A Development Curve

My ever flexible and changing role as volunteer within a multi-billion dollar international aid and development organization makes it difficult to really nail down my job description, often leaves me feeling lost among the fray, and finally explains why my work the past few weeks has somewhat veered off in a different direction. I guess, to some extent, I have to just sit back and enjoy the scenery.

After hiring 2 new rural auxiliaries, at a whopping 50$ a month each, to help look after my junior farmer groups, I had more time to attend to the most recent request of my organization: that I begin work on rural income generation projects with community health councils (CHCs). I have to say, working with adults was a welcome change in some ways; not having to constantly be entertaining, singing songs and dancing jigs, but rather sharing information in a simple and direct manner, requires far less energy than I’m accustomed to devoting to the kids’ groups. Thus more energy I can concentrate on speaking Portuguese, suffering the brutal elements, and staying awake in the car as I seem to have developed an allergy to consciousness the moment we begin off-roading...

In just two meetings I conducted with the CHCs, however, the danger of a culture of dependency we (as NGO workers) are all constantly aware of was made painfully clear. Neither of these groups have a cent to contribute to start-up projects, and World Vision hesitates, for good and obvious reasons, to become the sole investor in such initiatives. Reasons such as: we’ve invested in this group before and nothing has come of it. Or: if there is no initial sacrifice made on the part of the community, how can we expect them to feel ownership of the project? Throughout Mozambique, postwar crisis response by well-intentioned organizations has lingered and evolved into expectancy that I see written all over the faces of the members of the CHCs – what is she here to bring us? I accompanied a health worker from the city to visit a group several days ago, and after her presentation was complete and we prepared to say our goodbyes, the questions that had clearly been on the minds of the group members the whole time were finally vocalized: “why haven’t you brought us anything today? You gave group “x” skirts, why didn’t we get skirts?” These questions were posed with no measure of timidity, rather righteous indignation at the fact that we had arrived that day empty handed, with no other agenda than to analyze several health problems the community is facing and talk about basic solutions such as improved hygiene and family planning.

It’s less obvious with the children, who ask for simpler things such as soccer balls and jump ropes, and who seem to be interested in holding my hands and working with me in the fields for the sheer novelty of it. With the adult groups, however, a whole new set of questions arise and cannot be ignored: Will we ever find a balance between providing immediate necessities and facilitating education and support that can lead to long-term change? Why does it seem that so many of these programs aren’t sticking, and whose fault is it, if anyone’s? Have the rural inhabitants we aim to aid made a conscious decision that it’s easier to wait for help; are they too underfed and undereducated to summon the energy to follow through with projects; or are they trying their damndest and getting nowhere? In the end, I think it must be all three. I see how hard my colleagues work, and I see how much the rural beneficiaries still suffer, and while some reports may show numerical improvements (increased occurrence of breast-feeding, decreased rate of child growth stunting) it’s hard to see any of this when you make daily observations at the community level. Obviously change takes time, and a comparison of current Mozambique to the country immediately after the war would surely speak of improvement. But even so, I still can’t quite shake the feeling that I was much more productive working as the lone white-woman in my small community in the DR than I am within a large and influential organization. It’s not that I have a problem being a cog, a tiny part of the operation, but sometimes I feel like I’m spinning in a way that doesn’t affect anyone. Maybe I’m simply cut-out for aid work on a more personal and intimate level. And maybe I can even find a way to make that happen within the framework of such a huge and ambitious project.

I left the meetings with the CHCs only after both groups had extracted from me a promise to return. But unfortunately, there’s little I am authorized to do for them until they can demonstrate that they are a group fit for investment. It seems that projects conducted with these groups (and many, many others) before have left much to be desired in terms of sustainability and numbers satisfactory for reporting, and organizations understandably are looking to support groups which they have reason to believe will succeed. But what do you tell everyone else? All of those who have no start-up money, no ace in the hole?

Fast-forward to the following week, in which I visited 2 other districts who are starting up junior farmer programs. I met with 3 kids groups and gave them my now practiced introductory spiel, debriefed World Vision staff at both locations, and finally headed back to Morrumbala to check on my own kids’ groups. Paying a few unplanned visits, I find I can remember only about half of their names, although some of their corn and bean crops seem to be germinating relatively well. But as with the adults, I can see a waning in interest, in drive, in energy. In general, it seems that the work they have been doing with the auxiliaries in my absence is half-hearted at best. They like me enough to work well when I’m there, but I can’t always be there. Maybe we can reconnect after the holidays. Also after the holidays, I plan to spend a few days at the rural health clinic I wrote about a number of weeks back. My goal is to observe their daily routines, determine their greatest needs, collect interviews, photos and stories, and begin the legwork for creating a sponsorship for this clinic by a church or organization in the U.S.

A Thanksgiving List

I am thankful for…

•The Indian Ocean
•Suncreen
•NGO friends with real jobs and cars, who take pity on volunteers, low men on the totem pole
•Frango Zambeziano (the grilled chicken for which the province in which I live is famous)
•Grilled grouper
•My very capable tailor
•Internet on my phone (and therefore, constant contact with supportive friends and family)
•Packages sent from home
•African music
•Rain

There is so much more I have to be thankful for this year, as every year, but these are a few of the things at the front of my mind. Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.

A Beautiful Black Friday

After an arduous 3 day journey (with a stop off in Nampula for an eclectic Thanksgiving meal), made less so by a ride from a friend, we are finally at Chocas, um fim do mundo – an end of the world.

The cutest thatch-roofed bamboo hut, complete with outdoor shower for post-ocean rinsing, a late afternoon swim in the calm blue Indian Ocean (she’s definitely a woman, perhaps a mother even), a dinner of fresh clams and cold beer, then music back at the hut, swaying barefoot in the sand. A sandy scorpion joins in the dance, raises his tail, but I believe he means no harm. After, a moonlit walk on an expansive white sand beach. The tide is out, so we run around like children, and when I fall asleep in the sand, my friends line my spine with seashells. They tinkle to the ground when I rise. This is the best Black Friday ever.

And this morning, the sound of the ocean and a billowing white mosquito net. Sitting on the back porch under the coconut trees, hammock gently swaying to and fro. I could stay at Chocas for many lifetimes.

The Last Supper

Today I found myself at the head of the lunch table, staring down the corridor of 25+ hungry men (a double dose of disciples), mounds of rice, and a fish bigger than any I’ve ever seen, marveling at the urgency and efficiency with which they tucked into their meal. These are not starving people, at least not currently, although I can’t speak to their childhoods. Yet they must realize how easily they could be, how little distance there is between them and hunger, and therefore they eat with a purpose, like I’ve seen only Africans do. As I wasn’t standing in wait by the door for the lunch table to be set, I was one of the last people to arrive to the table, and found myself picking through the dishes to put together a full meal. The food culture that exists here doesn’t seem to be greed exactly – if you show up at lunchtime at the home of a Mozambican, they will insist that you eat. Yet when everyone has their plates in front of them, it’s every man for himself on a mission of nutrition. Not having suffered through years of famine and civil war in the not-so-distant past, I can’t personally feel where it is they’re coming from.

The reason for this gathering of 30 people (3 of which are women) is a week-long training in construction of water tanks for rural areas where water catchment and conservation is tricky. The trainer arrived from Bali, and as he speaks English but no Portuguese, I quickly became the impromptu translator. That was yesterday’s task, and I was treated very professionally as such. Today, however, the manual labor began, and try as I might to shrink myself and blend in by doing little tasks, there are a few men in this group who insist upon calling attention to my womanness. (In general, I have found the men here to be very respectful of me as a professional, but once we break down initial barriers and they learn I’m not a white ice-queen, some of them step beyond the line I appreciate.)

No matter what I did today, I couldn’t escape it. “Hey Mica, why don’t you try to saw? Haha! Or you could dig, heh.” And yet had I picked up the saw, everyone else’s work would have come to a screeching halt and I would have been, to borrow a friend’s phrasing, like a polar bear in a cage. So I ignored their urgings as long as I could before finally asking “Why is the idea of me sawing so entertaining to you? Is it because I’m a woman?” Now obviously, we all knew the answer to that question, but it was the best way to bring attention to their passive harassment, however harmless they assumed it to be. They answered yes, that’s why, and I responded tartly that where I come from, being a woman doesn’t make that much of a difference in such matters – another half truth, but it gets the point across: don’t belittle me and I will participate as an equal. It doesn’t help that I am half the size of most of these men, another reason that their face-stuffing is so curious… Anyway, in response to my comment, one of the 2 other foreigners present at this training announced, to my satisfaction “It’s just because they’re not educated on gender matters” and their giggling trailed off as they looked down at their feet and mumbled something about being educated, perhaps slightly embarrassed or maybe I just imagined it. Either way, I felt like somehow I won this, one of the battles I had chosen. And I do pick them. Every day. As wisely as I can.

Beloved

Today, we said goodbye to a compassionate field-worker, a gentle and dedicated man who suffered a fatal heart attack at 48 years old. Ernesto Amado, a last name that means ‘beloved’, was in fact just that, not only by his colleagues at World Vision, but by the community and church of which he was a leader, the soccer league in which he was a referee, and his large, loving family.

The funeral began at his home, a small mud-covered structure in an urban neighborhood of Quelimane, where we gathered to hear a sermon and listen to farewell songs in Chuabo, one of the local languages. As we left the house, the wailing began. Women in brightly colored capulanas needed much support to stand as they cried out their pain, but I was most affected by his children, in their 20s and 30s, dressed all in black and staring out at nothing, leaning on one another, eyes glossy and distant.

At the cemetery, we gathered in patches under shade trees, the sun already burning my arms at 9:30am, and watched as the gravediggers finished their job. The women continued to sing, “we’ve arrived at the resting place”. After eulogies were spoken and the casket lowered, we stepped forward to toss handfuls of earth into the grave, then covered it with cut flowers. The women sang “all is calm, we’ve said goodbye to our father”.

Back at his family’s home, everyone must wash their hands. It’s the custom here, to wash away what might have come with you from the grave, the resting place. And after everything, what’s left is the memory of a man beloved for his kindness and dedication to making Mozambique a better, more balanced place, and a lingering tune of pure harmonies in a sandy African cemetery.

Of Goats and Thieves

The goat tied up outside of my room, destined to be somebody’s lunch, is terrified of me. She jumps up and trips over her rope each time I emerge. I want to tell her, “If you think I’m scary, you’ve got another think coming”, but instead I just feed her moldy bread.

Spent a long but satisfying week in the campo with my four youth groups, all of which now have several plots prepared for corn, peanuts, and pigeon peas. It’s exhausting keeping them entertained, but this week I found a stalwart ally in the form of cookies. As they kneel down and reach up their dirty little hands to receive a meager treat, I wish I had 10 pounds of cookies for each of them, and can’t shake the feeling of a priest at communion.

In anticipation of my trip to the city this weekend, a much needed couple days of socializing with people who don’t require that I sing them silly songs, I went to the salon to have my fingers and toes painted. (Some Peace Corps girl customs are the same everywhere I suppose…) Salons are always a good place to sit and listen, to absorb the culture as a passive observer, and as I was watching my nails go from grungy to shiny chocolate brown, a large group of kids stormed by the salon, urging forward a single young boy. The woman painting my nails gave a one word explanation: thief. Apparently he was being escorted to a central location where onlookers could observe a public beating. I had read about this custom of civilians enforcing order with violence in other African countries, but this was the first time I had seen it in action, and guiltily, couldn’t help but feel a bit safer for it. Then again, maybe stealing from a white woman is an honorable deed. Hopefully I’ll never know for sure.

Just Say No

A group of rural health workers showed up at the compound today with the intention of vaccinating everyone in sight, particularly the suspicious white woman holed up in the corner room. I informed them, to the best of my ability considering my discomfort (there were 6 of them with very untrusting faces) that as a government employee, I get all my vaccines from Peace Corps doctors stationed in Nampula and Maputo, both very far from Morrumbala where I live. They said no, these are just pills, apparently with the power to prevent everything from malaria to pregnancy to other things I’ve never heard of. Afraid of being scruffed like a belligerent cat, I declined a little more forcefully and planned my retreat. They think I’m a weirdo, but there’s no way I was ingesting anything that came out of that box.

With the imminent promise of rain, noticeably closer each day as the sky turns gray and the wind picks up, we’ve had to step it up with our farmers and junior farmers. We spent yesterday morning preparing a 7x7 meter peanut plot
with one group of kids, but learned our lesson the hard way, as by 10 o’clock it was too hot to work anymore. So last night I went to bed at 8:30, got up before 5:00 and by 6:00 was out in the fields again, preparing corn plots under a much more friendly sky. By 8:15 we were done; rather, there was more work to be done but we had to give up our measuring tape (essential for a well-planned garden) to the adult group. So we spent the next hour or so talking about manure as fertilizer, the water cycle, and playing duck-duck-goose. Or in Portuguese galinha, galinha, frango. Or in Cena cuco, cuco, sato. Or something like that.

On our way out to the campo this morning, several squealing piglets darted across the road in front of us, which prompted the driver to ask me if I eat ‘leiton’ (the root word of which is ‘leite’, or milk). After a few questions, my suspicions were confirmed. She wasn’t asking if I eat some breed of pig that is smaller than the others even when fully mature. She was asking if I eat piglet, called ‘leiton’ because it’s not even old enough to be weaned yet. I didn’t even know how to go about answering this, and think my only response was hmmm.

Just say no to: suspicious vaccines and baby animal slaughtering.

The Frog Princess

Everything seems to be picking up at once. Work, the heat, the quantity of noisy toads living in and around the guest center…

Ever since I emerged from my room several weeks ago and stepped squarely on a squeaky frog – thank god for flip-flops! – I have been very cautious about where my feet land from about 6:00 onward.

As for the heat, it is reaching critical levels as we wait with dusty, baited breath for the summer’s first rains. Riding my bicycle to and from the office, an unintimidating 8 kilometers round-trip, I arrive home covered from head to toe in dirt thrown up by passing trucks desperate to get to and from the farms at this, the end of bean season. I wait as late as I possibly can to leave the office without letting darkness overcome my ride; the magic time seems to be 5:30. The sun sets and rises so early here, even in the summer, which suits those who choose to awake at 4am to begin the day’s work before the heat becomes unbearable.

After much struggle to understand the dynamics of the World Vision team in Morrumbala, I finally gave up trying to maneuver my plans around my co-workers, and began scheduling meetings with my 4 youth groups at times that suit me and the kids. This seems to be what everyone wanted all along, and as a result, my schedule is beginning to resemble something of a real job. When I’m not traveling to and from the city for meetings, I spend 2-3 days a week in the office and the other days in the fields with the kids, which is less like pulling teeth each time we meet (they’re really starting to like me and look forward to our visits, and clearly enjoy the activities and games I bring). After preparing a 15x20 meter plot for corn and reviewing the water cycle with one group several days ago, I inquired whether they wouldn’t accompany me to a nearby Catholic mission, an enormous, beautiful old building that has stood abandoned ever since the civil war. We walked around, careful not to step in piles of excrement (fowl and human alike…) and marveled at the immense structure, lamenting that no one has taken the initiative to repair and clean it up. After a lengthy and unnecessarily complicated debate about when we would next meet, I left feeling very satisfied with the day’s work, despite the many scratches on my hands and arms from mulching with 8 month dry grass.

Keep Your Eyes Open

Today, I saw my first green mamba, a snake that, with a well-placed bite, can kill a healthy adult within half an hour, and a child within minutes. The regional coordinator is in town, so we spent the morning visiting various project sites, and on our way to the first one, he suddenly shouts from the front seat of the truck “Cobra! Mamba Verde!” When the car stops, he jumps from the vehicle and fearlessly begins to stride toward a tree covered in craggy dry vines at least 50 feet from the road. Although my first instinct was to run in the opposite direction (as eagerly as So Vasco, our plump cook who for some curious reason propels himself about the acampamento at a whistling jog), curiosity eventually got the better of me and I cautiously crept from the car to get a glimpse of the serpent. It took the regional coordinator verily climbing the exposed roots of the tree, and tossing sticks at the mamba – “Look Mica! Look! There it is! Can you see it yet?” – for me to finally catch site of its green head, and when I did I could not fathom how he possibly saw it, hiding under all that roughage, from the road. He explained simply “We’re bush people!” and left me to gawk. This is not your average project coordinator, a man highly respected within World Vision, and I would be remiss if I didn’t note that his keen sense of snake whereabouts and the reckless abandon with which he approached it didn’t augment my respect for him as well.

Our next stop was to see a conservation farming plot, newly prepared by one of the kids groups I met with for the first time last week. Their choice of location is encouraging; with a well and cows nearby, they will have access to water and fertilizer, giving them a chance to cultivate vegetables and build successful compost heaps, which is unfortunately more than I can say for most of the project sites where we attempt to implement these projects. Water is such a problem here, and with people waiting in line for hours for their turn to pump water simply to drink and cook, filling gallons upon gallons to water a garden simply doesn’t fly in most places.

The kids’ plot is also right next to a rural maternity ward and clinic, and after a brief tour, I felt simultaneously shocked, hopeless, and inspired. With one dedicated nurse (who could easily find a better paying job in a city) and 20 midwives (who are unpaid and walk their patients for many kilometers to get to the ward), the rural operation has seen 27 births so far this month. And it’s only October 13th. After speaking to them at length, learning that the only contribution the government can afford is kerosene for lamps for night births, and that if the midwives want soap to wash their hands they must bring it from home, we entered the ward where two woman lay on cots, swathed in the typical colorful cloths, clearly in a lot of pain from contractions. No water. No food. No privacy. No family. Just two women on cots curled into fetal positions and moaning gently.

Of course I know that this scene pervades Africa, but this was the first time I’ve seen it, and the dedication of the nurse and midwives was enough to break my heart. No one is helping them, and yet they continue to work day and night to ensure that these women don’t have their babies alone on a dirt floor. After careful prodding, I extracted the opinion that the government is doing all it can, at the local and national levels, to improve healthcare, but that their resources are spread very thinly, in accordance with the belief that a larger number of basic facilities is better than a smaller number of well-equipped facilities. It’s hard to argue with that. My mind immediately flitted to all the places I could begin to raise funds for this hospital: friends, family, churches back home. And even if raising money to buy soap, gloves, and gowns is not “sustainable”, it’s hard to care when the need is so immediate and acute. When the effort and heart are there, but the money simply is not.

What would YOU do?

Adults Only

In Spanish and Portuguese ( as in all languages I imagine) there are multiple ways to say many words. Because the two languages are similar, I often rely on my Spanish vocabulary to help me communicate in Portuguese, and frequently it works. One way to say “battery” in Spanish (or at least Dominican Spanish) is “pila” (pronounced peel-uh). So that’s the word I’ve been using in Portuguese, and it seemed to be getting the point across, but after happening upon the word in the dictionary today, I doubt I will have occasion to say it again…

Although it could be continental Portuguese, my dictionary informs me that “pila” is a colloquial term for a man’s genitalia, and consequently what ‘Richard’s’ family might call him. As noted above, it’s likely that this word has other meanings as well, but that didn’t quell the panicky feeling in my stomach as I thought back on the multiple occasions on which I have used this word.

A hunt for the word “battery” reveals a one letter difference: “pilha” (pronounced peel-yah). This alongside the much safer “bateria”, which also exists in Spanish, but which as luck would have it I opted against, preferring the secretly erotic “pila”. Apparently the difference was slight enough that no one felt the need to correct me, but the snickers I thought I noticed when I used the word make much more sense now. Consider the following…

Does it have batteries?
What aren’t the batteries working?
Did the batteries die?
Maybe the batteries are old.
Maybe it needs new batteries.

I would snicker too! And if I was bored enough, probably neglect to correct the silly foreign offender. But just to be on the safe side, I’ll be sure to ask next time where I can buy “baterias”.

Cultural Relativity vs. Behavior Change

When I think of development work, specifically behavior change, in terms of culture and the alterations we aim to make to local traditions, however unfounded in reason those traditions may be, it makes me want to skip out on development work and return to anthropology – focusing on understanding people instead of trying to change them. But then, when I remember that so much of the way people live their lives (i.e. part of their “culture”) is the direct consequence of frivolous, unmonitored development, leaving a majority of the world’s population in misery, I remember why I’m here. Then the biggest issue becomes priorities. Every rural African, by default, has to focus on the immediate present and think about how they will provide for their family THAT DAY. Development work focuses on the exact opposite – influencing decisions that affect long term change and social improvement. Acres of trees and grass, valuable organic material, are burned to the ground every day to round up a few small wild animals that might provide protein for a family for that day…and how can I possibly presume to tell them this is a bad idea? It’s really disheartening.

Anyway, maybe there’s a way to find a middle-ground: changing people’s behavior without encroaching upon their culture, or at least the parts of it that make it unique and special, sacrificing aspects that might be partially responsible for jeopardizing personal well-being, for instance, the omnipresence of cassava, a crop that is known for its endurance but not its nutritional content. A background in anthropology tells me “keep your distance, observe respectfully, and don’t presume that people want/need to change”, and yet my experience as a development worker tells me “it’s the responsibility of developed nations to aid those in distress, those who may in fact be the casualties of the ‘success stories’ that fostered such privilege in more developed nations”. It’s really confusing.

My little soapbox for the day.

Unrelated but also potentially of interest to readers (are you out there?) is the difficulty of finding fruits and veggies in Mozambican villages. The natural inclination is to equate living in a rural town with the availability of fresh, chemical-free produce, but that’s not the case for several reasons. Most of the fruits and veggies I can find in Morrumbala are grown locally. In the States, local fare has become synonymous with "fresh and organic" and is usually accompanied with lots of options; however, that's because even small scale farmers in the States can afford lots of what we refer to as "inputs". Not only does their land have a history of being well-cared for, but they can afford fertilizer and pesticides (organic ones to boot!), they have easy access to water, and the weather conditions are more friendly, or at least can be controlled with greenhouses and shade coverings, etc. Here, you're at the mercy of the desert gods. Everyone has a lot of land, but no water. It's very sandy and hot most of the year, seeds are hard to come by, and transport to markets even more difficult. Small scale rural farmers are lucky to own a bicycle, let alone a cart to truck their wimpy produce into town.

So there are a lot of reasons that food is hard to come by in the rural areas, even if you're a little white girl with money to pay for it. :) And speaking of little white girls, we are definitely not cut out to endure the African elements.... The sun and sand are enough to have me dragging my feet by 10am every day.

The Big Bad Wolf

On our way back from a disappointing visit to the campo yesterday – the man we were supposed to be helping to set up a demonstration plot employing conservation agriculture techniques hadn’t cleared his bean fields after all, leaving us no space to begin – my colleagues poked fun at a little grass house on the side of the road, saying the owner really must have been lazy to not at least have built a mud house. Upon my inquiries, they explained that everyone knows how to build a mud house and it costs nothing but labor, concluding that “everything in Africa depends on how much work you’re willing to put in”. This seems truer to me every day, even when applied to my work with World Vision, which is significantly less physically taxing than building a mud house.

There exists, in the NGO world as in any business or company, a hierarchy of employees and volunteers. Being white gives me a simultaneous advantage (people listen) and disadvantage (they don’t necessarily trust me), but I’m still a volunteer and only have so much influence. For instance, today we showed up at the office, expecting to spend the morning capitalizing on the much needed internet connection, to find that the person in charge had neglected to pay the internet fees, and now is on vacation in the city, to return at a date TBA. Apparently this is not a new occurrence. Not content to sit and await that evasive date, I immediately commenced to flitting around any and everyone who could potentially fix this problem – ridiculous as it is in the first place since the money to pay the energy and internet comes out of project funds as opposed to their own pockets – making calls to people in the city who had strategically turned off their phones, and generally making everyone in the office here uncomfortable. I may not win the popularity contest by the end of my year here, but I won’t just sit in my room all day and wait for something to happen. Even if I am a volunteer. Knowing I only have 10 months here (which, today, feels like an eternity) makes me want to kick things into gear, but with my colleagues acting a little put out by my eagerness, it seems I must find some sort of middle ground between aggressively trying to make things happen and sitting back and smiling dumbly, nodding passively as behaviors remain unchanged.

As I try to settle in and determine my role in Morrumbala, where I am decidedly the outcast, I feel constantly thwarted by socio-cultural differences that make my efforts seem useless. When I go to the market to buy my own groceries instead of having the cook go for me: The 12 year old cell phone credit sales-boy tries to overcharge me; the guy who sells me vinegar tries to overcharge me; and the guy who sells me coconuts allows me to buy 2 that turn out to be perfectly putrid on the inside. I try my hardest to see things from their perspective – “white skin = money, and I need money, therefore I’ll do what I can to get it” – but it makes me feel as rotten as the coconuts.

I also have the sneaking suspicion that I’m driving everyone at the office crazy with all my questions, but how am I supposed to figure out how anything works around here if they’re not forthcoming with information? For instance, I asked a woman at the office today if there were any markers around that I could use to make a presentation for the Junior Farmers I’m finally supposed to meet with tomorrow. She said no. A couple hours later, I walked into the office and saw a big box of markers. I picked them up right in front of her and said “huh, markers! Whose are these?” She said they were World Vision’s, that they specifically belonged to the Ocluvela project that I’m here to work on. Naturally I asked to use them and she, unable or unwilling to hide her frustration, said that we had to ask the owner first (who, of course, is nowhere to be found and whose name she couldn’t even give, I guess for fear of….marker subterfuge?) and that if I used them without permission they would get upset. THEY’RE MARKERS! Not personal hygiene items, not even a favorite t-shirt, and yet the owner might be angry if I used them, even for a presentation for the children I was specifically brought here to work with! I smilingly stated that that seemed like a lot of protocol for markers, and was met with a blank stare, then a tart retort that she would ask. I don’t mean to insult, or infringe upon a system I clearly don’t understand; all I want to do is the job I was brought here for, which seems clear on some days and foggy on others.

Interactions like these leave the impression that my colleagues are more perplexed by my energy and inquisitiveness than actually happy to be working with me. I’m beginning to feel that, while I desire a career that will allow me to affect social change, I might be better off going the academic route as opposed to working in the international NGO arena, or as an individual development worker at the community level as I was in the DR. I know I’m still new to the game, but it seems to require patience, determination and optimism to the nth degree, whereas I feel my temperature cooling suspiciously. It might be a long year in Morrumbala. Or just a long day.

I imagine the man we visited yesterday, with his unprepared land, felt similarly helpless. As an auxiliary worker, he is paid 50$/month for which he is expected to organize and mobilize the presidents from 4 local farmers’ associations to employ conservation farming techniques in their fields. The “due date” as it were for him to have 5 plots completed is Friday; we discovered yesterday that he has done nary a one. I also discovered, while he was being verbally chided by my colleagues for his lack of progress, that he has several malnourished children who spend the day gnawing on sugar cane, and that the plots he is responsible for are at great distances from one another. The frustrations of my colleagues seemed to be based in the fact that the farmer had misrepresented to them the amount of work he had actually accomplished, and upon our arrival, the falsity of his claims was self-evident. The vegetable patch we visited was completely overgrown with weeds, giving the impression that it had not seen a visitor since the seeds were sown. They gave him one last chance to fulfill his obligations, and because his family relies on the 50$ a month he earns, he might manage to get it done. But even knowing that these were his responsibilities to fill based on the job description, I left feeling much more sympathy for the man than did my Mozambican colleagues, hardened by field experience and the simple fact that to them, this is life. You either build a mud house, or you build a straw one.

To Drink or Not To Drink

The party dynamic. It’s an elusive concept that differs slightly from city to city, hugely from continent to continent, taking months if not years of immersion to fully comprehend. I’ve been in Mozambique less than 2 months. I’ve been in my site a total of 8 days.

October 1st marks, along with my little (a term that refers solely to age these days) brother’s birthday, the beginning of the fiscal year for World Vision Mozambique. Accordingly, a huge party was planned. Accordingly, many cases of beer were bought.

The formal celebration was a daytime affair, involving lots of singing and dancing, a swarm of children who all felt the need to touch me and were eventually shooed away by a shyly smiling adult, prayer and goat stew which tasted to me like moldy cheese at best, but which I guiltily choked down as everyone around me ate with great gusto (walking through the market the next day, I passed a herd of live goats and got a nose-full that smelled exactly like the stew had tasted…)

And then the party. Scheduled to start at 4pm, it finally began at 10:30pm after all the food had been prepared (by none other than the cook with whom I struggle daily through language, etiquette, and ingredients to strengthen a tenuous kitchen-based bond) and laid out in an impressive display, the crowning feature of which was a cake with GLITTER (which unfortunately looked much better than it tasted). After the blessing, and a cryptic warning that everyone, in serving their plates, should try to remember that others would like to eat as well, the locusts descended. I stood a little bit back, in awe of the food fervor, and allowed my plate to be occasionally graced with the passing samosa or scoop of potato salad. I didn’t even look in the direction of the grilled chicken, as there was a dangerous swarm around it from the moment of its uncovering until the last thigh was nibbled down to the bone. I couldn’t help but feel, whether condescending or sensible, that they had more of a right to it than me. Me, who has eaten well her entire life, who can afford to buy chicken whenever she wants. Me, who has never had to fight for food, nor stuff herself to popping as a strategic plan for the next few mealtimes.

Once everyone was finger-lickin’ full, the beer, which had played merely the supporting role to food’s lead, suddenly appeared center-stage. I turned down several offers for a drink, feeling awkward being one of 4 women present and, as always and forever, the only white person, until it became apparent that 95% of the group was drinking, and at 100 yd. dash rather than marathon speed. It’s always tough to decide what’s best in these situations, where you hardly know a face and certainly don’t know the culture – Do they want me to have a drink? Is it weird if I don’t/do? Do women even drink here? – but everyone seemed to smile in relief when I finally accepted a beer. Or they were making fun of me. Who can tell? As I looked around, none of the other women were drinking. But I’ve long since given up trying to fit-in with any demographic here. I’m going to be watched no matter what, so I might as well make them smile. I’m not a tee-totaler, so why pretend to be if not to some social or professional end? After one drink, I shook hands all around and headed back to the compound, luckily not a 3 minute walk away. It was, after all, several hours past my bedtime.

As with every party where you don’t really know anyone, it was a relief to escape to the safety of my own space. As I write, I can still hear the celebration, and the music seems to be getting louder by the minute…

Writhing Cobra and the Honk of Faith

As ever, traveling through and around cities, whether on foot, bicycle, or in car, has provided me with an abundance of writing material.

Yesterday, I saw my first African snake. Thankfully, I was propelled by the latter of the aforementioned modes of transport, and therefore couldn’t get a good look at the creature writhing on its slimy back in the middle of the road, noting only that it had a light green stomach and dark back, features fairly common in the Snakes of Southern Africa book I consulted later that evening with my director’s kids. I’m currently staying with them at their house while he’s away on work duties, although they take care of me more than the other way around. The babysitter’s here, and she’s sleeping on a waterbed!

I wouldn’t have expected, or even wished for the driver to slow down for the snake; however, they tend not to slow down for anything – teetering bicycles, semis stopped in the middle of the road – preferring instead a method I have begun to refer to (in my conversations with myself) as “the honk of faith”. It still makes me clench my teeth, ever-gritty no matter how tightly I purse my lips against the sandy, invasive wind.

Also yesterday, we visited one of the junior farmer groups who are preparing a short drama about vegetables for the visiting donor representatives, USAID and the like, who are here this week to observe the project. We were a bit late arriving because of a delay in lunch, which having not eaten anything since a piece of bread in the morning, I insisted we wait for before trudging off into the bush. A little selfish? I dunno, but a girl’s gotta eat! I should have guessed that upon our arrival, I would be invited to speak, to give The Word of the White Woman, although I had planned on simply observing. I’m getting better every day at being put on the spot, so I quickly came up with some encouraging words and fun ideas to contribute to their skit. I just hope they don’t go white with terror, pun intended, when the Caucasian contingent arrives to snap their photos on Thursday.

And last weekend, I took my first bike taxi! It was much more comfortable and much less terrifying than expected. Way to go Quelimane for being so Green!

Sim Vergonha

Shameless. That's what this blog entry is, as it designed to do nothing more than provide my mailing address and a list of things I would oh-so-love. So with no further ado...

Mica Jenkins
Visão Mundial
attn: Brian Hilton
CP 474
Quelimane
Mozambique

Things that would put a smile on my sun-burnt face include: letters, pictures, black tea, chocolate, mustard, mustard pretzels, yogurt-covered raisins, dried Italian/Ranch dressing packets (Good Seasons, I think it is), hoisin sauce, nutmeg, rice noodles, sesame oil, travel tissue packs, sunblock (Neutrogena spf30 Ultra Sheer is wonderful), wall putty/sticky hooks and fishing line or similar thin twine (for hanging things), a coffee filtering device, bracelet making thread, washable markers, and YOUR favorite book!

Feel free to add to my list as well. :) Obrigada! (Thank you!)

A Hard Day's Night

Tired of staring at my unopened bag of Malawian coffee, I made a coffee filter last night by sewing a chopped up piece of clothing to a metal sieve. OK, it was underwear, but they were brand-new, never worn I swear!

Today I made a Mozambican child cry with my white skin and dug a live ant out of my ear canal. All in a days work.

Working in the NGO sphere and seeing that aid, however well-intended, can create dependency among the most impoverished families it is intended to support, you can’t help but sometimes wonder, what would happen if all the organizations just left? I’m beginning to feel that the greatest loss would not be the halt of projects that, admittedly, aren’t always as sustainable as they intend to be, but the loss of jobs for the many Africans who are employed by World Vision, Save the Children, The World Food Program, and similar institutions. Every day that I spend here, it is brought more clearly to my attention that volunteer work is, ironically perhaps, a luxury. Having the time, energy, resources, and support to spend your days traveling around and initiating relief projects, as opposed to feeding your children, is not something most Africans can afford to do, and thus why NGO’s have wisely recruited Africans as salaried employees, however modestly compensated, as opposed to volunteers. Although, according to some wise old philosopher, “comparisons are odious”, when I think of the time I will spend here, my goals for the future, and even potential career paths in development work, it’s hard to imagine anything I could do as being anything but luxurious.

A rough night of sleep (mosquitoes in my net and ducks outside the window) left me ill-prepared to face the blazing sun of the campo today as we set out for yet another garden-prep and compost demonstration. Even after applying sunscreen and borrowing a hat (gotta get one of those), my face broke out in angry red dots and I had to hang back from the group a little to find shade. One of 2 women in the training group (the mother’s weren’t really participating) and one of one white people, I had no hope of integrating anyway, so might as well protect my skin…

Getting to Know You (A Song for Morrumbala)

After a little more practice on my bike today (about 10 km of practice, roundtrip to the office to use the internet), I think the trick to driving in such sandy conditions must be the perfect speed. Too fast, and you lose control. Too slow, and there’s not enough inertia to keep you moving through the really sticky patches. So I’ll just continue to navigate, teeth clenched, toward the most compacted looking spots on the “road”.

Today the cook hard-boiled eggs for my breakfast and made me more grilled chicken, with spaghetti and homemade sauce for lunch. He also informed me that he knows how to make coconut curry and various soups. We’re gonna get along just fine. He’s already my favorite person at the compound, although it’s a close tie with the guy who washed my clothes and fixed the electric water heater in the shower. I’m still surprised by how much of this country’s paid domestic labor is performed by men, but it does seem that every single able-bodied woman has a baby (or two) clamped at all times to her breast.

I finally got taken out to the campo today with some World Vision employees who are working on conservation agriculture projects. We stopped at several farms to see how the owner’s were doing with the new techniques, although on our final visit, I found it difficult to focus on farming. The family we were visiting was quite large, and the smallest baby girl, bouncing on her mother’s hip, was suffering from some terrible rash-like, scabbed over infection on her face, and some notable swelling underneath her chin. When we asked what treatment if any she was getting, they produced a frighteningly grungy bottle of milky penicillin for my observation, injections of which she had been receiving since last Thursday. After firmly stating that I am in no way medically trained, I postured that perhaps the swelling on her throat was an allergy to the medication and that they should mention it to the hospital staff the next time they cover the many dusty kilometers on foot to take the child for an injection. It’s likely that even if it is an allergy, the hospital will have no way of testing it, and nothing else to give her.

Earlier this week, the 15 month old grandchild of a well-known pastor died in the hospital after 2 weeks of diarrhea and vomiting. It’s easy for anyone but a well-trained and well-stocked rural health physician to feel completely useless here.

Happiness is a Grilled Frango

Today, the cook arrived and changed my life. A short, round man with a friendly gap-toothed smile, he got here just in the nick of time to jolt me from my subsistence food stupor.

I gave him basic ingredients, and in return, he gave me a delicious meal of grilled chicken, white rice, and garlic tomato sauce, a portion large enough for lunch and dinner. I spent the afternoon sneakily walking by the kitchen and taking huge whiffs of chicken sizzling on the air, ecstatic that it was being made for me.

And after I finished lunch and safely tucked away the leftovers for dinner, I nearly skipped away to my room, belching happily all along the way.

Feeling energized (the miracle of protein!) I went for my first bike ride since arriving to Morrumbala, and quickly learned that dry sandy streets are easily as treacherous as wet rainy ones. The ride to a friend’s house was enough of a constant incline for me to happily exert a little effort. The ride home, during which I rotated my pedals approximately 4 times, was infinitely more challenging as I skidded through inches of sand, even dismounting at one point to walk through a particularly challenging patch as bike taxis swerved around me carrying passengers and bags of charcoal. It was my first time, so I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it.

After a satisfying dinner of cold leftovers, I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth, stepping squarely on a squishy, squeaky toad as I left my room. Lifting my foot, I found that he was not dead, and soon was chasing him back out onto the patio, hoping from a safe distance that I didn’t break any of his tiny toady bones. I guess that’s what you get for lurking in doorways.

To round out a very satisfying day, I gave the cook money to buy me eggs, which he assures me he can find despite my futile and fruitless searches. I have no doubt he knows exactly where to look.

Scrounging

Living in the World Vision compound, where I have my own furnished bedroom and sitting room, and even hot water in the bathroom (no matter that it’s shared), the biggest challenge so far has been food. The grocery and restaurant scene here in Morrumbala is predictably austere, and with no real kitchen to speak of, I’ve had to get creative with my non-cook foods. The malaria-prone cook has yet to appear – maybe he doesn’t work on the weekends even when not bed-ridden with a tropical disease – so the charcoal stove has been out of the question. My original thought was to hard-boil a bunch of eggs to make sure I’m getting protein, but a scan of local stores and markets on Friday revealed that eggs are much more difficult to come by than I would have suspected. I couldn’t find a single one.

Peanut butter and bread and the occasional hot meal at a restaurant, or cooked at a friend’s house, can only take you so far. I have started taking a daily vitamin, and at least being underfed makes for exhaustion and early nights (that’s dark humor you see). But seriously, I need to figure this nutrition situation out as soon as possible. Work starts this week, so I’ll speak to the office staff in the morning and see what system we can come up with.

Move-In Day

In spite of the many complex health, education, and socio-political issues that plague Africa, Mozambique actually has got its act together in many unexpected ways. Cell phone coverage is essentially ubiquitous (unfortunately, though, only if you bite the bullet and subscribe to the South African company Vodacom instead of the Mozambican MCell). Electricity is consistent, as opposed to a few spotty hours a day. And water is piped into the cities from large tanks in the rural areas, filled from rivers and lakes, where it is treated and supposedly becomes potable. I think I’ll filter mine anyway. And I found out today that you can buy most of your basic necessities at local markets even in rural areas like Morrumbala, although you must be prepared for them to spontaneously run out of even the most essential items, like eggs.

After waking naturally at 6am (if thousands of tweeting sparrows and a very active and noisy camp staff count as natural), I immediately went about the task of finding food. There is a kitchen at the camp, sort of, but the cook who would normally help me orient myself to the charcoal stove called in sick…with malaria. They say he’ll be back by Monday. I’m momentarily shocked, then sarcastically think “Likely story, on a Friday”. This flippant way of treating a serious tropical illness pervades the country – many World Vision employees have had malaria many times, don’t take any preventive medications or even require their children to take them, and can provide detailed information of which brands of remedies work and which are worthless.

Anyway, with no cook, I decided to head to the market, accompanied by a driver (which I didn’t protest since it was my first time out of the compound – there really is a different weight associated with being a white woman here than in the DR, and this site is far larger than my last community) and stock up on some basic no-cook edibles (powdered milk, bread, veggies, tuna) as well as rice, pasta, and other cook-ables that I eventually hope to use when I learn my way around the place. I envision that peanut butter will play a crucial role throughout my near future. The rest of the afternoon was spent organizing my belongings in my new room, complete with bed, armoire, two tables, 4 chairs, curtains and tapestries. It’s really a nice little space, and even though I may be moving out eventually, I unpacked everything last thing with a sigh of relief after a month of living out of my backpack. This afternoon will be a get-to-know-you walk around town, accompanied by another World Vision volunteer, and then visiting the other Peace Corps volunteer who lives in town. World Vision staff is currently scrambling to turn in annual reports and inventory lists, so it seems for the time being, I am free to wander and get to know my new home.

Arrival

After one month of seemingly endless travel around northern Mozambique, I’m beginning to grow accustomed to the roadside sites of Africa, but so many things still strike me as foreign and beautiful. A girl, not yet school age, pumping water with from a well with a lever she can barely reach, throwing her tiny weight against the job. Everyone everywhere lounging on grass mats. A dog with a collar?? Oh. Nope. Just a tricky ring of white fur. Women carrying 50+ pounds of water, jugs in both hands and balanced effortlessly atop their heads, with a baby strapped to their torso. A man carrying an entire tree on a bicycle, a firewood javelin. People standing on the side of the road, in the pitch black of night that exists only in Nowhere, on the road from Somewhere to Somewhere Else. Just standing.

The driver from Morrumbala finally arrived to pick me up from the Nicoadala camp at 4:15pm. The poor man had been driving all day long on another work errand before coming to get me, but I guess that’s what they’re paid for. I’m still getting used to being important (read helpless) enough to deserve personal drivers. After unloading his very sensible truck-bed cargo of bleating baby goats and bags of charcoal, we hit the old dusty trail at a sprint.

The entire country is on fire. Everywhere you look, the bush is being burned, and although it was not yet 5:00, I could barely see the road ahead. The alarmingly pink sun sat stuck in a white-gray sky, soupy with haze. Between the dust and smoke, and the driver’s yell-speak (an extremely kind man, his average volume hovers somewhere between ear-piercing and earth-shaking), I could barely see straight after half an hour. I finally asked if we could roll up the windows and turn on the AC, fully prepared to flinch involuntarily when he decided to speak again, but happily his words came forth at a relatively normal volume. I guess he had been unable to hear himself over the smoky wind and dust. I’ve begun to notice that all the drivers, while extremely personable and helpful, have their own little quirks. One likes to listen to the same song on repeat. At length. One is very interested in and equally clueless to world geography. And they all slow the car significantly when I take a phone call, as though I may receive news that would necessitate an urgent and immediate change in direction.

After an unexpectedly short trip of just over 2 hours, he informed me we were just 2 kilometers away from Morrumbala, my new home. In the dark of night, unable to see much of the town, I couldn’t have missed the big city lights. All ten of them.

In the words of a kindred wayward spirit, a famously spunky redhead by the name of Annie, “I think I’m gonna like it here!”

Small Wonders

Our last night in Nicoadala, we watched Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in Portuguese and made banana pudding, which between the coal burning stove and my Brasilian/Portuguese-American/English-Dominican/Spanish accented instruction, was quite an experience. I’ve come to believe you can make banana pudding anywhere in the world, and have in fact made it on several continents now. And after all, who doesn’t love fruit, cookies, and vanilla pudding?

After leaving a remote farm where we spent all morning teaching a group of painfully timid kids how to organize and plan a garden, leaving them with a bag of lettuce plants to transplant at sundown when the days heat dissipates, we finally arrived at the main road. No sooner had I sighed my relief at being back on relatively smooth concrete (it’s all relative…) than one of the coordinators in the car announced that she couldn’t find her cell phone. We stopped the car and she got out, looked all around the floorboards, checked her pockets, and finally concluded that she must have dropped it somewhere on the farm. At this point we were already late for lunch and had a 2:00 appointment with another youth group to keep, so I suggested that we drive a little bit further up the road to where we would have cell phone service and call her phone to see if anyone had found it. In a worried frenzy she decided it would be best if we immediately returned to the farm, a bumpy 40 minutes away, and looked for her phone. So at 12:40, I found myself back at the farm, guarding the truck while they walked back through the bush to look for the phone. On a whim, I decided to get out and have a look under her seat, just in case, and what to my wondering eyes did appear but a little gray Nokia, seated squarely beneath the front seat. In disbelief, I asked a man on a bicycle to ride out to the farm and tell them to end their search because the phone had been here all along. Sigh. Upon their return I didn’t get so much as a thank-you or a sheepish apology, leaving me to consider that maybe she thought I had plotted against her to hide her phone all along. Impossible. Still, it was a rough ride back to the highway.

But, as always, dessert fixes everything. A late dinner of fish and rice (surprise!) followed by heaping platefuls of sweet pudding put everyone at ease, and then it was off to bed for one more night’s sleep in this white-washed cement camp I’ve grown fond of in few days. Today, it’s finally off to Morrumbala, my permanent site, just a few bumpy hours away.

Next Stop, Morrumbala

After 3 weeks of unexpected “training”, a word which is used very loosely and can mean anything from sitting indoors at a center and copying notes from a power-point presentation to walking around a farmer’s fields, bugging him with questions about potatoes, to crashing through the overgrown bush, strategically not in front of the line so as to avoid any disgruntled snakes, I think I’m finally going to site on Thursday. However formal or informal the learning process has been during my time here, the bottom line is I do in fact feel more prepared than when I arrived.

I’m currently spending a few days in Nicoadala, at a sleepy “training center” (again, use this term lightly) with a very small group of people (just me and 6 Mozambicans), talking about conservation agriculture, visiting nearby farmers who are actually implementing NGO-promoted practices, and motivating local youth to organize themselves into groups and begin growing vegetables. That’s where I come in handy – kids the world over generally take a speedy liking to me, and my time in the DR left my head filled with ideas of how to get them excited about things they might usually see as mundane. What. You won’t race to carry 50 gallons of water from the far away stream to irrigate the garden? What if the winner gets to braid my hair? Mmm hmm. That’s what I thought. (OK So this may be a bit of an exaggeration. However, I can only hope that African children will be as susceptible to my mind tricks as Dominicans.)

Driving around is still quite an experience, for everyone involved. Most of the places I’ve been taken recently to see farming operations are far enough off the beaten path that those who catch a glimpse of me as we zip dustily by in our indestructible white pick-up truck don’t even have the forethought to make gestures or comments; they’re too busy being completely shocked to see me that all they can do is stare. The most quick-witted manage to throw a thumbs up my way, and impulsive children chase the truck until their little legs can take them no further. Those that, by some miracle, don’t notice the white woman in the front seat, who could very well be the only one they would ever see, are almost as shocked to see a car at all, and skip out to the path to watch until it’s out of site. It’s the most exciting part of their day, and the smallest jump in place and yell “Carro carro carro!” The rest of the time I spend jolting fearfully out of my strangely involuntary bumpy-car-ride-naps as we come unbelievably close to toppling yet another cyclist or herd of goats.

Each night, we return to a modest dinner, tea if I request it, and refreshingly easy and fluid conversation before we’re accompanied by the tune of crickets to an early bed in our ascetic cement chambers. Up at 6:30 to a breakfast of tea and bread, and a modest lunch of xima (corn-meal boiled to the consistency of play dough) and small bony fish, fried if you’re lucky, boiled if you’re not. There’s something to be said about such a simple lifestyle, and in fact I thought I was getting pretty good at removing the numerous tiny spiny bones of my daily fish, until lunch this afternoon, when I met the ‘Temba’. As opposed to the ‘Carapão’, a common and light-tasting fish of the sea, the Temba tastes like it’s river home, and once boiled, comes off the bone more meal than flake. It was challenging, to say the least.

I’m beginning to see why Peace Corps Mozambique has to be so fundamentally different than Peace Corps Dominican Republic, i.e. why volunteers are brought in to work at specific schools or hospitals and are provided housing by their institutions. It’s not feasible to simply arrive in the Mozambican campo, move in with a host family, try to start projects and eventually find my own house, all things I did in the DR. Poverty is too great here, resources are too few, and although I never actually blended into my site in the DR, I was able to integrate myself into daily life and develop patterns that I feel would be impossible in the most rural areas of Africa. I can only imagine the mental and emotional toll it would take until my hypothetical neighbors developed a semblance of normalcy and casualty around me. My differences here have arrived at a whole new level, and actually that’s ok. That’s good. It makes my interactions fresh and, in the end, makes the experience genuine and memorable.

Campokids and Citygirls

Also, although I formed very dear friendships with many individuals in my campo in the DR, it was obvious that we had little in common. My closest friends were evangelical Christian girls in their teens, and I’m, well, a pants-wearing, alone-living, female world traveler. We often just talked about the weather. But here, I’m working with a city-based NGO and associating with Mozambicans whose life experiences have, in many ways, reflected my own; college, traveling, privileges that most Africans cannot imagine. For instance, several nights ago, I was invited, along with the other American World Vision volunteers who happened to be in Quelimane at the same time, to a dinner party at the house of a young Mozambican World Vision employee. We arrived to find a buffet of food she had prepared, bottles of wine, and candles on the floor for mood as opposed to necessity, all to a backdrop of trendy music. When I left for my hotel, she and her friends went out dancing. It was about midnight. In other words, it was just like being at a small party at home. I felt immediately comfortable with her friends, and realized even further that this experience is shaping up to be very different from my first 2 years in the Peace Corps.

I’m simultaneously disappointed and excited that the relationships I shape here, even with people in my site should I ever arrive, will be fundamentally different from those I had in the Dominican Republic: instead of forming very close bonds with the same small group of people over a two year period, it seems I will have more occasional contact with a wider group. This week, for instance, I am visiting 3 separate groups of children to talk to them about agriculture and starting a youth group. I won’t be able to follow up with them as I did with my youth group in the DR, but after meeting the men and women in charge of the two groups I spent a collective 3 hours with today, I feel that they’ll be able to get along in their new gardens just fine without me. Their lives are so difficult. Most of them showed up to the meetings barefoot and filthy, flies swarming on their smiling faces, and even though I now realize how unrealistic it is for me to ever expect them to act naturally around me (we’re just too different; I’m too healthy, too white, too accented, too educated, too unable to speak African dialects), I hope they at least enjoyed the time that we spent together today. I imagine I’ll have the chance to form closer bonds with small groups of people once I settle in and stick to one place for a while, and a good place to start will probably be learning basic phrases in the local language: Sena.

Oriental Express

As soon as the Peace Corps mandated standfast was lifted enough to allow travel, we were on a 4am bus out of Chimoio and headed, yet again, to Quelimane. All other volunteers across the nation have been instructed to travel to their sites and stay there until things have settled back down to normal, but having never in fact been to my site, I instead returned to the city for a meeting tomorrow. As usual, I have no clue as to my role in this meeting, but simply that my presence has been requested.

On the bus, a girl somewhere between the ages of 8 and 12 (malnourishment makes it really difficult to tell) was seated below her mother on the floor in the aisle, either from lack of space or lack of money to pay for it. Several hours after leaving, as we were roused from our half-sleep stupors for a side-of-the-road pee break, we looked down to see her sitting in a puddle of urine. I felt for her, as I had strategically dehydrated myself to a state of pruney-ness in anticipation of this 8 hour minimum bus ride, crossing 600 kilometers of nowhere. No sooner had she changed clothes and re-boarded the bus, did her carsickness kick-in and leave her in an even bigger mess than before. She was such a pitiful little thing, I just wanted to take her home (theoretical, yet nonexistent home) and give her a bucket of hot water and a cup of tea.

Thankfully, there were no mishaps along the way and we arrived at the projected hour of noon. In rolls our big yellow bus, equipped with anime-animals and Chinese characters on the outside, wall-papered with cartoon Chinese babies on the inside. I felt strangely transported from the Orient back to increasingly familiar, curiously smelly, dusty Quelimane.

Expose Yourself

Leaving Zimbabwe, we hear the Zim version of Delila on the radio, speaking in accented English about the importance of loving yourself before you try to love others. We make a stop in town at “OK” grocery store to stock up on things we probably can’t find anywhere in Moz – ground mustard, youngberry jam, celery salt, South African wine, etc. On the road in front of the grocery store, a propped up poster headlines “Man jailed for insulting President Mugabe”, and I feel watched. A taxi company lightens the mood with its scandalous slogan “Expose yourself, get a ride.”



Although the training was run by an organization called Foundations for Farming (formerly known as Farming God’s Way), whose sustainable farming principles are based in a desire to use the planet in its most natural and godlike form, the religious undertones of the sessions had been relatively tame. That is, until I was suddenly and publicly singled out and questioned by the session leader as to whether or not I believe in demons. Apparently they wanted a westerner’s perspective. Unsure of the answer he wanted, and not articulate enough to formulate on the spot an uncontroversial answer re: my belief that “demons” are a metaphorical explanation for the difficult parts of life, like mental illness and disease, natural disasters and accidents, I simply said “No, I don’t believe in demons.” No one seemed shocked, but I still felt type-cast as the Godless westerner from there on out.

I’m torn by the idea emphasized at training of “breaking traditions” in order to encourage behavior change among farmers, even if it means better crop yields. There’s always a fine line where aid and charity end and cultural imperialism begins; however, these farmers had come to learn of their own accord, and maybe their current “traditions” aren’t even based in culture and custom, having no reason or sentimentality, and are simply traditions because they’ve always been done that way. Like plowing the fields. They can’t tell you why they do it, they just do. And as it turns out, plowing in desiccated, flood and drought prone areas often leads to extreme erosion and nutrient lost.



Even through our differing beliefs, the other trainees were extremely kind and energetic, eager to get to know me. The last evening after dinner, I stumbled upon a small group of women singing and dancing lightly under the stars. The song was beautiful, harmonies so easy and natural, and they told me it was their way of worshiping God. I couldn’t understand the words, and I didn’t need to. I tapped along on my orange for a while, and was thankful for the electricity being down, so I could grin ludicrously through my efforts to restrain the quick tears. The next morning, singing their goodbyes, they asked me to film them with my camera, and I couldn’t have been happier. They were thrilled to see themselves played back, and I’ll always have a piece of their beautiful song to carry with me.

Zimbabwe

Across the border from Mozambique, Mutare is paved roads and neat rows of old houses with collard greens planted in modest front yard gardens. Here, clean and tidy streets echo of British colonialism, which took a different shape and structure than that of the Portuguese in Mozambique, who took exponentially more than they left behind. And Mutare is also a stunning rocky landscape, dotted with schools and clinics, the fruits of international religion-based development. Decades upon decades of missionaries have certainly left their mark, sometimes in the shape of a fist. In our case, it’s in the shape of a Catholic-run training center for Africans (and two grinning-nervous Americans) who wish to learn about agriculture and small business. A training center faithfully guarded, appropriately enough, by 2 skittish Rhodesian Ridgebacks*.

After thoroughly noisy and purposeful stamping, furtive glances and suspicious questions, we made it through the border crossing, where the throb of tension that runs through the country, constant as a heartbeat, is even stronger. In Africa there is an undercurrent of danger to even the most mundane of everyday activities - going to the store, filling up the car with gas. Crossing the border to Zimbabwe is not an everyday activity.

But we can breathe again, and take in the thick opaque orange river, useful for bathing and disguising hungry crocodiles. Starched navy and blinding-white school uniforms migrating across impossibly red and dusty roads. How-do-they-keep-things-so-clean.

At the training center, I am odd man out. The only other white faces here are those of the family in charge of the ag. training, accustomed to playing “bossman”, descendants of the pre-civil war white Zimbabwean farmers, hard and sun-worn and capable, accustomed to the remnants of colonialism; descent roads, dropped eyes, first to the dinner table. Later, a cracked porcelain mug of red wine under a starry black sky, distant hills periodically ablaze with windy uncontrolled burning, help to alleviate the tension of so many day time eyes. What is the wazunga (white) woman doing in our dorm? As I let myself into my tiny room, equipped with bed for sleeping and sink for washing, the electricity buzzes to life and I blow out my candle with mild disappointment. I meet a girl on the way to the hall bathroom, and because she is the only one who has even half considered returning my maniacal over-compensating grins, I do whatever it takes to make contact: in this case, offering her toilet paper as she enters a stall that I know does not contain any. Politely confused, she says that she only needs to urinate and quickly disappears into the neighboring stall. I gotta get better at drip-drying.

For lack of anything else to do, I smile yet again at the women across the hall from me as I return to my room, and just as I am about to duck in, they invite me to sit with them, and suddenly I am surrounded by a room full of wide-eyed, dark-as-night-skinned Zimbabwean women. Clearly in the time it took for me to get from bathroom to bedroom, word got around that I was not a spy or a cannibal.

As expected, the first morning of our fundamental Christian based conservation agriculture training is kicked off with prayer and song. Although 75% of Zimbabweans claim Christianity as their religion, the music blissfully holds much of its traditional character. Clapping and multiple-part harmonies of African words, in Shona, Dbele, Shangani, Sena, are repeated almost as a chant, making my throat catch and my eyes sting with restrained tears. Everyone knows I’m a sucker for a pretty tune.

I feel inspired to be part of a project that is not just a “band-aid”, i.e. not dumping resources into the country in an unsustainable way, but rather teaching techniques that are meant to improve lives at an individual community based level before resonating outward. The leaders of this training go so far as to emphasize that Africans must summon up the pride to break away from reliance on foreign aid, to refuse to seek handouts; however, there is no talk of past abuse from the international community which actively participated in creating the need for aid, no mention of exploitation that maybe created a sense of guilt and obligation among certain donor communities. Maybe it’s better that way; dwelling on heartache could be counterproductive to creating new partnerships. Either way, the NGO presence in Africa would do well to make a concerted effort to decrease dependence by empowering Africans to change their own lives in ways they see fit.

*Rhodesia was the former name of Zimbabwe before the civil war and consequential independence from the British empire.

600 km to Chimoio

The sun sets red and fast, like blood on the horizon, pouring over the land, and then it’s cool and immediate dark. We’re mostly alone on the highway from Quelimane to Chimoio, the only light the rusty twinkling brush fires spotting distant hills. Men on bikes and women clutching childrens’ hands appear as apparitions on the roadside, walking hastily to nowhere. No one wants to be out at night.

In the cities, the roads are populated by bicycles and white utility vehicles, driven by NGO and aid workers. Should one of these vehicles take to the highway, the occupants are advised to stock up on food and fuel, because between cities, there’s nothing but bush. Teeth chattering, meteor sized potholes sneak up and give my ever-tightening seatbelt a workout. The occasional chicken vendor waves his squawking, flapping fare high overhead as we barrel past, so close my teeth make involuntary hissing noises. Bridges provide safe pass over long dried up, weed-riddled riverbeds, and road signs give pictorial advice about what travelers may expect to see in the road ahead: cattle, gazelles, bicycles, curves, and men, either belted or cut into two pieces straight across the mid-section. The real bridge, the one built to cross the roaring Zambeze river, is a source of awe and disbelief to all Mozambicans, including our driver who insists we stop at the top of its arch to take photos. A uniformed guard, materializing beside us, chastises at length for the photos we take that could apparently be connected to sabotage, until he gives up on monetary appeasement and begrudgingly sends us on our way.

If you leave late (as we did) without food (also us), you will be forced to stop along the way at the most undesirable of spots, Caia or Inchope, to munch stale bread while keeping wary eyes on your vehicle. You’ll breathe a sigh of relief when you are yet again barreling down the highway, because then at least no one can steal your backpack out of the truck-bed, right in front of your eyes. After all, who would stop them?

After seeing my first wild baboon, lounging lazily on the side of the road like a big dog, distinguishable only when it stood and sauntered off into the bush, 4 foot tail and colorful rump held high, I passed the time by scanning the savannah for other creatures, although I’ve been warned that the wildlife population in Mozambique was decimated after the civil war. All I can see, amid the roaring bush fires meant to startle small edible prey such as duiker, snakes, and rats into a scurrying, huntable frenzy, is a few furious and fumigated fowl.

I turn my attention back to the road just in time to see a sign and make a quick calculation: 300 kilometers to Chimoio.

Tea Time

At 6 am in Gurué, the fog is so thick it settles in puddles in the corners of your eyes. The mountains about the tea covered foothills slowly appear as the morning sun strengthens. And somewhere in those hills, a group of youth planted cabbage and carrots and tomatoes, and waited for their periodic visit from the NGO representatives that enabled them to do so.

Along the road to visit this new and informal youth farming operation, I am struck yet again by how many babies I see. It seems everyone who is not a male over the age of 10 has a baby strapped to their body. A woman walking down the road carries a considerable load of firewood on her head, simultaneously breast-feeding her child. A woman bends over her modest garden, and the tiny living package on her back doesn’t budge. A woman rides a bicycle alongside our car, a warm ball of baby smooshed to her back and soundly sleeping. It’s a wonder they ever learn to walk at all, but they must, for soon there will be brothers and sisters to carry.

Black, green, and red tea all come from the same plant. Green tea is achieved by clipping just the tips of the youngest tea leaves on these stout bushes. Black comes from more mature leaves, and red incorporates stems into the mix. We drove through rolling, tiered acres of this worldly commodity, an oasis of cool green, until we were on the other side, back in the bush, where we were greeted by a group of smiling, singing, barefoot and brightly swathed African children who paraded us down a path through scratchy dry grass and yellow flowers until we arrived at the plot of land they had recently planted with seeds given to them by World Vision employees. A manual water pump was installed at a nearby stream, and the children were briefed in very basic soil conservation methods, in particular mulching. The idea is to create ownership of the garden, and a sense of identity for these children, many of whom are orphans, by uniting them in an effort that can supplement their diet and enhance their nutrition. They were very taken with us, and I with them. They were what I always hoped and feared when I imagined Africa. Happiness, bright colorful beauty, and tradition in a setting which is ever-unforgiving of weakness, of mistakes.

For one night, I’m back in Quelimane, with the 5 o’clock call to prayer and dust so abundant I smell it on my skin and crunch it into my food long after I’m off the street. Tomorrow begins the journey to Zimbabwe.We will drive 9 hours to the border, sleep in Chimoio, and cross first thing on Tuesday morning to arrive at a 2 day farming training. Here’s hoping that the border patrol will be friendly, i.e. modestly bribable.

Creativity Lives

Africa is like the Dominican Republic in some ways – dirt swept yards, half finished homes left to sprout weeds when the money runs out, drivers honking instead of slowing to warn passersby of danger barreling their way at unregulated speeds, grassy expanses punctuated with towering palm and coconut trees, stray and starving animals. But other things stand out. Like grown men embracing and holding hands in the street, fearless of accusation of the hyper-taboo homosexuality. Instead of 5 people to a motorcycle, it’s the same number on bikes. A man pedals along with one woman perched on the front of his bike, and one on the back, both of whom have infants lashed to their torsos. Driving down the road past one of the many roadside markets, where you may buy shiny, cheap imported flashlights and old baggy clothing among other necessities, a man scuttles along in a chair somehow integrated with an inverted bicycle frame, hand-powered by the gear and pedals he has set up as a crank at eye level. And the houses are ingenious. Lincoln log structures stuffed with rocks and covered with a cementing mixture of muddy sand, these little grass-roofed huts don’t let much in or out. Bricks are made from dirt and fired in even the most remote of settings, resulting in compact little cookie-cutter dwellings that speckle the bush in between cities. Pop music in English, most of which never made it to any radios in the U.S. (except Rhiana, of course), blares from every stereo. Four young boys dress in matching t-shirts advertising “Klin” (clean) laundry soap and dance at the farmers market. We walk by a church called “Jesus es o Senhor” – Jesus is the Man. Can’t argue with that!

On our way to a 3 day conservation agriculture training, we stopped off to observe a small farming operation. Almost immediately upon our arrival, I was presented to a group of 30 or more dark and solemn faced farmers and prompted to introduce myself as a new addition to World Vision’s food security initiative. After smiling my way through a few sentences that could have been more more Brasilian than African Portuguese, more Spanish than anything else, it was back on the road to Mocuba, where we would stay with another volunteer each night after training. Come 5:30 in the morning, it was tea and a mouthful of moldy bread, then 50 kilometers down a bumpy dirt road in a pickup truck with no seatbelt and a driver more coldly cautious of potholes than pedestrians, impressively unmoved by the erratic behavior of distended belly children on the roadside. Clouds of red dust left in our wake swallowed whole the charcoal transferring men and boys on bikes. I was by turns bounced to sleep and carsick (at nights, there’s nothing to hold the eye except the rapidly passing cassava plants and the quickly moving, red compacted road, layers of sandy dirt and dirty sand) throughout the 6 trips we made in 3 days down this road. Shockingly, this is the main road to reach neighboring Malawi.

We arrived at Namanjavira, an animal traction (cows ‘n plows) training center, where a group of farmers from throughout the region had been assembled to receive training in conservation farming: simple techniques, such as mulching and crop rotation, to replace time honored practices that are no longer sufficient for large numbers of people living in resource deficient and flood/drought prone areas. Some of these same farmers had participated in a 2 month long animal traction training course, expensive by Mozambican standards (325$ US), at the end of which they received a cart, a plow and 2 cows. Throughout the training, as I learned about conservation farming alongside these old farmers, I became more comfortable with the idea of my role here as a development worker. Because I received an education that encouraged me to think critically and analytically, the concepts are not difficult to learn. The difficulty in such a position comes in trying to demonstrate the benefits of behavior change to individuals who have been using the same farming techniques for centuries, and in encouraging them to share those techniques with others. But however persistent and determined my job might require me to be, I am glad to be working at the community level with a project that has such great potential to resonate change. The need here is great, and I have access to certain resources to address that need.

On our final bumpy, dusty trip away from the center, a farming trainer from Zimbabwe who had been very helpful to World Vision workers and famers alike throughout the sessions, pointed to a tree and asked us to identify it. It was a coconut tree. I was astonished that he didn’t recognize it, but apparently they don’t exist in Zimbabwe and he’s never tasted any coconut product. Small wonders.

On the next leg of our journey, headed to Gurue to learn about farming youth groups, I looked down in my purse and realized I hadn’t opened my wallet for several days. There’s really not that much to buy when you’re this far out. Occasional trading posts and a pink setting sun over dry, flat expanses and sudden mountains marked our journey into the higher elevations, and then we were in cool Gurue, a quiet town known for its tea plantations. Tomorrow we’ll see what the local youth know about farming, and decide how to apply their experiences in our sites.

See ya later, Quelimane

Today, I found myself in need of a business card. I attended a meeting held by a group of researchers from Johns Hopkins, designed to share the outcomes of their 3 year project that collected information about teenage girls and the prevalence of youth pregnancy and HIV-AIDS. The African counterparts present at the meeting were very curious about the goals and outcomes of this three year project with no tangible results other than manuals and information regarding trends among African youth. To be honest, I was wondering myself, but the researchers reassured us that this was research for research’s sake, and that this information will aid those who, in the future, have the time and resources to conduct projects designed to decrease the occurrence of teen pregnancy and HIV-AIDS infection.

Africa really throws poverty and the distribution of wealth into your face like no other place can. Walking home from a luxuriously sized dinner of shrimp curry, with abundant beer, I passed two teenage boys sitting on the sidewalk and eating out of a cardboard box they clearly pulled from the dumpster, right outside the front door of my walled and gated hotel. The same hotel that, thanks to its hot water and AC, has made my transition from America to this provincial African capital impressively smooth. But tomorrow we say goodbye to Quelimane on our way to Mocuba, for a 3 day conservation farming training. We’ll be outside all day, so thank god for African dead-of-winter weather…60-80 degree range.

An astonishing number of bicycle taxis, while undoubtedly not the most comfy way to travel, make this city considerably quieter than had everyone motorcycles instead. Also, I have walked down the street alone now on several occasions, and an inappropriate word hasn’t been so much as breathed my direction. Just as I get used to this city, it’s time to leave. After training in Mocuba, it’s to site for the first time, staying in the World Vision “compound” (whatever that means) until I can find satisfactory housing. I'll have 2 days to settle in, and then it's off to Zimbabwe for a 2 day training. After that, I look forward to unpacking my suitcases and starting this new life.

Market Day

After a breakfast of papaya, bread, tea and surprisingly yummy fish stewed with vegetables (fish at breakfast seems to be pretty common, a little strange, but flavorful and protein packed), it was a day with a private driver with World Vision, kind enough to help us buy some essentials that we won’t be able to get once we get to site. Yesterday, I got peanut butter, lentils, and curry at a grocery store. Today, we ventured to the world of open air markets for a bicycle and various home necessities.

After perusing several muddy stops, later made muddier by a light rain which caught us under a tin roof, unable to leave without mud streaks on shirts from runoff, we finally chose a blue “City Bike” in need of many adjustments (i.e. taking parts from other bikes to make mine whole). While the bike was being tuned, we set off to look for pots and pans at another market, identically situated among thatch roofed huts and veggie vendors, to look for pots and pans. For around 7 dollars, I bought 2 pots, 6 drinking glasses, and a beautiful if scratchy swath of fabric (tablecloth? bedcover?) from a South African Muslim woman in full cover except for eyes and hands. She played with her phone as we sorted through the house wares, which made me smile, but certainly no more than the other covered women I’ve seen wearing silver sandal high heels and carrying leather fashion purses.

Famished from a morning of perusing, bumpy truck rides and thinking in Portuguese, made infinitely easier and, in fact, possible at all, by our patient helpful driver, we stopped for a coconut “lanche”, or snack. As I watched for the millionth time as a young man used his machete to open the fruit so I could drink the water, and then crack it further open so I could eat the meat, I appreciated the familiarity of the food and recognized it as possibly the best of its kind I have ever had.

Everywhere we went today, there were women young and old toting babies on their back, lashed in by swaths of brilliant fabric. Every last one was fast asleep.

Debriefing

Today we spent several hours with the staff at World (WV) in Quelimane (“Kelly-mahny”) outlining our job responsibilities and learning about what this organization does in Mozambique, particularly in the province of Zambezia where we will be working. It’s very inspiring to be associated with an NGO in a formal position of relative influence. I am beginning to sense that even as a volunteer, I will be in a coordinating, organizing position for local implementation of projects with large scale goals, which is refreshing after two years of the grungiest of grassroots work. Elements of the job I expect to be doing are working with the staff at the office of World Vision in Morrumbala on small demonstration gardening plots, involving local youth in agricultural efforts, inspiring women’s groups be the leaders of farming and health initiatives, and beginning conversations about conservation farming and youth involvement with other development organizations. It seems I have been sent here to be the driving force behind projects that have already been conceptualized, as well as granted the freedom to formulate ideas for and implement new projects. As I challenge my brain to remember Portuguese, I will also be doing what I can to learn important phrases in Sena, the local dialect.

All of this debriefing was being done from a well-lit second floor office, to the tune of a nearby chorus of African voices singing in acapella harmonies. Perfect.
We will be here in Quelimane, the provincial capital, until Tuesday, at which point we will travel to Mocuba for a 3 day training in conservation farming. Then I will go to Morrumbala, my permanent site, where I will begin work with the WV office, staying in a dormitory in their compound until permanent housing can be arranged.

I am very soothed by the demeanor of the Africans I have had the chance to interact with thus far. As opposed to the hopelessly impassioned Dominicans to whom I grew accustomed and was driven fondly crazy by, Africans seem much more reserved and serene, less interested in me and more interested in daily affairs that so often leave them teetering on the brink. For one thing, I can make brief eye contact with a man on the street without being kissed at. And isn’t that, after all, what every girl wants?

I was very saddened to hear that the wildlife population in Mozambique is not as diverse as in the years before the war. Apparently most of the animals were killed for meat, or simply had their habitat destroyed. Reserves and national parks are doing what they can to restore the web of life, but they have a long way to go in recovery. The entire nation does, after so many years of devastating war.

At a Glance

So far it’s…

5 days and 4 cities and 20 hours of air time

Fancy (a.k.a. SAFE) hotels and private (a.k.a. SAFE) drivers

Two lunches with the director of Peace Corps Mozambique

Dinner (curry of “cabrito de mato”, or duiker in English, which is similar to gazelle) in the home of the director of the sustainable agriculture project at World Vision, complete with comfy mismatching furniture and a brood of well-read children with Australian accents

Genuinely kind support staff

Brilliant, breezy weather

Waking up at 5am, fully awake

A switch in my site assignment – from Alto-Molocue to Morumbala

The dusty streets of Quelimane, swarmed with bicycle taxis and the utility vehicles of NGOs

Talk of housing and guards, bicycles and farming initiatives, trips to Zimbabwe and Malawi

A cell phone with internet and bluetooth (a.k.a. the thinga-ma-jigger that will let me have internet in my house, however limited)! And the discovery that I will have internet in the regional office in Morumbala

The realization that my pants my start fitting tighter as opposed to the expected opposite

That’s what’s going on here in a nutshell, condensed because I am thoroughly exhausted. There’s no malaria medication in the world powerful enough to keep me awake tonight!

Daily Confusions

I need to learn which way to look when I cross the street...and stop wondering why there's no one in the "drivers" seat! However, the toilets don't flush backwards so much as straight up...

Also, I was relieved to learn that the manual bearing the title "You Can Make It In Mozambique" distributed to us today was NOT in fact our medical handbook, but a friendly cookbook filled with African recipes.

Finally, our medical debriefing today put the fear of God into me. Between the parasites that bore into your heels and form black egg sacks, the parasites that enter your skin through almost any fresh water source and can cause bladder cancer, and the red welts under your eye that can secrete larvae when squeezed, I may never leave my house. Or the safety of my Mosquito net.

Our office is bright pink and overlooks the ocean! And I have to fly to my site tomorrow. FLY. Or rather, fly to a large city and be driven about 6 hours.

I am truly floored and exhilarated and can't wait to see what's next!