabilities… it truly is one of the great aspects of our country. I hope we keep on improving those efforts and that our future advances will not be limited to just within our country’s borders.

***

As a side note, (now several weeks later) just yesterday I came across a man in Eleve who uses a wheelchair bike. Ever since birth, his legs have been deformed and only permitted him to limp around his house with the help of a cane. Before getting the bike, if he ever wanted to travel some distance (even within the village), he had to rely on the force of his family members and neighbors. Now, although he still requires help to go from village to village, he is largely able to commute from one side of town to another without help due to the area’s flat ground. A definite success!

Monday January 10th, 2011
As I type this, there’s a Vodacom cell phone tower that’s officially under construction in Nauela. They are working really hard and are a real professional group of workers who seems to know exactly what they are doing. I actually talked at length with the supervisor and he informed me that their company builds these all the time, having already constructed 300+ cell towers in Mozambique.

My head is swimming!

I can’t even imagine how nice it’ll be to just be able chill in my house and talk to people via my cell phone. Courtesy of Bluetooth, I might even be able to surf the internet on my computer here in Nauela (I’ll just have to invest in a nice, fancy phone once the cell tower is up and running…)

Not having to go up the road to make a call would be awaesome 1) just for convenience, 2) for safety reasons at night, and 3) because, now that it’s the rainy season, it seems like there is a downpour almost every evening/night!

A panoramic of the tower’s cement foundation

Wiado and his son Salimo proudly standing in front of Nauela’s hottest new project

All the tower’s pieces being painted and organized so construction can go smoothly.

***

BTW, the government decided to do another routine personnel switch up (we changed district administrators a few months back) so we now have a new “Chefe do Posto” and, low and behold, now Nauela’s generator is working again! Looks like this new guy has decided to not sell off the gasoline! YAY! :-)

Monday January 26th – Tuesday February 15th, 2011 – Americaland!
What more can I say than:

It … was … AWESOME!

Seriously though: returning home while traveling around the world with the love of my life, meeting her mom, stepdad, and good friend from college, staying at REALLY NICE hotels, clothes shopping it up wherever we could, strolling along the Atlantic Ocean at Cocoa Beach, hitting up NASA and the Kennedy Space Center, seeing all that Orlando has to offer (including MANY views of the Amway arena! Haha... inside joke), experiencing old Florida cuisine while chewing on fried frog legs and gator tail with Ed and Rosa Lee, partying it up Tudeen-style at Aunt Sue’s house, having dreams come true at Walt Disney World for three straight days (Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studies, and Animal Kingdom), FINALLY meeting and hanging out with Tricia (my brother’s not-so-newly-found love), introducing Amanda to SO MANY of my family and friends (including two who flew in from opposite corners of the country… thank you SO MUCH Ricky and Chris!), proudly showing off Gainesville and the University of Florida to Amanda, visiting the oldest city in America (St. Augustine, FL) and having lunch with my mom’s new boyfriend Mike, being welcomed home by Trinity UMC, eating awesome food over and over again, dropping in to wish my good friend Lauren well, and topping it all off by having a very special Valentine’s Day with Amanda.

Simply AWESOME! I know I said that word already, but it just needed to be said again :-)

A big thank you goes out to all those of you who welcomed me and Amanda back home with open arms. I’m now more excited than ever to come back to start med school and I know that Amanda came away from the visit (impressed by both the area and people) with a good feeling about the idea of moving to Gainesville/Orlando/Florida when she’s done with the Peace Corps. I’m sure that everyone who saw how beautiful, fun, smart, and communicative she is was impressed… but I promise you that you’ll grow to love her even more as you get to know her better :-)

BTW it was definitely an eye-opener when I kept hearing from people “Come on Michael! Your last blog post was on Thanksgiving… Pick it up!”. I had no idea I had such a following! It made me smile and definitely was a big motivator for writing this gargantuan post…

Besides all that, I’ll let the pictures and their captions say the rest:

Maputo

Amanda and I playing dress up at the Hazel's house in Maputo

Orlando - Hotel, Citywalk, and International Drive

Hotel nights: Adam, Mariah, me, Amanda, and Katie all hanging out in our awesome suite

Katie, Patrizia, Amanda, and I at City Walk's entrance

Amanda and Patrizia infront of Universal Studios' globe

Al and me rocking out at the Cafe.

Lounging around Margaritaville

Wishing we were as cool as Harry and his friends

Amazed by the Wonderworks architecture

The mini golf crew: Patrizia, Mariah, Al, Me, Amanda, and Katie

Patrizia really getting into charades

Like mother, like daughter...

Cocoa Beach

Patrizia chasing the seagulls at Cocoa Beach

Just plain fun bonding time :-)

Afternoon at Bok tower

Last day at the new Grand Hilton Suites...

Family meeting day at Bok tower

Mariah and Amanda feeding the evil swans

Bok Tower!

Me and Amanda having a moment as the sun goes down on our day at Bok Tower

The ladies posing for a picture!

NASA

NASA! So much cooler than I remember it in 6th grade!

The Apollo rocket

Disney/Orlando

A last trip with Patrizia to Downtown Disney

Goofin' around trying to be scary

Cutest couple... for sure!

Disney Day 1: Magic Kingdom

Cinderella castle... gets the memories flowin every time!

Thundermountain Railroad

Don't mess with these pirates

Amanda, Mariah, and Adam taking a spin on the carosel.

Disney Day 2: Hollywood Studios

Getting pumped for the Toy Story Mania ride (with Bryan and Tricia!)

Amanda beat me at Toy Story :-(

Enjoying a last moment together over ice cream before BT and Tricia split for Edgewater.

A real-life disney pricess and her magician!

The girls making one last pose in front of Mickey's hat before calling it a night.

Disney Day 3: Animal Kingdom

Reminiscing on our time in Africa so long ago ;-)

Orange tiger! GERR!

Rafiki and the crew

Amanda and Mariah going barbarian on us.

I was SO pumped about getting wet apparently

Watch out for yettis!

Mom trying to size up the male gorilla

One last group shot at the Circle of Life baobob tree

Back in Gainesville

Amanda at the Swamp... one step closer to her becoming a diehard Gator fan :-)

St. Augustine day trip

Any explanation needed?

Mom and Amanda taking a side step off the famous St. George Street.

It's THE OLDEST...

Me and my ladies checking out the waterfront from nearby the fort

Last weekend in Gainesville with Visitors

Ricky, Chris and I chilling with the Gators at Paynes Prarie

Awesome brunch with friends and family

Getting ready for a postponed Christmas with the family by looking through old photo albums

Mariah, me, Amanda, and Billy next to the Christmas tree patiently waiting to open presents

Mom, Tricia, and Bryan opening some of their gifts.

Dad and Daniel sporting their new Gator-ish batiks

Amanda being squirely at Build-A-Bear getting ready for Valentines Day

Thursday February 17th – Tuesday February 22nd, 2011
Amanda and I arrive back into Maputo, Mozambique totally frazzled having spent the past two nights on 10+ hour long flights (Orlando-Frankfort, Frankfort-Johannesburg). So as soon as we can, without being rude, we pass out in the comfort of our friend’s, the Hazels, house in the USAID compound and don’t wait up till noon the next day.

The reason we’ve temporarily stopped in Maputo is to complete our mid-service dental exams, but we’ll be continuing our journeys back to site soon enough when we fly up Nampula in a few days to do our medical exams. Although these days are pretty chill (the only scheduled thing we HAVE to do is our one dental/medical appointments), the sudden adjustment to the time difference and culture shock is brutal… definitely more so than the dental exam!

***

BTW, I’m banking on the fact that the Vodacom cell tower in Nauela is done by now… so I go ahead and invest in a new, internet-capable, cell phone with a Vodacom SIM card in Maputo, where electronics are cheaper, rather than waiting to see if the tower really IS up and running… Keep your fingers crossed!

Thursday February 24th, 2011
Sad news… we HAVE a cell phone tower in Nauela now (it’s all new and pretty too!), it’s just not running yet :-( They still have to hook up the actual antenna parts, run all the wires, and build a solar panel grid to give it all power… so I’m guessing another month :-/

A vertical look at the completed tower

A quick peak up the tower’s center with the noon sun bearing down overhead

***

Reflections on our trip to America
I remember saying this while visiting Florida, but especially now that I’m back in Mozambique, it’s like… “Did that actually just happen?” I mean… I didn’t just imagine it, did I?

*Hard pinch on the forearm*

Nope, definitely not dreaming… unless it’s one of those crazy Inception ones – I don’t see Leo anywhere though, so I think I’m good [Yeah, that’s right! I definitely caught up on this year’s past hit movies while I was in America :-)]

Seriously though, so much has happened to me (in the past 16 months in Mozambique and in the past 4 weeks in America) and yet the people I know and my surroundings are so familiar! Some people are still the same good ol’ folks I’ve grown to know and love (and that’s great!), but with others I’m constantly like… Why haven’t you undergone some profound change by now?… Look at me… can’t you tell that I have?! ;-)

Judgmental and superficial?… Yes. True?… Well not entirely, but I’ll get to that later.

Regardless, the feeling that I’ve gone around the world and not much has changed, in America and/or Mozambique, since the time I’ve left is quite unsettling. Sure, a few buildings went up or came down in that time and sure the iPad came out and wowed everyone, but deep down I had almost assumed that the world would have turned itself inside out by now.

Strikingly it hasn’t though.

It would seem that the world has continued moving along relatively unaware and uninterested in my inner revelations. In fact, if my brief trip back to the States is any indication of things to come, many people outside my family and close circle of friends seemed rather indifferent about what I’ve experienced while in Mozambique. Sure the obligatory “What did you do there?” question is asked by everyone… but the answer is complicated and I guess people don’t often have that long of an attention span (if you are still reading this blog post now, I applaud you!). Sometimes I would even be in the middle of responding to that very question and we’d get sidetracked for a second and the conversation would move along to something else… them being completely unaware of what other sage-like wisdom they were missing out on! ;-)

Or at least that’s how my bruised ego felt for the first bit while in America. But then I started to question myself… Would I even be that interested in this story if I wasn’t living it in the first person? Is my experience really that unique or worth sharing? Have I actually changed that much? I mean, there are SO many Peace Corps/missionary/travel stories out there, many people listening to me ramble on must be like: been there, read that… let’s move on already pal!

On the other hand, my best friend Ricky’s might have summed it up well when sending me off to the Peace Corps 16 months ago: *Rough quotation* “I’m sure you’ll get a lot done while you’re there, but I don’t see you changing that much… not in a bad way, but, I mean, you’ve pretty much been the same guy ever since I’ve known you…” So who knows, there’s a possibility that everyone that sees me in America thinks “Well, it couldn’t have been THAT remarkable of an experience… he seems to be pretty much the same… if not worse off now (all pessimistic about NGOs and such)!”

That last part is probably the most noticeable way that I’ve changed (you could argue that I’ve also become a better cook, learned to garden, and other things along the way, but those things haven’t really changed ME that much)… I’ve become more… *GASP*… conservative! Practically a cuss word back in Gainesville depending on what social circles you’re running in… ;-) Someone once told me that people generally become more and more conservative as they grow older. My coming to Peace Corps might have just time-warped-forward the process. But, to clarify, I’m still not really THAT conservative. I still have quite a liberal lean to me, especially on certain social beliefs. I now just strongly believe that throwing more and more money at the world’s problems isn’t going to solve them. In fact, in some cases it might make it a lot worse.

Instead, I’m now appreciating and seeking to one day serve others through more successful small programs. One example of this that always comes to my mind is the Streetlight program at Shands hospital that I used to volunteer with. It’s a great program because in so many ways it’s everything that so many international NGOs aren’t - 1) There’s minimal overhead management and meeting times. 2) It’s all about bringing in people that can and want to relate with the target population, not just people who have lots of accolades 3) There’s a big emphasis in giving the team plenty of time “on the ground” with the target group. 4) The program is committed to serving limited amounts of individuals in specific areas in order to really try and make a difference and they aren’t looking for any and every opportunity to expand. 5) It’s not all about the numbers. - Just thinking about the positive differences between the typical NGO over here and Streetlight makes me smile and say… “Now THAT’S what we need more of!

Maybe I’ll find a medically-related national or international NGO one day that meets those expectations… maybe in relief work versus development work, who knows… I don’t! But I’ll keep you all updated!

***

Observations about Commercialism in America:
I’ve been friends with several foreigners all throughout high school and college and many have commented to me about how much of a consumer-nation we are. I didn’t get it though. Even when I went abroad at length for trips or school, I never really saw and appreciated what they were talking about… until now!

After being in rural Mozambique for over a year (largely without TV, internet, radio, and cell service), I guess I forgot how it feels to be constantly bombarded with advertisements as we are in the Western world. Then all of a sudden transported back to home, it’s absolutely mindboggling to see how much American culture is all about trying to sell you things. Stores, commercials, billboards, even people wearing signs on the street corners advertising their products/sales… and, from the looks of it, most people have been tricked into thinking they should be buying all these things too! Walking into a CVS/Walmart/Target it’s scary to see how many people seem to be wandering around lost, not looking for something they need to buy, just hoping to find something that catches their eye… like they have nothing better to do! It’s creepy! I hope that’s never me… or you!

It’s also NO FUN!

In Mozambique just finding some place that sells certain items (i.e.- peanut butter, candy, apples, cheese, etc) is something to celebrate. It’s like a treasure hunt of sorts! In America though, it’s almost TOO easy. You’re smacked in the face by not just one type of the thing you’re looking for, but several different brands and sizes. It really makes it all so boring to me! When shopping for clothes you find a store like Express where their jeans are all similar, yet slightly different… and upon seeing their outrageously high prices I’m almost determined to bargain with the cashier. “There’s NO WAY this pair of jeans cost $150 to make.” I mean, come on, let’s just settle on a price somewhere in the middle so that I can leave here wearin’ em and you can walk away with my money in your register.

I’m sure I’ll readjust… but I’m just saying…

Thursday February 24th, 2011
Perhaps against my better judgment, today I decided to give Rogerio a second shot at being my rapaz this year… Even though he failed his courses last year (he’ll have to repeat 10th grade for the second time this year) and I had told him I wanted to have a rapaz who’d be committed to studying, I figure I shouldn’t just give up on him in possibly his greatest moment of need… that, and I could definitely use someone to help around the house who I won’t have to train again. Hopefully it’ll go better the second time around…

Saturday February 26th, 2011
Partly in honor of my brother’s birthday and partly just to do some exploring of the area again, today I went on an epic bike ride halfway to the city of Gurue (I actually discovered that I had passed the district boundary long before my final destination).

I’ll write more about the people I spoke with during the journey on another post (I’m actually going to try and start updating the “Working Hard in Mozambique” page on my blog), but for now here are the photos and some captions:

Leaves of feijão manteiga (literally butter beans… but I think we call them pinto beans in the States) – the area’s famous cash crop… almost in season now!

A field of feijão manteiga – apparently the rich, mountainous terrain and mild climate makes it the ideal place for growing beans.

A small caterpillar trekking across the rural “highway”

Crossing the mountain pass gives me just what I wanted: a new view!

Two rural farmers bringing their pig into to town to sell

Tiring and opting to use a bike for the rest of the way, the farmers have to work hard to retie the upset pig

Not a happy camper… and a whole new understanding of the phrase “hog-tied”

A local farmer taking in his surroundings on the way out to his field

Fertile soil

Towering forests of eucalyptus trees: some of the few intact remains of Portuguese colonialism in the area.

A new found friend: farmer Manuel Maconde recently moved to area after buying a large farm plot formerly owned by a Portuguese named Romão (most locals still call the area Romão to this day even though he’s been gone for 30 years or so)

Originally from Inhambane province, Maconde can’t speak the local language of Lomwe and is also considered a foreigner of sorts...

My bike parked amongst the tall trees lining Maconde’s driveway

Despite having a new owner, Maconde’s house (a former Portuguese farm house) still lays in ruins… he’s too busy trying to get the farm going again to worry too much about the house now

It’ll be a lot of work and money whenever he does start rehabilitating the house. Old, broken bricks within and an invisible roof overhead

Maybe he should start with the entrance… not very inviting…

A glance back at where I’ve come from today. If you look closely, you can see Nauela’s Vodacom cell phone tower in the distance towards the right

Cassava root laid out to dry on the rocks

A rushing stream leading to a…..

Waterfall! – A recommended add-on to my trip by Maconde. The locals who ultimately led me to this spot excitedly informed me that there hadn’t been a white person in these parts since before the war with the Portuguese…

Mountains beyond mountains… so many more adventures yet to be had!

So beautiful, right?! I LOVE MY SITE! :-)

Sunday February 27th, 2011
Ever have that feeling that you’ve been cheated and you know who did it? And maybe up until that point the person was someone you knew and trusted?

Crushing.

That’s how I feel right now. Sort of how Wily-Coyote must have felt after crashing to the bottom of the Grand Canyon only to be further squished by the ubiquitous boulder falling behind him… and to make matters worse there’s always that stupid Road Runner just waiting to taunt your torn up carcass with its monotone “beep, beep.”

Whoa, Michael! Calm down.

I just got back from talking on the phone with Amanda and my dad, having left Rogerio in the house to wash dishes, and upon entering the house I discover that the screws on my door have been unscrewed then redone (I made note of their orientation before I left). Investigating, I find that my big kitchen knife is covered with red paint and finger prints all over the blade (my door and consequently the screws are painted red). Although I can’t tell if anything is missing right away (he probably wouldn’t steal anything too big as it would attract a lot of attention), it’s pretty cut and dry in my mind… and my conscious is right there telling me “I told you so!”

It’s bed time now, but I’ll have to address this first thing in the morning. God I hate this.

Monday February 28th, 2011
He denied it.

I can’t believe it! He lied straight to my face and told me that he didn’t know what I was talking about… that he didn’t open the door with the knife. What a bunch of BS! There have been several instances before where I’ve asked him similar questions and he’s denied having taken something… Has he been lying to me this whole time? How much has he stolen from me?!

I forgive him for everything and all, but he’s outta here. I just don’t want to have to be this worried about being robbed in my own house. Even though there’s a parental part of me that doesn’t want to give up on him no matter what, it’s time that I tell Rogerio his help is no longer wanted in this house.

And that’s exactly what I just did this morning.

Sunday March 6th, 2011 – Happy birthday to ME! 25 years old
This weekend fellow PCVs Amanda, Yohko, Kat, Julia, Camille, Allison and Annie all embraced Peace Corps hardship and crammed into my packed house to help bring in my quarter-of-a-century (!) birthday. 8 people, 1 bed, and 1 bathroom without running water… yet surprisingly no problems! In fact, thanks to their positive spirits and understanding, only lots of praises to report!

As usual, the party centered on two main things: food and activities. Over the course of my guests’ stay, we made/ate some seriously delicious food (banana bread, ratatouille, pancakes, guacamole and tortillas, Camille’s “better-than-sex cake, and burritos with rice, beans, guac, and salsa) and Yohko, Amanda, and I even got to go climb/explore a nearby mountain, called Tatu, located just South of Nauela.
Below are some pictures of the festivities:

Amanda and I breaking for a moment on our way to climb Tatu (pictured in the background)

Yohko (and her evil reflection) trying to avoid getting schisto in the stagnant river water

A busy dung beetle

Finally made it… now it’s time to rest and enjoy the view!

A panoramic of Nauela from the top of Tatu

Making our way back down the mountain…

A nice break at a babbling brook

I’m turning 25! And my love is here to celebrate with me :-)

Me devouring a watermelon brought straight from Gurue (we don’t have them here in Nauela, but a rare catch anywhere in Mozambique)

Kat and Amanda making tortillas/fried rice

Julia and Yohko making Guac and salsa

Tah Dah! Burritos!

Is there any better present in Mozambique than Black Cat peanut butter? The answer is no!

The whole birthday crew the morning after: (from left to right) Kat, Annie, Camille, Amanda, me, Yohko, Allison, and Julia

PST and Permagardens... AGAIN!

2010-11-30T04:16:00.000-08:00

Thursday November 4rd, 2010
Listen up! Word to the wise: As of about a month ago, there’s a new kid in town... which means…. Yep! You guessed it!... We’re no longer the newbie punching bags around here. We’re actually (scary thought!) the experienced, all-powerful, all-knowing, wise sage-esk PCVs who have never and will never make any mistakes! I mean, as soon as December comes around and all the ole’ 13ers have packed their bags, tucked their tales, and run back to the States… we’re practically going to be running this program!

Okay, so I’ll admit it… all that is a little ridiculous... to say the least! Moz 13 has always been really nice to us (Moz 14) and my guess is that a lot of the new incoming Moz Health PCVs probably have more experience/knowledge than I do. So don’t worry too much about all those ramblings above regarding us running this joint. Ultimately, the take home point is this: there’s a new group of PCT’s (Moz 15) and I’m down in Namaacha this week to help out with their training :-)

And from my limited interactions with them thus far, they seem to be a pretty cool group! They are a lot more demographically diverse (ie age, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc) than our group and, sure enough, have more degrees and experience than Moz 14 to boot (a few people have MPHs and there’s even someone who has already served as a PCV in another country for 2 years and is back here for 2 more… Wow! Can’t imagine…)!

I said “limited interactions” above because, after paying for all us volunteers to come down to Namaacha from all over the country to help out with training, Peace Corps is actually demanding that we do work while we’re here. Imagine their nerve! ;-) This whole week, Yohko and I have stayed quite busy during the day helping out with meetings and even during our downtime in the evenings we find ourselves planning for other sessions.

Luckily, though, our visit to training coincides with Permagardening (the don’t call it Permaculture anymore because it isn’t a complete inclusion of all of Permaculture’s principles) so several sessions are being led by the awe-inspiring Peter Jensen… which means we get to chill in the background and just try to keep the group motivated. Peter, even fresh-off a flight from Dar-es-Salaam, has been his inspirational self as usual. The group has had several people who have really gotten into Permagardening during the training… hopefully they’ll do a better job than us keeping up the momentum once they get to their sites (our group had several people who jumped head first into Permaculture during training, but quickly lost steam once outside Namaacha… myself included!). During the hands-on sessions in the practice garden I had a chance to ask Peter about some of my lingering questions and now I feel reenergized to tackle the topic again in Nauela. Can’t wait to get back to site to try things out again!

So even though I just said I am always busy down here… somehow I’ve managed to visit my host family 3 times during the week, hanging out and talking with them over dinner. They are all doing well and the kids growing up so quickly! (I feel like a grandparent when I say that…) I even got to bring my computer over yesterday evening and showed them my photos from the past year at site. They loved ‘em, especially the one’s of the mountains and my garden. They aren’t hosting a volunteer this year because PC decided their house was too far away from the center of town… but that’s a shame because they are, as I relearned in the past few days, AWESOME!

In short, the week has been GREAT thus far… but issues with my visa are lurking ahead…

Turns out the Mozambican government skyrocketed the price of visas this year and Peace Corps Mozambique hasn’t gotten the new budget approved yet for those price increases. So what to do? Well if you are at site, you’re advised to stay put… but since I’m here in Namaacha already, we figure it’s best that I get a temporary 30 day visa at the Swaziland border to buy us some time. The catch is, however, that my current year-long visa expires on Tuesday and you can’t get a temporary visa when your current visa is still active. Right now, the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants idea is for me to stick around Maputo/Namaacha and fly back to Nampula once it gets resolved… whenever that is! Sooo… looks like a few extra days with the new trainees :-)

Sunday November 7th, 2010
Even though we’re no experts on child nutrition, our Friday afternoon sessions on the subject go pretty well. I feel really happy because the PCTs were interacting a lot with Yohko and I, suggesting that they were at least somewhat interested and engaged in our discussions and games. What makes it even more impressive is that it was almost the weekend and they are in the “hump” week of training... so what I’m saying is that we’re pretty much awesome at this whole training instructor thing ;-)

***

I glance down at my watch. Eh, what does that say? The sweat dripping down from my brow doesn’t make it any easier to read the time as I fly downhill running. My pace slows and I pause for a moment: 3:55pm. Almost late! I turn around the corner at the bottom of the hill as instructed and follow the length of the gigantic baize wall topped with terrifying spikes rising up on my left … I must almost be there … Finally, an entrance! Armed guards peer out and cautiously swing open the heavy gate while demanding to see my documents. Long after my breathing slows, they eventually accept my story and let me pass unscathed. Two steps forward and the metal gate slams shut behind me.

“Where am I?” Visiting a maximum security prison? Seeking out the ambassador at the U.S. embassy? Trying to gain the attention of His Excellence Armando Emilio Guebuza (President of Mozambique)?

No silly! All those hyped up security measures are solely for the USAID housing complex: an oasis of American livelihood tucked away in one of Maputo’s many nooks and crannies. Although located just a stone’s throw from the water’s edge, there is no ocean view from these mansions (relatively speaking). The 12-foot-tall fortification surrounding the complex prevents any chance of that. The houses (and their occupants) are cut off from the view of the outside world and are seemingly content to do without even a small peek into what is beyond their walls. And why not? Upon stepping foot inside the compound, one immediately feels the relief of having escaped all the poverty, crime, and problems that run rampant in the surrounding streets, as if one has stepped through some kind of magical transport to America’s pristine suburbia. A little creepy at first actually…

Just past the guarded entrance, I’m awestruck. A year ago I wouldn’t have even given it a second thought. “Ho hum. Nothing special...” But halfway through my Peace Corps service, a good ole’ American cul-de-sac has me near trembling as I slowly move about the houses. It’s a feeling difficult to describe to those of you back at home, but there is something eerie, yet exciting and nostalgic, about simply watching the neighborhood kids run around on grassy lawns, escape the summer heat by splashing one another in inflatable swimming pools, and contently dig around in a sandbox as the time passes by. While it reminds me so much of home, it all seems so out of place and unreal here in Mozambique!

The inside of my host’s house is no less surprising. Of course there are the basic amenities of a nice house in a big city (running water, electricity, television, air-conditioning, tiles/carpeting, etc), but there are also more startling, unique aspects of the house: the shelves are stalked with American goodies (apparently each family is granted a 2,500 pound non-perishable food shipment once a year) and the kitchen is outfitted with all the household appliances you could ever dream of (including a waffle press that we definitely made use of the following morning!). The bedrooms contain various workout machines, the playroom has a huge doll house, the extra bathroom is storing a recently used microbrew kit, and the living room boasts beer on tap… ridiculous! Exploring the house’s nuances, perhaps the only real reminders of the African locale are the various pieces of art hung throughout the living space: African masks, batiks, sculptures and the like. A nice house I was prepared for. I’ve been in plenty of them in Quelimane, Nampula, and even Maputo. Just none that so well imitated all the little intricacies of American life. It’s crazy!

Needless to say, I man up and adapt. ;-) Soon the shock wears off and my mindset melds comfortably with this secluded overseas American lifestyle. That night, I sleep in an air-conditioned room on an extra cushy, king-size bed and wake up feeling PRETTY DARN refreshed. On the slate for breakfast? Home-made waffles, of course! Sunday morning plans? Lending a hand constructing the neighborhood playground set bought and delivered from Home Depot!... Next up for lunch? Delivered pizza!... Seriously?! This is just ridiculous and TOO fun, but a nice escape from the past year of roughing it :-)

If my hosts are out there reading this back in Maputo… just want to say thank you all so much for your hospitality and generosity! You guys are awesome and inspire me give back to others around me in need :-)

***

I come back to PST in Namaacha telling the trainees about my weekend digs/activities and there’s definitely a hint of jealousy in their responses. Some say “That’s great!” or “Sweet!”… others are a little indignant replying “Is that what our tax dollars are paying for?!” and “Now THAT is exactly what’s wrong with international development!”

I immediately rebuke them (initially probably because of how well it has treated me in the past two days!), but taking a step back, Are they right in some way? Is all this luxury, associated exclusively with expat State and development workers, in the middle of so much poverty, a bad thing?

What do you all back home think?

Tuesday November 16th, 2010
Big pot, little pot – a comparison:
One thing I’ve noticed since arriving here in Nauela is that, when preparing meals, people usually have two pots: A big one for rice/xima and another, significantly smaller, one for whatever sauce (flavoring) they can scrounge up. Sometimes, in the drier months, the smaller pot disappears and all that’s served for dinner is a helping of xima or nothing at all.
I, on the other hand, also have the two pot system working for me, but it’s oftentimes the opposite: the big pot for sauce and the other smaller one for rice (never xima!).
The tale of the two pots illustrates many things. 1) Usually I am eating alone or with one other person so we don’t need a lot of base carbs 2) I have more money to buy whatever sauce I need at a moment’s notice 3) Maize and rice are easy to store for long periods of time and are, generally speaking, readily available in the area. 4) There’s a cultural preference of filling up the belly with carbs whether or not there is other food available.

***

Renewing the permagarden spirit:
Since arriving back at site from my week or so at PST (where I helped out with Permaculture lessons), I’ve become all jazzed-up again about teaching aspects of Permagardening in the community. Last year I was really worried about stepping on toes and trying to educate a farmer population about agricultural practices when I really had no clue as to what the heck I was talking about! I mean I had never even grown a vegetable before… How am I supposed to tell a life-long farmer what do differently?!

This year things are going to be a little different. Everyone saw me successfully grow a number of crops last year (in a place and during the time of year when most people said the plants couldn’t be grown) and are interested to see how I’m doing it. So far it’s been pretty easy to get an audience. I started up a new compost pile next to my house by gathering fallen leaves along the street and neighbors immediately starting asking me what the heck I was doing. I politely responded, telling them just enough to gain their attention and then left ‘em dangling wanting more. In the end, I agreed to teach composting at the houses of several neighbors over the next week or so and even talk to the local church about various agriculture problems people are having. First I’ll ask them to share their problems and then I’ll suggest some solutions and we’ll see how it goes from there. Maybe people will want to do some kind of training, maybe not. Either way, I’m definitely still trying to approach the Ag issue with a lot of humbleness.

***

Today was the day: my first loss at chess in Nauela to a young man named Vladimiro, a Mozambican from Quelimane who is in town to help proctor the end-of-the-year national exams. I find out after the loss that he’s won the Zambezia provincial chess championship several times in the past. So… I don’t feel too bad about losing to him :-) At the end of the match I also talked to him about me trying to start up a chess club here and he promised that before he left, he’d give me another chess board and chess strategy manual, in Portuguese, to help our chess club start off strong at the beginning of next school year.

Speaking of chess makes me think of my best and most fervent chess student: Rogerio, my rapaz. Sad thing is that as soon as I came back to Nauela from PST I discovered that he had failed ALL of his classes this year! Now it looks like he’s going to have to repeat (again) 10th grade. Not sure if he’ll be back in Nauela anytime soon to talk about it, but I’m REALLY bummed! He’s a smart kid, but people (other students/teachers) tell me now that’s he just hasn’t been working hard this whole year.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a new thing. Students have been telling me that he’s been missing classes and not putting forth all his effort all year, but when I approached him about it in the past he said those people were lying and just trying to get him in trouble because they (or a friend of theirs) wanted to work for me in his place. I took his word for it, but never went to his classroom and actually talked with his teacher. My mistake… :-(

Worst thing is that I had these grand hopes of him passing 10th grade and then me helping sponsor his schooling next school year in Alto Moloque (we don’t have 11th and 12th grade here in Nauela). But now that it seems he hasn’t been trying academically all along, I feel that he has lost that opportunity. A downer for me and him both. I wanted it to work out SO bad! You can get so frustrated sometimes when things like this happen. Here’s a kid who so much going for him… and he just let it slip away.

***

Random thought. During my last blog post, I referred to how I was happy about how the Natural Medicine training here in Nauela had gone. In the same breath, I also briefly spoke out about how it definitely WASN’T a perfect training by any stretch of the imagination (we’ll see if any of the knowledge spreads throughout the community…) , but at least there purposefully hadn’t been huge amounts of excessive money and/or outside resources thrown into it. Below is a real life example of how heavy-funded trainings can go wrong:

Trainings can be such a waste! Just the other day I was visiting a fellow volunteer’s site when I ran across an expat NGO doctor who was discussing the highs and lows of this week-long training she had spent months setting up and how she is now neck-deep in frustrations.

In this international development age of “sustainability and capacity building” (definitely jargon words!), trainings aren’t supposed to be put on entirely by ex-pat staff members (NGO’s in Mozambique actually have a maximum percentage (10%?)of their in-country workforce that can be foreigners). No, instead trainings should be partnerships where host-country nationals are the main facilitators. This is good because they are obviously fluent in the language and cultural norms, but can be bad if they aren’t up to par on the information they are doling out.

This one particular doctor was going off, talking about how her overly zealous host-country national counterparts were simply fabricating answers to health questions they didn’t know, rather than admit to their ignorance and appeal to a higher authority (the medical doctor) for the answer (as one might expect, the imaginative answers were quite WRONG). Some of the information had been so erroneous that, when nearing the end of the training, the doctor was simply hoping that the people attending the training would FORGET all that they learned that week because it’d be better than spreading all the false information they had been fed.

Hear that?! That’s the sound of $8000 USD down the drain! Not to be too harsh, but seriously… what is there to show for the monetary investment? Wrong concepts being taught, transportation and a week’s worth of food and lodging for the participants and trainers… and best of all… the infamous per diem.

Even though the trainees were all getting fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the NGO was still providing every person with 1000 mets per diem (that’s 5000-6000 mets for the week… a small fortune for a lot of people here in Zambezia!). And what for exactly? Good question… As I saw the trainees loading into their privately rented chapa at the end of the week, packed in the back seat were newly purchased speakers, TVs, and DVD players to name a few… riddle solved.

Not too be too critical of Mozambican’s who take full advantage of the per diem thrown at them… We, PCVs, look forward to per diem handouts surrounding periodic meetings from our partnered organizations too. In my opinion, the problem isn’t those who are using what they are given… it’s at the people who are giving it! Seriously though, sometimes I feel that international NGOs are just trying to find semi-legit reason to spend all their money so they won’t get a budget cut down the road…

Thursday November 18th, 2010
Site placement :
Amanda is at PST this week and today was the long anticipated day of site placement for the new PCVs! Yay! They find out where they’ll be for the next 2 years and we take a look at who’ll be our new neighbors for our last leg of the Peace Corps journey. During my week at training, I met all of the Moz 15 health volunteers, but the closest new volunteers will all be from the education sector. So although the mystery has been revealed as to who’ll be replacing the exiting Moz 13ers around me, right now all I’ve got is a list of names without faces. Still… exciting stuff!

Up in flames:
Nauela is an area of pyromaniacs! Seriously! Sure you could argue that some/most of the burning is necessary or at least functional (ie the parents going to their fields and lighting last year’s crop refuse on fire to make way for this year’s), but I’d also argue that they enjoy it to some degree… maybe too much for their own good!

Thing is, all too often these flames come back to haunt the surrounding communities and yet somehow everyone is still amazed it happens again and again. Flash back: two months ago, a whole mountainside field of un-harvested beans is engulfed in flames and ruined by some drunk teenager playing with matches. Flash back: one month ago, an area church goes up in smoke when someone leaves their burning trash pile unattended and a rogue flame flies on top of the nearby grass roof. Today, more of the same: a little boy is flippantly lighting matches, trying to imitate his parents and, poof!, there goes a makeshift stick house with a grass roof (Thank God that at least no one was injured in all these fires…).

This most recent burning is the only one I got to witness up close and personal and thus it made a big impact on me. With the dried grass roof acting as fuel for the eager fire, it is incredible, but not surprising, how swiftly the entire house burst into flames and was reduced to embers… only in a matter of minutes really.

Quick add on: Although not the entire reason for the preference of tin roofs, being flame retardant is definitely a plus. I recently discovered that the primary reason for saving up to buy a tin roof (each sheet cost about 250 mets, or $8 dollars, and a house needs around 20… so about $160!) is actually so that you won’t have to keep taking off last year’s aged grass, going out into bush to cut and collect new grass, and then replacing/adding a new layer to the roof (all the while worrying about the excessive weight that builds up from layers of grass). A tin roof is a HUGE expense for the people here that are mostly living hand-to-mouth, but people recognize that it’s a great investment because it saves 2-4 WEEKS of labor a year by avoiding having to go out and redo the roof.

Actually, a little trick of the trade for you here in Mozambique… When approaching a rural community, one can (generally speaking) quickly tell the agricultural success of the area by simply seeing how many tin roofs are in place. If the general population has enough money to be doing some long-term investing (a tin roof mind you… we’re not talking about Wall Street here!), then things are going pretty well!

Friday November 19th, 2010
Going against my roots:
Gainesville, FL (where I was born and raised) is a pretty tree hugger place I feel. And I have welcomed and embraced that vibe my whole life (generally speaking)… until today!

Picture this: me in the middle of some scrubby bushes with a machete in my hand, whaling away with all the force I have at a big tree branch. Now picture this: me still in the bush… but with the machete now on the ground as I’ve given up on cutting through the rock-solid branch and have now resolved to try to use my weight to pull the branch off. It finally gives and I haul it off to my bicycle to strap on and transport (along with 5 other similar branches) back to my house to extend my shade hut for my growing number of compost piles.

In my mind, I can justify it all though. So listen before you judge me too much... You see, the thing is… I didn’t actually KILL the trees. I just cut off one lousy branch from each tree. I mean… you could look all around and see where people had cut off other limbs and new ones were already budding off. It’s an aggressive form of pruning really!

Now that I think about how great a wild undergrowth gardener I am, I might even go back in the next few days and do it again!… After all, I do need a fence for my garden to keep all those darn pigs out :-)

Saturday November 20th, 2010
Two scheduled compost lessons done… already THREE compost piles throughout Nauela (and that’s not even including the two at my house). Yep, that’s right! The first group (two area high school boys) I taught the other day came by this afternoon and informed me that they’d already gone over to a friend’s house and done another pile at their house. So exciting for me to see how energized they have gotten about it! Now I just hope that they maintain the piles and it helps their gardens. But I guess that’s my responsibility too with that whole Monitoring and Evaluation stuff we always talk about ;-)

Thursday November 25th, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back at home (or wherever you all might be now you world travels)! I just wanted to take this moment to let you all know that I’ve been thinking about you all today and I’m definitely thankful for having you all in my life in some shape or form. I hope your holidays are starting off on the right foot… with some Thanksgiving day-stuffed bellies! :-)

Amanda Adventure and Luke's Lobolo

2010-11-12T05:19:00.000-08:00

***
While I was in Quelimane the other week I got the chance to catch up with Carmen for a bit (she used Google Voice and said it wasn’t that hard to set up, so no more excuses guys!) and she point-blank asked me if it was true that I was coming back to the States before medical school (turns out there’s been a rumor going around due to a certain sister’s facebookin’ postings :-P) …

Well, SURPRISE! I am!

Although the itinerary is still up in the air, this much we know for sure: the plane tickets are bought so Amanda and I are definitely coming to Florida and we’ll be splitting our time between places like Orlando/Gainesville/beach in late January-early February. A good chunk of the time will be spent with her family who is visiting from California and then another good chunk will surely be spent with my family, but we’ll try to swing by TUMC one Sunday and will probably have some time for dinner/lunch dates with close friends at places like Satchel’s :-)… Exciting, right?! I’ll keep you all updated!
***

Sunday October 10th, 2010
Amanda is visiting me this weekend and so far it’s been, mostly (I’ll explain a little later), great! It’s always nice and relaxing to spend down time in the company of someone you mesh so well with, even if you are just chilling around the house, trying to escape the sun’s intense rays… Just this weekend, in fact, Amanda and I were discussing a book which says that most (70%?) of a dating couple’s time together is spent doing activities (not true if you’re in the Peace Corps!), while a married couple generally spends that amount of their time together just chilling and talking. Maybe life as a PCV is just preparing us for the future :-)

As much as I love sitting back with Amanda and discussing a book, devotional, or passage in the Bible that one of us are reading, reflecting on today’s adventure, I believe that most of the time we choose to have a day inside simply because leaving the house can be soooo DIFFICULT! Although I sometimes feel a hint of laziness for slouching around the house the whole day, this afternoon it seemed that the powers that be just didn’t want Amanda and I to do anything… and while you can fight it at every turn (as we did!), it’ll probably just end up frustrating you all the more (once again, speaking from experience!)…

Regardless of what happens in the next day or so before Amanda goes back to Morrumbala, I confidently proclaim that today’s arduous (attempted) visit to Mehecane will forever stand out in my mind as the defining event of the long weekend.

Our afternoon bike ride started out pleasant and interesting while exploring the ruins of the old Catholic mission just outside Nauela. We poked our heads into the empty church (still in use, but in disrepair and missing much of its ceiling), then walked around an abandoned housing complex used by Portuguese missionaries back in the 50’s and 60’s. It’s crazy to imagine the house’s grandeur back in its heyday because there are still remnants of many things that aren’t readily available in the area even today (ie tiled bathrooms, running water, large glass windows, etc). Such is the norm in a country that is still recovering from 2 decades of war….

Leaving the ruins, things quickly took a turn for the wor... I mean… rough! And rather than just whirling around and calling it a good afternoon, my stubbornness kicked in and insisted we go on… even when my bike tire popped, even when we had to leave our bikes at a random drunk’s house and start walking, even when Amanda lost her belly button ring, and even when no locals knew the way to get to Mehecane via a (supposed) shortcut. Upon arriving at a lookout point 30 minutes later and realizing we had only made marginal progress as the sun dipped low in the sky, only THEN did I finally concede to turn around.

Oh Amanda … your patience with me!

***
FYI, in case you are ever in Mozambique and lose a belly button ring… and you don’t have anything else to keep the hole from closing up… you can make a temporary one out of stripped and sterilized electrical wire! You definitely should try it sometime… just ask Amanda :-)
***

Tuesday October 12th- Thursday October 14th, 2010
Joakim Pedro visited my house this morning arriving on the heels of Amanda leaving in order to make some last minute touches on the natural medicine training sessions before we kick them off tomorrow. Over the past few weeks, Joakim and I have written out the sessions’ bullet points on giant flipchart paper and discussed them to make sure we’re both on the same page. I have hopes that he will take over leading the sessions, speaking primarily in Lomwe, and I can play a minimal supportive role in the background… Setting up this supportive role from the beginning will be aided by the fact that I can’t attend the first day of the sessions due to scheduling conflicts. So let’s just hope for the best!

***

The first few days of Muretchele’s training have gone really well! Joakim has immediately taken the leadership role out from under me and I’m so excited to see how he’s just running with it! In my mind the training has been a HUGE success thus far. It’s a small, but committed!, group who aren’t coming because of handouts (per-diem and/or free food) and the training isn’t using many resources that don’t come directly from the community (the trainees bring all the pens, notebooks, pots, wood, spoons, and plants for the day’s session… only the markers and flip chart paper have been brought in by me...)

Check out some of the pictures below:

Saturday October 23rd, 2010
Lobolo: a traditional Mozambican ceremony where the bride-to-be is offered up to the groom and his family in exchange for various material goods. Maybe that definition oversimplifies the tradition and leaves out some of its cultural beauty, but essentially that is what it is: handing a woman over in return for various commodities.

Before judging it too harshly though, one must consider what is actually given: a ring for the bride-to-be, a new pair of clothes for her and her entire nuclear family, food and beverages for the reception afterwards, and a little bit of cash-money. And while I am no expert of marriage traditions in the West, I believe that we have similar (albeit not as strictly followed) traditions where the families’ are obliged to pay for some of these practical expenses surrounding a wedding (I found this website that talks about accepted wedding traditions in the UK for example). Once again, I’m not condoning the practice, but it’s not like the tradition is THAT different from some of our own!

And while someone might say that, “Well our society has outgrown those silly traditions…” I would reply that many Mozambicans have too, in fact. How do I know this? Because I was lucky enough to be invited by a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Luke, and his future (Mozambican) wife, Dinha, to their lobolo this weekend.

Sure, the Lobolo ceremony is still a stable in most of Mozambican society, but it fills the role of a theatrical performance recalling their cultural roots more than anything else. Awarding presents to the bride’s family allows everyone involved to sing, clap, and dance to old hymns reserved for just such an event. The bride’s family makes light of the handing over of money by constantly jabbing at the groom’s family for doing some fictitious intricacy incorrectly and subsequently charges them a small additional “multa”, or fee. And the ceremony is light-heartedly capped off by the presentation of a live, loudly bah-ing goat which in turn solicits a huge roar from the crowd.

Interestingly enough, the ceremony happens largely without the presence of the prospective bride or groom. Although planned from start to finish, it is acted out as if the whole event is a little random and spur of the moment. The groom’s family (in our case, made up completely of fellow PCVs because Luke’s family couldn’t come over for the occasion) arrives at the bride’s family’s house and states the purpose of our visit: to seek the hand of the daughter. The bride’s family invites us all in to the house to sit and “discuss” the matter where they pull out a list with their lobolo requirements. After the list is read over, our family goes through the list, revealing each item one by one.

At that point, the elders of the bride’s family go and send for Dinha, but ask us to help pay for the transportation cost of bringing her here (keep in mind she is actually in the next room over… again, little jabs!). We offer up 20 metacais (75 cents), but they prod us for more stating that she is “very” far away and “What do we expect? That we send a bike taxi for her?!” When Dinha finally arrives, she does so, her body masked by a capulana, accompanied by another hidden figure. The family then challenges us: if you really KNOW our daughter, surely you can pick her out of the two-person lineup. The choice is obvious: Dinha, with her full-figured body type, is the one to the left. That doesn’t stop everyone, however, from crying out when Denys (another PCV) correctly picks and the capulana is pulled back to reveal Dinha’s smiling face.

Now that Dinha is present at the ceremony, her family asks if she indeed knows this family and she responds that indeed she does. At this point the lobolo presents are doled out, starting with Dinha then working their way down from the eldest family members to the youngest. Between every gift there is a lull that is filled with singing and dancing. Everyone is happy and smiling, but none so much so as Dinha (not always the case for traditional Mozambican ceremonies where people are oftentimes very stoic)

Only at this point does anyone bother to seek the presence of the groom. “Where’s Luke?!” people start asking worriedly. Someone calls him up and he pretends to have been busy doing other things. He’s slow to show up, not wanting to seem too eager (I guess?!), but once he arrives, he thanks both families and presents a message from his actual family back in the States talking about how much they wish they could be there for the ceremony. It’s a touching moment that lasts for a second, but quickly gives way to the after party as people flood out of the house into the courtyard.

Food that (conveniently, for a “spur of the moment event”) has been obviously prepared in large quantities, well in advance pours out from kitchen into the courtyard. The mob is hungry, but the food is more than enough. We eat, dance, and party late into the night and even celebrate a second time as the clock strikes midnight and we celebrate Dinha’s birthday that just so happened to fall on the following day.

Learning about new traditions, food, and a birthday to boot… definitely a good day here in Mozambique :-)

Thursday October 28th, 2010
I’ve been stuck inside feeling sick all week ever since coming back from the Lobolo…. but all the while I’ve been healing my body and spirit by relaxing, reading, and praying about various books Amanda lent me. I spent most of my time wrapped in one book in particular, “A Voice in the Wind” by Francine Rivers. It falls in the genre of Christian fiction because it makes illustrations about the Bible and one’s faith through fictional characters placed in various historical settings.

The particular book mentioned above follows the story of a young woman named Hadassah who is struggling with the expression of her Christian faith during the downfall of the Roman Empire. And as of late, the way I express my faith is something that I also am regularly thinking and praying about… I’ve had a lot of good reflections this week about the book though and I hope that it’ll make me firmer and stronger from here on out.

Friday October 29th, 2010
I’ve been sick this whole week (diarrhea accompanied with general weakness, an aching back, shoulders, and neck… to the point where I’m stuck in the house most of the day)– not really sure of its cause, but it seems to always be worse when I’m at site. I’ve started thinking about all the possibilities and my first thoughts are Rogerio’s (and my) sanitation with food preparation and dish washing, over chlorinating the water, accidentally letting some of the ant poison dust touch the chlorine dropper, and general stress. Some of those concerns I can easily address, others are a little bit harder… (ie the stress bc I don’t FEEL too overstressed usually, but I know I am).

Luckily, I’ve been getting steadily better and that’s really good because this Saturday (tomorrow!) I have to start my long journey from Nauela to Namaacha via Nampula City and Maputo. The trip could technically be done in one day, but, because of the time of the flight and the fact that I can’t travel after dark, it’ll probably involve a hotel stay in BOTH Nampula and Maputo. It’s nice to break up the trip, but I also just wish I could GET there and not lollygag around…

Sunday October 31st, 2010 – Happy Halloween!
So I just got great news from my friends and family back home… Gators beat the Bulldogs on a clutch, game-ending field goal in OT! Even though the Gators are having a rough season this year (having lost 3 in a row) they still have beaten their 2 biggest rivals thus far (UGA and UT) and definitely still have a chance to make it to SEC championship… I’m stoked!

Ok, ok… so many of you probably already knew all that, but I just had to give a shout out to my home team… especially when they have been struggling so much this season…

Late Update: Tanzania Pictures

2010-10-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

The captions will be coming later, as for now, just enjoy the sights :)

1 Year In Moz! - Limpin' Through The End Of Dry Season

2010-10-15T03:50:00.000-07:00

Monday September 20th, 2010
Mariana, my new FGH counterpart, and I spent most of the morning meeting with the Muretchele leaders trying to hash out some new goals/objectives for the group because of last week’s fiasco. Quick flash back: Renato, the new FGH district coordinator, came to Nauela and asked Muretchele’s president what the group’s main purpose was and, nearly 4 months after Rocha, my old FGH counterpart, formed the group, the president was unable to even string together a few coherent thoughts about the group’s purpose. GAH! Needless to say, the meeting today was a bear, with us all looking the part… staring at one another exasperated and wondering what the heck we’d gotten ourselves into. That said, the cake probably goes to Mariana when, after a painfully slow and only marginally productive meeting, she discovered that no active member of the PLWHA group was actually living with HIV/AIDS… Oooooh Rocha, the legacy you leave me behind with… I definitely gotta get away for a bit… Road trip anyone?!

Tuesday September 21st, 2010
After 9 months at site with at least a few minutes spent every day staring that huge hunk of rock in the distance, I decided last night that today would finally be THE DAY! Indeed, I resolved to do the impossible: climb the legendary, the perilous, the spirit-filled Mount Nepo. Okay… So maybe it’s NOT the impossible… maybe it’s actually something that some area farmers actually do on weekly, if not daily basis… but still! It’s something that my Mozambican neighbors were surprised I could do… and for that I’m feeling pretty froggy!

Here are some pictures and comments from the epic bike/hike….

The sun rising over the valley well into my journey... I had to leave really early to avoid the midday sun

Morning fog still hovering over Nauela before the rising sun comes and burns it off.

My trusty Hero bike in the foreground with Mount Nepo in the background...

On my way to climb the mountain, an area farmer well in to his morning's work of harvesting beans

I was drawn to a stop by these two roosters facing off over mating territory

Mount Nepo near the base in Vehiua

Mid way up the mountain, looking back at Nauela, the Catholic mission, Mehecane, and Eleve

My first glimpse EVER of the view on the North side of the mountain! YAY!

A lone dead tree seemingly floating in the clouds with the even-more-distant mountain of the Nampula province haunting the background...

A quick first glance across the top of Mount Nepo

All smiles once the hard work is done and a snack is in the belly, right?!

Even though we're technically entering spring/summer over here, many of the trees have been changing colors as if it were mid fall :-)

A pano of the top of Mount Nepo facing the unknown North... Always more to explore here :-)

Wednesday September 22nd - Sunday September 27th, 2010
My Dad is scheduled to have open heart surgery today and that’s reason enough for me to get out of Nauela to go somewhere with better cell phone service (not to mention the stressful meetings with the local associations!). So with that in mind I organize things with Amanda and we meet up in Quelimane to rest, relax, and do some shopping during the long weekend, but most importantly, just be there for one another.

After a long, taxing day of traveling to Quelimane, I get a call from the States in the late evening and my stomach turns. My sister is on the other end… What if? What if?! No… my sister calms my nerves telling me that the surgery went as expected and my dad will be moved into intensive care in the next few hours. If everything goes as planned, he’ll be out of the hospital and back at home in a few days then mostly homebound for 4-6 weeks. I say “home”, but really Dad is going to stay at Uncle Mike’s house for most of the time to try and enjoy the peacefulness of not being around the loud mouth - Mr. You Know Who! Stepping up to the plate as usual, I find out that Mom has volunteered to move back into Dad’s house to help take care of Billy :-) I love my family!

The time in Quelimane is a blur of running around meeting up with other PCVs, going to the beach, and shopping our brains out. Sure there was a little bit of clothes shopping, but most of it was stocking up on food that you can’t get anywhere but the big cities (i.e. apples, honey, peanut butter, oats). One special stop this time was Amanda and I buying paint: Me, for my house back in Nauela, and Amanda, to redecorate the Save The Children guest house in Quelimane.

I’m so excited to have some colors in my life in Nauela… white walls get old QUICK… I’ll let you know how those personal projects go!

As of October 1st I’ve officially spent 1 year in Mozambique!!!

Friday October 1st – Sunday October 3rd, 2010

Sadly, sometimes when it rains, it pours…

I’m traveling up to Nampula for a Peace Corps-sponsored English Theater competition on Saturday (Amanda has a group that is competing) when I get a text telling me how Dad’s house was just broken into last night. Billy’s digital camcorder and Wii/games are missing. Also stolen are two laptop computers (including my Mom’s, which was only there because she is staying at my Dad’s helping out with Billy while my Dad recovers from his open-heart surgery) along with DVDs and other small electronics… It’s really depressing that people would do things like this… and at such inopportune times nonetheless! Please be praying for and supporting my family, especially my dad, as they are having to deal with all these obstacles… At times like these I feel like I’m definitely too far away from home :-(

At any rate, the competition and the weekend in general are HUGE successes! I was really impressed by the groups’ performances as a whole. It’s crazy when you sit back and remind yourself that these young kids are effectively communicating all their thoughts and feelings while acting out this play in a foreign language! Although Amanda’s group didn’t place in the top 3, one of Amanda’s students (a 10 year old nonetheless) won the award for best female actress.

Unfortunately, the trip was marred by the kids’ Saturday late night antics when, after the competition, many students from various groups snuck away to go joy riding in one of our privately-rented chapas. (Cursed, sketchy chapa driver who let them come along!) Besides the absolute youngest of the groups, almost everyone had a hand in the matter, sadly all the way up the ladder to the Mozambican counterparts/chaperones. After participating in a competition titled “Be the Change!”, how ironic that rumors of drinking and sexual promiscuity circulated about the groups in the end.

Maybe we, the PCVs, are the ones to blame though. For either being too naïve to be playing with the younger kids while the older kids are plotting ways to escape, or for setting a bad example for the group by sitting around and drinking casually ourselves. I couldn’t help but scoff inwardly as PCVs reprimanded some of the older kids (some upwards of 18-21, BTW drinking age is 18 in Mozambique) for running off and getting cheaper booze when the PCVs weren’t setting a good example to begin with.

After a long night of worry and fret, I found myself lying restless on my bed, staring up at the ceiling and couldn’t help but reflect back on the climatic end of Amanda’s group’s play: “The change starts with YOU!”… And as it so turns out, with US too!

Monday October 4th, 2010
I wake up and, “Surprise!”, today is another Mozambican holiday… Technically, the “Day of Peace” commemorates the day Mozambique’s civil war ended, but I choose to make my own interpretation of the holiday as a national recognition of our work here with the PEACE corps ;-)

Trying to think about how I could best reward myself for a job well done I choose to celebrate by painting the inside of my house. The long day of painting finally ends around sunset not because the house is done, but sadly rather because I was a little too conservative in my estimates and need to get more paint…. But it looks great so far!

Rogerio and I painting the accent wall in my bathroom

One view of my orange/green living room and hallway

Another shot of the living room/hallway

Like my Orange and Blue Gator Bedroom?! Not quite Gator colors, but close enough, right?! Also, like the SWEET African bedspread?

My ever improving bathroom... not pictured is the new solar shower (hot running water... sort of...) courtesy of Amanda's godmother. Thank you!

Wednesday October 6th, 2010 - Burn baby! Burn!
The dry season is coming to an end and people are revvin’ their engines while getting ready for the start of planting season. In order to facilitate manually digging the field’s rows, they prepare the area by burning any left over organic refuse from last season’s crop. The upside is that it only requires a match and some wind to clear a whole field (people are always looking for the easy way out), but it is obviously a slippery slope because the fires oftentimes get out of control and burn other fields, homes, stores and/or churches. Also, while burning the remains of last season’s crops leaves behind some of the plant’s nutrients to benefit the soil, it robs the soil of other nutrients by throwing away most of the carbon element.

Sadly, this whole month Nauela’s visibility has been way down… I mean, to the point where you can hardly make out even the closest mountains in the distance! I’m told this is partly due to the change of seasons (it’s getting hotter and thus creating some fog/smoke), but mostly the result of the sky being filled with smoke and ash from the ever present, surrounding fires. Although the night time rings of fire on neighboring mountains and the burnt brown glow of the moon are incredible sights, the smell of smoke is always in the air and I’d trade those sights in a second for a crisp, clean breath every once in a while!

Regardless, I resolved to brave the smoke-filled air this morning and make the trek all the way out to Mehecane to meet with Pastor Vicente in order to check up on their carpentry project. Upon setting my eyes upon him, I knew that something was wrong. As soon as we sat down, everything that had happened since my last visit came pouring out of his mouth. Turns out the church treasurer and leaders had finally run the numbers themselves on the project and realized for themselves what I’d been telling them all along: that they are currently losing money on their slapstick business attempt to help OVCs in the area. Although I had informed them of this long ago while analyzing each piece they made, they weren’t able to clearly understand it until their initial lumber supply ran out and the carpenters were demanding their 2 month’s pay… At that point the numbers were easy to figure and the losses were staring them right back in their faces. Those losses were so demoralizing and jolting that they immediately halted the project, sent the carpenters packing, and even considered abandoning the project altogether.

Upon my arrival, Pastor Vicente, ready to cut the church’s losses, had already started pondering other possible projects. I listened to his story and new ideas biting my lip not to jump in too quickly. Biding my time and letting him get it all of his chest must have been therapeutic in some way because he soon calmed down and grew silent. It wasn’t until that point that I started in and reasoned that the project IS sustainable, just that they need to improve their business practices. I further encouraged them insisting that it probably was for the best that they sent the carpenters home because now we can try and find the best deal on bulk lumber without having to worry about keeping the carpenters busy.

Towards the end of our meeting, a planned a meeting for this Saturday morning with both the church treasurer, to demonstrate to him how he too can calculate the profit on the project piece by piece, and the head carpenter, to show him that we’ll only be able to hire them back paying a salary based on the amount of wood pieces they produce, rather than on how many days they work.

As the conversation finally wound down, business turned into small chat and we ended up talking at length about the water system the previous missionary had set up in Mehecane and how the church has worked hard to maintain it. Which sent my mind wandering… as the dry season is reaching its end, certain water pumps across Zambezia are drying up while still others are breaking down, making certain areas very stretched for water. Thankfully, the well I use is very deep and well maintained (Wiado, my next door neighbor, is the area well mechanic) thus it’s still pouring out clean drinking water.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same, however, for Amanda’s neighborhood in Morrumbala. The story we’ve been getting is that one of the main pumps for the city has broken down and due to various reasons, the government has been unable to fix it and likely won’t be able to in the near future. In the meantime, people most go to the neighboring communities and wait in overcrowded lines only then to have to carry hundreds of pounds of water back home. Needless to say, everyone is feeling pretty stressed because they are quite strapped for water and time. Be praying for the people in Morrumbala!

Thursday October 7th, 2010
This week is all about getting ready for natural medicine training next week with Muretchele. Every day it seems someone is at my house talking about the logistics of it or helping prepare the lessons by writing out notes on flip chart paper. As a general rule, I won’t tell them exactly what they need to include and I definitely won’t do the writing myself. In fact, they will have to present the material alone with me sporadically popping in just making sure they don’t convey any misinformation. We’ll see how it goes!

As mentioned before, my new FGH counterpart has already told me how disappointed she is with the “PLWHA” group because it doesn’t have almost any people who are actually living with HIV/AIDS… The fact that the group is also relatively weak in attendance and participation during meetings doesn’t help either… but such is the life in rural locals… most locals have very little education and have to work their butts off doing physical labor starting at 3 or 4am just to feed their families. With all due respect, I honestly feel that expecting well-educated, outspoken individuals to show up in masses for unpaid, philanthropic work in a rural Mozambique is just setting oneself up for disappointment.

Saturday October 9th, 2010
Three times in the past month and a half I’ve met with a group of church women in Mehecane to do Art Therapy with a local group of OVCs to encourage fun, creativity, and conversation. One of the essential parts of the Art Therapy is that all of the materials used are found locally. The cornerstone of the art project uses locally found clay (that women typically make cooking pots out of) and other leaves/twigs/rocks/flowers/whatever else we can scrounge up. Although the art sessions aren’t giving the kids food to eat, funds to pay for their educational supplies, or a skill that most could help support themselves with down the road (albeit maybe some of the kids will start being able to make clay pots to sell later on), I believe that the sessions are teaching them to be creative, have fun, support one another and, best of all, bringing the OVCs into an active church program that is equipped and interested to continuing to help them long after the Art Therapy sessions end.

Below are some select pictures from two of the Art Therapy sessions:

Two of the church mother's who are leading the group washing their hands before the session starts.

We make everyone a name tag, then go around and shake everyone's hand greeting everyone by name to make everyone feel special and recognized

Even the little one's love shaking hands!

First activity: Make "your ball" *Note the next several photos are of the kids participating in this activity...*

One kid showing off what he's made *Note the next several photos are of the kids showing what they've made today...*

P.S.- On the way back from Mehecane I came across a bunch of students doing the front end work of making bricks (i.e. before you burn them). Below are the pics... And also, some people emailed me asking how Wiado's house is coming along. Well, FYI, his family has gotten the cement and sand to build, but are still waiting on neighbors to come and help repair the house...

First you need to dig a big hole in the mud and pour water to get it to be the right consistency.

Then you need to pack into into a form.

Then you need to take the form to a dry place where you can lay them out in lines so they are easy to count/keep track of.

Then you need to set them out in the sun to dry for 3 or 4 days, rotating them 90 degrees everyday....

ONLY THEN do you get to stack them up and burn them as Wiado and his family was doing in the last blog post.