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.