JUNTOS Trocas and Debauched Drivers

Good morning, it’s a cool Friday morning here in Mangunde and I am enjoying a rare respite from the typically hectic and demanding atmosphere of life as a Peace Corps volunteer.  This week, at school, is exam week, and all of the students are currently taking final exams for the second trimester.  This means that here in my house, the usual pandemonium of students and teachers coming and going and asking for help with this or that is in a brief but nonetheless pleasing recess.  This past month has been especially busy as, in addition to carrying out my normal responsibilities as a teacher – teaching 24 hours per week – I have also been heavily involved in organizing extracurricular activities.  The months of May and June have, thus far, seen the realization of four very successful events in Mangunde.  First, my JUNTOS group (Jovens Unidos No Trabalho para Oportunidades e Sucesso) hosted two other nearby JUNTOS groups for two days in what we call here a “troca de experiência” or an “exchange of experiences.”  The very next weekend, my other JUNTOS group (we have two separate groups) travelled to Estaquinha, a neighboring mission school, for their own troca de experiência, the following week our school’s boys volleyball team (which I have now been officially named the coach of) took a sports field trip to Machanga, yet another neighboring school under the same mission organization, and just last weekend, my JUNTOS group here in Mangunde hosted the granddaddy of them all, a three-day workshop with over 40 students, and 4 professors which taught the students about important JUNTOS themes in their communities like gender equality, HIV/AIDS, violence, reproductive health and for them personally, leadership skills, self-esteem and communication.  These events have consumed my life for the last month because, as you might have guessed, even the simplest sounding detail can get complicated quickly here in Africa. 

After all of the prep work, however, the troca was unequivocally a huge success.  The students got together and were able to do activities and games relating to the important themes that JUNTOS stresses, each of the groups were able to present theater pieces that they had prepared for the occasion and at the end of the night we were able to hook up some speakers and have ourselves a bumpin’ dance party. 

There were, of course, a few challenges.  The first of which was the quality of food served.  Our students here in Mangunde are accustomed to very low quality meals – for lunch and dinner every day of every week they are served something called muguy-ee-wa with feijão nhemba.  This is essentially the poor man’s rice and beans, but instead of rice, which is only bought by people who have actual salaries (teachers and doctors), you have this muguy-ee-wa as your starch – imagine a really thick cattle feed boiled with water – and instead of beans you have feijão nhemba which actually are beans, but not the kind you may be used to seeing.  They are tiny, the size of lentils, and mixed into a watery and salty sauce before being added to the muguy-ee-wa.  I’ve eaten in the boarding school before, and suffice is to say, I don’t dine there if I can avoid it.  Anyway, this is the food that was served for all of the visiting students at the troca and while my Mangunde students ate this delicacy compliantly, the other students were not as excited and there were a few hunger strikes that happened over the course of the weekend.  Teenage girls of any culture aren’t necessarily the most accepting and flexible people in the world, and these girls from Dombe were not having anything to do with the meal choices that weekend.  They would turn up their noses and claim, “I’d rather go hungry!” 

Outside of our culinary oversights, there was one other challenge that I had to deal with on that weekend which trumped all other minor snafus.  This challenge, like most challenges in Mozambique, happened to fall under the category of transportation confusion.  Before I tell you the details of the exact situation, let me say that I like to think of myself generally as a pretty cool, calm and collected person.  I don’t get too worked up, deal with people respectfully and certainly don’t get into fights.  23 years growing up in the Midwest have ensured that I instinctually avoid conflicts like poison.  This particular situation, however, was too much for even my non-confrontational self to hold back on.

 We had organized a chapa (mini-bus) to come to Mangunde on Sunday and bring the Dombe students back to their school at the end of the weekend.  We had arranged for the driver to pick the students up at 8 o’clock Sunday morning, but 9 o’clock came and went, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, 12, 1, 2p.m all went by and the driver still hadn’t come.  He had called at 10a.m. to tell us that he was at the intersection and would be there in 30 minutes, but had clearly been lying through his teeth.

So finally, at 3 p.m. he rumbled into the mission with his music blaring.  The students had been sitting for 8 hours, with no lunch and nothing to do, getting irritable.  At this point, I approach him with the fire of hell in my stomach ready to give him everything he deserved – chew him out for coming 8 hours late, for lying about being here, for leaving us stranded with no food – and he stepped out of the driver’s side of the car with a grin so vile and revolting that words could never truly do it justice. 

You have to understand that there is some inexpressible quality about chapa drivers that one can only viscerally feel when in their presence.  I don’t know if it’s the pungent smell of rotting foam seats, or goat urine coming from the back of the car, or simply the knowledge that their only motivation is to fuck you over and rip you off, but whenever one gets close to a chapa driver there is something palpable in the air that you can almost taste, a nauseating mixture of everything evil in the world.  I don’t think it’s possible for me to truly describe such foulness in words here on this page, but if any of you are lucky enough to visit Mozambique and even luckier to organize private transport with a chapa driver you will feel the ineffable qualities that I am failing to convey here. 

So when the chapa driver opened the door and stepped out of the car and I saw his disgusting grin and was hit by the smell of beer and rotting yeast emanating from the car I had to first swallow the little bit of vomit that had crept its way up the back of my throat, compose myself, and address him.

I first asked him, “Do you know what time it is?” expecting him to shrink back in shame for his blatant tardiness.  He looked at his phone and said, “Yes, it’s 3 p.m.” He was completely sincere and unapologetic.  Then I thought that maybe he needed a reminder.   I asked, “What time did we agree on meeting you?”  There were sweat stains emerging from under his armpits and he had beads of sweat forming on the top of his shaved head.  His odor was rank.  He responded, still maintaining a veneer of light-hearted cordiality, “Ah, well we had a flat tire on the way in.  You know…”  The insults echoed in my head, but I hadn’t been pushed far enough yet for them to come out.  “No, I don’t know.  Six hours to fix a flat tire?  Do you think I’m an idiot?  Just tell me that you were lazy, hanging out, drinking with your buddies, and don’t care about people that are depending on you, and we’ll move on and get out of here, but don’t give me this flat tire bullshit.” 

Anyway, I didn’t actually say any of this and realized that chewing him out was not going to go anywhere, so I told him, “Don’t worry about it.  Let’s just go.  The students are tired and hungry and want to get home.”  The students climbed into the chapa  and let me say that the 15 passenger van that he was riding around in was a far cry from anything that would pass road safety regulations in the states.  There were two rows of seats in the back that were each meant for three people maximum, but were saddled with four people each, and the front two rows had apparently been removed at some point, because instead of seats there were now empty beer crates on the floor for people to sit on. 

When it came time to negotiating the price, shit hit the proverbial fan.  We had pre-arranged a price when he dropped off  the students the day before and now he was saying that he wanted more money.  Let me repeat: he, Mr. 8-hours-late, wanted more money.  At one point in the bitter argument that ensued, I squeezed my fist tightly and almost punched this grown man in the face.  He claimed that it was now so late in the afternoon that he would not be able to pick up other passengers en route, and therefore, we needed to buy out all of the seats in the chapa.  He also wanted us to pay an extra fare for having had to come all the way into the mission, when he had said from the beginning that he had relatives living here and would be visiting them anyway.  After these demands, he said that if we didn’t comply he would simply take the students as far as their money got them and leave them on the side of the highway at night.

I hope that the reader can understand the pure and rancid lack of logic in the arguments that made me want to kill this man in the first place.  But lest you forgot, HE WAS 8 HOURS LATE!  Not once did he apologize or even accept a sliver of guilt for making us wait 8 hours for him.  No, he decided that instead of apologizing, he would capitalize on the fact that he was late and try to squeeze more money out of the situation.  I remember thinking at the time that in a normal society it would have been appropriate me to ask for a discount in a situation like this.  He ruined our day, made the students miss lunch, and clearly botched the agreement that we had made.  In my culture, this would be seen as reprehensible behavior and I could probably complain to his company and get the driver fired.  When I suggested a discount to this greasy driver, however, I was laughed at.  “What a ridiculous idea; the muzungu (white) wants a discount. Where does he think he is, America?”  I imagine that in many societies adults understand when other people are depending on them and may even make efforts to fulfill responsibilities they are given.  After many experiences here in Mozambique, however, I don’t understand why, but I’ve realized that this crucial concept of responsibility is scarce, and, in the world of transportation arrangements, it’s non-existent.

There was no way to reconcile such a villain. Therefore after throwing my hands up countless times, calling him a heartless bastard and an idiot on a number of occasions I was forced to pay the money he asked for because, frankly, we had no other choice.  It was either go with him, or get left on the side of the highway with 15 teenagers at night.  Even writing this blog post a month after this happened, I am getting riled up just thinking about it.  I can’t let it ruin the fact that we had a wonderful weekend though, and a very successful troca.

Thanks for reading and HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!  I know it’s a little late, but better late than never.  I hope that you are all enjoying the warm June weather!

Roosters and Remedial English

It’s two in the morning and I wake up suddenly to the cacophony of a rooster humping a chicken outside my window.  This has happened every night for the past two weeks and unfortunately for me this particularly horny rooster tends to cluck wildly we he is on the prowl for vulnerable hens.  Why he’s not sleeping like the rest of the world is trying haplessly to do at two in the morning, I don’t know.  I look out my window and perhaps emboldened by the anonymity of darkness the rooster has let the victimized hen out of his clutches and sets his target on my garden.  First he pokes around the seedling basil, then tears clean a few leaves of nascent green bean plants and then rests his icy and sinister gaze on the lettuce I just transplanted yesterday.  I will not stand by and watch all of my work be destroyed by the malignant whims of a rooster.  Can I run outside at two in the morning with my boxers on and catch this pest?  The answer is no.  I go back to bed and toss and turn restlessly with the knowledge that my already feeble garden is being killed a little more every night by a pea-brained rooster. 

I have tried to catch this rooster before.  I would recommend this activity to anyone marooned at a mission school with few other sources of stimulation.  I have to confess that it’s not as easy to catch a rooster as one might imagine.  They are as wily as they are annoying when you are trying to corner them and actually get them in your grips.  If you, dear reader, are ever unlucky enough to be faced with a pernicious rooster problem and need to go about capturing said rooster, here are some recommended supplies you may need to carry out this task: sturdy shoes, long sleeves because you maybe be chasing the rooster into thorny bushes, a few stones to throw and, most importantly, a band of anywhere from 2 to 10 children who have nothing better to do than chase a rooster around for 2 hours. 

Step one is to try to surprise the rooster, if you can catch it off guard, maybe, just maybe, you can nab it before the chase ever begins.  This, however, is unlikely.  What will probably happen is that during the stealthy approach one of the kids will get over-anxious and rush too early.  The rooster will get spooked and run for dear life.  Then, the chase is on.  Roosters, unbeknownst to me before engaging in this hobby, are quick little suckers.  They only have two legs, but they start pumping that head back and forth and the momentum drives them forward.  You will not outrun a rooster in a foot-race, you must use your guile to catch them.  Set up a perimeter of equidistant children around the rooster, and begin moving uniformly inward to trap him inside the circle.  Once you get within 10 feet of the rooster, it will sense danger and starting freaking out.  This is when you must act.  Close then circle rapidly and hope that someone is able to dive on and nab the rooster.  Another wild card, however, that I didn’t know about roosters comes into play during this step.  You may think that they can’t fly.  You would be mistaken.  While I’ve never seen a rooster flying up in the clouds, they will start flapping those stubby wings of theirs and get high enough to fly right over your head when you close the circle.  The dust will settle and you and your child helpers will all be clutching air, piled on top of each other like policemen trying to catch the savvy bank robber in a cartoon.  Once you pull your wits together and start looking around for the elusive rooster, you will realize that it has disappeared.  In addition to being quick and flighty, a well-adapted rooster will also be an accomplished hider.  They duck into thickets of grass and bushes and remain there, absolutely still until you have stepped right over them and not noticed.  The chase is over and you have lost, again.  This has happened to me countless times and I still don’t have the evil rooster in my grasp.

It’s actually become a running joke here in Mangunde.  Our house is literally a stone’s throw away from the school and at times feels a lot like a fish bowl.  Students and teachers are walking by, relaxing in front of our house, playing on the field and always watching what’s going on in “Teacher’s” house.  Thus, they see me maniacally chasing a rooster in my pajamas five days a week and have probably already begun to question my sanity.  People will ask me on my way to school how the chase is going and I tell them “bit by bit, I’ll kill that rooster if I ever catch it.”

Chasing roosters, however, is not the only thing that I’ve been up to here in Mangunde over the past couple of months.  It has been a busy and very enjoyable last couple of months filled with classes, theater presentations and even a few school trips.  I have been happy to settle into the day to day flow of simply being here at site throughout May and June.  Often, between trips to the provincial capital, Peace Corps parties and other non-curricular events it can feel a bit like I am a visitor even at my own home here in Mangunde, always coming and going, and never staying long enough to simply exist and adjust to the rhythm of day to day life.  The past two months, however, have offered me that chance.  For the most part, over the past two months, I have been exactly where I want to be, here.  I’ve had the chance to focus on my teaching during the days at school, spend time with my students in my various extra-curricular clubs in the evenings and enjoy time tending the garden, cooking, and relaxing at home. 

Here at the house we’ve had a few new developments that have significantly altered and improved our quality of life.  As you may remember from an earlier post of mine, we had a situation here where our modestly sized house and meager incomes were supporting a family of four, our housekeeper Gracinda, her now two year-old son Jacinto, and her two teenage nephews.  The situation was taxing our patience and also taking a chuck out of our living stipends.  Thus, we decided to make a change.  As of the beginning of May, Mike and I decided that we would begin cooking all of our meals for ourselves and have our housekeeper begin providing food for herself and her family from the wages she already receives.  This may not seem like a large alteration, but when you’re talking about the livelihood of a family you care dearly about, it is a serious conversation.  The plan worked though, and for almost two months now, Mike and I have been expanding our recipe books and enjoying the fruits of our own cooking.  There still is very little fresh food to be found in Mangunde, which diminishes the size of one’s cookbook drastically to essentially variations on beans, lentils, and pasta, but, to us, it still feels like culinary freedom, and it feels great. 

At school, it is mid-June and we are nearly finished with the second trimester.  Meaning, wow, I only have one trimester left in my Peace Corps service.  I am still teaching 10^th grade English, 8^th grade biology and 12^th grade computers and I am enjoying myself in the classroom.  Despite the fact that I do enjoy my time in the classroom, I can say, without a doubt that I have now officially lost hope in education, period.  This is what two years in the Mozambican education system will do to even the most optimistic PCVs out there.  Is lose faith in the future of humanity too strong of a statement?  I’m not sure.  I remember when I first started teaching here how surprised I was by how slowly students learned, and then realized, no, it wasn’t slow learning, at times it was no learning.  These days I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but I still find myself scratching my head at times saying, “How?  How can you NOT get this? I literally can’t spell it out for you any clearer…”  Yet there are students who, after a year and a half with me as their English teacher, don’t know more than a dozen disparate words of English.  I don’t understand.  Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some students, a select few, who are so refreshingly smart that they momentarily restore your once lost faith in humanity.  You can ask them about things learned in previous classes and they just might show some indication that they were on this planet during the class and maybe, just maybe, learned something.  There are those, however, who clearly were not even in the same galaxy. 

Let me give you an example.  I’m giving a biology test about the digestive system and am giving them instruction for the test.  Just so that everything is clear I tell them “Let’s do number one together.  What is the first part of the digestive system?  Look at the picture on the blackboard and write down the name of the first part of the digestive system.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  The answer is boca.  That’s B-O-C-A.  Boca.  There were it says ‘number one’ on your test, everyone, right now, write B-O-C-A.” One would think that surely everyone would at least get number one, boca, correct.  Well, I was wrong.  Somehow, somewhere in that series of words a neuron misfired for about 25 percent of the class because about a quarter of the class got number one, boca, incorrect.  Again, sometimes I just don’t know. 

At one point during an English class in which I was teaching the present perfect tense (i.e. I have written, she has arrived) I had a revelation.  The present perfect tense isn’t an overly complicated tense to comprehend, but I knew that it was probably going to be a stretch for many of my students.  The task of stringing together three words and conjugating both the verb “to have” and the correct form of the past participle (i.e. written, arrived) would outwit the vast majority of my 10^th graders.  One would think, however, that given a set formula to follow, and me being there to guide them through it, they would eventually at least grasp some kind of understanding of this tense.  This, I found out, was very optimistic.  As I was up there carefully explaining the steps “begin with the subject, I, then, what’s the next word on the board?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Right there after I what is written on the board, look at the board, after I, anyone?  Have.  I have” I realized that I was talking to these 16 year-olds as if they were in second grade.  This is how I would address a second grader if I was teaching in the States.  I’ve found myself doing this because I ‘ve found that many of their abilities to follow simple logical steps is, I’m not kidding, at the level of what I would expect an eight year-old to have.  The ability to learn a form or a process, whether it is a grammar rule in English, a mathematical principal or a chemical equation, and apply it to new situations is a jump in logical thinking that, I would imagine, happens for most students somewhere between second grade and high school.  It’s very important, but, and I say this with the utmost consideration of all of my students, it is something that I’ve found to be quite scarce here and it often leaves me at a loss for what to teach.  Do I try haplessly to teach them all of the advanced grammatical concepts that the nationally published curriculum requires that they know, or do I approach it like an elementary school ESL class and try to get them thinking, even if just a little, about some basic concepts in English.  It seems to me that there’s no right answer to that question so I keep chugging along with my vocabulary and grammar rules and hope that, somewhere along the way, someone gets something useful out of it.

Outside of classes, my projects, JUNTOS theater, English journalism and English theater, have been very active in the last couple of months and I have a lot of fun activities to talk about.  That, however, will have to wait until next time because it is midnight here in Mozambique which is far past my bed time, and the rooster is going to start clucking any minute now as it gulps down more of my lettuce.  Thus, I’m going to wrap up in my blanket and my long underwear (yes, it’s that cold here now) and go to bed.  By the way, anyone who tells you that Africa is all hot all the time is a liar.  As I write on the computer in my room with the window open, I can see my breath in front of me.  I don’t know what that means temperature-wise, but it has to be cold.  Google only tells me that seeing your breath means that the temperature is below the dew point, and unfortunately the local Mangunde meteorologist doesn’t broadcast the local temperature or the dew point, but I think it must be in the 40s here.  Anyway, I’m cold and tired, so thanks for reading this far and I hope to hear from you all soon!

Tragedy of the Unseen

I wake up to a flash of brown and a loud hollow thud.  It takes me a second to reconstruct my surroundings.  I look to my right and see two Mozambican men seated motionless, mouths agape as if they have just seen a ghost.  We are in the cab of a shiny white open back truck.  I am in the passenger seat still trying to clear the fog in my lagging consciousness while a fat man with a self-important look on his face sits behind the steering wheel.  Between us there is a smaller meek man wearing a concerned frown on his face.  As my memory races to catch up with me, I remember trying to hitch-hike from the EN-102 outside of Tete City.  The two men, in their sparkly white pick-up truck screeched past me as they slowed down, and then backed up, rolled down the window and asked me where I was headed and how much I would pay.  The fat man was in charge and had ordered his compliant subordinate to slide over and occupy the middle seat so that I could sit down in the passenger seat of the truck.  What had followed was one or two hours of scant conversation which eventually puttered out and gave way to a long and deep slumber. 

Now I am wide awake.  I deduce from the sound and the fact that we have stopped moving that we have hit something, not an incredibly rare occurrence on Mozambican roads; dogs, goats, and chickens frequently frolic in the roads and become casualties of fast-moving and irritable drivers.  There is something leaden hanging in the air of this new truck, however, that is pushing my stomach into the ground and making me certain that the hollow thud I heard was not a chicken or even a dog.  We have pulled to the side of the road and I struggle free of my seat-belt and throw the door aside.  As I stumble desperately out of the car I look back and I see exactly what I was hoping to have imagined.  There, limbs tangled awkwardly on the pavement, is a child.  I don’t know how she got into the position she is in.  She is resting primarily on her knees, but her forehead is also resting on the ground to form a sort of tripod.  As I race back to reach her I am sure she is dead.  Her body is petrified in that position.  When I reach her I stand over her lifeless body and I don’t know what to do.   I want to scream.  I want to yell at the driver.  I want to save her.  I am now acutely aware that I am still alone, standing helplessly over a dead body.  I look back towards the car and see that the driver and his friend are still sitting in the cab.  This is turning into a nightmare.  Are they still in shock or are they contemplating their escape?  Where are the villagers?  Where are the other cars?  I feel more alone than I ever have in my life standing awkwardly and alone with this poor corpse of a girl. 

Slowly and gingerly the driver opens the door and steps out onto the pavement.  The look on his face is not one of surprise, pain, or even remorse, it is a look of minor annoyance; the kind of expression one gets when he’s been pulled over for speeding or is stuck at a long traffic light.  As the driver slowly paces his way towards me I look back down at the girl below me on the pavement and I notice her rib cage expanding and contracting slowly.  She is breathing in labored and crackly spurts.  As the driver finally arrives to survey the scene with his hands in his pockets I reach down and touch her neck for the first time.  She is warm and has a strong pulse. 

I don’t know what the protocol is in this situation.  In my mind I am a bystander; a witness with no responsibilities, but someone is dying in front of me and no one is doing anything.  Why isn’t anyone doing anything?  Someone, please, do something.  My mind is screaming at them.  Now there are a few other pedestrians that have arrived to watch the spectacle.  We form a circle around the disfigured girl, all, seemingly, waiting for something to happen.  Every heave her lungs make I imagine to be her last breath and wonder if we are all just waiting for her to die.  Finally, the driver nudges the girl with his foot and asks, “She’s not going to survive, is she?”  From the tone of his voice, you would think he has just hit a deer and is wondering if he should call the DNR or not.  He takes an almost imperceptible step towards the car and I can’t tell whether he wants her to live or not.  I imagine that he is thinking about getting out of here.  If she dies he will leave and call it an unfortunate accident, probably be in Chimoio by noon.  If she continues to hold onto life he has to take her to the hospital and get buried in police reports. 

Meanwhile, we are all still standing, watching the life bleed out of this girl.  There is a bump the size of a tennis ball protruding from the top of her shaved head and it is bleeding a lot.  She has now coughed up mucus and blood all over her dress and there are raspberry colored gashes covering her elbows and knees.  I yell, louder than intended, “well, we can’t just leave her here.”  The onlookers seem startled by my level of agitation and content to just observe.  I want to look at them and explain to them that this child is not dead yet.  I want to tell them that this is not a goat, or a chicken that we ran over, it’s a human being.  I want to say so many things.  I lean down and place my left arm under her neck, letting her swelled head rest on my forearm.  I then put my right arm under her legs and lift her fragile and broken body off of the pavement.  She may be 10 years old, but she doesn’t weigh more than a small dog. 

I lay her down gently on the dirt shoulder of the road.  This seems to be sufficient for the driver.  He motions towards the car one more time as if we should be getting on our way.  At this, as if it had been waiting for the right moment to appear, anger and emotion swell up in me like fire. I blame Mozambique for this tragedy.  I blame the narrow roads; I blame the pot holes and the reckless drivers; I blame the parents that don’t teach their children not to play in the street; I blame the parents who don’t teach their kids anything; I blame the poverty; I blame a society that allows a dead child to be less of a concern than a dead goat; I blame everyone for not caring.  I repeat, more to convince myself than anyone else, “We can’t just leave her here.”        

At this point, five minutes have passed since we stopped and word has spread to the neighboring village that a child has been hit on the road.  Parents emerge from the stores and the fields beyond sweating and covered in dirt from their mornings spent in the fields.  They are looking for their children, making sure that their families are still complete.  The increase in the number of eyes now beholding the spectacle seems to have a distinct impact on the driver and other people previously standing and watching.  There are now 15 or 20 villagers around who know the child.  One man shouts, “You have to take her to the hospital!”  His spirit and sense of urgency seem to finally light a fire in the rest of the stagnant crowd and they nod eagerly and approvingly.  Despite this no one seems to have the motivation to actually take action.  We find ourselves, yet again, standing and watching the blood pool under her hair and run off the side of the road. 

A thought now occurs to me.  I am the only white person within miles of here.  In their eyes, I am the driver of the car; it was my car and my wealth and my carelessness that are responsible for this innocent girl’s death.  At this, I lean down once more, and lift up the child in the same careful manner I had before.  With a crowd of Mozambicans parting like the Red Sea to let me pass I march the remaining 20 feet back the car alone with the girl in my arms.  She is now heavier than I remember when I first lifted her up.  With help, I manage to place her in the bed of the truck and rest her head on a few sacs of corn.  There is still blood flowing freely from the wound in her head and I use the only first aid technique I know of: I pull a filthy piece of cloth from the bed of the truck and wrap it twice tightly around her forehead, covering the tennis ball sized lump and the oozing gash in her head.  I think the driver has finally received the message that this is also his burden to bear and he hurries to the driver’s side to start the car and ride to the nearest hospital.

As the engine revs and we pull away a small muscular man jumps into the back of the truck with the slumped over girl.  He seems distraught and I deduce immediately that he is the girl’s father.  I look through the back window of the cab to see him lift up his daughter’s head and let it rest gently in his palm.  His body is that of a farmer – undernourished and miniature but taut with sinewy muscles.  He wears a brown shirt, the color of the earth and no shoes.  As he holds his daughter despondently in his arms I see the sadness pouring out of his eyes.  I look through the glass of the cab window and I feel his sadness as if it was my own.  It starts in my stomach and swells into my lungs, my throat and then my eyes.  I can’t hold it in or keep it out. Her head is the size of a large grapefruit and it fits perfectly into his palm which now is covered in red.  The father looks briefly into my eyes as I peer back through the impenetrable glass of the cab window.  I try to project all of the empathy and remorse that I possess into him.  Direct it through his eyes and push it into the empty pit in his stomach.  I know, however, that all he sees when he looks back at me is pity.  There is nothing I can say or do to help a father who has just lost his daughter.

When we reach the village clinic only a two minute drive away the driver honks to summon the nurse from his post within.  No one comes; we wait a few minutes and still no one.  It occurs to us that today is Sunday and at a small village clinic like this there will likely be no nurse here until Monday morning.  We decide to take the next best action.  We will drive 40 kilometers down the road to the next large town, Vanduzi, where there is a full-service health clinic that we can take the child to.  We jump back in the car and drive South.  Another relative of the girl has now jumped into the back with her and is urging the driver to step on the gas.  “She is still breathing,” he shouts.  “Move quickly!”  For the entirety of the 20 minute drive to Vanduzi I don’t take my eyes off of the father and his ailing child.  She has vomited and is now writhing back and forth letting out brief shrieks of pain.  Every time she yelps, the anxious relative bangs on the driver’s side window imploring the driver to have haste.

When we arrive to the clinic in Vanduzi it appears to have been abandoned.  There are three buildings which form a courtyard around a small pavilion for waiting patients.  As we pull the pick-up truck into the courtyard there appear to be no patients, no doctors, no nurses, no staff.  The driver honks the horn and a large man holding a clipboard and wearing a white nurse’s uniform finally emerges from a door with the inscription “Socorro” or “Help.”  There is no gurney, no flashing ambulance lights, in fact, the nurse doesn’t even look at the child sprawled out in the back of the truck.  He keeps his eyes firmly fixed on his clipboard and merely flicks his chin towards the door to indicate that we should bring the victim into the room inscribed with “Help” that he had appeared from and wait for instructions there. 

Another 10 minutes pass and I’m ready to put the gloves on and start treating this girl myself.  The nurse is still outside asking questions to the driver—name, vehicle number, registration, description of the incident, identification.  Meanwhile, the girl, I don’t even know her name yet, is lying on the hospital bed and I am standing at the foot of the bed as her father sits by her side.  The room we are in is a small operating room with a desk, two beds, a sink, and a small counter full of surgical tools.  The hospital bed the girl is lying on has white Mickey Mouse sheets.  Where is the doctor, I wonder?  She is still bleeding from the wound on her head and now the Mickey Mouse sheets are becoming wet with her blood.  I expected her to be dead by now and I don’t know whether seeing her now in a semi-conscious state, writhing and moaning in pain is heartening or not. 

The nurse walks in casually and sits down at his desk.  I look up at the father sitting helplessly at the side of the bed holding onto his daughter and follow his eyes back to the nurse sitting at his desk.  The nurse has yet to take his eyes off his clip board and address the child bleeding to death on his hospital bed 10 feet away.  Finally, the nurse rises and saunters over to the girl on the bed with his clipboard in hand.  He begins his next line of questioning, this time directed at the father—name, age, birthplace, identification, education, profession.  This is not as simple of a task as it should be.  Her father doesn’t know exactly how old the girl is or what her date of birth is; neither the father nor the daughter have identification of any kind; and the father can neither read nor speak Portuguese, making the entire interrogation last five times longer than it should.  Each question must be repeated three times and each time there is no answer they must make something up to write into the nurse’s clipboard.  For the second time today anger boils within me and I want to scream.  Will no one acknowledge the fact that there is a child bleeding from the head lying untreated in this hospital bed?  I’m sure now that she will bleed to death and it will be my fault for not saying anything. 

Just when I have reached my boiling point and am ready to grab the gauze and begin wrapping her head myself the nurse looks up for the first time and approaches his patient.  I want to hold the girl’s delicate hand and ease her pain, but I feel my feet glued to the tile floor underneath me.  My mouth hangs open primed to speak words of comfort and encouragement but I feel my mouth fill with cotton and my words become muted.  The nurse calls an assistant over and they prepare to put an IV into the squirming girl’s arm.  The assistant appears nervous and botches the injection of the needle four times in a row.  They can’t seem to get the liquid to flow down into her veins.  They have tried her elbow and wrist on both arms, each time having to untie and retie the rubber band on her upper arm. 

Another 10 minutes go by fumbling around with the IV and the ring of blood staining the Mickey Mouse sheets beneath her head is expanding.  There is no sense of urgency.  The nurse and his female assistant are laughing about the IV.  They had forgotten to turn the valve under the bag to allow the liquid to flow down.  I know nothing.  I wonder, however, if there is any doctor in the States that would let a dying child bleed onto a hospital bed for as long as we’ve been here without wrapping the wound and stopping the bleeding.  Why can’t I move towards her?  Why can’t I tell the nurse to do his job?  Why is the life of a poor child not even worth the effort of saving her?  Finally they get the IV flowing and the nurse looks at her head for the first time.  Perfunctorily, he rotates her head to get the full view of it and remarks, “Head trauma, we can’t treat that here.  She’ll have to go to Chimoio.”  Thus, after the assistant wraps her head in gauze, and only minutes after they had successfully inserted the IV, they pull the IV out and send us back to the car.  “We’ll take her to Chimoio in the ambulance.” 

The girl is placed in the back of a different pick-up truck, the so-called “ambulance,” and it disappears from view.  The driver, his friend and I get back into the truck and continue on our way to Chimoio.  It is as if nothing ever happened and I wonder if it was all a dream.  I look over at the driver and he wears a concerned frown on his face.  I imagine how I would feel if I had been responsible for a tragedy like this.  We spend the rest of the drive back to Chimoio playing through the events over and over.  I feel the sadness in his voice as he recounts the details.  There were two girls playing in the street, oblivious to the approaching truck.  As the truck neared, they tried to run off to the right side of the road, but, at the last second, changed their mind and went left to avoid the truck.  As they did this, the driver was forced to swerve right veering off of the road and onto the shoulder.  He avoided the two frolicking girls in the street, but there, on the shoulder, was a third girl waiting for the car to pass.  I imagine she did not see the car coming and did not have time to be afraid.

In Chimoio, we now go to the hospital where we were told the girl was taken.   This hospital is much larger than the Vanduzi clinic and appears to have doctors and nurses working at it.  I see the girl lying on a hospital bed through a crack in a door to one of the general rooms.  They will not let me go into the room.  The same wiry father is sitting on the bed next to his daughter.  I don’t know if I make eye contact with him or if it is my imagination, but when I look into his eyes one last time I have no words or emotion for him.  I try to show genuine concern and not pity.  I want his daughter to survive more than I have wanted anything in my life.  As I’m peering through the crack in the door and nurse approaches me and tells me that I can leave.  There’s nothing more the police or the hospital need from me.  I feel awkward leaving without knowing what’s going to happen to her.  I ask one of the nurses how it looks and he tells me that the child suffered a serious head injury, and there’s no way to tell yet whether she will survive or not, but it doesn’t look good.

Slowly, and shamefully, I retreat from the hospital room and exit the premises.  I give the driver my phone number and tell him to call me if he hears any news about the girl.  I know that I will never hear from him again; he is ready to put this episode behind him.  Meanwhile, the girl and her father sit in the hospital waiting to see whether she will survive or not.  There will be no organ transplants, no transfusions, no fancy machines to keep her alive.  If she lives it will be a God-given miracle; if she dies it will be her God-given fate.  They will mourn and cry for a week, but she will be buried and the corn will need be harvested for the next season.  I have never felt both so ashamed and blessed for the privileges I have been given in my life.