A Highly Anticipated Visit to Mozambique!

I have a Where’s Waldo calendar here in my room which I absolutely love.  If I’m ever bored or anxious I can peel it off the wall, and while I’ve already found Waldo in all 13 scenes, I can look for the elusive Odlaw, his black and yellow foil, Wanda, his weekend hook-up, Wizard Whitebeard, or the most challenging of all, his long-tailed dog, Woof.  On my calendar right below the red and white sea of Waldo look-alikes in July there’s been an event etched into the date July 25th that I’ve been anticipating for over a year—it reads, “July 25^th, parents arrive.” 

I don’t know exactly when this happened, but sometime between high school and Peace Corps, visits from your parent became cool again.  I would’ve been horrified if my parents showed up to visit me on a school field trip in high school, but here in the Peace Corps, a visit from your parents is about as bad-ass as it gets, and trumps all other social gatherings.  It’s widely accepted that volunteers miss their parents here in Africa, and, maybe more importantly, that parents will pay for you and your friends to do cool shit that you wouldn’t have been able to do on your meager volunteer living allowance.  People will take advantage of their parents visiting to go on private game drives, rent beach cottages, fly to South Africa and drive around in chic rental cars instead of braving the horrific public transportation situation here in Moz.

When July 25^th finally came around I was excited for the first leg of our journey to begin.  First my parents flew directly into Vilanculos, or Vil, a small beach town a few hours away from my site.  Hannah had been with me at my site and we hitch-hiked down to Vil together to meet them.  On our way down Hannah and I took the open-back chapa out of the mission to Muxungue, the first town on the way down to Vil.  There we tried to flag down a car headed to Vil.  After a while we got what we thought was a decent ride for our standards—a big open back truck transporting sacs of corn.  We hopped into the back and sat on the corn.  There was plenty of space for our legs to stretch out across the sacs and the few goats that were loaded in the back with us were relatively calm and didn’t smell too bad.  It was blisteringly hot with the sun cooking us along with the corn in the back of the truck, but with a capulana wrapped around our heads and some sunscreen to protect us from the sun’s rays, it was all-in-all not too bad of a ride.

 About an hour into the ride something peculiar happened—a private black SUV passed us and immediately slowed down in front of our truck.  The driver, a middle-aged black man appeared to be signaling for our truck to pull over.   I joked to Hannah that he was probably coming back to offer us a ride in his car.  We both laughed because that never happens; it’s commonly known among Moz15 that with our two accidents and constant road frustrations, Hannah and I have the worst hitch-hiking luck in our group, and there was probably a better chance that this man was coming to rob us than offer us a free ride.  Miraculously, though, the man got out of his car and started talking to us in his heavily-accented English.  He said, “You look like you are suffering!  Why don’t you come into my car and have some water and enjoy the air conditioning?  Are you also going to Vilanculos?”  We looked at him, baffled.  Is this really happening?  To us?  It seemed too good to be true.  One thing that happens in Mozambique is that everything is so fucked and so many people try to take advantage of you on a daily basis that even when someone does something nice for you, you are automatically suspicious of their intentions.   

I said, “How much?” thinking that maybe he saw white people and was going to offer us a ridiculous rate to drive us all the way into Vilanculos, but he waved me off with a flick of his wrist and said, “Please, get in.”  Well, we couldn’t argue with that, and, as nice as our corn sac seats had been, we were ready to get out of the sun. What he did next is something that I’ve never seen someone do while offering a ride, he proceeded to pay the driver of the corn truck for the entire distance that we had come until that point, and did so with a smile.  When we got into the car, we realized where all of this generosity was coming from—this man loved America.

He immediately turned around with an excited smile and asked where we were from.  When we said, “United States of America” his face lit up like a light bulb as he said, “I thought so!” and began reeling off all the cities and celebrities that he’d heard of from America and how much he wanted to visit all of them.  At one point he even said excitedly, “I weesh dat my gret gret grendfada was brought to America as a slave so dat I could be born as an American.”  That was kind of awkward, but we shrugged, “Yeah, us too!”  Another question he asked was whether we were friends with some of his favorite musicians and celebrities like 50 Cent, Jean Claude Van Damn, and Lil Wayne, who all live in America.  This isn’t a question I balk at anymore because I get it almost every day, but what made it especially cute was that he followed it up by saying, “Dese people must be so beezy becose I keep sending this facebook messages and emails to dem and dey never respond.  Why is dat, Mr. Ian.”  “I know, man, they don’t reply to me either.”  Before arriving in Vil, he stopped to buy us each bottles of water and packets of cookies and then dropped us off at the beach villa at which we were to meet my parents that afternoon.

Vilanculos was beautiful.  When we arrived my parents were already there at the beach villa.  Seeing their faces against the back drop of Mozambique, the two distant sides of my life coming together into one picture, was surreal. The veranda of the bamboo villa looked out onto the azure waters of the Indian Ocean and was shaded my coconut trees.  We spent the entire first day of their visit relaxing on the beach and walking around the town.  For lunch on day two we walked to a restaurant and they tried traditional a traditional Mozambican dish, matapa with prawns over xima.  More than the beautiful beach and the fresh seafood I think the most interesting thing for my parents during those first days in Vil was simply walking through the town and market and interacting with the local people – seeing women carrying vegetables and water on their heads and babies on their backs; men hawking sunglasses and sandals at the crowded market; the smell of fresh bread and salted dry fish wafting through the streets.  I realized that I had become desensitized to all of these novelties in my time here in Moz, but being there with my parents, I was able to experience the awe all over again with them.

On our third day in Vil we decided to take a snorkeling cruise to the nearby Macarangue Island.  We boarded a small sailboat, or dhow, in the morning with our local crew and headed out into the turquoise waves. The chef boiled water for tea on board and we were served a small breakfast in route to the island.  On the island we got our snorkeling gear and swam around the colorful reefs that skirted the edges of the island.  While I choked on salt water more times than I can remember, the reefs were beautiful and the brightly colored tropical fish that inhabited them dazzled us as they reflected off the sun.

After Vil, we hired a car and drove the four hours inland to my site, Mangunde.  Despite not having beaches or wildlife to stun us, this is the part of the trip that I was most excited and nervous about.  I wanted my family to meet my friends, colleagues and students and see the place that had filled me with so many experiences over the course of the past year and a half.   The trip to Mangunde turned out to be an overwhelming success.  On the first afternoon, I planned to have a party with a few colleagues and many of my most active students outside the mission at the rural house of my counter-part and friend, Alberto.  We all walked to Alberto’s house together that afternoon and my English students all hankered to get a chance to talk to my parents and use what broken English I had taught them to communicate.  When we arrived to the house my students surprised me by performing a few songs and a short theater skit they had prepared in English for the occasion.  Put on the spot, the four of us, mom, dad, Hannah and I, decided to also present a song that we had prepared in the car on the way in – “In the Jungle.”  It was a hit. 

Afterwards we ate rice with a goat that we killed for the occasion and danced around the fire until nighttime.  Seeing the reality of life and the pure poverty out in a rural homestead like Alberto’s was most assuredly eye-opening for my parents and to meet the students that I have worked so closely with over the past year and a half was definitely the highlight of my parents’ trip to Mozambique.

On our last day in Mangunde, I had class and was able to bring my parents into my English class for an interview with my students.  They had to learn how to speak slowly and choose their words wisely for any of my students to pick up anything and also got a taste for what the classrooms and general school system here in Mozambique is like.  In the evening we cooked another traditional Mozambican dish, couve, and my parents had to learn how to prepare it in the typical Mozambican way – my mom chopped the leafy greens into small slices and my dad cracked and grated the coconut to make the coconut milk.  I have to say that it was delicious – they did a great job for their first Mozambique meal.

After my site we drove up to Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique, and flew out to Johannesburg the next morning.  There the four of us met up with Hannah’s mom, who was just beginning her visit.  We drove to Kruger National Park together, about four hours outside of Johannesburg and found our lodge, a beautiful two story African-style house with a upstairs porch and pool overlooking the reserve.  It was idyllic and a perfect setting for the last leg of our adventure. 

We did an evening game drive on our first day, a full-day game drive on our second day (my birthday) and relaxed at the lodge on our third day.  Everything about it was glorious.  We saw every animal you could imagine (except the elusive leopard) and took it all in.  On our full day game drive we spotted dozens of giraffes, elephants, impala, nyala, kudu, rhinoceroses, hyenas, warthogs, and even saw about ten lions.  In one instance we were driving slowly past a site where we had been told a giraffe carcass was being fed on by a couple of young lions.  We went there and saw that the hyenas had already taken hold of the kill and the lions had fled just minutes earlier.  Fortunately for us, however, as we were driving away we spotted two lions trotted lazily in the grass off to the side of the road.  As we got closer we saw that they also approached us.  They seemed to not even notice us.  The two lions crossed the road in front of us and proceeded to walk along the road, only a few yards in front of us for five to ten minutes.  It was amazing to be so close to such a powerful and fabled creature and an untamed lion.  I felt that at any time it could decide to jump up into the car and tear us all to shreds.  Luckily for us, though, it didn’t and eventually wandered back into the bush. 

After our incredible wildlife experience it was time for me to say goodbye to my family.  I had been anticipating their visit for months and now it had already come to a close.  They dropped me off at the bus stop where I would catch a bus back to Maputo and another one up to my site and they continued on to Johannesburg where they would catch their flight later that evening.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip.  Yes, I did some cool shit that I wouldn’t have been able to do on my poor volunteer stipend, but more than that I got the chance to show the people I love the things that I’ve been passionate about for the last year and a half.  One of the difficulties of the Peace Corps experience I’ve heard is that you become deeply engrossed in your experience during your two years of service, and then you get back to the States and it seems that few people care or understand what you have been through.  I feel that now, having shared this experience with my family, that I’ve at least taken steps towards letting others understand the challenges we face here in Mozambique every day. 

One of the things that the Peace Corps teaches you in training is that there are three goals every PCV should strive to achieve in his or her Peace Corps service.  One is to promote the development of skills and resources in your country of service; another is to promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of other countries; and the third is to promote a better understanding of other countries and cultures on the part of other Americans.  If nothing else, I know that bringing my family here to Mozambique fulfilled my third goal as a volunteer—my family left here after only 12 days, but with an understanding of who Mozambicans are and what kind of conditions they deal with on a daily basis.  Mozambique is no longer just a shape on a map or a photo on facebook for my parents and I; it has a personality.  It is a live film in their minds and an on-going relationship in their hearts.  In my opinion, this is as valuable as any work we can do as PCVs.

Perspectives from the Top of Mozambique

After trudging through the discarded Mozambican landscape that separates Mangunde from our destination of Dombe, we were ready for a rest.  This was July, 2012, and five PCV friends, my trusty Mozambican counterpart and I had just walked 100 kilometers in two days from the comforts of our home in Mangunde to Dombe, a distant secondary school and home to two other PCVs.  On our journey we came across a degree of isolation that made our remote mission school seem like a nucleus of development—people who are forced to travel four hours on bicycle for the simple necessity of water.  We were also humbled by the generosity of Mozambicans who had few material possessions.  The sister of my counterpart, a poor farmer, opened her house to six white giants on just a few hours’ notice and offered us food and a place to spend the night. 

Three days later I decided that the blisters on my feet weren’t big enough so I took a four day hike up the tallest mountain in Mozambique.  If you look at a topographical map you’ll see that isn’t quite as impressive as it seems.  Nonetheless, this would be my first tallest-mountain-in-a-country and I felt like I was obligated to try it. 

I set off with another PCV, David, and we really had no idea what we were doing.  We had been told that to find Mt. Binga you have to take a chapa from Chimoio to Sussendenga, get off, and get on another chapa from Sussendenga to Rotanda, a border town with Zimbabwe.  Don’t go all the way to Rotanda though, we were warned, you must get off at the entrance to Chimanimani National Park, which is on the road to Rotanda, then walk 22 kilometers into the park and find Robat (or Robert, depending on how you pronounce it), there we would receive our next clue (I’ve been watching too much of the “Amazing Race” over here).

  We had packed our bags smartly with the only real packable food that you can buy here in Mozambique, cans of “Bom Amigo” tuna, bread that we squashed into our packs and some apples, which interestingly are exotic and expensive fruits here in Mozambique.  No matter how they’re dressed, two large white guys wandering around the busy chapa stop of Chimoio are going to turn some heads, but on this day it was ridiculous.  David and I had our backpacks and hiking gear on, and were stopping at the roadside stands buying large amounts of food.  I probably got asked for apples 10 times between the fruit stand and the chapa. Then a reasonably dressed man on the bus next to me who clearly had enough money to buy food and ride on buses leaned over and said, “I’m asking for your jacket.” And it’s like, “What?  No!  Go buy your own jacket you lazy piece of shit.”  “I’m asking for a tangerine.”  “I’m asking for 10 meticals.”  Sometimes I think people in Mozambique just beg out of pure boredom. 

Anyway, just getting to the chapa through the sea of solicitors was difficult enough. We made the first leg of our trip no problem.  Then we got to Sussendenga where we were supposed to catch a ride to this border town called Rotanda, a town which neither of us had ever heard of.  I bought some road peanuts (in my opinion the best on-the-go snack in Mozambique—moms roast, salt and pack the peanuts into little take-away plastic bags and their kids wander around the markets and the streets selling them for 1, 2, and 5 meticals per pouch) then we began looking for the elusive chapa to Rotanda.  Strangely, we asked a man at the bus-stop there and he replied, “You want to go to Rotanda?  Let’s go!”  He hopped in his pick-up truck, invited us to sit in the cab with him and before we knew it 15 passengers had materialized out of nowhere to fill the back of the truck as if they had been waiting for us to arrive all this time.

The road to Rotanda was dirt and after an hour or so we easily found the entrance to Chimanimani National Park on the side of the road.  We got out of the truck, thanked our driver and began walking into the park.  Now our challenge was to find the park gate four kilometers in from the road and then continue on to find Robat’s house 18 kilometers further down.  This was a strange experience.  Given the poor financial standing of the Mozambican government and its ostensible neglect of all public services like schools, roads, and hospitals, my expectations for a remote mountain post in a relatively unknown national park like this were very low.  I was expecting an unattended gate dangling half open with some broken chains hanging off of it and a faded sign marking the entrance to the park.  When we got to the park entrance, however, it was a hub of development.  A construction crew was fording a river to build a bridge and another crew was stacking cement blocks while building what appeared to be a welcome center.  At the same time park rangers in full uniform walked or drove their Land Rovers from one station to another within the entrance area.  We were baffled and, after spending almost two years in a broken and under-financed education system couldn’t help but think where all of this money is coming from and why it’s being spent on an isolated mountain post instead of the schools or roads that are in desperate need of funds. 

When we got to the check-in tent the ranger was delighted to see us.  He fastidiously arranged his papers and pulled out a sign-in book from inside the tent.  As he eagerly explained to me how to enter my name, nationality, and passport info in the book I couldn’t help but notice that last visitors to the park had come almost a month before.  Now I knew why he had been so excited to see us walking in.  Curiously, I asked him if it’s been a down year for some reason and he replied, “Oh no, sir, it’s been quite busy this year.”  I had to suppress a laugh at this.  And this is why Mozambique is so poor.  Here we are at a remote mountain post that you have to walk four kilometers just to get to which receives one visitor a month and there are more construction workers and rangers than I’ve ever seen in one place in Mozambique.  The ranger also knew about where we were headed and said jovially “Just continue on 18 kilometers and ask for Robat; he’ll take you up the mountain tomorrow.”

So we walked…and walked…and walked…

As the afternoon wore on the oppressive heat subsided and the afternoon sun faded into dusk.  After not too long, however, we pulled up to a small clearing of huts on our left and figured, based on our instructions, that this must be the house of our supposed guide, Robat.  Sure enough we turned into the clearing and a tall lanky man with a baseball cap and a goofy smile approached and greeted us on his bicycle.  We told him that we wanted to hike up Mt. Binga and that we had been told that he was the man to find.  Robat had guessed as much, as there’s not much else two wandering white guys would be doing in his village, so he showed us around his home. 

If I wasn’t tied to my family, friends, computer and all of the other material possessions I hold onto in life, Robat’s little compound tucked into a remote valley of the Chimanimani mountains on the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe would be about as perfect an existence as one could ask for.  His compound consisted of a large clearing with five or six stick and mud huts spotted around the outside.  The houses were beautifully painted with colorful African inscriptions and coated in a red terra cotta clay.  As we walked around, people, goats and chickens gamboled through the compound in the setting sun.  Just 50 yards down a wooded path one could find a pristine river flowing from the top of the distant mountain down and out of the valley.  The river water was crystal clear and painfully frigid.  As a backdrop to the calmly flowing ice water Mt. Binga and its neighboring peaks lifted ominously into the air and were glazed by the yellow rays of the setting sun.  After having recently hiked through the flat and desiccated land between Mangunde and Dombe and seeing people walking hours to simply fill up their water jugs, this existence seemed too good to be true.  Robat grew all of his crops there on the banks of the river and never had to worry about carrying water more than a few yards.

That evening we set up our tent and cooked some tuna and pasta that we had brought to feed ourselves for our upcoming journey.  Robat explained to us that the next day we would be hiking about six hours to the last base camp before the summit of Mt. Binga.  There we would spend the night and on the following day we would summit and make our way all the way back to the house.  As the evening wore on and Robat told us more about his life there in the valley the thermometer sank lower and lower towards freezing.  We knew were still in Africa, but that night it felt like the Arctic.  I put on one layer after another and continually found that it was never enough to keep me warm.  By the time I was ready to sleep I was wearing two t-shirts, a long sleeve shirt, my jacket, long underwear, pants, wool socks, hat and gloves and was tucked into my sleeping bag.  I was still cold. 

The next morning we woke up at dawn, downed some granola bars and set out for the base of Mt. Binga.  The hike was difficult but not grueling.  We stopped at a waterfall for lunch and continued steadily up the valley in order to reach the last base camp, our destination for the night.  We arrived just after midday and hunkered down there for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

The next day we again woke up at dawn for our big summit.  We left of things at the base camp and only carried the essentials up to the top.  The ascent was deceptively steep.  We walked along the face of a ridge that went steadily upwards.  Robat was a machine.  The soles of his cheap tennis shoes were tearing off, but his gangly legs never stopped pacing out the giant steps which propelled him forward.  Every once in a while he would look back and flash his goofy smile to see how we were doing. 

The summit of Mt. Binga came up very abruptly.  I was busy watching the soles of Robat’s feet in front of me, and suddenly I looked up to see that there was nothing left to climb.  I asked Robat, “Is this it?”  We had made it from the base camp to the summit in less than two hours and it seemed implausible, but he said, “Yes, this is it!” and we made our way up to the rock cairn that signaled the summit, the tallest point in Mozambique.  From the top we looked out at the panorama of peaks making up the Chimanimani range and Robat pointed out every one that he and his father before him had climbed and guided people up. It was incredible.  We looked out and saw where Mozambique crosses into Zimbabwe, and the little speck of white that was Robat’s clearing, where we would be eating dinner later that evening. 

The trip down the mountain was simple and relaxing.  After a day’s work we were back in Robat’s compound enjoying the sunset view from his picturesque compound and a hot meal.  I looked once more onto their compound, Robat’s wife giving a bath to one of their three kids in the clearing, the other two kids kicking around a ball of tightly bound plastic bags and his adult relatives cooking and sharing stories around the fire and couldn’t help but reflect on how different life can be for different people.  Robat’s wife, delicately washing the soap out of her son’s eyes, has no notion of what life for people like David and I is like.  If there is one thing I can be thankful for in my Peace Corps experience, it is that Peace Corps has given me an opportunity to see how other people live.  It sounds trite, but it is a simple privilege that very people in this world have ever had: to go outside your own culture and understand that there is more than one way to live and find happiness.  What you do with that perspective is up to you, but to be given that gift of perspective and the power to then decide your own path is the greatest gift that the Peace Corps offers.

The next day we said goodbye to Robat and his family and waked the 22km out of the park to the main road.  On our way out we saw the strangest thing.  There was a bus parked in a clearing a just off of the path.  As we walked by we looked over and saw a group of 20 or so white, college-age girls getting off the bus with their backpacks, putting sunscreen on and apparently preparing for a hiking trip.  The context of it all was so strange that we weren’t immediately sure what to do—go over and talk to them, wave from the path or simply forge ahead pretending we don’t see them.  To clarify, other than PCVs I’ve never seen a group of more than about four white people together at one time in Mozambique, and here we are in the middle of nowhere, Mozambique, hiking from a guy named Robat’s house to a road that nobody has ever heard of at a National Park that receives one visitor per month, and we see 20 white college-age girls all together at the same time.  While I was curious, they seemed to be on a mission, and may have been a little afraid of or scruffy appearance, so we decided to go with the distant wave. 

Once we got to the road, we waited to hitchhike back to Sussendenga where we would be able to find a mini-bus headed to Chimoio.  This road wasn’t exactly I-90.  In fact, in the first hour of waiting a grand total of zero cars went by.  We began to wonder if we might get stuck out here all day.  But, sure enough, after not too much longer and dump truck from the construction site came by on its way to Sussendenga and offered us a ride in the back of the truck.  Talk about scary rides.  We couldn’t see over the edges of the truck so all we could do was feel a sharp turn or a steep incline on the windy mountain road.  Every time the driver would accelerate into a sharp incline we felt our stomachs climb up our throats like on an amusement park ride minus the amusement. 

Despite the exciting finish, we arrived back in Chimoio that afternoon and I took a well-earned and much needed shower.  In just a few days I would be heading back down to Mangunde and getting ready to meet my parents in Vilanculos for their visit to Mozambique.

Well, Mozambique, it's been two years...

Two years ago I was frantically preparing for a vast and unknown adventure in Mozambique. I remember trying to pack my two bags and cursing the fact that there was a weight limit on the flight. In the weeks leading up to my September 29^th departure I made about a hundred lists and went shopping almost every day to pick up a new gadget or article of clothing that I was sure would be irreplaceable during my Peace Corps experience.

Well here I am, a very short two years later, looking back on an experience that even after 100s of pages of blog I struggle to put into words. I didn’t use all of the “essential” things that I bought two years ago and realize now that I would have been fine with a few necessities packed down into one small bag. While my experience isn’t over yet, I still have over two months in Mozambique and one month travelling to India and Thailand before I arrive home around Christmas time, it is now the beginning of the end and I can feel the end date ominously hanging over me. I feel the compulsion to extract meaning from my experience and consolidate all of the challenges I’ve faced and the effort I’ve put in.

Last week all of the volunteers in my group (Moz 15) went down to Maputo, the capital city, for a mandatory close-of-service conference. There we heard from returned PCVs, talked about post-PC career options, the close-of-service process, and how to make sense of this experience that we’ve all just had. It was actually a very well-spent three days for all of us. Apart from getting to stay in a fancy hotel and take hot showers, it also got us thinking about our experiences and how we can look back on such an immense but ineffable time in our lives. It got me thinking, what have I learned in the past two years? What do I know now that I couldn’t have imagined two years ago? Sometimes it’s difficult to step back and take that perspective. We tend to get so tied up in our daily lives, the frustrations of working and living in Mozambique and the joys and difficulties of maintaining relationships with Mozambicans and other PCVs, but it’s important to be able to see the changes and all of the rich experiences that have benefited all of us PCVs throughout our service. In order to sort it all out in my head I decided to make a list of all the things that I’ve learned over the course of my two years here in Mozambique and I will present it to you now:

During my Peace Corps experience in Mozambique, I have learned…

• First and foremost, that very few things make sense in this country…
• That when someone says they will do something for you, there’s a good chance they won’t
• That when someone says they will meet you at a certain time, they actually mean anytime from 30 minutes to 2 hours after the said time, or not at all
• That when there is ceremony or event run by Mozambicans, the program will always read that the start time is 8 a.m., but the event will never start before 10 a.m.
• That you cannot, under any circumstances, start an event before the chief arrives, even if he is three hours late
• That no one seems to care or realize when an event or meeting begins late and that people think you’re acting irrationally when you just want to start something on time
• That chapa driver are the scum of the earth – they will screw you over and try to squeeze as much money as they can out of you if you are organizing a group trip with them
• Related to the previous theme, that I can get angry when a chapa driver tries to screw me over
• That personal space does not exist
• That I actually miss fast food
• That I will never again complain about having to go put my clothes in the washing machine
• That dish-washers, microwaves and toasters are amazing inventions
• That I wouldn’t even know what to do with a stove that has four burners
• How to pretend I'm cooking different things when I actually use the same ingredients for every meal
• That you can repair anything with a plastic bag – bike tires, balls, water mains, electrical wires
• That a soccer ball made out of bunched up plastic bags is not the same as a real ball
• How to hold hands with other men for long periods of time without feeling uncomfortable
• That nearly everyone actually believes in ghosts, curses and magic
• That when you ask someone here how many times they’ve had malaria they assume you mean how many times this year
• How to cut the egg sac of a parasitic worm out of people’s feet
• How to take a malaria rapid-test with my eyes closed
• That people use condoms for everything but sex
• That you kill a pig by stabbing it in the heart from under its foreleg
• That you kill a goat by slicing it’s throat and hanging it upside down
• That a dried goat scrotum makes an excellent change purse
• That you will offend respected guest if you don’t serve them the head of the goat
• That you kill a rabbit by clubbing it over the head
• That giant rat meat smells like rotting garbage
• That I will miss fresh fruit and vegetables
• That for two months out of the year people eat exclusively mangoes
• That I can buy six huge pineapples for about $2, peel one and eat it whole like an apple
• That I have a clinical addiction to cashews and it made me poor
• How to defecate into a hole in the ground and prefer it to a toilet
• That I took grass for granted in America
• How to appreciate a good pattern of swept dust in someone’s front yard
• How to recognize a dust storm coming and close all my doors and windows in 15 seconds
• How to fit 60 students into back of flat-bed truck
• That students spend more time planning where to hide their cheat-sheets than actually studying for a test
• How to spot a cheat-sheet on anybody – under the chair, in the blouse, on the desk, written on their hands, written on their pants, up their sleeve, in their pencil box…
• How to find gratification in failing students who cheat
• How to wait…
• How to avoid having a break down at the bank even though it seems like the only option
• How to organize huge events without anything reliable to trust
• How to walk across Chimoio with $5,000 worth of cash for a project and not get robbed
• That I am never invisible in this country, even in my own house
• That people are ungrateful
• That people steal
• That few people understand why we are in this country
• That no matter how much time I spend in this country and how much it feels like home to me, I will always be white
• That my garbage pile will never last more than a day outside because there are things in my garbage more valuable that any of some people’s possessions
• That I will never truly understand what it’s like to be poor
• That police in Mozambique are idiots
• That people take justice into their own hands
• That if you steal a lady’s purse on a chapa the community will chase you down and beat you before turning you in to the police
• That corruption is insidious and impossible to confront
• That men have caused every problem this country is facing
• That women are blamed for every problem this country is facing
• That the best spot in a chapa is one of the middle seats in the third row back (you don’t have to get out every time someone else wants to get out, and you’re not next to the window if it rolls in an accident)
• To not sit in the front left side of a coach bus because you might get impaled by giant wooden rods if the bus hits a truck while trying to pass it in the middle of the night
• That people die in this country
• How to not talk about HIV/AIDS even when you know 1 in 5 people are dying of it
• That there is only enough ARV medication in the country to give to the people that have advanced stages of AIDS and are already near death
• That I’ve always taken my family for granted
• That when someone grows up without a family that cares about them, they grow up without any idea of what is right or wrong or what is important
• That as a teacher you can’t teach someone if they don’t want to learn
• That most girls don’t believe in themselves
• That students sleep with teachers regularly to get passing grades and the students are always blamed when they get caught
• That I will never change the core beliefs of this country that are bringing it down from within
• That despite all of this I love Mozambique
• That a day on a white sandy beach with azure water makes me forget all if the problems Mozambique has
• That there are people who care in this country
• That for every 10 students who cheat and daydream in class there is one who learns and asks questions and wants to achieve something more in his or her life
• That for every 10 girls that write themselves off as weak and subordinate there is one who realizes that she can do something more than just bare children and wash dishes in her life
• That for every 10 people dying of AIDS there is one who takes care of him or herself and lives long enough to help spread the message of prevention
• That my time in Mozambique was not wasted
• That for every 10 people who see me and only think “white,” there is one who takes the time to get to know me and together we can make a difference in each other’s lives

This is my list. It’s a little bit like how my experience is floating around in my brain now. It’s difficult to put it all together into one coherent theme. You can only pick out a few strands at a time and analyze them individually. Just like a mosaic, I feel that eventually I will be able to step back and evaluate what this experience has meant to me on a larger level, but until then I have these shorts clips to look at, each one providing me with an aspect of life here in Mozambique that I will take back with me to the states. If I had made a list of expectations two years ago as I was packing my bags and getting ready to come to Mozambique, would it have looked like the list I just wrote? Not even close. That’s life though. You take what’s given to you and try to benefit from it as best you can, even if it’s nothing like what you expected.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. It was interesting for me to write and forced me to think back on all of the varied experiences I’ve had here in Mozambique. I’m sure the list will grow as I remember more things and add new experiences over the next couple of months. Here at site, I’m getting ready for the end. Next weekend I am organizing the same regional English Theater competition that I organized last year, so that is consuming a lot of my time now, but I am looking forward to it. I still need to write about my family’s visit back in August and a number of things that have happened since then, so stay tuned and I will hopefully be writing more soon!

The Long and Winding Road of Mozambique

It's 7 o'clock in the evening and it is pitch black.  Although I know there will be a moon later, the weather is chilly and overcast, so not even the familiar forms of stars in the night sky are visible.  When I rub my hands together I can still feel the dust of daytime layering my skin.  Now, in the cool darkness, the dust is settling, but earlier in the day it had been flying freely, billowing into unprotected eyes, and giving a fresh layer of brown to anyone bold even to have bathed or washed clothes that morning.  The landscape this time of year, August in Mozambique, is a monotone brown and the Mozambicans, with their already cracked and coffee colored skin, blend in to the landscape. 

I sit down on top of my bag and begin something that I’ve become adept at in the past year and a half in Mozambique—waiting.  I have just come from Maputo, the capital city, on a twelve hour bus ride and have been dropped off at the intersection to my school.  Here I must wait for a car from my school, a private catholic mission, to make the 25km trek from the mission out to the intersection to pick me up, along with the other patients that are waiting to be brought in to the hospital.

This is not explicitly a new experience for me.  Every time I enter the mission I am forced to play this waiting game.  One generally tries to arrive as early as possible to the intersection and waits anywhere from 15 minutes to 6 hours for a car to appear through the dust.  What is unique about today, however, is that I arrived to the intersection after dark.  When I arrived, it was 6 p.m. and the sun was bending around the horizon and coating the landscape in a fading yellow light.  Now, at 7 p.m. all vestiges of light are gone and I’m sitting in darkness. There is no electricity here which means there are no street lights, lit houses, or blaring music.  Save for a cooking fire at a home across the street and the whispers of a few scant conversations, it is eerily quiet and dark as I wait. 

Locals say that this is not a good idea.  The darkness in Mozambique is owned by bandits, thieves, and, worst of all, evil spirits.  Sitting there on the road in the dark, one is disposed to the whims of all three.  Unfortunately, on this night, I have no choice.  I must wait until a car comes.  Thus, I lean back onto my bag and let my imagination wander.  My mind drifts to the trip I am now returning from: a four week break from school which included a long and arduous journey through the burnt Mozambican landscape on foot, the climbing of the tallest mountain in Mozambique, and a visit from my parents in the States.

It all began on the last week of school in the second trimester.  The idea had been smoldering in my mind for a year and a half now, ever since I arrived in Mangunde.  I wanted to walk to Dombe.  Dombe is a town with a school in the neighboring province of Manica where two other Peace Corps volunteers live and teach.  By car, one has to follow the tortuous whims of African roads and the trip could be 200 kilometers and take five or six hours.  Students have told me, however, that there is a shortcut.  If we cut across the river and veer directly west out of the mission instead of taking the road to the east and curving back around, we could cut the distance in half and walk there in two days.

Adding to the quixotic allure of such a trip, there is a legend that any volunteer who has lived in Mangunde knows well.  You only have to be in Mangunde a few days before you will surely hear an older student or another professor drop the names “Teacher James” followed by his impressive list of accomplishments achieved here in Mangunde.  James was one of the first Peace Corps volunteers to arrive at Mangunde and the only volunteer thus far to extend for a third year here.  He is revered for his impact on the community and remembered with a demigod-like zeal among his former acquaintances.  When listing his résumé, people will often mention most importantly that James once rode his bicycle all the way to Dombe in one day.  It always stuck in my mind as something I would like to do.  As my bicycle grew into further disrepair, however, and the weekends filled with project activities and schoolwork, the thought drifted out of my head at some point and I resigned to be vanquished again by Teacher James. 

Just when I had forgotten about my ambition to make it to Dombe, fate took a sudden turn in my direction.  The Ministry of Education decided last minute and without warning to push forward by two weeks the school break that separates the second and third trimesters.  I had planned for my parents to come visit during the school break and their plane tickets had already been purchased for the two weeks in which the previous break had been.  Now, however, school was getting out early and I had two weeks to kill with no plans.  Mike and I seized the opportunity to plan a long awaited journey; a journey that would not only best the deified James, but also give us an opportunity to discover the unique Mozambican landscape and become acquainted with people far removed from the relative bubble of development that exists here on the mission.

We quickly devised a plan and, like a climbing expedition preparing for Everest, we assembled a team of skilled accomplices.  First, we would need a guide.  While I knew roughly the direction that Dombe was in, I had never walked more than an hour or two away from the mission in either direction, and if we were going to try to reach Dombe, we would need a local who has walked there before.  Luckily, my good friend and counterpart for my JUNTOS youth group, Alberto, was the man for the job.  After talking to him about our expedition, I found out that when Alberto was a child, he had fled from the war on foot into Zimbabwe via the same path that we were planning on using to get to Dombe, and claimed to know the area well.  In addition, Alberto also had a sister that currently lived on the path to Dombe, roughly halfway to our destination where we would be able to spend the night on our way. 

When other Peace Corps volunteers got wind of our proposed voyage, they quickly showed interest, and, before we knew it, we were a cohort of eight men, packing our bags for the journey across Mozambique.  Comprising our team were Dylan (D-train) and David (Marshall) from Estaquinha, Mac (Mac Daddy) and Micah (The Cleveland Steamer) from Machanga, Mike and I from Mangunde, our trusty guide Alberto, and a student named Agostinho making his way home to Dombe for the holidays.  The night before the trip we all gathered at Mangunde and consolidated our resources.  We would need enough food and water to get us through at least two days of hiking through the dry African bush.  We filled our bags with water bottles, cans of tuna, bread, and oranges and, at 5 a.m. the next morning we set out through the morning fog for Dombe.

Not 15 minutes into our hike and we came to our first challenge.  We would have to cross the crocodile infested waters of the Buzi River.  Students from the boarding school often bathed in the river and claimed to know the areas which were safe from the dangerous crocodiles.  We stepped cautiously, however, into the knee-deep water of the Buzi and waded through, our eyes darting around for suspicious looking logs and movement in the reeds.  After we had reached the far bank, I told the others of my first day in Mangunde, when I visited the local clinic and saw two young boys bandaged from head to toe after having been attacked by crocodiles while crossing the river at the very same location. 

After the Buzi River, we had nothing but the dry inhospitable African landscape in between us and Dombe.  Alberto told us that we wouldn’t see another river until we arrived in Dombe some 100 kilometers in front of us.  So we walked.  We walked out of the chiefdom of Mangunde and into the chiefdom of Dongonda.  After Dongonda we would enter Gunye, where we were planning to spend the first night. 

As we walked Alberto explained to me the system of governance in rural Mozambique.  The country of Mozamibique, which is twice the size of California, is broken into 10 provinces which are, in turn, divided into districts.  Within each district there are various chiefdoms each with their respective chief who represents them.  In the more urban and developed areas of Mozambique, the chiefs are largely ceremonial and the power is wielded from the elected government positions – the president, governors, and administrators – in rural areas like Dongonda and Mangunde, however, the central government is all but absent, and the authority in each community is exercised by the chief within his chiefdom. 

Places like Dongonda and Mangunde hardly ever see the government or the government’s money.  As we walked and tired, step after step, we saw how true this was.  For almost six hours we walked without seeing a town, school, health clinic or even a water pump.  The population in these stretches was understandably scant with such a scarcity of water.  Every hour or so we would pass by a traveler on his bicycle with two 20-liter jerry-cans strapped to the back of his bike, or a small group of women walking with a basin of clothes or a jerry-can of water on their heads.  I always asked Alberto where they were coming from and where they were going, and he would respond that they were bringing water home from the nearest pump, in some cases, up to two hours away on a bicycle.

In the late afternoon, after ten hours or so of walking, we came to our first water pump.  The sun was already beginning to set and we could anticipate that we were approaching something important by the increased density of people we began to pass.  Suddenly, there were crowds of women with jugs of water on their heads walking adroitly by us, their bodies floating by statuesquely to balance the water, but the faces animatedly gossiping about this or that; kids scampering by us throwing rocks into massanica trees to try to coax the unripe fruits free for an afternoon snack; and bicyclists whizzing by on the dirt path ringing their bells for us to make space in the road for them to pass.

As we neared the water pump people had no idea how to react to us.  Everything about us was ostentatious and we had no way of blending in.  We were white, we were men, and even the shortest of us was bigger than the brawny but miniature-sized women we encountered on the path.  Some women and children would simply run out of fear.  They would see us coming, and bolt in the opposite direction, eventually darting off the path into a thicket of brush to watch us pass by.  When I asked Alberto why they were running, he would tell me they thought the war was starting again and they were running to hide.  Others, not knowing what to do, played the deference card.  Assuming that all white men were high ranking officials, they would stand to the side and kneel, lowering their heads to the ground the way a serf would bow to his or her lord. 

When we finally arrived at the pump, we were in desperate need of water and rejuvenation.  The ten hours of non-stop walking had broken most of our bodies, and while our spirits were still high, we were flagging fast.  We sat down under a tree and all removed our shoes to survey the damage.  Dylan had two blisters the size of quarters on the sides of his toes and Mike had a four-inch long blister on the bottom of his foot.  The others weary travelers didn’t fare much better and by this point we were all walking in a kind of blister-inflicted hobble. 

We walked over to the pump to fill our water bottles and the 20 women surrounding the pump stopped what they were doing and looked at us.  We were too close for them to run, and they didn’t want to lose their spot in line, so they just stopped and stared.  Did they think we were soldiers pillaging the landscape, European diplomats from Maputo, or a group of oversized nomadic albinos?  Well, whatever they thought, it worked to our benefit because we handed them our water bottles and our VIP status took us to the front of the watering line to get our bottles filled and let us get on our way.

The last few hours of the first day were tenuous, with us growing continually dispirited and having to alter our strides to only step on the few square inches of unblistered skin we had left on our ailing feet.  Finally, at around 7 p.m. after 14 hours of nearly non-stop hiking we walked into a small homestead of mud and stick huts and were greeted by Alberto’s sister.  We deduced from the map that we had walked about 60 kilometers that day.

Her family’s compound was humble, but not impoverished.  There were at least four small huts spread around a small dirt clearing, and there were two fires raging in front of us with home-made wooden chairs spaced invitingly around the fires.  Alberto’s sister welcomed us all without speaking, kissing our cheeks and motioning to the chairs circling the fire.  Like most people living this deep in the bush, neither she nor any of her family members spoke Portuguese and we were forced to communicate with her through Alberto or a series of crude hand gestures and butchered local language.  After she greeted us, she scurried back to her fire and sat back down with the rest of her family, leaving us, the guests, to the fire which had the nicest chairs around it.  I imagined that in preparation for our arrival she had frantically visited all of the neighbors to borrow their best chairs.  Most families only have a few good chairs that can be pulled out spur-of-the-moment to entertain a passing guest.

I also wondered how she got news of our arrival.  They have no phone, certainly no email, and no mailbox.  When I asked Alberto this he said that he ran into his niece at the water pump a few hours back and told her to run home and start preparing the food and chairs.  I felt a tinge of guilt for imposing so freely.  This was not a well-off family and to provide food for eight hungry men was no drop in the bucket, especially in a year of drought like this year when so many were already suffering from hunger.  I shored myself by realizing how bedrock it is in Mozambican culture to receive guests.  Whereas in the states it would be considered unthinkable to show up at a stranger’s house unannounced expecting food and a bed, in Mozambique the burden of the host is foundational. People will drop what they are doing, feed and bath you without a second thought. 

That evening we were fed steaming plates of xima with chicken stew.  I felt even guiltier because chicken is a very special delicacy for poor families like Alberto’s sister.  They might eat chicken or goat only a few times a year, saving them for holidays and special occasions.  Throughout the entire night, as we tended our wounds and rested around the fire, only the bravest children of the family had the courage to come explore us, listening to our strange tongue, and probing our peculiar hair.  The rest of the family stayed safely away, watching us and listening from a distance.  Most Mozambican households have multiple related families living in the same compound and will generally have two fires, one reserved for the men, the other for the women and children.  Tonight was no different and again I felt a pang of guilt for falling so easily into the gender norms.

The next morning we woke early with the intent of getting on the road shortly after dawn, but it was a frosty morning and we felt no other compulsion than to sit around the fire and wait for the sun to pick up its intensity.  As we repacked our bags and ate the oranges we brought we had to turn down our host’s offer to make and serve breakfast to us. It would have delayed us and depleted more of their precious food stock that we already felt guilty about raiding.  Thus, around 6 a.m. we got on road and buried our heads into the 40 kilometers or so that we knew we would have to walk to arrive to Dombe that afternoon.

The second day of walking wasn’t as romantic as the first had been.  The blisters that we all had didn’t heal overnight and, save for an initial burst of energy out the door, we quickly slowed and took on the hobble that had characterized our previous afternoon.  With our packs on, trudging through the burnt landscape, day two felt more like a military march than a vacation.  Talking ceased as we focused on putting one foot in front of the other. 

The landscape was not beautiful.  August in Mozambique is the height of the dry season.  It hadn’t rained since February and the moisture in the air had all but vanished.  What was left was a sea of yellow grassland with a few brown trees spotting the area.  In most areas the dying brown grass had been burnt by farmers and hunters leaving the soil black with tufts of charred grass and streaks of white ash.  What was left was an eerie desolation that seemed almost apocalyptic. 

We thought we would get to Dombe shortly after lunch.  This turned out to be misinformation and our collective morale plummeted.  As we were eating lunch we were told we had a solid three to four hours left and would be lucky to make it by nightfall.  That’s when things got hairy.  Tempers rose, we broke rank, some fell behind and other pushed ahead in desperation.  When we finally arrived at the river that marked the entrance to Dombe, we were too tired to even celebrate.  I arrived first, took my shoes off and washed my feet in the river as I waited for the others.  I don’t know if it was the exhaustion or the contrast with the burnt landscape, but the river was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.  The sun, now a watercolor of pink and violet, painted the horizon as it dipped into the river upstream.  Set to this backdrop there was a hub of activity at the river.  Canoes made of hollowed out tree trunks were shuttling men and women across the river who were anxious to make it home before dark.  One canoes sat on the banks of the river abandoned and half submerged in the water.  The sun reflected off the water in the boat, giving it a purple hue that not even my camera could capture.

We were told that this river was particularly infested with crocodiles and it seemed too wide and deep to wade through anyway, so we approached a boatman who assured us that all eight of us could fit on his boat for five meticals per person.  Seeing the dilapidated canoe he was proposing to fit us all in, we laughed.  We weren’t about to come this far just to see our canoe capsize and get eaten by crocodiles.  Therefore, we decided to split up into three groups to make the crossing in the rickety canoes.  When we reached the other side it finally hit us that we had done it—100 kilometers, two days and a lot a of blisters—we had walked to Dombe.

I open my eyes and hear the sound of talking on my left.  In the blinding night I can just barely make out the shape of a cluster of five or six women.  They are clearly patients, waiting for the same car that I’m waiting for in order to get to the hospital in Mangunde.  They call out, “Teacher,” and my head jerks up out of my wandering imagination.  We exchange salutations and they ask me if I know anything about a car being sent from the mission.  I called the manager a few hours earlier in hopes that he would send a car to pick me up at the intersection and, like he always tells me, he urged me to relax and trust him, there would be a car…he just didn’t say when.  As the minutes tick by, however, I begin to wonder if this car is, indeed, coming.  I assure the women that I have spoken to the manager and a car is on its way, but I realize that I am forcing myself to sound more confident that I really am.  This has happened before—once I showed up at the intersection with a promised ride, waited for three hours and finally received a phone call telling me the car had problems and wasn’t going to make it.  Better find a place to stay there.  I ended up riding into Muxungue and staying on the floor in the house of a complete stranger that I had met that day on the bus.  He served my dinner and breakfast the next morning and I thanked him for his hospitality.  As hospitable as he was, I don’t want to have to do that tonight. 

Just when I am considering my emergency plan, however, I hear the distant roar of a motor and see headlights peak out from around the bend up ahead.  The ladies let out a cheer of relief, as they don’t want to be stuck out here in the cold with the bandits and spirits any more than I do, and quickly arrange their things to get a good seat in the car.  When the truck pulls up, I am immediately given the first seat and the women wait for their names to be checked off the list to enter the car. What will happen if there is not enough space for all of them?  That is not an option.  This is what happens so often in Mozambique.  You make room, sacrifice safety, and compromise your comfort because there is simply no other option.  All 12 of us pile into the back of the truck, stepping on each other’s toes and sitting on laps in order to all get into the closed back truck.  The engine revs, I closed my eyes again, and before I know it, I am back at home.