Thanksgiving

The pilgrims arriving in America would be like if the Kardashians were dropped off in Africa, they didn’t know what the heck they were doing--- this was Tim F, and this was the start to his Thanksgiving story. The day before the Alexandra Thanksgiving story ended up being a bit of a disaster, somehow resulting in some confusion about whether it should be a British or American holiday, so Tim told his story to clarify the misunderstanding. He continued (though my summary doesn’t really do it justice): Squanto wanted to usurp power over his tribe and was hoping to use the pilgrims for his grand plan….Squanto may have been the only Indian present during the so called Thanksgiving dinner…. and there probably hadn’t been any turkey but just some salted dried fish and corn porridge (what we call here in Mozambique: xima; Malawi: nsima; South Africa: pap; and Italy: polenta…well polenta without milk, cream, cheese, and salt and made with feedcorn not sweet corn). I couldn’t help but try to imagine the picture book that would go alongside the Tim F Thanksgiving Story, it would have a small insert at the end of the book explaining what happened the years following the infamous meal with a watercolor picture of cholera infections, displacement, and starvation. Once during a lecture at UCM a student asked me what our dialects were like in America and I told her that we don’t really have dialects like Moz because the colonists managed to decimate most of the natives so few people were left to speak dialect…. She was horrified.

Regardless of these uncomfortable renditions of the American story, Thanksgiving is one of my top favorite holidays, and I have so many things to be grateful for this year. We showed up to Gorangosa with apple pies, unfortunately arriving after the aptly named turkey had been unsuccessfully intoxicated and then slaughtered. I have to give Jordan and her parents props and then some for putting on a fantastic meal…. All cooked on charcoal because the electricity was out all day long. Truly unbelievable and all their hard work paid off: pies, stuffing, fruit salad, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, etc. etc. 5 star!!!!

This year I am so thankful for getting to live in Africa and Mozambique, for meeting all the wonderful people I have met, for having such an empowering support base back home, and for being from a culture that values expressions of gratitude and love, even if the national history doesn’t always reflect it.

He is My Hero

He was half a man. I don’t mean this as a philosophical judgment, just pure physical observation. His torso seem shrunken in at the middle, his limbs half formed and twisted, his legs small and eternally folded, his arms pulled and buckled at the elbows and wrists. When I caught a brief look of him around the corner, pulling himself up the stairs with his elbows and dragging his leg stubs, I immediately assumed an awkward situation was soon to follow. He would probably want money, or would get stuck upstairs in the university hall and someone would have to carry him out, or he would cause a scene… this has happened before with other people wandering in: street boys coming into my lecture pedir-ing for candies and monies, a crazy drunk man who claimed to be some father figure of mine, school kids shrieking and running down the hall…oh the thrill of stealing erasers from the university classrooms (!), other school kids sneaking up to sometimes use the bathrooms or more frequently to play and pee on things that are not the urinals (two bathrooms for 1 primary school, 1 secondary school, 1 industrial school, 1 teacher training school, and 1 university… except the bathroom is on university part of the facilities), full grown men asking for any odd jobs…. It really isn’t unusual to see interesting characters, though less so now that we have a guard.

The lady walking up the stairs with me maybe was thinking the same thing, as we passed him, when she asked him nicely, politely: “What are you doing up here?”
“I’m here to matriculate.”
“… At UCM….?”
“Yes, I am here to matriculate at UCM.”
He was articulate, un-offended, professional, and as we came up on him I could see he was holding a document pouch, he was ready, prepared, and just like any other student. It was just a bit harder for him to get upstairs to the offices.

It made me think of an interaction I had a couple weeks ago. An American entrepreneur generously showed me his community health project that he has been developing, it was really interesting to see … I wouldn’t even know where to start if I wanted to start something like that and they have accomplished an incredible amount of work in a short amount of time. When I was there, I went with them to deliver clothes to a man with paralyzed legs living in the bairro. This man lives alone, in a mud hut off the main road. His yard was neatly swept but the inside of his house was humbling.

As we were leaving, I asked something along the lines of does he get out often, or what does he do. My question was answered with surprise/shock: He’s paralyzed, he can’t go anywhere. I felt a bit bad. Oh yeah, of course, how could I ask such an insensitive and thoughtless question.

. .. but wait … maybe my question wasn’t so thoughtless but in more of a subconscious way. I absolutely say this not to demean the challenges facing people in any way (this is an uncomfortable topic but I’m not that insensitive), but every day when I go to work I see people around town, mobile despite predisposition for immobility: scooting on cardboard, or being carried to the spot where they shine and repair shoes, or making a daily journey from downtown to outside Shoprite and back again by crawling, or that man literally pulling himself up a flight of stairs to register for classes at the university.

Certain norms that I might have unconsciously had about capability and resiliency have shifted: a lesson for me in being supportive and sensitive of challenges but not being too presumptuous about limitations.

Virus

Computer virus. This is my number one virus concern in Africa, after the HIV (of course). The main difference being a computer virus is 100% manmade---- there is no spontaneous encapsulation of nucleic acid, there is no ecology to it, no retroviral induced mutations, just some jerk sitting somewhere undoubtedly dark and windowless typing 1’s and 0’s down, and he is probably thinking that he is helping take down the Man, bringing down the Industrial Machine, or something…. Well let me tell you right now, he is not taking down the Man, he is just bringing down Africa… because this is the hotbed of computer viruses… all viruses come to Mozambique and stay in Mozambique. And flash drives (aka “memory sticks” for the technically challenged such as myself---yep, recently realized I may be the only one using that terminology) are the main vectors, they are the festering infectors, teaming with viruses.

***

In the mornings, on my ride to work, we listen to the radio, on good days it is BBC news coverage and I can feel somewhat classy, but on the other days we listen to local coverage. Sometimes it is a DJ taking in calls, most of the calls are dropped, in which case the DJ makes a quick transition with a laser sound effect (“hello…. hello…?” **pew-pew-pew**). Sometimes it is this music from Zim (I think it sounds like amped circus music, friends are trying to convince me otherwise and I’m open to conversion because it is played all through the night), this is also interrupted with the laser sound effect **pew-pew-pew** repeatedly and erratically, keeping **pew-pew-pew** a sort of anti-beat through **pew-pew-pew** seemingly random parts of **pew-pew-pew** the tune (I’m probably not Hip enough to get the musical sophistication of this “re-mix”, if this were Portland I’d put on my black rim glasses and grow a mustache at least to make it look like I get it). Sometimes it is national news, which I like because the Portuguese in Maputo sounds exotic. And sometimes it is local news, which I usually don’t like because it frequently is about some shock-and-awe story that is uncomfortably close to home: some guys cutting the hearts and lungs out of his relatives, or some guy who did a self-castration (this one apparently made national news because a friend in the south asked me about this, and for the record these are not exemplary stories of Mozambican culture but rather Mozambican news coverage). The laser sound effect makes an appearance for the local news too **pew-pew-pew**. There are actually three or so versions of the laser sound effect, apparently nothing else, and those buttons are well used.

By far my favorite radio moment is a public service announcement targeting teens and pre-teens to stop downloading music. I think the ad is targeted for Moz but they just say Africa in general. This is different from the ads back home, no scary aggressive voice calling you a thief, no screenshots of musicians talking about their feelings about illegal downloads. Instead it is a scripted dialogue with a schoolboy who is told that Africa/Mozambique is not as developed as everywhere else and does not have the same internet capacity, that when he downloads music he blocks up the system for everyone else----something along the lines of: by downloading music you, personally, are slowing down the Development of Africa, and most of the stuff downloaded is full of viruses anyways and viruses are messing up everything for everybody. The announcement also includes a list of appropriate uses of the internet in Mozambique: mostly just email (sans attachments).

Here is my plea: Dearest Computer Virus Writers: You make it so my students can’t put digital copies of their homework on my computer (that flash ain’t going nowhere near my machine), you make the computers too slow for students to learn how to do research or type out a paper, you make it so little Joao or little Fatima can’t download the latest Akon or Shakira hit. Please find a new hobby. My personal suggestion: eradicating the laser sound effect. Sincerely, Alexandra.

A Special Performance

When I was six or so Mom and Auntie Clay took me to The City to see The Nutcracker. I was ecstatic: ballerinas. That’s all I wanted to be: one of those oh-so-beautiful ballerinas with something tinselly bunched around my waist and ribbons cris-crossed from the point shoes up the entire length of my legs. However, Mom forcibly evicted Ballerina from my Things-I-Want-to-be-When-I Grow-Up list with a big NO to ballet classes--- something about me having lasting body image problems. She did concede, slightly, with a tutu and, later, tickets to The San Francisco Nutcracker—possibly after seeing my dedication to the Ballerina idea through hours of untrained versions of the pirouette in the living room (well documented in Grandpa’s homevideos). It was a big day, just us three ladies. Mom sewed me little green chiffon/black velvet dress for the theater (man was I spoiled). It really was beautiful and hung up in my room for days before, taunting, teasing, but I had to wait for the big day. Of the performance itself I don’t actually remember that much, just walking in the City in my brand new dress, Auntie Clay piling her fur lined jacket on the chair to prop me up because I was too little to see the stage, and that one scene with children coming out from the bottom of a man’s hoop skirt. Guess it wasn’t really the show itself that was so memorable, but rather getting to do something special with mom and Auntie Clay: a Special Treat.

I thought about my day at the Theater when I asked the neighborhood girls who play at my house if they wanted to go to English Theater: Hours of short skits put on by regional secondary schools, all in English and with the theme Be the Change (and some kind of HIV/AIDS tidbit, because that is how these events are funded…. Don’t sleep with your teachers kids! Use a condom!). It was a gamble, either the girls would love it or they would be bored to tears. “Ask your parents….” And Claire was quick to point out: “You are so American.” She was right, parents just kind of let their kids run free, parental permission: pssh---as if!! Half the time these little girls show up to my house with a baby cousin or brother or sister or neighbor strapped on their back, babies holding babies, babies caring for babies.

Would they show up? Would they even want to go?

Saturday rolled around and there was a “Dona Alexandra, Dona Alexandra!” at the gate. Two of them showed up, early (!) and in their fanciest dresses and a Strawberry Shortcake plastic handbag. The mom of one of the girls had even rubbed her daughter’s shoulders and back with body oil. I’m sure we were quite the spectacle, these two little girls in their dresses with these two Americans walking through town, through the market area, and the main intersection to get to the Theater.

We watched the performances. Ate some crackers I brought. They would lean over to tell me little tidbits they were understanding in English “he just said ‘goodbye’”; “she just asked ‘how are you?’ ” They stored cookies (leftover snacks for the performing students) the coordinator of English Theater generously gave them in the little pink plastic handbag, taking them out one by one slowly munching and savoring, even when we walked home during the lunch break, they kept pulling the contents of the handbag out and stuffing it back in… just to check on it.

English Theater is a daylong event. Honestly I figured we would go for an hour tops then head home, they’d get bored, right? But they wanted to stay on. We left during the lunch break, parted ways in Bairro Quatro, but 20 minutes later they were back at my house “Dona Alexandra….” I was flopped on my bed, hot and tired (and need I say sunburned?) but they were super excited about going back, to see the last couple performances, to see who got the 1st place award. How could I say no? We trucked back into town, back to the theater to finish out the very special day, to watch every single skit. It wasn’t really about being able to understand the performances, or even the quality of the performances, it was just the excitement about getting to be there, to do something “special”.

Classroom Correspondence

The three goals of Peace Corps Mission are:
1)Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2)Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3)Helping promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans.

Of these three points I especially value the second two, cross-cultural dialogue can be extremely illuminating and I personally feel like I have learned sooooo much. Though truthfully, sometimes "cross-cultural dialogue" can be frustrating, especially with the tired conversation of "I want an American girlfriend/wife". And for whatever reason it is impossibly hard for me to redirect the conversation here once it enters the Red Zone (maybe other PCVs have better luck? any tips guys?), and my tolerence in recent weeks has waned to a point of an emotional allergic reaction in the form of impatience and bitchiness (hmm... I don't think this is the PC way) when the "Are you married?/I've always wanted to be with an American" comes up. Thankfully not everyone is like that and everyday I am around students, colleagues, etc. who continue to engage and teach me, so I always have a positive interaction to focus on.

One of the ways PC helps facilitate Goal #3 is through classroom correspondence. I thought I'd post the first couple letters I wrote to a 5th grade class that I have been paired with in Salem, OR. Not sure if it is of interest, but maybe I talk about things here that don't usually show up in this blog.

Email #1:
Hello Ms. D.'s 5th grade class!

I'm excited to hear from you guys and be your penpal! I am also from Oregon, I grew up in Portland (I went to Chapman Elementary School)and then studied Marine Biology at the University of Oregon. I miss Oregon a lot but I'm learning so much here in Mozambique.

I live in a city in central Mozambique, it is about the size of Salem more or less and I teach biology at a University. Before I came to teach at the university, I taught 8th grade biology in a very small village in the north called Ile (or Errego). Next
year I am going to move back to a village to teach high school biology at a vocational school.

I'll try to answer all of your questions!!!

Mozambique is very very beautiful (I feel so lucky to be here), and HUGE!!!! In the south there are dry, flat sandy palm grooves, in the central part of the country it is more green and lush with less palm trees, and in the north it is more rocky (they have these big granite
rock formations that everybody says look like sleeping dinosaurs). The beaches have brilliant turquoise waters and you can buy fresh fish and squid for dinner from fishermen right on the beach when they come in at the end of the day.

The culture here is agriculture based, most people have land that they farm through the year, which are called machambas. So even though most people don't have jobs and cannot earn a lot of money they are able to provide food for their families and live a good life. Things that they farm: corn (maca roca), couve (a big leafy green... it is like chard), sweet potatoes, yucca/mandioca, lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, and other things. Most people have chickens, and a few people keep goats too. A lot of what they can grow depends where in the country they live because the environment varies a lot.

Soccer is very very popular here. During the World Cup, everyone was getting together all the time to watch the games. Mozambicans were especially proud because it was being held in South Africa, just south of us, and is one of the first major world sporting events to be held in Africa. People play soccer all the time, every weekend there is day long tournaments that everybody goes to watch. Most of the soccer fields are dirt fields, which get really really muddy during the rainy season.... but that doesn't stop anybody!

I haven't seen too many predators here yet! A lot of the big game animals were killed during the civil war because it was the only food people could find. Now that Mozambique is not in a civil war people are trying to do things to protect the animals. I have seen lots of
baboons (they are kind of scary and pretty aggressive..... once I was eating peanuts with a friend and one charged at us... we had to toss our peanuts so he wouldn't come up on us.....needless to say that is how I learned not to snack around monkeys), some smaller tree monkeys,and hippos. Last week I saw a secretary bird, which is very large and looks almost prehistoric, it eats snakes. There are big snakes in the region where I live (black mambas!!!) but haven't seen one yet, I don't mind snakes back home but they get really big here, so I'm okay not seeing one. A friend found one in his outhouse and another one
found one on his porch (it was so big that it sat up and looked at him).

I think the most difficult thing for Mozambicans is the school system, it is very hard to get a good education here. A 5th grade class has 60-110 students, there are no books or anything to use. Even if a student is really really motivated they don't always get the education they deserve. But I can talk more about the schools some other time if
you are interested.

The best part about living here is the food. The food is influenced by India, Portugal, and China and the result is....YUM! Coconut-bbq-chicken (called: frango zambeziano), garlic sweet potato fries (called batatas fritas), regular french fries, rissois (little shrimp stuffed morsels), matapa (green leaves cooked in coconut milk with peanut flour), feijoada (a bean stew with peppers), and piripiri(hot pepper sauce to put on pretty much everything). Plus papayas, mangos, pineapple, guava, passion fruit, lichi, when they are in season.

I could keep on going but I'll end it here before I start to ramble!!! :) Eat lots of apples for me because the apples here are expensive and no good!

Paz e amor! Ciao e ate proximo!

***

Email #2:

Hello Ms. D's 5th grade class!!!
It was in Portuguese (it said: peace and love, bye and until next time), Mozambique was a Portuguese colony so I speak Portuguese here. They got their independence in 1975 but then had a civil war, which ended in the mid 1990s. There are also a lot of local dialects! People who speak dialects from the south can't always understand people who speak dialects from the north (it would be like if you had a special language with everyone from Salem but couldn't use that language to communicate outside of Salem, or understand the special
language from other places like Portland or San Francisco), so they use Portuguese. Since I teach my classes in Portuguese I just have been focusing on learning Portuguese (I didn't know it before I came, but I used to speak Spanish which has helped me learn Portuguese), but
I hope next year to learn more local dialect (I'm not sure which one yet). Some names of the dialects are: Shona, Sena, Macua, Lomwe, Xitsua,and many many more.

Here are some fun things to say in Mozambican Portuguese:
--Fafoca: these means gossip, people love to gossip here so it is a
good word to know
--Ate logo: means until next time, it's a lot like "hasta luego" in Spanish
--Mato: the bush, or the country; to say the word "shortcut" you say "cortamato" which roughly means cutting through the bush
--Mangueira: mango tree, it is almost mango season, I am very excited.
--Amor: love
--Catana: machete

I have not seen any ostriches, unfortunately, but I have seen many baboons... probably 70-100at this point, they aren't that common but I do see them frequently. I see them on the roads and sometimes on the outskirts of little towns but they can be pretty aggressive so I
try to avoid them. I think baboons are more common outside of Mozambique because I saw more baboons in Zambia and Malawi when I was traveling there for my summer vacation. I'm not sure how many big game animals are still around, I have not seen any. There is a big
national park (called Gorangosa) near where I live where they have some elephants and lions, but most of the animals hide away from people and sometimes people will go to the park for a week and still not see anything because the animals are so shy. Some times people get lucky though, my co-worker was at the national park last weekend and saw 40 elephants!!! I am very jealous and wish I had been there!

I got so hungry reading about your favorite foods! Even though I get good food here I still miss food from back home.

I haven't heard of people learning out on boats here in Mozambique, but they do have little wooden boats on the coast that are called dhows that they use for fishing.

A vocational school is for students who are going to go on to a trade like becoming an electrician, or a plumber, or something like that. Instead of going to a normal secondary school (grades 8, 9, and 10)they go to a vocational school that will teach them the same thing as a secondary school (Portuguese, Math, etc.) but also things for their profession. A lot of students prefer vocational schools because they will have a skill that will possibly get them a job after their studies. Here in Mozambique it is a very big deal if a student finishes 10th grade, many do not make it that far. Some don't continue because they don't want to, other can't continue because they have too many responsibilities at home (working in the fields, taking care of siblings, or even starting their own families).

Well.... I live in a city so it is pretty hard for me to know everybody, I am still making friends. People are very friendly and because I work for a well-known university often times they know who I am before I know how they are. They like coming up to me to ask me
questions about life in America. Lots of people want to learn English too, so they like to try to speak English with me for practice.

I am in Mozambique for 27 months, that is how long the Peace Corps service is. I started about 1 year ago and my service will be ending in December 2011.

It was wonderful to hear from you guys. What are you guys going to be for Halloween? We don't have Halloween here, unfortunately. I sure wish we did! We have other holidays though for different historical days, like Mozambique Independence Day. During these holidays people like to play loud music and dance, Mozambicans are very very good dancers.

Hope to hear from you soon.

ZAP!

This last week the electrical company cut power to the house because, supposedly, a bill hadn’t been paid. I mean the most literal sense of the word “cut”, though “hacked” would really be an even better fit. After a rather exhausting day at work I came home to find a bunch of wires hanging from the side of the house. Actually I found the mangled wires the next day since it was 6pm when I first found out there was no power, which is way too late to start poking around the house for possible causes. I spent the night alone by candlelight… romantic, I know. Now I’m fine with no power, but the problem is when city-houses-that-are-set-up-to-have-power don’t have power things get complicated (complicado: this is what people say when things are a pain in the ass, as in “a situação é muito muito complicado//the situation is very very complicated”…. other words, like “difícil”, come off a bit strong, I learned this the hard way, so even when the situation is more than complicated it is better just to stick to “complicado”). When I don’t have energia I also don’t have water, because to pull water from the well I need an electrical pump, and there are no neighborhood communal pumps (that is what the villages have), no river, nada. My romantic night sozinha was briefly interrupted by my guard (the older guard was working that night): “We have no power” “I know we have no power, I noticed just now when I got home, I’ll figure it out tomorrow when the offices are open” “But I am suffering out here in the dark” “Okay…. I understand that the situation is not ideal but there isn’t anything I can do about it right now because it is night” “But the water tank doesn’t have much water” “I know, I also need water from the tank, I am frustrated too” “But how am I going to see the robbers” “Listen extra carefully, be alert” “But we have no power” ……… I’m really too tired for a cyclic conversation…….. The next day the university kindly started figuring out things with the electrical company, four days after the payment was made my house was reconnected and six days after payment was made the electrical company left the electric bill on my front porch, the very one that supposedly hadn’t been paid in the first place…. Ah, gotta love the order of things: cut energy for an unpaid bill, and then, many days later, actually provide the bill to the customer, but don’t forget to charge them those reconnection fees.

So I’m back to normal: wearing rubber flipflops when I cook with my stove…. or else the current grounds from the hot plates through my body…ouch (don’t even think about stirring that pasta water with a metal spoon), following the strict rules of what I can plug in when (oven + computer = blasted fuses), and not touching things like the ends of plugged in cords or the CD drive on my computer (ouch, again). I wonder how many times the human body gets zapped before your nervous system starts getting wonky.

Mato

Every PC site has its own vibe, its own challenges and strengths, so when people talk about the Peace Corps Experience or Life at Site it can be hard to know what exactly they are talking about. The point is, every volunteer is getting an interesting and eye-opening experience no matter where they are serving, the specifics of their experience is inevitably unique. I recently went to visit a gal friend of mine who lives at a mato site, while I see the pluses and minuses of city life, she gets to see the pluses and minuses of mato life.

Visiting her was a bit complicated, mostly because she doesn’t have cell reception, so no check-in text to clarify logistics (gotta love the cellphones: some PCVs are resistant to cellphones because before service these volunteers imagined PC would help purge their dependency on electronics, sure a valid desire but, man, do cellphones make coordinating for both work and social so much easier). I talked with her on a Tuesday (she had been at another site with network) and mentioned that I’d head down to her site that weekend if standfast (i.e. PC travel restriction during the riots) was lifted. By Thursday standfast was lifted, I radioed her via another volunteer saying I was coming (though I’m not sure the radio message made it to her), packed my little bag, set my alarm clock for bright and early,…. Yay, so excited!

There was one major hitch, I wasn’t totally sure where she lived. I knew the name of the town, I knew the crossroad off the main highway that heads in her direction, and I knew transport was difficult and frustrating for her and I should get to the crossroads as early as possible to get a car into the village.

When I told the chapa to pull over, the driver doubted my request, no this is really where I want to get off. He pulled away, leaving me at a crossroad between the EN1 and a dirt road with a restaurant/bar, some farmers trying to hitch north on the main highway with sacks of corn, and a man leaning on his bike telling me: “you just missed a car”. I began to wish I had a plan B.

I sat under a baobab tree, at first with a man who had a satiny, snakeskin print shirt and classy shades---this was his cellphone tree, the spot where there was sometimes (but not always) network. His big watch and shiny clothes seemed odd at these crossroads. Eventually he caught a ride to another village down the dirtroad on a bike, and then I was alone....just me and the baobab tree and some burrowing ants. As more kids (their bums peaking through ripped seams) passed by, men on bikes, women carrying bundles on their head, the “you just missed a car” turned into “you missed the last car going to Estaquinha for the day”. Now I really was starting to wish I had a plan B. Could I walk? Nope, too far, one teenage boy estimated the distance at roughly 80 km (okay I kind of doubt this distance but it is too far to walk nonetheless).

One man came up (multiple times) and offered to resolve my situation: we can go grab some drinks at the bar and then he could take me there on his motorcycle. He had no teeth. This seemed like a really really bad idea, an even worse idea than sleeping in the shrubs on the side of the road, which according to him was my only other option. <>

And just as the need for a plan B was starting to get urgent a car came by. While I felt better in the car, I was still not totally sure the car was going to the right place, the driver said Estaquinha…. I think? At one point the car stopped and almost everyone got out, and I asked the woman sitting next to me if this was Estaquinha…. She just stared at me, so I asked again, same non-response, maybe she didn’t speak Portuguese (oh man, I’m not in the city anymore)… well it didn’t turn out to be my destination, so good thing I had gotten back in the car.

The driver, who was sweet and inquisitive, eventually stopped the car in front of a group of little concrete houses and said: “your friend gets out here.” “Are we in Estaquinha?” “But your friend gets out here.” I was hoping he was talking about my actual friend, not one of my other “friends”. Often people I meet think I am friends with all other white people. It is not uncommon to hear: “oh I know your friend John, he lives in a vila in Gaza.... he is from your land, from either New York or Chicago or London…. No, he doesn’t live in Gaza now, he lived there 5 years ago….. I think you know him or maybe he knows you? No eh?” So when the driver talked about my “friend” I was starting to worry I was going to be crashing at the house of some other white lady, not my PC buddy.

I ran up to the nearest house with people, two men laying out on straw mats. “Good afternoon? How are you? Does the Professora Rebecca live near here?” One of the men let out a single: “Yes.” That was it, nothing more affirmative or negative, just “yes”.

Guess this is the spot.

****

My friend who I visited is a wonderful actress and I really enjoyed watching her work with her students in prep for English Theater, a PC run regional competition. There were a couple of things that I thought were particularly interesting while watching her students perform (1) greetings: culturally it is very important to greet everyone and ask how they are before you bulldooze into whatever point you need to talk to them about… I still have a hard time remembering to do this without being prompted by someone else. The students struggled to resist their urge to extensively greet each other at the start of every scene (which was a necessary dialogue cut considering the time constraints of the performace). (2) that weird clapping thing: at one point during the play the characters arrange a bride price, and all the actors start a slow rhythmic unified clapping. After the third time watching the scene I realized that this was not some accidental motion. “What are they doing?” I whispered to my friend, “You know I’m not so sure…” It turns out that the slow group clapping is just one of the essential steps to the bride purchase. She later told me that when they were getting ready for the final performance the students were stressed about finding the appropriate props for the scene, specifically two plates that you sandwich over the bride-money.

Indicators of Normalcy

On our ride to work in the university van, a professor mentioned, “I’ve got some shopping to do before the end of the month, I’ve heard that prices are going to rise significantly the first of September…” This professor refers to himself as my African grandpop and teases me about my boyfriends (aka any guy he sees me with… we’re just friends I promise). He tried to direct the driver to pull over at the lojinhas (shops) by the train tracks, and the driver just smiled and shook his head in that “Oh you, always trying to break the rules….” kind of way and continued driving towards the faculdade, towards work (not shopping!). A week before, after my late class (which ends at 22:45, way too late, if you ask me, for teachers to be teaching and students to be learning) I got in the van and the driver apologized for driving with the windows down on such a chilly night, he was airing out the car since earlier in the evening the grandpop professor had decided to smoke a cigarette to alleviate stress (Truthfully, at the moment I was thinking that I could use a cigarette and maybe a night cap….. ). The driver, partly exasperated but mostly humored, complained that the professor didn’t even ask as he puffed in the back of the van: “He is naughty! He is very very naughty!/ Ele é indisciplinado. Ele é muito muito indisciplinado.”

When the professor first mentioned the price spike, I didn’t think much of it, too distracted and amused by the driver thwarting the naughty professor’s attempt to bend the rules, and figured it was the usual price fluctuation. When these so called “bread riots” did eventually start, everything was concentrated in Maputo and frankly there wasn’t a sign of anything anywhere else, just the reports from Maputo on the radio and the same flashy images on TV that ended up on major international media. The demonstrations started popping up in a couple other major cities, but daily life was generally unchanged. Not that I want to belittle what demonstrations there were or say I wasn’t a little nervous, but there wasn’t nationwide chaos (most volunteers didn’t hear a peep).

We had one day of commotion where I live. I was at work and we got a phone call saying it was better to go home, people were congregating at the mercados, the praças, etc. How many people? Not really sure, never saw anything. What was the mood of the crowd? Again, not really sure, never saw anything. Schools were closed, the neighborhood girls said they ran straight home without stopping and their parents kept them indoors the rest of the day. Someone else said there had been a tire bonfire by the fairgrounds. And someone else said the demonstrators had left the streets littered with stones. But who knows, it’s all hearsay and I’m not much of an investigative reporter, I’m satisfied with loose gossip. I spent the day at my colleague’s house, waiting for things to die down, gauging the intensity of the protests by the frequency of police gunshots and the number of cars passing on the street. It was unnerving but not terrifying. At the end of the day, after things calmed down, I got a ride to my house to pick up a couple things and returned to spend the night at my colleague’s house (I really wasn’t interested in sleeping alone at home).

On the ride over to my house I wondered what would be the indicators of normalcy here, how would I know things are safe happy and calm? Back home, I guess it would be…. buses going up Thurman Street? The only citywide shut-downs from home I can think of are Oregon so-called snow storms: 2 inches of snow and the city Portland is immobilized and in hysterics (no judgment: I can drive in a downpour fine, a snowflake stresses me out). When the buses get off their snow routes and start heading up Thurman Street again you know that it’s probably all right to drive down the hill, this is my sign that everything is a-okay.

The call to prayer was projected from the turquoise mosque. But the streets were relatively quiet and cleared, few people out, few cars. All of the lojinhas by the central market were closed and some were boarded up, but across the street the vendor boys had already laid out their t-shirts on the corner sidewalk, ready to sell. The main market was deserted except for 6 women at the entrance who had set up their baskets with lettuce, couve, and those bitter greens that I don’t know how to cook.

Normally, the main intersection at the end of the day is monitored by traffic control (traffic light at the major intersection in town… pshhh). They pull up a cylindrical wooden stand that is painted with vertical red stripes (it reminds me of those step-stools for circus elephant performances) to the center of the intersection and a traffic guard stands on top directing the hectic confusion between outgoing cars, kids on bikes, especially-full chapas going to the outside bairros, buses coming in from Maputo, and big pushcarts from the central mercado with unsellable goods. Every two seconds the traffic guard mechanically bends one elbow, then the other, left, right, left, right, regardless of the flow of traffic, left, right, left, right,…..then he turns to direct traffic on the cross-street. His trained movements are rhythmic and precisely timed. Meanwhile, a crazy man with a cotton, fisherman hat and chin-length dreadlocks, standing at the side of the intersection, also attempts to control traffic; he waves what looks like a mini padded golf club (there is a piece of blue fabric cinched at the club-end by red string) at cars as they pass by. Never mind that he only “directs” one of the cross-streets, but he does so with the pace of traffic, like how traffic control is done in the states, swinging the club at the speed the cars should be moving at and with a slight sense of urgency: “Your turn. Go Go GO!” When he is tired, which is understandable since he is out there hours on end (even covering times when the officials aren’t there), he loosely waves his club while sitting on the curb, chin resting on hand.

I’m not sure how Cotton Hat Man perceives the police traffic patrol officer: competition or assistance? Or maybe he doesn’t notice. Either way, this strange, crazy man directing traffic at the end of the day was my major indicator of normalcy, oddly comforting, more so than the market ladies or the t-shirts on the sidewalk. When I saw the swing of the club my first thought was: it’s just like any other day. It didn’t matter that the police weren’t there with their striped stand, he was there, unfazed by the commotion earlier in the day.

***


I’m no economist nor a political essayist, so I won’t comment much, but I’d say the demonstrations aren’t the critical part of it all, or even the most frightening part. For me, it’s the big picture stuff that doesn’t come with a flashy burning tire photo or a “bread riot” tag line, the stuff that is too hard to define and delineate to make a catchy headline.

I think everything has passed, at least the demonstrations. I am writing this on a national holiday and texting is not working. Rumor says: the two phone companies have blocked all cellphone texts, jamming what was the most popular mechanism for protest organization, but who knows… I’m just a spreader of unconfirmed facts. The Problem is still here (regardless of government subsidies), and will continue to remain unresolved indefinitely.

Jeans.

Chimoio is chique. Women dress nice. Men dress nice. Attention is paid to such details, such as accessories, flare, shine of shoes, and matching (red on red; blue on blue; green on green… the shade is not particularly important, but keep the color somewhat constant through the outfit). And I still look like I rolled out of Eugene, not that Eugene isn’t a stylish place (there are a number of Eugene-ians that I can think of the elicit wardrobe envy) but it is the kind of place that I could wander around in a Care-Bear PJ onesie without drawing attention to myself.

Chimoio is especially chique at my work, so while my Oregon-summer-worthy wardrobe was perfectly hip for the professional environment up in Zambezia, I tend to feel Frumpy here in Chimoio---and Frumpy is not at all what a lady in their prime wants to feel. I'll be honest: I want to feel a little bit sexy (not the unsolicited attention kind, rather the inside confident glow kind), I want to feel like I’m going to be a hot mom and that I will never drive a minivan and never have a bored husband. Africa generally makes me feel completely opposite of those things, I think my internal nerd is overtly pronounced here in my effort to stay relatively conservative. I have been mistaken for a nun numerous times (I blame it on the knee length skirts and the fact I work for a Catholic institute), and in Zambia an intoxicated man on a never-ending bus ride told me I was clearly a pastor’s wife (I blame it on my passive, mental disengagement when dealing with drunks). I will, however, take being mistaken for a matrimonially bound church member over being mistaken for an albino (…damn it…*long exasperated sigh*) any day, which happens far too often for comfort or confidence. I do, however, find reassurance in the sporadic exchanges when I am mistaken for Brazilian (…much sexier than albino….): people will “Gee”-ify (bom “Gee”ia) their speech in order to emulate the Brazilian cadence and accent they hear on telenovelas (maybe to help me understand them better?).

The point is that I needed to buy… something…. just one outfit to up the Brazilian factor and down the pastor’s wife factor (though I’m sure my Dad would rather me do the opposite… Dad, you can just assume I found a heavy-turtleneck and keep my ankles covered). A PCV goes a-marketing….

You can buy perfectly nice fancy clothes in town store: American prices Chinese quality or really really expensive American prices of okay quality. You can also buy clothes at the mercados, all those things you donated to Goodwill are now in Africa (this can be a hard thing to explain, first because the Goodwill origin isn’t always known and second because there isn’t really a good defendable answer to: “But why would people get rid of perfectly good clothes?”). I’m not sure about the exact business but essentially vendors bulk buy the clothes in big plastic bundles, and then later individually re-sale the clothes. Sometimes a vendor gets lucky: contemporary clothes in good shape; other times he’ll get a bundle of mu-mus… just depends on when the bundle was packaged and where the clothes came from in the first place. At the big market outside of the town, it is like walking through 30 years of time warp: some stands with clothes straight (literally) from the 60s, other stands with sweatshirts from the early 90s, and still others with slinky slightly used lingerie. Clothes are displayed in piles, or hung up on wires, or dangled from a string with a stick as a cross-bar through the shoulders or hips. While this clothes market can provide hours of entertainment (…oh, man, did someone really wear this?!....), it can be hard to find something “professional”.

To deal with this clothing issue I went to the smaller market in-town. Same clothes, just filtered down to a manageable amount. I am not a really good shopper in Moz for a number of reasons: 1) different taste in style. Fashion is often flashy here! Bright skin tight pants with or without heavy stitching on the back beltline resembling a regrettable tramp stamp tattoo, gems rhinestone glitter accents, a little pizzazz here, a little motif there. Personally I’m not really into shiny, it makes me feel awkward and like a treasure chest, it looks great on people who can pull it off… I’m just not one of them 2) I’m bad at negotiating prices, and that is an essential part of the buying processes. 3)…. Okay I’m not really good at shopping in the states either so it’s not really a Moz-issue it’s a Alexandra-issue…..

So I went with Claire who is a good shopper, good stylist, and a good bargainer. And she probably felt like she was taking a 12-year-old shopping. “Try on these pants, it doesn’t hurt to try them!” “I don’t wanna….too much shimmer, they’re too bright, too much butt pocket stitching, too much gold!” After some fuss---on my end, and a number to trial and error changes behind a Jurassic Park bed sheet rigged up as a "dressing room", we found them: hip and happening jeans. Though they are a bit more…snug…. than what I wear in the states (…when in rome…), the purchase was a success: I got a big “Bom Gee-ia” first thing in the morning on the first day I wore them out.

Nightguard

“It’s broken,” pointing down at the slingshot, “Completely.”

This would be my night guard.

And That would be the … security system?

“Oh. Um… Where can you buy that… Thing….?” Thing: the best synonym because Arma seemed too weapon-y to be used to in substitution for the word Slingshot, which is not part of my vocabulary.

Seriously? Is there a full grown adult man standing here asking me to buy him a slingshot?

He stands, slanted and staring off to one side avoiding direct eye contact, a stance that would indicate submission and complete lack of assertion in the States, but here in Moz it is meant to show respect. His eyes are big (buggy, really, but that isn’t a really flattering description) jaundice-yellow balls poking out over his nose. Age… somewhere between 35-75, but definitely an adult. And that is definitely a legit, albeit stretched out, Slingshot; not a forked stick with a rubberband, but a professionally carved Y and a wrapped leather handle and hooks for the thick rubber strip and ammunition cradle.

This all happened when I first moved to Manica province, site number two, new house, new neighborhood, fresh start. Though the house/complex is shared with other employees of the university, through a strand of chance happenings I lived essentially alone in the complex for my first month. Just me and night guard. Me and …Drunk… night guard.

Yes, maybe I should start at the beginning of our relationship. The moment the primary tenant in the main house left to temporarily teach in another city at a different campus, night guard started drinking. A lot, or maybe just a little bit of the really strong homebrewed stuff, either way you could smell it miles away and he couldn’t talk straight. During the nights, it was me (in lockdown in the house) with this drunk man wandering around the courtyard or chatting with the other guards outside of the house. During the days, he would pass out on his nest on the patio… sometimes with pants… sometimes not.

As the more time went by from the primary tenant’s departure, various guard responsibilities started to go by the wayside: the yard dirt was left un-swept and he started augmenting his patio nest: first with the big pieces of cardboard from the recently purchased fridge and stove, then small boxes and jars, which were later filled with various bits of plastic paper metal. Essentially most of the things that I was putting in the trash pit was ending up, rearranged and reorganized, on the patio nest.

Then he stopped sticking around, some nights he’d be there and some nights not. The crucial guard responsibility: just being there, what not being done. One night I woke up to neighborhood guards tweeting their whistles, and laid in bed petrified as I heard them out on the street apprehending a thief who tried to rob the house next door. What if that had been my house? It was time for an intervention.

I scolded (firmly but nicely) this adult-man-guard. What if it had been this house with me alone? What if there had been nobody to alert the other guards? When you have a job it also means you have responsibilities. And though he was inebriated at the time of the Talk, he evidently took something in because he showed up the next day asking for a fix-up for the slingshot. He was ready to take his job seriously.

I gave him a pc issued rape whistle and 50 Mts for the slingshot. The more I thought about the situation the more I thought: maybe slingshot really is the weapon of choice for him, because alcohol plus a machete really sounds like a bad idea. Gun would be even worse.

Despite these new on-the-job-toys, it was clear that it was time to get a new night guard. With the help of some concerned co-workers, I hired a rather attractive young man with a name that sounds like Fabio. The first night he came to the house to work he was too shy (…wait, shyness is not a quality I want in a guard…) to interrupt me in the house, so he sat outside, next to the patio nest, next to the passed out old guard, for 20 minutes until I realized he was there. As we chatted about the set up, how the guards for all the houses work together, how they have a call system to check in on each other during those crucial 2AM-4AM hours, etc. the old guard woke up, stretched, stood up, slipped his pants over his underwear and lit a cigarette…. Yep Fabio was waiting for 20 minutes next to a dude passed out in his underwear…. In my frontyard…. We both tried to play it off like it was normal…. see this is a “clothing optional” work environment, heck let’s just start a nudist camp (though, speaking of which I did walk in on old guard taking a full-on bucket bath in the yard, I should have known since the other guards started giggling as I pulled back the gate… bucket bath is an at-home activity not an at-work activity…so guess there has been some nudity, but also guess that everyone needs to keep good hygiene somehow…anyways…)…..Fabio, old guard with no pants, and me: felt like a first date gone bad, really bad.

After a few conflict resolution sessions between the two guards (“So what I am hearing is that he feels frustrated when you get drunk and argue with the other guards”) and the return of the primary tenant of the house, we have finally figured out a system that works. Old guard now is day guard (apparently one of the actively functional moz laws is some labor law that prevents him from actually getting fired…. couldn't really explain it to ya), he tends his lush garden patch (in our courtyard), he has stopped drinking (here), shows up to work, and gets bubbly-excited about how big the couve is growing... it's quite endearing actually. The nest has been downsized and the dirt is swept. Young guard is night guard. All is well.

***

“It’s broken,” pointing down at the slingshot.

This would be Fabio, week three on the job.

And That would be the ….. same janky slingshot! Didn’t I already get that fixed?!

“The other guards make fun of how weak my slingshot is, they say it couldn’t even take down a little bird.”

Hm, guess that money went to some Tentação. Oh, well. And here, Fabio, take the machete. I think you can handle it.

Just Trying to Get From Point A to Point B

My grandparents and aunt called to wish me a happy birthday, and at some point someone asked me to tell them something crazy that had happened: “Hm… well yesterday a truckdriver who drove us down held a machete to his throat and said he was going to commit suicide because I wouldn’t return his love, he was joking….I swear…” Yikes! Okay, one of those times things sound way more intense then how it was in the moment and the second the words left my mouth I wished I could suck them back up, put a stopper on any anxiety that I could cause. (Why couldn’t I just tell a normal story about going to get meio frango at that little new stand near my friend’s house and the cute lady at the counter who served us). It is just so easy to spill out about the nuts, the bad, and the worse, but without the context of the good and the great it doesn’t make sense.

Transportation. I think probably everyone in PC Moz (if not all of PC) blogs about transportation at some point, how could you not? And I feel like if someone asks for a “crazy adventure story” they will get a story about transportation.

Public transportation: chapas: little white vans that are designed to fit 11 people but usually carry 20-30 people, no joke: 4 people per bench plus a couple of babies, a large plaid zip suitcase, and a some of chickens, maybe a caged pigeon (the worst was when there was a live sheep shoved under my seat, and it gave off the strong odor of rotting cheese and fear). Chapas are usually rusty, thick-exhaust producing, roped together death traps… sometimes you get lucky and the plastic on the seats isn’t tearing and scratchy, the paint is flawless, and the speakers are actually good enough to figure out what song is being played. At Inchope, the major crossing for me to catch rides, there is a charred chapa skeleton, victim of an engine fire or explosion, a little reminder about the lack of the enforceable-safety laws to motivate you on your way. Really I have nothing positive to say about chapas themselves, but I have this weird liking for chapa drivers and workers (I am also semi-obsessed with public trans drivers for trimet back home, you know they have good stories to tell at the end of the day… so this chapa driver intrigue might not be an opinion shared by all volunteers). They are usually helpful, honest Businessmen (except sometimes they say they are leaving RIGHT NOW when they are really going to be sitting for another hour) who point you in the right direction when you look totally lost, and up for a little chatting if you are sitting in the front. So far the only incidents: a few popped tires in the middle of nowhere, once the hood started smoking and the driver poured water, which was carried to the vehicle by an ancient women from her hut next to the road, all over the …engine?… and we were on our way.

Up north most of the transport is open-back flat bed trucks. Once two women got in a fist fight, which was physically limited by the 25 people standing and sitting around them. Open-backs mean big sky wind and sunburn, and for whatever reason I see more male passengers drinking in the open backs then the regular chapas.

Buses are my least favorite. The rows have fold down seats so that there is no aisle, the last row sits 5 across rather than 4 like the other aisles… I’m not sure, guess the bus is slightly wider in the back? Once coming home I was stuck in the back seat, and this adorably cute fat baby was sitting next to me with his mom (so we were 6 across technically). I dozed and woke up because my leg was damp, okay more than damp, it was wet. Juices from the baby’s cloth diaper had leaked on me. A man up front started complaining about the smell and the mom started changing her babe. It was a difficult process to coordinate because we were all packed so tightly on the bench that I would say we were more like snuggle-buddies than strangers on a ride home together. I pressed my fontside up against the bus wall, stuck my nose out the window and took big calming breaths hoping that the yellow baby sludge wouldn’t get on my backpack. Poor mama!

So, public transport is an experience but I’ll take a private car anyday. I don’t have to worry about a private car falling apart halfway into a trip. Hitching is, in my opinion, a safer option and my preferred mode of travel. I meet businessmen, workers, tourists, ex-pats and I awkwardly try to make engaging conversation, not that small talk has ever been a strong skill of mine. But it usually works, somehow, the chitchat goes between two complete strangers.

When public transport is not coming and private cars aren’t passing, you can pay to ride in a semi. Semis are slow. I avoid them but sometimes you just have to keep moving. In terms of what happened the other day, what I mentioned to my grandparents on my birthday: I ended up in a semi with two friends I was traveling down south with. They snoozed on the trucker’s mattress, and the driver turned up the stereo and started to serenade me with passada songs: “Listen to these lyrics, they are for you, listen carefully.” He passed his cellphone to me: “Your friends will never know, look they are deep asleep, they don’t have to know, just give me your number.” He talked about how if he had a white American woman traveling around with him in his truck nobody would question him, nobody would challenge him, everybody would just be in awe, and everybody would know he had unique prowess intelligence and success. I told him my husband (um … yeah that one who is teaching English down in Vil) would be soo angry with me, I just could not give him my phone number, and so on. The driver persisted: teasing joking complimenting. He started fiddling under his seat and pulled out a machete. And I thought: Oh no! Machete, again! He held it to his throat, he was going to commit suicide if I didn’t give him my number, he was heartbroken, he could not live without my love…he said everything with a little smile but tried to keep the theatrics serious … and, machete still out, he started singing passada songs to me, again.

Making Business

Though I feel, in some ways, like I have just rolled off the airplane, there comes a point when you forget that Business could be conducted in any other way than what is at hand. Before this Mozambican commercial system gets more normalized to me, I feel like I owe it a description… and this will more than satisfy repeated requests from Dad for mundane details of the ordinary life.


The Road Into Town:
Couches. Lots of couches. That is the first thing I noticed driving into Chimoio when I moved. Surprised? I sure was. The couchmakers line the main road going into the city and their products are pulled up alongside the road. These are really nice looking couches with a straight-out-of-Lazy-Boy SuperMegaStore look: sharp lines, various styles with decorative pleats at the headboard or along the corners, tight tan or black vinyl, wooden feet, usually sold in a couch loveseat armchair combo set. Granted I’ve only been in two houses with couches since getting here, but there must be a market because there are sure a lot of couches being made. What makes these couches special (at least in comparison to Lazy-Boy) is that they are built essentially with just hard manual labor. Every time I ride or walk by I learn something new about how you make a couch and there seems to be a few key components: chicken wire, used heavy bulk rice bags, and plastic grocery bags… you see: once the vinyl is pulled decoratively over the basic frame you don’t really have to know what’s inside the couch… that is if you are just looking at it… sitting on one, well that is something else. Wicker furniture venders sell their wares alongside the couches, for buyers seeking an economic alternative. I, personally, had a to go with a wicker item, specifically a standing basket shelf, but it is full of a healthy population of woodworms that are munching it down, leaving little yellow sawdust piles on my bathroom floor. In the mornings, the couchmakers wipe down the couches that are left sitting by the road day in and day out, the wicker furniture venders carry in their sets—2 chairs+loveseat+small coffee table can be roped together and carried all at once on your head or bike… if you are skilled.

The couchmakers share the road with chalkboard makers, woodshop co-ops. Street sold chalkboards are painted plyboard, so after one lesson you can’t hardly use it again and students complain so it is better to get the real thing. The woodshop wares are fine quality chairs, cupboards, tv stands (bookshelves not so common), bedframes (nothing beats the one chosen for my room: seductive purple velvet headboard, classy I know) cribs, etc. all well crafted with attention to style. Various carpenters share a shop (shack with a powerline) and tools, and each one has their own style or specialized item.


In town:
Being American I am constantly bombarded by whoever selling whatever, heck I’m foreign, I’ll buy whatever… men’s suit jackets:yes…baby shoes:yes…brooms:yes…briefcases:yes. If it’s been a legally acquired good it will be draped around arms, if it is an illegally acquired good (usually cellphone, sometimes jewelry) it will be held down low by the crotch and flashed up… a technique that would result in a lot of guys getting slapped in the face if it were used in the states. If there is a niche, or something that could be a niche even if there isn’t a market for the item, it is filled. In the city, people want money and will do what it takes.

There is a corner with shoe polishers. There is a corner with men who buy and sell dollar bills. There is a corner with legless men who repair shoes. Their tricycle, hand cranked/peddled wheelchairs (basically a metal chair enhanced with spare bike parks) sit on the street while they work on the curb. There is a corner for the medicinal (and probably some non-medicinal ones too) drug venders with their little suitcases propped up on a wall filled with packages of pills, and they will run fast and manically if the police seem like they are moving in, though this has only happened once that I’ve seen. The black sandals you see around town are made from old tires, and they are cut and stitched together by men working next to the bicycle repair lean-tos. On all corners there are boys selling prepaid cell phone credit, they clump together and each shake a long laminated ribbon of linked used cards as you walk by… “credito credito credito”. For one cell company you can whistle the jingle and they will come running, shaking their strips at you, eager for the sale.
In the park you can buy grey egg sandwiches in plastic bags to go with your mini-bagged koolade-like frozen beverage, or your bagged yoghurt. On the main road the newspapers are sold next to candy, which is laid out thoughtfully on homemade cardboard box displays with the lollipops propped upright in little holes. On rough days I go for the round chocolate bomboms instead of the street egg sandwich, still not brave enough for that one. In front of my work, ladies sell bananas and tangerines (now that they are in season). One lady also sells these rather alien looking baked goods: flakey cones with hot pink cream (if Barbie were a flavor these would be Barbie flavored) filling and sparsely stuffed chamussas.


In the Station/On the road:
The most … insistent… vendors hang out at paragems, where the overflowing chapas (like a minivan but really crappy) move in and out. Candy, chips—my favorite are straight from Maputo and the chutney tomato cheese beef etc. flavoring turns fingertip skin dark magenta, crackers, sodas and waters (though the bottles are usually refilled and glued shut: no that is not a Fiz beverage it is actually a Divita juice powder rehydrated), socks and belts, and fried dough knots piled in baskets and covered with cloth (sometimes they are sweet and soft, more often dry and disappointing). All paragems have the same vibe. As your chapa pulls up the vendors come running, the boys with bagged cashews will run alongside the windows trying to seal the deal as the chapa or bus putters on, the women will come with flat woven rice sifters filled with fruit on their heads…. 10 at once all with bananas or all with tangerines… and they wail at you to buy buy buy. Based on the discounted sale items, usually on the brink of expiration date, at the local supermarket I can accurately predict the hot items that will be at the paragem in coming weeks.


The Way of Business
The philosophy of making Business, of selling your product is different Mozambique than America. Okay that statement seems self-evident . . . duh, Alexandra, of course it is! But sometimes completing a transaction is so mystifying, and I can’t help but come out of the deal asking: But why…? Here the customer is not always right, actually the customer can sometimes be an inconvenience especially if there is a working tv in the shop. But why is it so hard to buy white envelopes? But why didn’t you show me this voltage regulator initially when I asked for this specific style? But why are you saying you don’t sell markers when I can see markers displayed behind the counter (is my Portuguese really that bad)? The pressing-pushy mood of Transaction on the street is the opposite from the leisure Transaction in a shop. The Buyer in a shop is in no hurry and the Seller is not to be rushed. A business owner will, frequently, harshly criticize a shopworker on the floor in front of customers (me, in my head: hey it’s cool if this is a bad time for me to buy something here I can come back later… me, actually: don’t make eye contact). But why were things so heated in there? In the market once a woman selling eggplants and greenbeans scolded a herd of other vendors for harassing/bombarding me (carrots carrots carrots beans beans beans tomato tomato tomato potato potato potato pumpkin pumpkin pumpkin). But why won’t you just let me be? But why do you have to say everything 100 times over? This woman leaned under the hanging scale dangling from the top of her stall: “She has eyes, she can tell what you have laid out!” One of the men said, “I’m just trying to tell her what I’ve got, I just want to make sure she knows! I’m just trying to make a sale!” …. Oh that is why, just making Sale.



The Players of Business
Regardless of where the place of Business is, and I would say this is true in the states too, there is the collision of vendor, buyer, thief, and beggar. For me the most irritating are the beggar boys in town, 5-10 years old, they will stand under your chapa window, or chase you down the street, and try to look at pitiful as possible (“mili mili mili”), one arm slung over their forehead, their pained expressions well practiced because they don’t know any better and not much more is expected of them…. asking the mazungo is like playing lottery, except they have nothing to lose. Child beggars make me extremely uncomfortable, and frustrated because I know that my coins are going straight to a little cake, but their poverty and lack of opportunity is real. I feel disgusted with how the way I communicate with child beggars, awkward with how spoiled I am, and depressed that this is how the world works.

Okay… a slight digression: I’m not sure about the validity of this but I heard that, especially in Southern Mozambique, South African vacationers will toss candies out of their car windows at the kids on the street as they pull in with SUV plus trailer (if they have a boat trailer they probably are from Zim not SA, check the license plates, I swear everyone in Zim has a boat that accompanies them on all trips… I’m not sure where they go boating but there are apparently lots of boating hot spots in Moz) plus food plus supplies for eternity as if they were entering Armageddon. And the kids love the sweets because who wouldn’t?! The beggar kids are there because, sometimes, they get goodies. If you can’t already tell, I am critical of creating a generation who expects handouts, this is the paradox of help. Less so with hand-outs from tourists and more so with foreign aid efforts I wonder: how do you help without making dependents, how do you help by empowering? Or do we just say fuck it? I try to think no.

Abertura do Ano

Buster’s Barbeque. That is what I think of when people start talking about school sponsored events to celebrate the start of the academic year. The only thing is that I have absolutely no memory of Buster’s Barbeque. Frankly I don’t think I even went once during my time at Lincoln High School, but I remember the sign-up form and the posters… it was probably some kind of PTA fundraiser linked to a football game, but those details are vague. My parents are absolutely phenomenal parents, they just aren’t the all-American, homecoming football game, Buster Barbeque type. At the U of Oregon start of the year events, there was usually a guest speaker, maybe food, again the memory is hazy and I only went once… I have stronger memories of the non-institutionally-associated celebrations, and I doubt few college graduates have good memories of those sloppy, but fun, gatherings.
Fast forward: me. Here. now. I have had the privilege of going to two, extremely different, start of the academic year celebrations, one at the secondary school and the other one at the university.
At the secondary school we had a tree planting ceremony (I know this sounds like some hippie thing from Oregon, but I’m not confusing things). Mostly everyone showed up on time, and waited around for a couple of hours for things to get set up: the chairs for the attending students and parents had to be moved to place, the plastic flower decoration, which was usually some kind of pencil holder from a director’s desk, had to be artfully positioned the speakers’ table, the district representative had to arrive (he was on Mozambiquian time… two hour difference with real time). By the time things were ready it was blazing hot and everyone was huddled in the shady spots under buildings or shrubbery around the school grounds. A student was selected to ceremoniously dig/plant a small sappling, and the school officials helped water it to show the strong bond within the community. We sang the national anthem (look it up online, the lyrics are good but the longest anthem ever, I think the main verse is repeated some eight times). When all was ready for the speakers’ time, the sun was high and the chairs were no longer in the shade… so things were adjusted and parents’ seating was moved perpendicular to the ornamented speaker’s table and students stood inside the building across the way, watching from the windows.
Okay so the set up was awkward, but what was more awkward were the main topics of the keynote speaker: (1) corruption. All involved parties: parents, students, and professors, were specifically asked to stop playing their respective role in the rampant corruption at the school. Parents were asked to not come by the school with live goats and chickens (… and I was later told by Dio pigs) to give to teachers, students are not to do manual labor and/or sexual favors (apparently a popular option) for teachers, and teachers are not to solicit sexual favors or livestock from students. Yep, I was going to have to hold back from my 8th graders…this kind of corruption is disgusting and sickening. (2) Dress code. Students can no longer show up to class with tagline shirts purchased from the mercado (these are clothes that Goodwill ships to Africa, meaning the shirts that you give to Goodwill, that can’t get sold at the regular Goodwill or, after, the BINs). The problem is that none of the students know what the shirts say because their english ain’t so good. The speaker’s examples of taglines include “My name is John” “I love you” “New York” …. But I could think of some (spicier) examples. Though I always notice the bizzarro shirts that make it out of the states to Mozambique, I had never heard a Mozambiquan talk about it. Granted I know people don’t know what they are wearing, I still get surprised when I see “guess what’s making me happy down here [with an arrow]” “Someone I know went to Hawaii and got me this shirt” around town, or in the classroom with the words are showing through the pressed white button up school uniform shirt.
I often imagine various scenarios with events from Mozambique transposed onto life back home. Like what if a suburban forest heights mom pulled a live goat out of her mini-van to take to her child’s trig teacher at Lincoln High, and what that teacher would say upon receiving the goat. Or a parent teacher conference with the student wearing an ironed t-shirt with “i have problems” on it. Or, over hamburgers at Buster’s Barbeque, teachers being told they could not do naughty things with their 14 year old students while parents stood around rolling their eyes thinking “hmm… that will be the day….”.
The university Abertura do Ano was… tame and much better and not too much of an interesting story (what will I blog about… man). This was one of the few times I’ve been to a mass, the bishop came, bible passages were read, people got on their knees and prayers were said. All of the professors were in their black graduation robes and hats, except for me… it was a like a game of “Where’s the Unqualified Volunteer Who’s on Faculty?”. Over the center table there was a photo of an African Mary holding a black Baby Jesus with a caption reading “our mother”. A phenomenal speaker came and talked about human rights issues and how to protect the oppressed. She talked about the US, and it was the first time I’ve hear a non-American give a reasonable account of US issues, usually things are unreasonably (and falsely) positive, or excessively (and unfairly) negative. We had chamussas, rissois, cake and champagne.
And at the university level here, just like the university level back home, the non-formal event was more memorable (and sloppy… if not sloppier than at home). The only difference here is the event was sanctioned by the school. After teaching my class one evening a co-worker asked if I was going to the “baptism” that coming Saturday morning. Sure, which church, whose baby, what time? He just laughed, no not a baby baptism, come to the main campus and you’ll see how the new students are welcomed by the old students.
Second/third year students had spent the last month fermenting raw eggs, milk, corn husk, and I’m-don’t-want-to-know what else in an old oil barrel… this is the “holy water” for a university baptism. Tests are arranged so all of the first year students have their last mid-term the same time on a Saturday morning at the main campus, and as they exit out they are initiated into the student body. The first year students had to walk on their knees in the mud to a pick-up truck with the spoilt food filled barrel; a rather animated, chanting mob of older students taunted…. Because of my language issues in understanding what the heck was going on in mob settings either the older students were chanting “I am bishop” or they were telling the first year students to say “I am little-insect”…..bishop and little-insect sound similar in Portuguese hence the uncertainty. Anyways…. once they reached the barrel they were smashed with raw eggs and doused with the chunky, foul smelling “holy water”. When I came to the campus, the gates were locked tight to prevent potential escapees; cars were pulled up around the perimeter as extra blockade. As the barrel emptied, the solution was augmented with muddy puddle water. Students who tried to flee had it much worse than those who embraced the ceremony. The parking lot was full of spilt “holy water”… it was absolutely disgusting. And disturbingly amusing to watch.
We do a lot of weird initiation hazing events in the states (for sports, for greek life, for secret societies, etc. etc.) I wonder how it would be different if it was all done out in the open, not behind closed doors.

I have arrived…take two

Long story short, Peace Corps decided to pull me from my Zambezia site because of that little security incident and because of absolutely zero support from the school. In retrospect I can now see what a headache everything was getting to be. Just a little sampling of what was going on between me and the school: they never called after hearing about the break-in to see if I was okay (and this is not a cultural difference problem… ), they did call once … to see when our personal belongings were going to be out of the house so the new director could move in. They never tried to help find a house and were unable to tell PC where we were living (we could have been living in a cardboard box under a mango tree and they would have never known or cared). A week before PC pulled us, I showed up to teach classes only to be told by students (?!) that I was no longer their teacher, half of my classes had been reassigned to a physics professor (when he and I talked about it, he asked for my all class prep materials because he didn’t know anything about biology), school administration apparently thought they didn’t need to communicate directly with me about this and later denied the whole situation when the PC chefe showed up. School administration was surprised and stressed about our departure “… but we love our peace corps volunteers, they do so many important projects and are such hard workers…. How can you leave us …. ” Suddenly, when they were faced with the monetary cost of finding replacement teachers, they were the most devoted administration in PC Moz history.

Peace Corps came to site, made a decision, and we had less than 24 hours to pack our belongings, say our goodbyes, and move to Manica Province. We drove through one of the biggest rainstorms; rain filled some of the boxes on top of the car and leaked down through the plastic tarp into the car. The roads between the village and Quelimane (where we overnighted) are some of the worst in the country, 100% deep rivets and pot holes, and as they turned into muddy rivers all I could think was: I love you SUV. The roads shouldn’t be that bad there, some government somewhere has funded a complete infrastructure rehabilitation project but the money has been sucked into someone’s play fund and the road remains… horrible. To make it worse (and you see this around Moz), people (with an average age of 12 years old) living along the side of the road have taken to digging up soil next to the road to patch the holes in the middle of the road--- it’s a niche to make money, they patch the road and the drivers owe them for the labor. As you drive by they lean on their hoes, clap their hands their hands together and and hold them out. The only hitch is that by carving out earth next to the road they are only creating more erosion, so besides the holes and rivets in the middle of the road the sides of the road are also cracked down and melting away into cassava and pineapple fields.

After a couple days driving, Peace Corps dropped me off at my brand new site, and guess what: I’m teaching biology at a university! Yep, Doutora Alexandra, that’s me because I also got a couple extra academic degrees in this transfer. Now I wish I could say this promotion was due to my incredibly inspirational teaching skills, but this is sadly not the case. The university schedule is a bit different, classes hadn’t started yet and I didn’t have to jump mid-term into anything, which would have been the case if I had gone to a secondary school.

I’ll be honest: teaching biology at the university was (still is) scary. I feel more accountable for what I teach, big difference from that secondary school up north where I could have showed up to class and taught basket weaving and nobody would have known the difference.

Getting assigned to teach at the university is some Karmatic fate after four years of being a complete bitch to all of those foreign GTFs I had at the University of Oregon. When I was a student I had zero patience when I showed up to class and the GTF lectured in sounds that are not even close to the English language and wrote things on the board that looked more like drunk Pictionary. … so I’m *that* GTF now, except I’m called Doctor and feel a little bit like a fraud. When I lecture I sometimes wonder what it sounds like to the students, in Portuguese I primarily can only speak present tense, my vocabulary is probably about 150 words, and I have directly transported my Spanish grammar/sentence structure into Portuguese (they are not the same). But they did really well on their first test, so either things are better than what it seems or there was a heck of a lot of cheating… Either way the students are enthusiastic and positive to work with. Despite being adults, I still get giggles when I talk about sperm and fertilization.

The university is in a city and my lifestyle has completely changed. This really brings to home the fact that every Peace Corps experience is uniquely different, even in the same country. Actually I am almost not in Peace Corps anymore: My house has tiled floors, a shower, running water, and electricity, I am no longer only eating okra, tomatoes, and wild chicken eggs because the markets here are fully of stunningly beautiful produce, the nearest place to buy food is a supermarket (just like one in the states: frozen processed food, ice cream, skim milk, diet soda, and everything… not that I eat most of it but the point is that I could if I wanted to), a driver comes to pick me up to take me to and from work, I have a real sized oven and refrigerator…. Etc. etc. Things can still be hard but in a different way than before at my first site.

Overall, I’m glad I stuck through the hard things and am excited to see how this whole teaching at a university thing goes. I get to be a part of a really interesting department (Nutritional Engineer) that could really help communities eat locally and am lucky to work with such wonderful, intelligent people. And on those rough days, when everything is going wrong and cultural differences seem impossible to overcome, when the guard is drunk and passed out in his underwear in the front yard, when the house floods and the faucets fall apart because they are super-low grade Chinese-ware, when my neighbor’s guest absent mindedly takes my house keys to Beira unbeknownst to me, when living alone is as lonely as it sounds, when the Portuguese just isn’t coming out right and I wonder how the heck I’m going to pull this lecture off, I just take a big breath . . . life is good, overall.