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!
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