Hello! Good afternoon to everyone! Let me start this blog with a few acknowledgements. First of all, happy Father’s Day. Sunday was Father’s Day back in the states and because of technical difficulties I was only able to get a couple of words in to my dad, so here it is, Happy Father’s Day, Dad. Also both my father and grandfather have birthday’s coming up in June. So I would like to wish my dad a happy “Xth” birthday this week and my grandpa a happy 92nd birthday this year!! I wish I could be there to celebrate with all of you!
Here in Mozambique life is moving along like always. I find myself approaching the 9 month mark of my service here – almost a third of the way through. Wow. At some point over the course of 9 months, your perspective shifts and you no longer become a wide-eyed tourist. You come to expect certain behaviors and attitudes from a culture you feel you know intimately. I can’t make up my mind as to whether I like this feeling or not. There is a certain romanticism and excitement to the first few months you spend in a new place, insatiably taking in all you can about a new culture – snapping photos every time you see a woman carrying water on her head, and imagining you’re on a movie set when you walk through mud-hutted villages. Now I pass by these relics like I would pass by an old N’Sync album at a record store. Yesterday’s news. Am I jaded, inured, or just integrated? Hmmm…or maybe I am somewhere in between. I am not nor will I ever be African. I’m sure that there are things that I will never fully understand or come to appreciate about this culture, but I can only hope that the fleeting excitement of being a tourist has been replaced by a deeper respect and understanding of not only Mozambicans or Africans, but all of humanity that I may not even realize until I’m thrown back into the American culture that I grew up in.
As it stands now, while they are fewer and further between, I still occasionally come across moments when I am thrown back into the wide-eyed giddiness of someone who just stepped off the plane. Last week, I had a conversation with one of my brightest 12th grade students named Young Marvin. We were talking about the widespread belief in witches or feiteceiros in African culture and it was one of those moments that made me realize how truly different our cultures are. The conversation started out simply enough when we were discussing business and potential jobs for him after graduating. Young mentioned that besides getting an education or a well-paying job you can also make pretty good money if you carry around this special herb in you pocket. It is a very potent herb that can only be found in special locally sacred places. It is widely held that any vendor toting this herb in his pocket will sell out his stock in a fraction of the time it usually takes. A beggar carrying around the herb will have money spilling out his pockets by the end of the day. If you are going to ask the village chief for money or permission to do something that he would normally deny off-hand, carrying around the herb is said to soften his heart and lead to unprecedented privileges. Young told me that when he was a young boy his mother sent him out to sell that days’ catch of fish and told him to stow this special herb in his pocket to ensure luck for the day. He was back before lunch having sold out of all the fish his mother had sent him along with. At first, when he started touting the mystical qualities of this herb, I thought he was joking and actually had to stifle my laughter when I realized he was being completely earnest. I couldn’t believe that someone like Young, who is my age and has his head screwed on as straight as any Mozambican I’ve met could believe in something that seemed at the time to be so childish and fairy-tale-like.
I think Young sensed my skepticism as I smiled wildly back at him, not believing my ears. At this point, I thought he would back-track and admit that there may be room for interpretation, but instead, he forged ahead assuring me that the work of witches and curandeiros does not stop at magic herbs. In fact, there exist witches who mount and travel the night aboard broomsticks, arriving in distant districts in a fraction of the time it would be possible to cover over land. He told me that he actually knows people who live in Mozambique but commute to Zimbabwe in the early hours of the morning via broomstick to start the workday there.
I know, it sounds ridiculous and impossible. You’re probably thinking, “Mr. Young can’t really believe that. He’s just saying that…but deep down he knows it can’t be true.” Wrong. If you looked into his eyes and saw the conviction burning deep down you would know that he really believes with all of his heart that witches commute to Zimbabwe on broomsticks. And Young is not just an isolated case of a crazy man who believes in witches. He is one of the few people I would expect to have a clear understanding of the world and its physical boundaries. This is a belief that everyone here has. The existence of curses, herbal magic and witches are as certain as the dirt is brown and the sky is blue.
By bringing this up I am not trying to undermine or make light of their belief system, and I am not trying to say that our belief system based more in science and physical explanations is necessarily right. No, I am simply trying to understand it. Whose culture is better, richer, healthier, or more abundant because of the beliefs they submit to? I don’t know. For that matter, what is it that makes one culture better or richer than any other? I’m not about to start comparing all of the values and problems with Western culture and the values and problems with different African cultures in this blog post, but I do think that the belief in mysticism is a fascinating cultural and religious difference that warrants some attention.
After Young was finished with his fantastical anecdotes he again noted my skepticism; he told me, “I know that you people from Europe and America don’t believe in these things, but here in Africa, we are different.” I agreed with him. We don’t believe in those things. I looked him in the eyes and told him “if you said that you believed in flying witches and magic herbs in America, they would think you were crazy.”
It was a stark realization to come to and got me thinking about how profoundly different our culture is from theirs. How is it something can be so implicitly accepted in one culture and so vehemently denied in another? I can’t imagine ever having a serious conversation about business with someone in the states and telling him to toss this herb in his pocket just for today to make a few extra bucks. It would be a joke. I can’t imagine losing a soccer game and them blaming the loss on the hexes that the other team put on the goal posts (“Did you see how many balls hit the post? Not even Pele could score on that cursed goal.”) These are actual examples, by the way. I can’t imagine having a student come to me in tears asking for 100mts so that he could go to the curandeiro to catch and put a hex on the person who stole his phone, and then, after refusing to give him the money on principal, having him come back a week later and tell me that the curandeiro made the phone “appear” to him. I can’t imagine our soccer team taking a 10km detour on the way to a game to avoid the curse that the opposing team put on the main road.
Here, it’s a fact of life. Curandeiros are real and witches fly. I honestly don’t know what it is about the culture, education and upbringing that make such beliefs possible, but I respect it deeply. I think that we jump to judgments too quickly, I certainly did when Young told me about flying witches. We think that something that seems to us so outlandish must be objectively and scientificly wrong. But what if there is more to life in this world than science and physical boundaries? What if there is more than one way for something to be “right?” Maybe, having an herb in your pocket doesn’t actually affect your “energy flow” and the mood of your village chief, but if you sell out all of your fish before lunch, does it really matter? It is easy to jump to the conclusion that these people living in their mud huts believing in witch doctors and working in the fields all day are just brutes who suffer from a lack of information, but I’m not willing to say that. They may be right, they may be wrong. For some ailing people curandeiros present one’s only hope for a spiritual recovery. For others with HIV, seeking cures from curandeiros wastes precious post-infection time and prevents patients from beginning anti-retroviral treatment. Would Mozambique be a better place if there were no curandieros? Would it be healthier? Would be the HIV rate be sky-rocketing like it is now between 15 and 20% prevalence in the population? Maybe, but it may also lose some other intangible qualities. It may lose some of the “spirit” that makes Mozambicans who they are. I don’t think it is my place to say.
I want to leave you with one story which took place a few years ago when I was in Peru. I was travelling the country with a group of pre-med students, doctors and dentists. Over the course of 3 weeks we set up small clinics in orphanages, schools and villages and treated over 500 children. There was one troubling case that still stays with to this day. We treated a small infant in a distant mountain village. The child was about 1 year old and had been coughing for weeks, was rejecting milk and was becoming very thin. With the resources that we had available the most that our small team of doctors could do was to give the child some basic cough medicine and hope for the best. They didn’t know what was wrong with the ailing child, and there was no “physical” cure available that could help him. Thus, the doctors recommended that his parents send the baby to the local healer. As I sat there observing the conversation I couldn’t help but think that it was strange for a Western doctor to suggest such a “traditional” intervention. I still remember, however, what the doctors told me when I later asked about they’re peculiar recommendation; he told me, “Sometimes when standard medicine fails, all you can really hope for is hope.” I never found out if the baby survived or passed away, or what kind of treatment the local healer attempted on him. I do know, however, that the mother and entire community believed in the healer and that belief is a powerful thing.
Alright, well, I’m going to leave it at that for this week. I hope that I get the chance to blog again soon. I had an eventful last couple weeks, full of school activities, clubs, and classroom challenges that I want to eventually share, but those will have to wait for next time. I want to again wish my dad and grandpa happy birthdays and happy father’s days and assure them that I am thinking about and appreciating all that they’ve done for me. To close, here are a couple of poems that some of my students published in our last edition of the school’s English newspaper:
Poem About AIDS
AIDS, what do you want from me?
AIDS, you finished destroying my life.
Take with you every dream in my life.
AIDS, your temptations destroy my life,
But you will not succeed.
AIDS, everyone weeps for your cause.
AIDS, we want peace
When you attack us.
I’m in the wilderness
And my outcome is to die.
-Marques (Krish)
Tear Of Ache
Don’t put me in your eyes
Because I will fall as a tear.
Put me in your heart, for, in each beating,
You will remember someone who has never seen you cry.
I can’t be the person who consoles you,
Caresses you, cleans you tears, or makes you smile.
I am someone who desires everything good and wants to see you happy
Enjoy yourself when you live;
Don’t fight only for the beautiful girl,
For every girl knows how to love.
-Issaca (Trouble-Free)
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