Agriculture

For the last few months Sojo and I have been put in charge of the agriculture program. Agriculture has been a topic of heated debate at our school because they have tried to grow fruits and vegetables many times and have failed an equal number of times. The problem is that we have no soil here, it's just sand. Really dry sand that blows away easily to be more specific. Our director in training, Clara, is adamant about trying new approaches in Agriculture and proving once and for all that we can grow something at our school. Since all of the teachers refuse to work with her on it, we've been given the responsibility. That seems to be the only reason why we are given any task, because no else will do it.
We wake up at 4:50 in the morning. At that time of the morning anyone can become suicidal, but we resist the urge to kill ourselves, get dressed, and arrive at our school just as the sun rises at 5:15. We are trying out a method called trench farming which is supposed to promote the growth of soil. We dug long lines of trenches, filled them with capina (which is rotting tall grass) and then buried it, leaving some sand on either side to protect the new soil from the wind. The capina should continuously decompose under the top layer of sand, offering rich nutrients for our little seedlings.
It has taken much longer than we thought it would. We've been working on this particular project for two months now, and we've only planted one trench. The students and administrators have become very impatient with the project. They think you can just plant a seed in crappy soil, water it, and then you'll have a tomato in a few days. They don't understand that this project is investing inthe future of the soil. Even things like fertilizer are completely new for them. We've had some lectures explaining the importance of fertilizer, pest controls, consistent water schedules and so on. I'm not sure id anything is sinking in.
So far these are our two biggest barriers:
1. a perfectionist boss: The trenches are supposed to be 40 centimeters wide and deep. If they are 39 or 41 centimeters he makes us do it over again. If the trenches are not in a straight line we do it over again. I don't think he understands that 40 centimeters is a suggested guild, not the end all and be all of gardening. He loves his measuring stick.
2. The students: They do not want to be there. Not at all. Every day it's a struggle to get them started on time and to actually work when they are there. Usually when I ask them to do something they will ignore me at first. Then I repeat myself and they look up at me with a blank expression and then just laugh. By the third try I usually have to grab their hand and lead them wherever I want them to go and stay there until I see them pick up a tool and work. It's like working with toddlers. Sojo and I end doing the bulk of the work.
In addition to the trench farming we're also planting fruit trees all over the school and planting some decorative gardens. Sometimes I really don't understand their reasoning for things. The director will say that we need more trees at the school so he'll have a students cut down a huge beautiful tree that has been here forever and plant two baby trees there in its place. Can't we plant the new trees in a different aread!? It doesn't make sense to me.

PIctures!

I forgot to mention a huge change in my last update. Pricscila was transferred to Chimoio to work with children. The switch was very abrupt and upsetting but she's happy where she is now and has a lot more to do. A new Di also arrived at the school. Her name is Sojourner and she trained at the same school as me in Massachusetts. We are having a lot of fun together. We break out into musicals quite often.


Here's one of my smaller evening classes. We are analyzing the lyrics of Jon Lennon's Imagine.


This is me helping to collect garbage in the city with an organization called ALMA. It was so hot that day. This is about an hour before I fainted. As you can see I don't look very happy.


A nice close up of one of the many moths that have invaded our house. They are about the size of my hand when they open their wings. When the lights are off it seems as if there are birds flying around our house.


The following are pictures I took while walking around Inhambane city. You'll notice in this picture how my sense of fashion has been influenced by Mozambican style. I was actually complemented on this outfit once. Who would have thought stripes and Popsicles would be in fashion.


This is the other side of the sign I was standing next to. I love this picture for some reason.


The sun setting by the dock to Maixixe.


A painting on the front of a little restaurant.



Oh the beautiful architecture. This is my favorite building in the city. There is some wonderful colonial buildings here that just need a little work. Whenever I walk through the streets I pick out which house I will buy and refurbish and then show of in Architectural digest.

It's like this everyday. And people say it's a sacrifice living here. Hah!

Poetry, germs, and songs

In a land where grass swallows the trees
And beetles rattle the dogs
Coconuts fall to percussion
And wind plays the leaves

We danced in our tan lines
We kissed the silver sky
We wondered is there anything
As charming as an unexpected smile

In a land where water silently kills
And mosquitoes bring down men
Ants clear away the rubbage
And moon lights the way

We danced in our tan lines
We kissed the silver sky
We wondered is there anything
As charming as an unexpected smile

In a land where patterns fight for attention
And chickens make house calls
Babies dream in capulanas
And mangoes sweeten the tongue

We danced in our tan lines
We kissed the silver sky
We wondered is there anything
As charming as an unexpected smile

I wrote that after taking an inspiring hike to the watering hole nearby my house. I felt like Robert Frost on safari.
Currently my bedroom floor looks like those aerial shots of New York City traffic jams except it’s ants instead of cars. I think my room was built on top of an ancient ant migration path. There is a thick black line of ants that crawl up the outside of my house and into my window through a hole that they made in the screen. They crawl down my wall, spread out over the floor and walk back up the opposite wall and disappear into a hole in the ceiling. They are all carrying these little white balls, which I assume, and fear are ant eggs. No matter where I stand in my room they continue on their way even if that means racing over my feet. Sometimes they get more adventurous and continue all the way up my body and aim for my nose/mouth/ears. I keep waking up from nightmares where the ants take over my bed and eat my face.
However, I must acknowledge that it is a symbiotic relationship. It’s like having a personal staff of a million janitors following me around. If I drop a piece of food on the floor within 30 seconds the ants greedily concentrate over this food and then disperse as soon as the food is nothing more, and the floor is spotless. Sometimes I’ll drop a piece of food on purpose just to watch the race. Nowhere else is this act of consumption more grand than in the outhouse. I could watch the ants moving enormous cockroach carcasses all day long, but usually the stench gets the better of me and I have to leave and do something actually productive.
My English class is going super well. I am absolutely in love with my students. They are the most motivated, diligent, and respectful students I have ever had. On song night, I was teaching them Jon Lennon’s Imagine and it was truly magical. We analyzed the lyrics and they were saying that that was the kind of future they need to teach their students about. They got so into the song that we ended up singing it for an extra hour after the allotted time for the class. The next day I heard them teaching the song to other students in the school. So touching. In our regular classes I’ve been integrating pedagogy lessons with their English lessons. It was really hard at first because they are so used to a teacher just lecturing them in the front of the classroom and they don’t have to interact besides for answering a few questions. But now they are leading discussions and teaching review sessions and becoming so much more comfortable speaking in English.
Unfortunately, I seem to have broken the sick seal here. First everyone in the house was sick for a month because the well water had bacteria in it. Then I had a foot infection from the tiniest cut. When I was helping to repair the school’s road I dropped a rock on my foot and had a scrap about the size of a pinprick so I didn’t give it any thought. The next day it blistered up, expanded and became an open wound. As soon as it started to scab over it blistered again and got even bigger. After a few days the pinprick became the size of a silver dollar and let out a constant source of puss. Lovely, I know. One of my students took me to the hospital and told me that it was an infection of the blood and that whenever it would heal the blood clot was what was making it get really infected again. I never heard of such a thing. But it’s completely fine now. No more puss, thank god. Then I had a serious of bad headaches and sore throats and general fatigue. My director was making me go to the hospital nearly every week to get tested for malaria, but I’ve been negative every time.
Going to the hospital is like being in a zombie movie where the zombies are too tired and sick to attack you. The doctors are the most zombie-like of all. They call you in, and look at the chair to indict that you must sit down. Then they mumble, “O que é sua problema?” You give them a list of your ailments and they stare up into space thinking about whether they should have beans for dinner that night. Occasionally they perform an autonomic function such as breathing or blinking. When you are done complaining they scribbling something on a prescription pad and hand it over to you without ever making eye contact. I could have been a giraffe for all he knows. I feel like I’m entitled to at least a smile from the doctor considering I have to pay literally 40 times what the locals pay to see the doctors, but there goes my American over-blown sense of self-entitlement again. I have to keep that in check here. I suppose if the doctors spent a modicum of empathy on one forth of their patients they would die of exhaustion. They can see up to 200 patients a day.
When I went to get my prescription filled at the hospital pharmacy they only had one of the three scribbles. I asked them what it was and they showed me the bottle. It was vitamin C, so I politely turned it down considering I have about 400% of the recommended dose of vitamin C for breakfast. Then I went to the pharmacy in the city to get the other two prescriptions. They only had the amoxicillin and told me I had to go to Maixixe to get the last prescription. I had been meaning to go to Maixixe, which is a half an hour ferry ride from Inhambane, so I walked to the dock.
I gripped the shaky railing of the make shift wooden dock that went on for three hundred yards. The gaps between the wooden planks on the floor of this dock were wider than the actual planks. I could see the crashing waves 15 feet below me through these huge gaps. Even if I wasn’t sick and feverish I would have been sweating and dizzy from shear fear. However when I could work up the courage to look up I saw people scurrying by in high heals, carrying clucking chickens, buckets on heads, and the worst, people checking their text messages. I felt really lame and tried to hurry up.
Maixixe is not worth writing about, so I won’t bore you with details. When I found the pharmacy and presented my scribbles they rummaged around the backroom and brought out a dusty bag of pills. I asked what they were. It turns out that it was the active ingredient in Tylenol, which I had been taking all along. Well at least I became familiar with three different pharmacies.
Last Saturday I was so excited because I was in charge of taking 15 of the students to the city to help clean up garbage with one of our partnerships, ALMA. I was feeling sick all day, and it was so hot, but it was nice to hang out with the students outside of the school and do something productive. I guess I was exerting too much energy though. Some of my students weren’t really into it so I was running around trying to motivate them. By the time we were getting back into the chappa and saying goodbye to the guy from ALMA I was feeling really lightheaded and dizzy. Before I knew it I was on the floor and I heard voices above me. I fainted! I’ve never fainted before in my life. I thought only women in corsets faint. It was so embarrassing. I had to go to the hospital again, but I knew it was just dehydration. I felt completely fine within minutes. No permanent damage. I learned my lesson. I’m drinking tons of water, and the guy from ALMA who broke my fall when I fainted calls me everyday to make sure I’m drinking water.

Well that’s my update for now. I hope everyone is happy and healthy (or at least more healthy than me).

getting into the routine

2/9/2008

They say the best way to learn is by teaching. I would like to add to that, the best way to learn a language is by teaching in it. I taught my first art class in Portuguese this week. I’ve never had such a big headache, but within a mater of minutes, verbs that I always hesitated before conjugating became second nature. I don’t think I will ever be able to forget the Portuguese verb for to draw (desenhar) after consulting my dictionary a hundred times during the first art class. (Besides for having the language obstacle for this art class we also have no art supplies, not even pencils or paper. I was originally only supposed to have five people in my class so I was able to find enough paper and pencils for them, but when I showed up I had thirty students. They had to share the pencils and we used paper from the garbage bin.)
I have been going through a Portuguese over load. For the first two month I was here I honestly thought I could learn Portuguese passively, meaning as long as I am surrounded by the language I will learn it with no effort. Not the case. You really have to be an active learner. Now I carry a notebook with me and write down the new words I hear and I study them at night. We used to only speak English in my house because it was the common language, but now that Jerome, and Flavia left, and two Brazilians are visiting, Carol and Mauro, we only speak Portuguese in the house. I can’t escape it. But it’s good. I’ve learned twice as much Portuguese in the last three weeks than I learned in the first two months.
It’s finally getting busy around here. Well, busy for Mozambique standards. It’s hard for things to get really busy here when everyone follows African time, and the sun really doesn’t help at all. I have four Art classes and four English classes. I’m also in charge of planning the open Saturdays. We just had one this past weekend and it was so much fun. Almost two hundred people from the community came. It was mostly kids. First the students put on skits making fun of the construction period (I’ll tell you about that soon). Then we had the choirs from all the different churches in the area sing songs. We had some games (I had a really hard time explaining an egg hunt to them. Each egg had a different letter on it and everyone was supposed to find an egg, bring it to the front of the school, and arrange the letters correctly to spell out a phrase about the school. However, the birds and the children ate most of the eggs before we could make a sentence). Then we danced and ate cookies.
The Open Saturday was meant to celebrate the end of the Construction Period, or what I like to call the most poorly planned month of my life. This is a time when all of the students and teachers come together to build and repair things at the school. I though this would be a great time to repair all of the faucets which leak precious water, but no, we spent most of the time moving sand or rocks from one area of the school to another area of the school. Monday through Saturday, we started at 6: 30 in the morning and ended work at 5p.m. that gave us time to clean and eat dinner before evening classes. For the first week I was in charge of cleaning and painting the pig pens and cutting the grass. Cutting the grass is quite an ordeal. They give about 40 students a bent piece of metal with a handle and for 8 hours they swing the metal back and forth and this cuts the grass. Every week a different group of students cut the grass. It took a month, and by the time we finished the grass was just as tall as when we started. The worst part was that the grass cutting coincided with the caterpillar-mating season. After a long day of cutting grass you were covered in bits of caterpillar. I feel personally responsible for the lack of butterflies in Mozambique.
After this job I was put in charge of keeping track of the students who took a break outside of designated break times. I could not carry out this job conscionably. It was over a hundred degrees every day, and the students were working in direct sunlight for 10 and a half hours with only a lunch break and two 15 minute breaks. I was supposed to write the names of the students who sat down and then if they did it twice I had to send them to mix cement. I couldn’t even stand up for more than ten minutes without taking a break let alone cut grass, so I felt like a terrible hypocrite. As a solution I started carrying my camera with me, and whenever the students saw my camera they all wanted me to take pictures of them working so they would stand up and working harder than ever before. I ended up taking 600 pictures in one week, but I didn’t have to write any names down. I became the official photographer for the school.
Now for the poor planning part: the director in training at the school decided it would be nice to build a bunch of walkways all over the school during this period. Knowing that she didn’t have the money to finish this project she started it anyway. First we dug a trench for the main walkway, and then we filled it with rocks, and put the dug up sand on top of it. Afterwards we put another layer of pointy sharp rocks on top of it. None of this sequence made sense. The director wanted to put cement over this but we couldn’t afford it. We couldn’t even afford the rocks to finish the path, so now we have a path that starts in the middle of nowhere and ends in the middle of nowhere. It’s a big eye soar. The rocks are too sharp to walk on so everyone walks on either side of the path but never actually on the path. The worst part was that we could have built the ugly path in a day or two but someone told the rock delivery guy to dump the rocks as far away as possible from where we were working, and so, we spent more than two weeks carrying buckets of rocks, 2 tons (literally), over a quarter mile distance of bumpy, sandy terrain. The students were so pissed off, and they really held nothing back when they were making fun of directors in the skits for open Saturday.
Speaking of poor planning, while we were building this doomed pathway, the government was building a new road along our school. After several days of work, and several loads of rocks and cement, they realized they didn’t measure things before starting and the road was going through the school’s property lines. For a month now, there has been a constant line of workers pushing wheel barrels of rocks and sand from where the road used to be to where it’s supposed to be. It’s quite comical.
Speaking of comedy, we now have the funniest housemaid. She is the Mozambican Amelia Bedelia. At first I was a little hesitant to have a housekeeper, after all I’m a volunteer. However, when you have to walk to the well to get the water for laundry, cleaning dishes and cooking, you end up spending the entire day doing chores and you don’t have time to teach.

Funny housekeeper story number 1:

We hired this woman, Joaquina, on a Thursday and asked if she could start this Monday. She said that was impossible because it was too soon, so we told her she could start the next Monday. But sure enough she came that Monday and when we asked her about it, she said she thought we meant the Monday that had already passed.

Funny housekeeper story number 2:

On the first night she cooked far too much rice. In the morning I asked her to save the rice for dinner. When I came home that night for dinner I saw that she had indeed saved the rice, but she also made another pot of fresh rice in addition.

Funny housekeeper story number 3:

I gave her money to buy groceries for the week. She asked me what she should buy, and I told her just the basics. When I came home our little refrigerator was filled with sardines. Hundreds of them, and nothing else.

If she wasn’t so funny we would have fired her long ago. I’m excited to come home every day just to see what she does.
Ok, I’m going to the beach now. Hope you enjoy your snow, suckers!

p.s. I never thought this would happen to me, but I’ve fallen in love with beans. They are the best food in the world. The other day I actually traded my piece of chicken so I could have more beans. It makes me think of all the beans I turned down when I was in Nicaragua because I thought they were gross. I wish I could turn back time and eat all of those rejected beans. Speaking of food, I highly recommend the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. If you eat food you should read this book.

Investigation period

December 12, 2007
_____________________________________________

The sun is a predator here. You can run under a tree to find asylum, but he can smell your smoky flesh. He pierces you through the gaps in the leaves until you admit defeat. He could easily kill you at any time, but has decided to torture you instead. And so, he hovers over his victim until you are nothing more than a melted soul in a charred body. This is not the same sun who brightens the day and supports life. It is his sinister brother who is only capable of withering, wilting and melting all that he sees.
Ok perhaps I’m being a little melodramatic, but it really is hot here. I wrote this while supervising my students while they interviewed farmers in a remote village in Zavala. Since none of the farmers speak Portuguese (there are five different tribal languages used here) I did a lot of smiling, nodding, and writing. They are all very nice and I never walk away from a farm without several mangos, bananas and coconuts. I’ve developed quite an addiction for mangoes. They only cost 1 medicais at the market (that means you can buy 25 mangoes for a dollar)!
For the last two weeks my students were on their investigation period. That is a time when they go into small villages, and talk to every person there asking questions about agriculture, education, health, and environment. We were ten kilometers from a road, and even if you walked there, the road led to nowhere. I felt so isolated.
Everyday we woke up at 5 in the morning to do chores. We were sleeping on the floor of an abandoned school, with no electricity, internet, or running water. We would thoroughly clean everything, do the laundry, refold our clothing several times, shower, eat breakfast and rush to be out of the school by seven. We would start the day by talking to an administrator, but they never came to the office before 9. I couldn’t understand why we rushed to be there so early just to wait around for two hours. I tried to talk my students into sleeping for an extra hour, but they were far too responsible. I don’t think they really need sleep. They hang out until three or four in the morning and then wake up after an hour of sleep, looking so refreshed. It’s creepy.
One of the bizarre things I noticed when we were driving down to the town was that whenever you drive past a new village there’s always a big sign that says, “Welcome to this town” and then below it, “get tested for HIV.” These signs are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. However after interviewing the people in the villages I found out that it was malaria and diarrhea that were the biggest causes of death. I find it absurd that on the brink of 2008 people can still be dying of diarrhea. I can’t even imagine being a mother and watching my child dye slowly of diarrhea, something that should be so easily treatable. Of course HIV is a death sentence here because even drinking the water is a death sentence. And pharmaceutical companies come into these villages saying that only their drugs will prevent malaria, kill the bacteria in the water, or fight AIDS. But they are only making people more dependent on foreign aid for these drugs without helping to solve the main causes. If these companies were as altruistic as they claim, they should be building wells, growing eucalyptus trees (which repel mosquitoes), and teaching people about proper hygiene and nutrition. But of course there’s no money in that, so what’s the point. Ok I’m being really cynical, but it gets so frustrating here.
(Here are the cockroaches that lived with for two weeks)


Maybe this is one of the reasons why I’m so bitter towards drug companies. Now this is embarrassing, and if you’re easily grossed out skip the next three paragraphs. The malaria pills they gave us for our time here causes yeast infections in 2% of the women who take it. I found out I am one of the unlucky 2%. I was with 18 of my male students and there was no way I was going to tell them about my problem. Since we were walking for an average of 15 kilometers a day I would come back home almost in tears, I tried to get treatment at the hospital, but they had no idea what I was talking about. I even went to the local witchdoctor, but she didn’t understand either. They thought I was saying that I was infected with bread. I had treatment for it at my house in Inhambane, but I had to wait two more days to get permission from my director to go back for a day to get the medicine. Those were the most miserable days of my life. And the worst part was that no one believed that I was sick because I couldn’t tell them what was really wrong.
On Sunday morning my students walked me to the chappa stand. There were no direct chappas to Inhambane so I had to make four connections. My students talked to the first driver and told him to take care of me. Whenever the chappa arrived in the connecting town the driver would walk me to the next chappa and would speak in Portuguese thinking that I didn’t understand. They would say, “this is our sister and she’s sick. Make sure she gets to Inhambane safely.” I never felt so well taken care of.
The trip should have only taken 4 hours but it ended up taking 7. On one of the longest rides, I was sharing the front seat with two ancient women who were sitting so closed to me that I could feel the peach fuzz on their cheeks. One asked me to hold two of her tied up live chickens on my lap. I was praying that the bird flu was just a hoax. The chappa was from the former Soviet Union, and I’m pretty sure it was old enough to have driven Stalin around town. It stalled every time we got below twenty Kilometers an hour, and considering we stopped every ten minutes to pick up people, we had to get people to push the bus a lot.
On this particular ride I went a little insane. I looked out the windows at the passing red roads, and the women carrying buckets of water on their heads. Celine Dion was crooning on the radio. Sweat was swimming down my face. The stench of twenty crushed people in the back was scenting the air. The chickens were clucking in my lap, my lap that was burning more than my sun burnt face. I started crying, and I mean really crying. “Why am I here? This would never have happened if I stayed in America,” I cried. But then out of nowhere I just started cracking up. I started thinking about how I will tell my grandchildren about the time I got a yeast infection in Africa and I had to drive for 7 hours with chickens to get the medication. I couldn’t stop laughing. This time a huge smile broke across my face, and I thought, “yeah, this never would have happened if I stayed in America!” The two old ladies took note of my insanity and inched away from me which made the rest of the ride much more comfortable.
When I got to my house all of the kids in my village came running up to me to welcome me back. They carried my bag in the house and even got water from the well for my shower. I took the medicine, took a shower, and then I slept like I never slept before. The next morning I caught the chappa to Zafala and headed back to my students in a much better mood. When I got back to the school my students looked shocked. They thought I was lying about being sick, and that I was going to go back to America without telling them. As soon as I walked in they all ran up to hug me and cried, “Mommy Tracy, you came back!” From that point on I won them all over. They still call me Mommy Tracy, which is funny because they are all in their twenties. This is the first time I’ve been called “mommy” by twenty year olds without it being a come on.
The second week was amazing. Everyday the students wanted to show me something cool. They took me to a beach where they let the bulls run loose. I went to this huge sand dune and we slid on the sand all day long. They talked to farmers to let me plant some crops for them. It was quite an experience. Once everyone in the village heard that there was a white person visiting they all wanted to see me. Kids would follow me in huge groups. One brave kid would finally run up and touch men and then run away laughing. A traditional dance tribe visited one night to teach me a dance. They made me perform it in front of everyone. There were a lot of hip thrusts, and moves that only dogs make when they are in heat. My students cheered and laughed the whole time. I was quite humiliated, but they seemed to enjoy it.
The rainy season started during the second week as well. I have never witnessed rain like this. We had a tin roof, so every night I woke up because of the pounding of rain on tin. Every night I mentally prepared myself for the roof collapsing, and I’m still shocked that it never did. There were so many holes in the roof so that no matter where I slept I woke up drenched. When you go walking in the morning the land is completely transformed. Some roads were completely washed away. Everyone is outside repairing their houses. The air was so saturated with water I felt like I was swimming in a hot tub.
Before I go any further I must describe these visits to the farmers in more detail. First you need to find the tribal chief to get his permission to talk to his people. Next you walk for about an hour to find a house because everything is so spread out. One time we tried to talk to a family, but we got permission from the wrong chief and her son came out with an axe and we had to run away. I think he was just trying to scare us, but I was willing to stay and find out. Usually it’s much more calm. When you walk up to a house the people ignore you at first. After standing awkwardly for a few minutes they bring out their chairs and let you sit down. Then they do the introduction. They mutter a sentence in Bitonga, a local language, without making any eye contact. You are supposed to respond with a barely audible grunt, then they say another sentence and you grunt again and this goes on for quite a while. After that you can conduct the interview. If you are really lucky they will present you with water. Since they walk for hours to get water, they usually don’t offer, but if they do you should be very flattered.
Drinking water in the small villages is like a fine wine tasting. First the youngest child brings the bucket of water to show you the vintage. Then she scoops up a little bit and presents it to the oldest male visitor. He holds the water up to the light and swirls it around to make sure there is no sand or bugs. He takes a sip, swishes it around in his mouth, and gives a satisfied nod of the head. Then they child will fill the glass up all the way and everyone drinks from it. Fortunately there is no spitting; however there is no cheese either.
When the two weeks were done I was happy I experienced it, but eager to go back home to Inhambane. As soon as Pricilla, Jerome, and I saw each other when we got back to the house we were so happy we started to cry. They were on investigation too. We went strait to the beach and stayed there for two days. We didn’t have a room, but we kept meeting new people who let us stay in their room. We met amazing people for those two days. A dance group came to perform and we told them about our school and they are going to perform for our students after the New Years. We met some people that do micro-financing and they were really encourage us to do it as well, and they said they would give us guidance. It is so easy to make connections here.
Well that’s all for now. I’m looking forward to Christmas when everyone from my team who is working in Mozambique will come and stay with us in Inhambane. I can’t wait to see them. And afterwards my parents will be visiting me for the New Years. It’s hard to believe it’s December because it’s soooo hot, but I remind myself everyday, and it’s starting to phase me.

Early realizations

Here are some observations I have made over the last few weeks:

1. It is impossible to sleep-in in Mozambique. If you are still in bed after 6 am you’re crazy. By that time it seems as if the entire village is outside my window singing songs, banging pipes together, and killing chickens. Not to mention that my window is just a screen with bars in front of it, so there is really no privacy. Even when we slept over at the beach on our day off I couldn’t sleep in. We rented a hut on the beach for five dollars. I couldn’t wait to get some extra sleep, but then at 6 on the dot the men in town started constructing a new hut right next door to us. No one should be hammering at 6 in the morning on a Sunday. That’s just ungodly.

2. There are two ways you can behave here: Really really stressed out, or really really relaxed. Fortunately I have gone for the later. There is no such thing as a schedule here or a time frame, or even a clock. I have never seen such an absence of clocks in my life. If you want things to be done at a certain time, or if you like to make plans Mozambique is not the place for you. Flavia was supposed to teach a course on Exell three months ago for the teachers here. She runs around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get all the teachers together for the course, but they always say tomorrow. I need to stay at the school from 8 am to 9pm, but I only have a class for the first and last hour. I usually sit under a tree for those hours studying Portuguese and all the students will come to me to ask questions about English and America. It’s very informal, but for now there is not much more I can do.

3. They really know how to throw a party here. Our neighbors, who we rent our house from, were celebrating their birthdays, anniversary and their car all in one party. They never had a party before so they wanted it to be a big deal. For the week leading up to it there were about twenty women working in our backyard. When I’d go out for a shower at 6:30 they would already be butchering a pig, plucking chickens and shelling beans. They would work until midnight doing this and then pass out on our kitchen floor. The night before the real party they threw an extra party for all the people who were helping. I was walking to the outhouse late at night and when I turned the corner and there were more than fifty people silently sitting in front of a fourteen inch t.v. watching a Jean Claude Van Dam movie with no subtitles. It was quite a sight. The next day the actual party started. Everyone in town was there. They paraded up and down the road singing a song with more harmonies than a Shoenberg 12-tone composition. Then they feasted on every kind of animal possible for the next few hours. Every important person from the community gave a speech congratulating the family, even the mayor spoke. Next the dancing broke out, and this is serious dancing. Even the ninety your old women were getting their grooves on. The party lasted until the last person passed out, which was around three in the morning.

4. They love to have meetings. Especially if nothing is decided during those meetings. They will go on for hours, last Friday we had a meeting from 8 am to 3 pm and the only thing we could decide on was that we should continue the meeting next week. I think they only do this because we get free coca-cola if the meetings last longer than three hours. That said:

5. There is nothing better than Coca-Cola. Nothing.

6. Different cultures have very different ideas of what’s appropriate. I’ll never get used to my students picking their noses during class. Apparently that’s a very common and accepted past time here. It’s also appropriate for someone to groom you while you are talking. I’ll never get used to a stranger brushing dirt off my chest, or another teacher wiping off my butt. During our last meeting my director asked me if I was pregnant in front of all the other teachers. I couldn’t believe he did that, but then he said he was joking because I was wearing I kind of shirt that only pregnant women wear.

Alright I hope everyone is great. There’s no postal system here, so I can’t get your letters, but I can almost always check my email. Actually I won’t have Internet for the next two weeks because I’m going on investigation with my students. I’m going to a place that makes my current house look like a five star hotel. Wish me luck.

The First Days

Well, I’m here and I’m happy. That’s a lie. I’m ecstatic. I love it here. Every five minutes Pricilla and I look at each other with big goofy smiles and say, “we’re in Africa!”
It was quite an ordeal to get here, however. Once we boarded our plane for Johannesburg it was delayed for six hours, and we couldn’t leave to plane. They didn’t give us food or drinks that whole time either. Every hour the pilot would give another excuse for why we were not taking off yet. Just when we were ready to leave a woman fainted from claustrophobia and emergency medics had to come and take her away on a gurney. But twenty hours later we landed in Johannesburg with only a few pee-in-your-pants moments of turbulence.
We were so excited to land and go meet our Brazilian friends who landed before us, but then Iliana was detained at passport control because she didn’t have a proper visa. Apparently Guatemala is one of the only countries that needs a visa to enter South Africa. We were running all over the airport to try and find a solution. This was at nearly 1 in the morning after being on a plane for 25 hours. Since half of us needed to catch a bus at 6 in the morning the next day we needed to leave to go to the hostel. Ben, Jogn-soh, and Jacoby ended up staying with her, since they had to catch planes the next day, and got her a plane ticket for the next morning to Maputo. It was really nerve wrecking. The rest of us got to the hostel at 2 and then woke up at 5 to catch the bus. It was an 8 hour bus ride but it wasn’t so bad.
The whole team stayed in Maputo for one day to sign contracts and adjust. When we went to buy groceries for lunch we just walked over to a machamba, small vegetable gardens that everyone grows here, and asked for some vegetables. The man walked over to the lettuce patch and pulled out a head of lettuce for us and some tomatoes. It doesn’t get any fresher than that. We rode on chappas into town. I read a lot about chappas in other people’s emails but I never really understood what they are really like. They are converted minivans that are the most common form of transportation. Whenever one comes by a sworm of thirty or forty people run after it. Then they all push to get into it. It’s so intimidating. We waited for over an hour to get our because we were to scared to fight in the crowd. There is no way you are going to believe this but there were 31 people in the chappa, the size of a minivan. I was squeezed between two guys armpits. People were sitting on the smashed out window sills with their butts hanging out and there were about four people in the trunk space. We rode like this for 45 minutes.
The next morning we caught another bus. This time we had to wake up 4 in the morning. We said our goodbyes to the rest of the team and Pricilla and I prepared ourselves for a nine-hour bus ride to Inhambane. It was quite an eye opener. It was sad to see how Mozambiqueans talk to each other.
The driver sold ticket to fill all the seats, but then right as we were about to leave he kicked off half of the locals that were on the bus. He said to them that they were just extra luggage and that foreigners pay more for their luggage to have a seat. There was a lot of yelling but eventually the locals left the bus and the driver gave them back their money. I didn’t understand why they were kicked off because half the bus was empty, but then we went and picked up about fifteen white people from a nearby hotel. Mind you there were twenty seats on the bus and thirty people with tickets. It was jam-packed and people were sitting on luggage in the aisle. We drove like this for four hours. When we stopped in a small town I thought we were going to drop off some people but the driver ended up picking up his family. The five of them brought on huge bags of rice and crops and sat on top of the huge pile of luggage.
The roads were so awful at one point that the driver drove on the side of the road because it was less bumpy. It took us an hour to drive twenty miles. When we got to Inhambane Flavia picked us up. I was so happy to see her. She took us to our house to see were we’d be living for the next year. It is a very cute, bright blue house across the street from the school. I have to share a bed with Flavia because they usually don’t have this many DIs here. We also live with Tamsin (from England) and Jerome (from France). We have no running water and no flushing toilets. But we do have electricity which I’m very happy about. There’s a well out side that we get our water from for our showers. We have to get the drinking water from about a half-mile away. The outhouse is hilarious. There are two cement foot shaped things that you stand on and then a tiny hole that you use. The smell isn’t too bad.
We were so exhausted after the bus ride and the tour that we fell asleep at 4 in the afternoon and slept until eight the next day. That is when we went to the school for the first day. One of the students showed us around, and it’s a pretty clean and modern compound. We talked with the directors about what our responsibilities would be. I’m going to start off teaching English, and in December I’m going to travel around Mozambique with the students for the investigation period. I was so glad when they said we could have the rest of the day off because I had such a headache from trying to understand the Portuguese.


When we got back to our house we decided to take the hour and a half long walk to the nearest town. When we got there we met these two guys from South Africa who were so nice. We told them it was our first day and they offered to show us around. We drove everywhere in a nice air-conditioned car. Then they took us to their hotel on the beach, and we got to swim. It is the nicest beach I have ever seen, and we were the only ones there. The water was the perfect temperature. They said they never saw two people so happy to be in the water. I love the Indian Ocean.
Then they took us out for dinner and told us all about the situation in South Africa. They are Africans (I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it) the descendent of the Dutch settlers in South Africa. They said that all of the white people are trying to leave South Africa because it’s impossible for Whites to get jobs there. A lot of them are moving to Mozambique, Australia, and the UK. They said the guy who will probably become the next president hates white people and wants revenge for the Apartheid, so they want to leave before, as they said, “shit hits the fan.” It was interesting hearing this perspective of South Africa because I usually only hear about how oppressive and racists the whites are there. At the same time we were talking to the local waiters and they were saying that they didn’t like all the white South Africans coming in and buying up the prettiest land, but that they can’t complain because Hotel owners offer a lot more jobs and they improve the roads and the water.
Next, they drove us to all of the hotels in the area to introduce us to the owners. When we told them we didn’t have running water they all said that we can come to the hotel whenever we need a hot shower. We got their numbers and they said to call anytime if we need help. It was so invaluable to make these contacts on the first day.
Afterwards we all laid out on the beach and watched the stars. I have never seen so many stars in my life. It was an incredible evening. We all agreed that it was a blessing to meet each other. The two guys then drove us home and made plans to meet up again. They are here purifying water, so we are going to try and get them to teach an evening course at our school about how to purify water.
Unfortunately we found out the next morning that we were in big trouble. We didn’t know that we had to ask permission to leave the school any time we go out. I’m realizing now that we really won’t have any personal time. We don’t have free weekends and we can’t go out at night. It’s going to be very hard to adjust to this lifestyle. I want to teach, but I also want to meet as many people as possible and have lots of different experiences. The director said that if I want to do that I should go home. Tamsin and Flavia told us that he pretends to be really mean at first because he wants to have control over everyone. I'm hoping it will get better. It’s hard to know that the easy life is so close by but I’m not allowed to enjoy it, but it’s a good lesson because that’s how it is for most of the world.