Been a while…

It’s March 21, 2013, which means that I’ve been here for something like six months now.  And six months gives you a lot of time to reflect, especially when you don’t have much else to do but plunge into the depths of your own mind and think.

Strange how even in a place where progress seems to crawl, life still sprints by.   It’s been a while since I actually sat down to type something and there are a number of reasons for that.  For one, school has been getting the best of me and I’ve really wanted to try and focus on writing lesson plans to better prepare myself.  While my language has gotten better – or at least I have gotten to a point where the kids can at least understand what I’m trying to get across – now I just feel like a crappy teacher.  I assign homework and give tests, but the majority of the time these kids can’t do anything because they still have no idea how to add.

It’s crazy to think that so many kids could have slipped through the cracks, but when you truly experience the system that’s in place here, sadly, it makes perfect sense.  Just like in the states, most kids don’t like school; what’s different here though, is that there’s no one trying to motivate them to change that opinion.  The value of an education isn’t really demonstrated and is rarely acknowledged.

Alas, I’m just as guilty as anyone else.  I just can’t seem to figure out how to motivate them, and that’s something I’m currently struggling with.  I don’t want to threaten them with failing grades or detention, but I also don’t want to be too laid back. This would give them the impression that they can take advantage of me.  And they will, if given even the slightest opportunity to do so.

So, I’m currently in the process of trying to figure out how to better incorporate experiments and demonstrations into my lessons.  I figure, why try and explain a concept when I can just as easily demonstrate it.  The problem now, is how to demonstrate concepts of Atomic and Nuclear Physics in a bare-bones high-school classroom.  Good luck.

So anyways, Thursday’s are the end of my week, and easily my favorite day.  My last class gets out around 1130am, and after having spent the previous six and a half days tolerating the stress of life as a Peace Corps Volunteer (re-teaching myself physics, trying to come up with creative ways to present what I’ve just re-learned, writing lesson plans, grading copied homework, giving impromptu English classes, reminiscing about home and thinking about everything I’m missing, wondering what my friends and family are doing, being careful not to use up all my stored water, wondering when the power will come back on, cursing my cell phone service provider because I don’t have service again, missing a constant connection to the internet, not being able to eat burritos, etc.), I can take an afternoon to myself and do absolutely anything I want.  So today, I decided to write.

My Neighbor just told me

I am completely and utterly fascinated by the history of this country. It has somewhat of a Pavlov-ian effect on me.  Anytime, anywhere I am, all someone has to do is mention something about the war, and my curiosity peaks all the while my mouth starts to drool.

It’s weird to think that I was alive while the war here was raging.  While I was using plastic guns to play fake war with my friends back home, my Mozambican counterparts (some the same age as me) were playing actual war with real ones.  During two wars that raged for over 25 years, entire villages were burned to the ground, children were recruited to be soldiers and their parents were killed or forced into slavery, families were literally torn apart appendage by appendage, hundreds of thousands were buried across the country in mass graves, and millions of people were forced to flee the land their families had occupied for centuries.  It was mass starvation, endemic poverty, malnutrition, trauma, and severe psychological damage to all those who were involved.  It was mass murder and the self-destruction of an entire nation.

It’s been 20 years since the Rome General Peace Accords ended the Civil War between FRELIMO and RENAMO, but war is still very much fresh on the minds of those that survived the horror.  How could they forget?  It doesn’t help that the world around them constantly seems to produce unwanted reminders of what they went through.

My neighbor just told me that sometimes when people in the Nampula Province (where he’s from) burn their trash (this is typically how people dispose of it, though in Montepuez the city administrator has started a collection program, something that is unique to both this region and country), every once in a while the fire will set off latent bullets that liter the ground, left behind from the war that ended two decades ago.

The bullets are there for a number of reasons.  Could be that they were purposely put there along with a number of other dangerous toys, stored and then forgotten about (or worse) by people making a makeshift weapons cache underground that would be easily accessible if the need to arm oneself ever arose.  Or maybe it was a bullet that dropped out of someone’s vest 20 years ago.  Maybe it was a dud.  Doesn’t matter how it got there; what matters is that it’s terrifying that this threat actually exists.  Imagine going into your yard to ignite your trash or dead brush, and then being inadvertently ripped in half by a spray of forgotten bullet’s someone decided to dump on your property prior to it being your property.

Luckily, the thought of erratic trash bullets ripping across your machamba is easily forgotten when you start to remember that this is Mozambique, and you have way bigger things to worry.  This country has an incredibly fresh and vicious past that left us a ton of reminders with which to remember it.  Aside from the intangible cultural mementos, there are a plethora of physical souvenirs as well.  And these little trinkets like to explode.

Over the course of two wars that spanned nearly thirty years, hundreds of thousands of landmines – potentially millions – were laid from the northern border with Tanzania to the areas that surround Maputo, the capital city in the far south.  That’s a distance over two California’s in length.  And most of that is bush.  Although an incredible amount of effort has been put into clearing these mine fields (the UN is using rats that have been trained to detect mines!) and making the country safe to explore off-road once more, there are still areas that are not only heavily mined, but poorly marked as well. And then you think, "Well, shit...at least a bullet sometimes lets you keep your leg."

Climbing Market Mountain

Today I made some of my kids take me up on of the mountains that flanks our town.  It has a name already, but I can't pronounce it without being laughed at, so I just call it Market Mountain (since it looks over the central market).  Anyways, sorry for the short post, but here are some pictures of Montepuez from above!

Cultural Tid-Bits

My friend Elizabeth is visiting me this weekend.  She’s come to town to run some errands, stock up on supplies, and spend five hours on a Saturday standing in line at the bank waiting for the 55 people in line in front of her to let their friends cut, and then use anywhere from one to eight different bank cards to make a withdrawal from the one functioning ATM Machine (I’ll rant about the bank, and Mozambican Bank Etiquette at some other point in time). 

Anyways, my friend Elizabeth just sneezed.  And, out of instinct, I responded by wishing her good health.  In the states, this is just something we do.  It’s a result of a tradition that developed in the past, maybe in Europe, where people believed that when you sneezed, your soul was trying to escape…or something like that.  By saying something after someone sneezes, you are essentially helping to shove their escaping soul right back down their windpipes to wherever it is that a soul resides.  This little action is a part of our culture, and normally, it’s not really something anyone would ever think twice about. We just do it.  But today, after doing, it sparked a firestorm inside my head.

I was already in a weird sort of “Oh shit, that’s right, I live like 10,000 miles from my family” emotional state (I think I’m feeling a little homesick because the emo-punk rock music we’re listening to keeps sending me back in time to flashbacks of high school), and it evoked a deep introspective moment about sneezing.  As I dove into my own thoughts, I pondered how a little action like saying “Bless you” or “Salude” or “Gazudteit” exemplifies one of the many customs that define our culture, and subsequently who we are.  Then it made me think about some of the cultural tid-bits they have here.  Boy are they different.  And then it made me miss home even more.

So now for some Mozambican Cultural Tid-Bits:

• I’m always surprised by how often people tell me they wish they had my skin and hair.  It’s like they seem to hate the color of their skin.  I don’t understand why.  Mozambicans have these gorgeous smooth, dark complexions, flawless and unscathed by white people problems like sun-burns and acne, yet, they don’t seem to like their own color.  Maybe it’s kind of like how white people don’t like their color either.  They go to tanning salons and the beach in hopes of changing as well.  Maybe it really isn’t such a cultural difference.  Maybe it’s inherent in all of us that nothing is ever really good enough and sometimes everyone wants to be someone else.
• Nose picking, it’s not really an issue here.  In the states, you wouldn’t dare do it public.  Some people in the states don’t even like doing it in private.  But here, that couldn’t be further from the case.  Five or six times a day I will be talking to someone – boy or girl, man or woman – who will instinctively go digging for candy in their nose right in the middle of our conversation.  They don’t even think twice about it, they just shove a finger right up that hole and go to work.  It usually doesn’t last too long, but it’s one of those scenes that seems to move in slow-mo because of how disgusted you are.  As soon as they find what they're looking for, they pull the finger out, give it a little flick, and without missing a beat, they keep on conversing.
• Alcohol.  Mozambican’s love alcohol.  As a result, drunk driving is really common here too.  And to say that it’s frustrating is an understatement.  Aside from the obvious danger of losing your life, what confuses me is the contradiction that exists within a culture that is so obsessed with wanting and having money, yet completely careless when it comes to taking care of personal possessions.  I hate this topic, so I’m going to continue to put off writing anything more about it so as to avoid snapping my computer in half out of frustration.
• Chapa Foot.  It is impossible to describe how uncomfortable your foot gets during chapa rides. You can't ever lay it flat, and after a certain amount of time, you start to feel something that I like to call “Chapa Foot.”  First, the front hurts, then you make a casual shift and soon after the back start to hurt too.  Then the joint gets sore and your foot locks up.  The pain is intense, but you can’t do anything about it because of how tightly compacted you are into your bench seat.  Suicidal thoughts start to creep into your mind, or at least the idea that if you chop off your leg a little below the knee, you’ll never have to deal with this excruciating calamity.  But then you come to your senses.  Who wants to go out like that?  Who wants to lose a leg because you were upset about a foot.  Chapa Foot, it’s not really cultural, but it’s still something I’ve had to get used to here.  And it’s stupid and it sucks.
• I constantly hear popular American/Mozambican pop music throughout the day, all day.  It blasts from speakers that someone across the street has and starts when the sun comes up.  It sometimes doesn’t end till really, really late at night.  Sometimes I get jealous of those who don’t have electricity.  Lucky folks get to avoid hearing the same Rihanna song fifteen times a day.

North to Macomia!

FINALLY!  I FINALLY left site.  And it feels good to get out.  This past weekend, I as well as my site-mates Anna and Mireya (I don’t think I’ve mentioned her yet, but she lives with Anna, and is equally awesome), took a trip to Macomia this past weekend to visit a friend for her birthday.  A big group of us had planned to meet up there and celebrate together.  Gatherings like are like breathing a big sigh of relief as it gives us a chance to escape for a little while and pretend we’re in America again.  American food (sort of), American People, and American Language.  And now I’m homesick.

 

Macomia is like a bush-oasis.  About half way between Montepuez and Pemba, you take a left at Silva Macua and drive north along a paved road that takes you through some genuine African matu all the way to Mozambique’s northern border with Tanzania.  After about 100 km, you’re greeted by a Gas Station as you first enter the rustic looking mountain town of Macomia.  The settlement catches you by surprise, as for the last two to three hours, you passed nothing but forests spotted with the occasional thatched-roof hut and macamba.  Then, all of a sudden, you find yourself in the middle of a bustling market that seems to specialize in extravagant Capulans, soft serve ice cream (one flavor, usually a twist of strawberry and vanilla), dirty Majimbwe (it’s a root that looks like daikon from the outside, but has an inside that’s more like a potato with little fibers woven throughout), and honey that looks so fresh it’s like the seller has an active honeycomb in his back pocket that he uses to fill the used plastic water bottles he’s selling it in.  Everyone is selling honey, and it’s dirt cheap; Winnie the Poo’s dream.

Splitting off perpendicular to the North-South Road, is Macomia’s main throughway.  It’s paved, but who knows for how much longer.  Little by little, the already cracked and worn down pavement is slowly being reclaimed by the earth with each new rainstorm.  There are points along the roadway where you need to pay attention to where you are walking so as to avoid falling off the side of the road because a huge chunk of pavement is missing.

Where intact, the road is gorgeous. It’s lined with coconut trees and runs in practically a straight line right up the face of the mountain, only turning once it disappears behind the mountains first apex.   The secondary school caps the town’s mountain, and my friends live up there right next to it.  It’s a hike, but really a magnificent one.  Takes nearly an hour if you’re on foot, but a convenient boleia (hitchhike) can get you up there in less than 5 minutes.

Walking down the mountain towards the Market.  Straight Shot.

When we weren’t exploring the city, we were engaged in genuine American debauchery, highlighted by a late night dare to play a game of Mozambican Ding Dong Ditch on our friends drunk neighbors who had been hanging out with us earlier.  Here we call it “Com Le Sensa Ditch” and it involves going up to a house and “sensa”-ing (this is what people do here instead of ringing doorbells ), and then running away.  It sounds sophomoric, and it totally was.  What can I say, I guess we were eager to share a little bit of American culture with our new friends.

We spent the days eating in the city, and the night cooking up a feast and subsequently stuffing our faces with food.  This seems to be the common activity at these get-togethers, and I’m surely not going to complain.  Chicken and Chili on day one, followed by some more chicken and beer-battered reef-fish on day two.  Although it was still pretty awesome, I have yet to find chicken as good as what I had in Namaacha (not even in Montepuez, but I’m gonna keep looking).

Overall the trip was great and has gotten me really excited to continue exploring this amazing country.  Getting there was easy, particularly because of the transportation situation.  I can only hope tht in the future, I can get as lucky.  We caught what turned out to be a pretty comfortable chapa to Silva Macua (it was really just a guy in a private car going to Pemba who wanted us pay to ride with him), and were then offered a free ride all the way to Macomia by two exuberant guys driving a customized Toyota Helix with an incredibly efficient air conditioning system.  Also, they drove about 120 km/hour the entire way, so we got there really fast.  We weren’t so lucky during the ride home, but we made it back in one piece.  All’s well that ends well, right?

View from the Top, with Elizabeth, Marin and Eryn.

Africa, and its street goats.

This dude get's to wake up to this view every day.  Except it looks better cause he didn't drop his eye balls in a bucket of water.

Colonial buildings in Macomia.

I demand more goats.  Please.