How nice it is to sit here with nothing to do, enjoying a relaxing Saturday afternoon. I am under the shade of my veranda; I can smell garlic and lentils cooking in the kitchen and can hear the steel drums of Zimbabwean tunes dancing their way out from the speakers inside. The sun is bright again, and people have sought refuge. It’s midday and everyone in Mangunde is resting, leaving me with a disarming tranquility that is rarely found here on my usually bustling veranda. On a normal day you cannot sit on my veranda without being bombarded with requests to check out soccer balls, magazines, or chess, to charge students’ phones or load memory cards with music. Today, however, it is hot again, and the people are hiding out. I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but as suddenly as the heat was replaced by the cool winter breeze back in April, the heat returned. One day, just like that, it was hot. I started to sweat, looked forward to cold showers again and pulled my fan out of storage. With the heat came malaria. In one day, I talked to 4 or 5 of my favorite students, all of whom had come down with malaria that day. To give you an idea for how ubiquitous malaria really is here, I asked one of these students how many times he’s gotten malaria and he responded, “you mean, this year?” It’s unavoidable. A students who gets malaria goes to the hospital, disappears for a few days and then comes back. No one blinks an eye. Where is Marques? Oh, he’s got malaria. Ah, I see. Next topic. If I get it again. Teacher, where were you? Malaria. Ah, I see.
The big news I wanted to tell you all about, though, is that I have finally made my travel plans for Christmas. I’m coming home! I’ll be in the states from December 15th until January 5th! It’s not much time (3 weeks) but I’m pretty excited to come home, see my friends and family and experience a slice of the American culture for the first time in over a year. Three weeks from now I’ll be coming up on one year here in Mozambique. It’s pretty crazy. I love Mozambique, but what I didn’t expect or even realize before coming here, is that I also love America. It sounds really cheesy and patriotic, and trust me, I’m not the type to say that I love America, but when you are away from it for long enough, the conveniences of a functional society – rules, laws, effective transportation, roads, buses, stores, banks, lines instead masses of people pushing to be first, washing machines, etc. – become magical things that you can only dream about. The amount of time that Peace Corps volunteers in Mozambique spend fantasizing about America is ridiculous – what if Mozambique had McDonald’s (I don’t even like McDonald’s, but the very thought of a cheeseburger with ketchup mustard and pickles and a large coke is just too much), what if Mozambique had good roads and real buses; what if at the banks here you could stand in an orderly line and not get cut by every shameless idiot who thinks they can just sneak into the front; what if just once I could sit in a chapa and not have every single person looking at me and talking about me. We see America as this sort of paradise, which has none of the bad things we remember and all of the beautiful comforts that we crave – hot showers, running water, milk, chocolate, pizza, machines, internet, phone service…sounds like heaven. I am anxious to see if it really is heaven. I guess I’ve kind of forgotten by now.
It’s interesting, for as much as us Americans here in Mozambique put America up on a pedestal, the Mozambicans have an even more grandiose version of what they think America is. On weekends when I am here at school, I periodically show movies to the students in the boarding school. These movies, along with the rap and R&B music they listen to is their only insight into what America is like. The movies are often action movies with sweeping shots of New York City or Los Angeles and the kids always let out a collective gasp when they see the expansive sky-scrapers and 12 lane super-highways. To them it all looks like a Sci-Fi movie. They look at the shiny cars, impressive weapons and beautiful woman and dream of one day being an action hero or rap artist in America. They ask, teacher, how much does it cost to arrive in America? How do you get there? I tell them that a ticket could cost $1,500 and they can’t even relate to that amount of money so they keep it in their mind as something they might like to do one day. I don’t have the heart to tell them that 99.9% of them will never have the chance to see America. This is a conversation I’ve probably had 200 times. They then ask me if people speak Portuguese in America and whether I know 50 Cent, Lil’ Wayne, Eminem, Akon or Chris Brown. Surely I have at least seen them pass by on the street, how big could America be? What about Obama? Jean Claude van Dam? Jackie Chan? I never know what to say. Sometimes I say no, no, no, no, never seen him, no, don’t know him, sorry, and I see disappointment settle on their faces. You mean even if I go all the way to America I won’t be able to communicate with anyone and probably won’t see Lil’ Wayne or Akon? I can hear their dreams deflating inside them, vanishing into a big ball of smoke. For them, America is not a tangible future or planned course of action like Africa was for me, America represents hope for something better, for something more exciting than a life working in the fields day after day. Yes, it’s a pipe dream, a delusion; they don’t have a 5 year or 10 year plan for how they’re going to get to America, but it’s an escape, a chance to dream of something bigger and better. So sometimes I lie to them. I tell them yeah, 50 Cent is my buddy, we used to rap together; Eminem is my dawg; van Dam, yeah, my older brother; and Obama used to babysit for me and my sister. Everyone has their own house with hot running water, washing machines and dryers (this gets them pretty confused), their own car. Everyone has a computer and you can go the supermarket and buy any food you could ever imagine. If you are poor, can’t work or disabled, the government will pay for everything. The police aren’t corrupt. There’s no malaria, no AIDS. When I tell them all this they light up like Christmas trees. America really is paradise. I don’t have the heart to tell them that the real America is not everything they see in the movies; it has its dark sides too. I think they have earned the right to keep America as their castle in the sky without me spoiling it. Sometimes their poor grasp of reality is even too much for me to keep a straight face through. For a week after I showed them Jurassic Park I had students asking me whether those types of animals exist in America. Same thing happened with “I, Robot” – does everyone have their own personal robot in America? Terminator, Matrix, Lord of the Rings, all were huge hits but provoked a similar reality-twisting confusion. I usually tell them the truth that no, America is not controlled by robots and aliens have not yet proclaimed war against Earth, but in general I like to let them believe in something bigger than themselves. Still my favorite response to an alien movie was, “Teacher, if aliens really haven’t come to Earth yet, then how did the movie know what they look like?” I had to admit defeat there. I don’t know how they knew.
Alright, well that was my big news for the week. Remember: December 15th to January 5th. I will probably be in Madison for awhile, but then plan on making a trip at some point to Minneapolis and also will probably go to my cabin up north for a bit. Please let me know when you’ll be around so I can start making plans. I’d love to see as many people as I can. Take care!
