What's for dinner?

You know, there are few experiences in this life sweeter than seeing the terror on the faces of your fleeing students as they backpedal from a water balloon ambush.  If you´re a teacher, like me, who harbors a deep desire to publicly humiliate students then water balloon ambushes on the last day of school are a safe and sure-fire option.  We had four teachers up against about 50 students mulling around the soccer field.  Strictly speaking, we were outnumbered, but we had the element of surprise and advanced weaponry.  Plan A had been to set up heavy artillery shelling from our veranda, aiming the water bombs onto the soccer field 50 meters away using some resistance bands to jerry-rig a catapult.  After drawing blood and nailing ourselves with the first few misfires from our failed catapult, however, we realized we were drawing some unwanted attention from the students and therefore abandoned Plan A for a carefully drawn out Plan B: Operation Bull-Rush the field.  The students fled like gazelles evading a pride of hungry lions.  We prayed on the weak, took no hostages and made them regret all those times they knocked on our door at 5am to check out the soccer ball or charge their phones.  I´ll let your imaginations fill in the rest of the details, but it was a grisly scene to say the least.

What else have I been up to here other than shelling students with water balloons when not teaching?  Well, I´ve realized in the last couple of months that´s it´s been more and more difficult to pick out interesting things from my daily life that my vast readership would also find interesting.  After awhile, you get inured to and don´t even really notice the bizarre cultural stuff that would usually color a blog post and just focus on the stupid frustrating stuff that no one wants to hear you gripe about.  Therefore, there are still a few things that pass through my biased corneas and make even me look twice that I might chance to share now. 

The first thing which I  don´t think I´ll ever not find strange here is the affinity for eating rats and their close relatives.  Let me explain.  Between about March and November here is the dry season.  We saw hardly a drop of rain in 7 months, and everything got very dry.  Over the course of the dry months the high grass which fills in between the trees in the temperate forest turns to a dull yellow, the leaves on the trees brown and the earth hardens and cracks.  The streams, tributaries and small ponds dry up leaving only the widest rivers with water still flowing in them.  Around August the burning starts.  At first I though it was strange, the scent of smoke floating by and the horizon filled with haze for miles from the rising smoke.  After a month, however, it was strange to drive by a patch of yellow grass that hadn´t been charred and singed by a passing fire.  When I finally asked someone what was going on, I was told that the farmers were intentionally burning the fields and forests in order to hunt ratazana.  Hmm, I thought, ratazana?  Ratazana is nothing more than a giant, glorified rat.  Biologically speaking, I might actually put them in the weasel family as they kind of have beaverish teeth and a bushy tail, but I´ve found it best to just think of them as a giant rats the size of fat house cats.  Anyway, the farmers burn vast acres of grass and forest and wait for the ratazana to flee from the fire at which point they are waiting in ambush with bows and arrows and sling shots to pick off the rats.  I won´t go into the ecological consequences of such vast burns, but the whole event is a tragedy as it ruins the soil quality for long-term cultivation and destroys crucial habitats for other animal species.  My biggest qualm with it actually  is that it´s all done in order to nab a few smelly rats. 

Maybe some of you have seen the picture I posted a few months ago of me standing in front of my house holding one of these rats.  Well, that would be the first and last time I will eat ratazana.  While it had a nice meaty texture, I couldn´t avoid the smell of rotting garbage that emanated from the dark stew as I lifted chunks of meat to my mouth.  I got through about three bites and had to put the fork down and leave the room.  Now I just find it amusing when other people buy the rats.  A couple months ago I was sitting in a mini-bus waiting to leave from the city and, like usual there was a swarm of anxious vendors trying to reach the bus window to have a go at selling their daily booty to trapped passangers.  I´ve seen a fair amount of strange things try to be sold through a chapa window including, my favorite, a guy who was offering on-the-go through-the-window ear piercings, but I wasn´t ready for what I saw that day.  Before I saw it coming, someone had thrust a bird-cage full of live scurrying normal sized rats into my face.  I don´t remember the price, but I remember thinking, “what would I possibly do with a live rat if I bought one from his cage right now?”  Pocket it?  Eat it live?  Keep it as a pet.  It seemed to me a poorly planned business venture as I didn´t notice that he was offering to-go cages. 

On another occasion, I was riding on jammed open-back up to the city when we passed a roadside ratazana stand.  The way people often sell things here is just hold out chickens or dead ratazana as cars pass by and hope that they are enticed enough to pull off and make a purchase.  On this occasion, the ratazana must have piqued the driver´s interest because he screeched to a stop and proceeded to reverse the car for 50 meters on the national highway to talk to a caricature of a scrawny teenager with terribly bucked teeth who was offering up a fat rat, precooked and on a scure for drive by convenience.  I imagined that this is about the closest thing to a drive-thru you can get here in Mozambique.  When the driver asked in dialect how much the cooked rat would cost him, the vendor wheezed out a price of 150mets through his crooked grill.  To me, it sounded reasonable.  That´s about $5, no more than you would pay for a drive thru Whopper meal deal in the states, and we´re talking about at least a couple of pounds of rat meat, but all 20 people, who seemed amiable despite being packed like human sardines in the back of the pick up disagreed vociferously.  If you live here for even a week you learn to recognize the sound of Mozambican negotiatory disapproval instantaneously.  I can only describe the sound that comes out as a high-pitched “Sheeeee” followed by an “-eeeee” which is guttural and drawn out in accord with how strongly the speaker disagrees with the price-setter.  Well, on this occasion after audaciously asking the driver to pay 150mets for his rat on a stick, the open-back erupted with a collective “Sheee” signaling that only a fool would pay 150 mets for a cooked rat of that size.  It was too much for me at that point to not break out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.  While I was certainly the only college or even high school educated sardine in the back of that truck, I guess I was the only one there not savvy enough to know that only an idiot would pay 150mets for a charred rat of that size.  The driver shook his head and we sped off to pick up lunch at the next rat stand.

Enough about rats though.  Here in the present, a few clouds have finally rolled in and a morning drizzle has temporarily lifted the week´s oppressive heat and turned today into pure refreshing coolness.  Before I go eat some rat-less beans for lunch, I want to leave you with a Mozambican fable I heard a few days ago that, curiously, many people will swear actually happened:

Many years ago there was a poor fisherman who sought the curandeiro (traditional healer) in hopes of a treatment that would transform him into a wealthy landowner.  When he arrived at the curandeiro´s hut the curandeiro evaluated the poor fisherman by throwing down precious rocks to judge their scatter pattern on the dry earth inside his hut.  Before the fisherman was able to say anything, the curandeiro knew that his ambition was to become rich and already had a treatment ready.  Before prescribing the treatment, however, the curandeiro warned the fisherman that throughout the course of treatment, he will be tested by spirits and auspicious events, but that he must, above all, continue the course or all will be lost and he will suffer even more than he is now.  The fisherman greedily accepted, dreaming of finally becoming rich.  The curandeiro prepared a tonic from precious seeds and tranditional plants and the fisherman gulped it down when instructed. 

A week later the fisherman was becoming impatient.  He had yet to see any change in his wealth or success as a fisherman in the week since he had gone to see the curandeiro.  In fact, he thought, he had been catching even fewer fish than normal and made a mental note that he was going to visit the curandeiro to ask for his offering back.  That afternoon, however, he went to the river to pull up the bamboo trap that he had left in a spiraling eddy earlier that morning.  When he looked in the trap he was shocked to see a a stack of gold coins in the trap which would normally have been full of fish.  He staggered back and called his wife over to carry the trap out and bring it to the river bank.  She looked in and congratulated the fisherman on a great catch that day, noting the 8 large fish swimming around in the trap.  He came cautiously back and peered into trap, rubbing his eyes in surprise as he also saw 8 fish floating in the trap.  He picked the trap up and placed it on his back, preparing to carry it back to the house but noticed that it suddenly felt much heavier than he had ever felt in his many years of being a fisherman.  He lurched under the weight but reached the bank and dropped it in the sand.  To his shock and horror for the second time that day, he looked down and saw not a fish trap but this time a heavy wooden coffin stuck in the sand.  When he opened the lid of the coffin he saw not 8 floating fish but the body of a dead man staring up at him with glazed over eyes.  He stammered a curse in shock and slammed the lid shut, calling his wife over for a second time.  She came back and, to his dismay, she found a perfectly functional fish trap with 8 fish lying dead now up against the bamboo walls.  He could not utter a word and simply sat down on the sandy bank trying to process the events.  His wife took the fish inside and prepared dinner.

A week later the fisherman´s wife called him outside and instructed him to to climb the cashew tree in order to bring down the precious fruits because they would make a local beverage to celebrate their recent good luck at fishing.  The fisherman climbed the tree and began to throw the fruits down one by one.  To his horror, however, he looked into the branches of the thick tree and saw that all of the cashew fruits had transformed into thick and menacing snakes.  The agitated snakes began to hiss at and threated the fisherman.  The fisherman knew that snakes were sinister and auspicious signs of evil and in their presence he reeled back in horror.  This time, however, he remembered the curandeiro´s threat that he would be confronted by tests and evil things and resolved himself to face the insidious creatures and not flee from the tree.  The snakes did not take well to his proximity, however, and began to lunge at the fisherman with their venomous fangs.  One after the other connected and broke the fisherman´s callased skin.  The fisherman yelped out in pain and cursed himself for ever seeking out the curandeiro´s help.  In a desperate attempt to escape the maniacal snakes the fisherman leaped from the tree trying to grab the branch of a nearby mango tree.  One of the snakes bit his leg just as he pushed off, however, and his momentum was stunted.  He missed the mango tree by inches and went sprawling towards the hard dry ground below.  With a thud the fisherman slammed into the ground 10 meters below and died instantly. 

Later, the curandeiro visited the fisherman´s house, having heard about their unfortunate turn of events.  He mentioned to the grieving fisherman´s wife that the fisherman´s ancestors had a long tradition of seeking out the curandeiro for wealth and personal gain.  The curandeiro spoke warmly but with an air of detached righteousness, “your husband saw gold in his fish trap and did not realize that it was his own body that he was carrying out of the river in the casket.  A greedy man will kill himself with his own greed and a selfish man will have no one but himself to carry his own casket.” 

I like that story.  I hope you all are well and have learned a lesson today about greed and selfishness.  Until next time!

School's Out and I'm Back

Hello again, and Happy Halloween!  Welcome back to mangos, mozambique and me.  First of all, let me apologize to the angry mobs of people that have been anxiously awaiting my next blog post for the past two months or so.  Due to a number of circumstances out of my control and a hectic last couple of months here in Mozambique it has not been possible for me to keep in touch as well as I would like to.  Nonetheless, that is all water under the bridge.  If I ever manage to drag myself into the heat, across the field and to the hospital which has a shaky but functional internet, I´ll be able post this blog and all of you who have been holding your collective breathes for two months can breath easy again.  You may be asking, “so what has Ian been up to these last couple of months in Moz?” or you may not care at all and are about to tab out to ESPN.com, in either case, without further ado, as the sweat drips down my nose onto the keyboard, I´m about to tell you what´s been up in these sticky months of October and September.

Today is Monday, October 31, which means that three days ago, on the 29^th, I officially completed my first full school year as a teacher here in Mozambique.  The students finished up their exams and on Saturday had a mass exodus off of the mission to their homes (you´ll recall that I live at a mission school with no real town or civilization so most students come from the cities and stay in the boarding schools).  Students in exam years (12^th, 10^th and 7^th grades) will stay until the end of next week to study and then take the national exams to pass on to the next level, but other than that it is all over here in Mangunde.  It did´t feel as momentous as I had imagined it through all those hours sweating in the classroom with my bata (white labcoat-ish garment that all teachers are required to wear here), but nonetheless it was a very satisfying feeling to know that I had pushed through a whole school year in this, at times, frustrating and seemingly backwards education system.  Looking back, did I accomplish everything that I had imagined when I first arrived at school last December?  Did I eliminate corruption?  Stop cheating?  Get all my students to think creatively instead of just writing and memorizing?  Did I get my colleagues to show up to class on time and not abandon the school to hit the city for 4 day weekends every week?  Hmmm....maybe best not to ponder the answers to these questions. 

Somehow, when I got here in December I don´t remember exactly, but I kind of thought I would fix all of these crippling problems and see a different Mozambique when I flew out at the end of a righteous and productive two years of service.  I don´t want to confess that I´m completely jaded at this point, but I will say that a year in this school system makes you re-evaluate your goals and try to be a little more realistic about your accomplishments.  Did any of my students learn English, biology or computers this year?  For sure, loads of them know so much more now than they did a year ago, and it feels great to know that I at least was able to educate a few people.  Did they all learn English?  No chance.  Were there plenty of students who, after a year of English classes still didn´t know how to conjugate “to be” or who don´t know that the heart is part of the circulatory system?   Way more than I want to even think about.  What I´ve realized, however, is that when measuring your accomplishments in this context you can´t set your expectations too high.  That´s kind of depressing in itself, but it´s true.  If you come here thinking you are going to move mountains, and change cultures you came for the wrong purpose and are going to fail.  Once you make the realization that the best thing you can possibly do here is teach or inspire a few people to do more with their lives, go to university, learn a language, set an example for their community, you can start to make a difference and see the results of that difference in a very fulfilling way.  I would have never said this a year ago, but in my opinion, if you can influence that five percent of the population to do something special with their lives, you can forget about the other 95 percent and you´ve still succeeded.  In my classes of 60 students, there are maybe three to five students in each that are actually smart, hard-working, successful students.  They study, do their homework and pass their tests with ease.  I teach and they learn.  It all seemed so simple when I was in school back in the States – the teacher would teach and all of the students would learn.   But it just isn´t like that here.  I feel that I could teach until the cows come home and would not see much difference in the other 95 percent. Those three to five kids would soak up everything like sponges and the rest of the class would wallow and fail and never quite get past the verb “to be.”  So many students here don´t have the context, the family support, literacy, learned motivation, or study skills to just pick up and start succeeding.  It´s sad but it is true.  If this education system was full of good, creative and stimulating teachers and had books and resources starting in primary school up through 12^th grade the students would at least have the tools they needed in order to succeed if they put the effort in.  Those simply aren´t the conditions here though.  The primary school is nothing more than a chalkboard propped up against a tree outside and kids running around playing.  Anyway, all of this is not to say that Mozambique and Africa are a black hole in which no one will ever learn anything.  At the beginning of all of this I was meaning to make a positive point in saying that you really can make a positive difference here if you focus on the people that have the tools and motivation to do something more with their lives.  A perfect example of this amazing ability we have to make a difference in the lives on a few came last weekend when we put on the annual regional English Theater competition.

I was pretty nervous and excited about this event.  I was coordinating the event, which would take place in the regional capital of Chimoio.  There were to be 15 schools from all over the central region of the country each bringing a group of 8 students and 2 teachers who had each prepared 10 minute theater pieces in English.  Outside of the strain of trying to get my group prepared with their theater piece, I was also responsible for organizing all of the logistics of the competition.  To the untrained eye, this might not seem like a complicated task.  Let me assure you, however, that this was no walk in the park.  Between the shortcomings in transportation, communication and banking that this country suffers from, hosting 150 people for two nights in the city was a challenge.  Among the things that needed to be organized were transportation to and from the city for the 15 schools, lodging for two nights for everyone, meals for all participants, renting out the theater, getting prizes and dictionaries, having t-shirts made, and finding judges and dignitaries to attend the event.  The funding for the competition came for PEPFAR, which is a fund from the American government that often works with Peace Corps projects that are somehow related to AIDS relief.  I was working with a budget of about $10,000 to put on everything, which is a lot of money, especially here.  Again, you´re probably thinking, doesn´t sound too hard, just make a few phone calls and everything would pretty much take care of itself.  Hmmm...Not quite. 

In my opinion, banks in Mozambique are the earthly manifestation of Hell.  The nearest bank to my house here is 5 to 6 hours away.  In the month leading up to the competition I went to the bank four times and not once were there more than about 3 people attending and less that 100 people waiting in line.  Every time I went the computer system was down for at least an hour and I waited to be seen for at least 2 hours while other people cut in front of me and dispelled any notion of order or humanity that may have existed.  None of the $10,000 needed to put the competition on actually arrived in my bank account until the Friday that everyone was arriving.  The competition would take place on Saturday.  Try coordinating food, lodging and transportation with no money.  It sucks.  When I went to the bank on the Thursday before the Saturday event, I was told the the transfer of funds had still not come to my account, and due to normal delays, I would not see the money until the Monday after the event at the earliest.  I tried to contain myself but could not prevent the pencil from snapping in my hands when I heard this.  All of my planning would be for naught if there was no money.  The event would have to be postponed.  Due to a miracle later that day, however, I was able to talk to the national coordinator and she canceled the delaying transfer and put cash directly in my account so that it would be accessible the following day, just in time.  I breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to go to the bank on Friday, the day that all of the schools would be arriving.  When I showed up at the bank they informed me that the money was all there.  It was all could do not to jump up in celebration.  But before I could even ask to make a withdrawal, the banker told me that my account was an ATM account only and that I have a daily withdrawal limit of 4,000mts (about $150).  This would essentially mean that I could go to the ATM every day for a month and still not have the money that I was going to need later that afternoon.  I slumped in defeat.  The only thing we could do, the banker informed me, was find someone with a checking account, transfer the money to them, and then withdraw the cash.  Now renewed with optimism, I went searching for anyone in the city who would have a checking count at my same bank.  After a few phone calls, I was able to locate the cousin of one of the Peace Corps staff in Chimoio who could help us out.  We went to the bank together, waited, waited, and waited, but finally made a transfer and a withdrawal and I walked out of the bank with about 95,000mts on me in an envelope.  What I have found here is that, while things might get tense and may even seem hopeless at times, they always find a way of working out in the end. 

After the frustrating bank snafu everything could not have gone better.  The schools all arrived at the hotel, ate a dinner of chicken, rice and a salad, gourmet for their standards (at school they get served watery beans with rock hard xima for every lunch and dinner), practiced their theaters and got ready for the competition the following day.  The next day was probably the most fun day I´ve had here in Mozambique.  To see all of the organization and planning that you´ve done come together beautifully and make so many students happy is the best feeling I can imagine.  My group presented first and did a wonderful job.  They´d been talking about and anticipating this competition for months and seeing it all finally come together was special for them as well.  The theme of the competition was “Choose Your Future” and my group did a piece about two brothers who chose different paths in life.  One brother, Habibe, went to school and studied to become a successful priest while the other brother, Anthony, chose to start hanging out with the bad crowd, smoking, drinking and soliciting prostitutes.  Not surprisingly, Anthony contracted HIV and was later confronted by his brother and family as he regretted all of the poor decisions he´d made in his life.  They were brilliant and I was so proud of all of my students that day.  I was also extremely impressed with the overall level of English and theater that all of the schools presented.  It´s probably hard to imagine from the States people getting so excited about a puny little theater competition in Mozambique, but to these kids, this was the Super Bowl, it was the highlight of the year and they came to win and have a blast.  The amount of energy, enthusiasm and passion for English was palpable, and to hear them shouting out and gesturing their sometimes hilarious lines in accented and imperfect English was sometimes too much for me to contain my laughter.  After all of the schools had presented, and there were some seriously kick-ass theater pieces, everyone received t-shirts and dictionaries and we announced the awards for Best Actor, Best Actress, and the overall winning groups.  You could feel the tension in the room but at the same time it was beautiful to see how thankful and truly happy some of the students were to even get minor awards.  You would imagine that it wouldn´t be that thrilling to get an award for 3^rd best supporting actress, but the students reacted as happily as if they had just been given a million dollars, cheering and screaming and hugging their friends.  After the winning team was finally announced, my group got 5^th place, we put music on and everyone spontaneously began a dance party up on the stage.  Losers and winner alike flocked to the stage and danced like they had been friends their whole lives.  We put on “Wavin´ Flag” by K´naan which is an anthem here that everyone knows and loves and they went crazy flying around the stage in a euphoria, dancing and kicking in rhythm with the beat.  It was a moment that I will never forget and that I knew would never happen in the States.  It was pretty rewarding to know how much learning and preparation went into getting those students here, all of the hours spent studying lines, correcting scripts, imagining themselves holding the trophy in front of a crowd and thinking of accomplishing something that they never would have dreamed of.  It was humbling then, to realize that all of this, the emotions and the preparation, was put together and made possible by a few Peace Corps volunteers with an inspiration to create something bigger for a few students who deserve it and have been working their whole lives for this opportunity.

I´m going to to leave my blog post there for now.  I hope someday to put up some pictures and videos of the English Theater event so you all can see how truly magical it was.  Now that school is over, life for me will be much more relaxed and simple for the next couple of weeks while the remaining students prepare for national exams and I get ready to start some traveling in November – to Maputo, then South Africa, then home for the holidays.  As it has been so long since updating my blog, I have a lot more to talk about, and now that I finally have some time on my hands, I hope to keep updating more frequently in the next couple of weeks before I head home in December, so stay tuned...I hope that you are all enjoying the cool weather back in the states and that you save some some snow for me when I get there in about 6 weeks!

Cheers!