Several Months ago I facilitated the communication between the small community NGO which I have been placed with and the foreign aid department of the Japanese embassy to Mozambique. The discussions ended with my org proposing the construction of two HIV/AIDS information centers. After a few months of deliberation a guy from the Japanese embassy came out to meet us to make a preliminary assessment as to whether or not the plan is realistic and worth funding.
The Japanese man spoke much better English than Portuguese so I helped with some of the communication. He actually had dual citizenship because he was born in the US while his parents were working there. So, after he graduated college he did Peace Corps El Salvador. So it was cool getting to talk with him and compare notes.
My org was really good about contacting local government and community networks for the preliminary assessment. We spoke with several levels of local government and health care. Then we went to the proposed construction sites and spoke with the heads of households from families that lived close by. Almost none of these people spoke Portuguese. The heads of household would speak their local language, one person would translate that into Portuguese and then I would translate that into English. My supervisor at my org speaks a different local language so he was as lost as I was.
When we had finished with our last community meeting the neighborhood head asked the Japanese man to take a look at their closest health center. We went through some small, rough dirt roads until we arrived at a very large hospital complex. Most of the buildings were abandoned, only one was really in use. Even the building in use was in heavy disrepair, there were rats everywhere and a couple holes in the walls big enough for a child to walk through. There was no electricity and no running water, all the water was carried in from a well. There were two nurses that work there and one of them only works 3 days a week. There were two operating beds and two beds with mosquito nets over them that are used for pregnant women. Those 4 beds are the only furniture. All the surgical tools are kept in a bowl of water. They are cleaned with plain water, no money for soap and no money for any type of anti-septic. They basically just didn't have money for anything, there was one cupboard and it was almost completely empty. It basically seems that the only things they do have are left over equipment from the colonial era of the late 60s. Ironically this spot (were no one is educated enough to speak Portuguese and they have a heavily under resourced health center) is about 20 min drive from possibly the most expensive tourist town in Mozambique where there are very large and very extravagant resorts for wealthy tourists. When I went into the nice town it was like a whole other world. And then I went to “Beer Olympics”-Beer Olympics:
For one weekend each year all the peace corps volunteers from all over Mozambique get together at a beach side hostel for what is officially known as “Beach Beer Olympics.” For some it is the greatest weekend of excitement out of the year. For others it is a worthless endeavor that embodies all the reasons for which they did NOT join peace corps. For the Peace Corps Mozambique HQ administration it is the shame of our presence as an active development and cultural exchange program. The idea is thus: everyone from all over the country joins up and rents out the whole hostel right next to the beach. Then we have a series of drinking game competitions where teams are divided between the North, central, or southern parts of Mozambique. The region that wins the most becomes the champion for the year and gets a trophy.
I had no idea what to really expect. There were lots of images of debauchery and loud drunken 20 somethings running up and down the beach being obnoxious. In reality, the weekend was pretty tranquil. Each day by 10 am everyone was sitting in the water with beer in hand, that lasted all day with the exception of eating lunch. By the time the sun had gone down, everyone was so tired from drinking beer and sitting in the sun all day that most people went to sleep by 9 pm. Then they just got up in the morning and did the same thing promising themselves that they would stay out latter the next night and really go for it. The first night I think a 10th of the group stayed out late and the second night maybe a 5th. In the end it was almost disappointing how un debauchery the weekend was. But at the end of the weekend I was happy having been given the opportunity to chill out on the beach and relax with some friends for a couple days.
The good bye party
one weekend a group of friends all got together at the site of an outgoing volunteer couple. They had spent 2 and a half years in Mozambique together and lived in a small town as a school teacher and a community health promoter. They organized a big feast and party for all of their friends in Peace Corps and in their town. In truth, where they actually lived was on the grounds of a Methodist compound (where the school was also located). This compound was built by Germans so it looks like a small Bavarian village built on top of a hill in the middle of African bush landscape. All the buildings have high, A frame, tile roofs and stone walls and in the corner is a stone Gothic style chapel.
All the food was cooked out of giant metal pots that were cooked over wood fires. I helped cut potatoes before they were thrown in a giant pot of hot oil, they were quickly taken out so they could not get crispy, and then placed to the side to cool down because Mozambiquans prefer fries to be soft and cool.
After the meal various members of the community gave going away gifts to the two exiting volunteers. This was the most touching part of the evening as everyone got up and sang the same song and then one by one each of the members of the community gave their gifts and said their goodbyes.Then everyone went back to the house of the couple and put on loud music and danced all together for several hours. There was a lot of “sura” (a wine made from the sap of coconut trees) and the Mozambiquans were loving it. The peace corps volunteers mostly just tried to keep it down, its a little foul tasting. One of the men from the community had too much sura and he was refusing to leave when the party was over. After some time of arguing, myself an another guy convinced him to leave, but ten min later he came back through the rickety side gate. Then after some more arguing we got him to leave and we built a barricade out of random pieces of wood and metal. At the least it would have made a lot of noise if anyone would have tried to get in again. Victory :)
Birthday BBQ and Film Festival
There is an English volunteer in my city as well. He is with basically the English version of the peace corps. He has been a really great friend over the past few months, so when it came to be his birthday I wanted to do something awesome. So I decided to make American style BBQ chicken for him. I had a grill previously made for my birthday, so we set that up in his backyard, a friend made some home made BBQ sauce and we had a legitimate BBQ feast amongst 10 or so people. Unfortunately I took the chicken out too soon at first and several people bit into some raw flesh...oops.
The next day we went to the Film festival that was taking place in town. There is a small, run down, one screen theater in town. The inside is all falling apart but back in the 60s it must have been a really cool art deco interior with geometric lamp chandeliers and broad designs along the walls. Once a year for the past 3 years there has been a three day film festival in town. They played only African made films and they are in Portuguese or have Portuguese subtitles. I learned a lot about an organization started by an Austrian musician and a UK couple. It is called “Positivo” and they do social change work through music, where the lyrics are in effect written by the population that is being targeted for behavior change. One example is high risk teenagers writing out why they felt uncomfortable taking the HIV test, then writing counter arguments to those reasons. Then the musicians make lyrics out of the counter arguments and then a song and then they give out the CDs for free to the teenagers in the area.
I was very proud of myself because I and a fellow Peace Corps volunteer gave a small presentation (in Portuguese) on the HIV prevalence in our Provence and the need for prevention and also reduction of stigma and acceptance of HIV positive people. It was a little awkwardly pulled off because audience participation is not really “a thing” in Mozambique and my Portuguese is also far from perfect. But it worked out in the end :)
Bush Fire
At the end of May every year there is a music festival at an out door venue in the middle of rural Swaziland. It is called “Bushfire.” It is a bit of a peace corps tradition to go down to Bushfire. Most years, peace corps volunteers from Swaziland, South Africa and Mozambique all meet up there. (However this year the South African peace corps volunteers were not allowed to come because there was a small chance of a national transit strike in Swaziland) It is a three day long festival of African Musicians and African arts. Its like cochela but all african and much smaller in scale. I got there by getting a ride in the back of a pickup truck from a friend. We left my city at 5:30 in the morning. A friend of mine and myself were in the bed of the pickup with a couple blankets and wearing winter hats. Its winter time now and with the wind chill it was like 40 degrees, which is colder than I have felt in over a year. So there we were freezing our asses off in the back of a pickup truck getting beaten up by the wind with the Mozambican landscape passing us by as the sun came up over the mists of the bush. It was uncomfortable but fun. By the time we got to our lunch break the sun was in full force and it was hot as hell in the back of the truck. We made good time and made it to a large city in the middle of Swaziland before dark. It was my first time leaving Mozambique since my arrival almost one year prior. Yay! I had been to Swaziland four and a half years ago when I was studying abroad in Durban. The country has become noticeably more wealthy. Or it could just be that Swaziland is a bit more developed than mozambique. I got a little jolt of culture shock when I went into the big supermarket and it was even more fancy than 80% of grocery stores in the US. I was even able to buy some cans of real Guinness! For the past year I have only been able to drink Mozambican bear (of which there are three brands) and one type of South African beer. I really miss good European and American beer. I miss that the most of anything. Good Mexican food is a close second. Finally we made it to the Area where Bushfire was taking place and to our camp site. We got there at 5:30 pm, so it was exactly a 12 hour journey. We stayed in a hostle in the middle of a wilderness park so one one night I saw a small pack of hyenas 30 feet from my tent! It was very cool but later I realized that is was probably not safe. It is Winter in Africa now and Swaziland is semi mountinus so it was surprisingly cold. At night I was wrapped up in a blanket, a sleeping bag, sweat pants and a sweat shirt. By the evening everyone was drinking cups of hot mulled wine. Ironically when you enter the venue you are encouraged to by “drink tickets” but these are only usable for beer and not hot wine (what a scam). In general the large out dour venue with lots of strange cement sculptures had a very cool vibe. At one point a few 20 foot puppets from Mozambique did a performance. They were made in my city so I kinda knew one of the puppeteers. All the peace corps volunteers were really excited about the food. There was Indian food, Sushi, Italian pasta and pizza, Mediterranean sandwiches etc... Ironically the music itself was nothing special. There were a few really good exceptions, but most of the bands were easy listening semi jazz semi rock. A lot of it was Swazi christian music groups (they are very popular there). In general it was a good time.
Trouble in the Office
One day I was told that the organization I am working with was going to hold a group meeting. I thought that this would be great because we could identify weaknesses and strengths and try and improve the organizational processes. What it really ended up being was a lot more immature. Apparently the maid that cleans the office in the mornings has been sneaking off to have sex with the guy that owns the store next dour when his wife is away. It has been a big topic of gossip around the neighborhood. So my boss decided that he needed to put an end to it because he felt it reflected poorly on the organization. So an hour long scolding of the maid commenced and I felt like shooting myself because of the awkwardness of the situation. But at the end of the meeting it came out that there was a lot of instances where people had been leaving the office without telling anyone and no one knows how it get in contact with them. So I proposed the creation of a sign out sheet. If someone one is leaving the office for a full day or more they write down when they will be leaving, where they are going and when they will return. They thought that was a great idea so I made one up and stuck it on the wall. If it actually gets used im going to step forward an claim having accomplished some organizational development. Go team Jack! In addition I downloaded some type learning software on their computer and made a folder of PDFs with information on possible future projects.
The woman who died from stre
One day I was sitting around on my porch. It was a spontaneous holiday that day. The new Mayor of the city was getting sworn in so the local government decided to announce a holiday. But the maid and the nurse who works with my organization did not know so they showed up for work anyways. Then the Gardener showed up at my house in the middle of the day with the Maid. They told me that the mother in law of the Gardener was not talking, that they were not sure if she was sick or just sad, so because I was a health volunteer I should go over there and see if there was anything wrong with her. I decided that I was highly unqualified for this responsibility. Thankfully the nurse was still in the office so I spoke with her and she decided to come with us. So we set off into the poor outskirts of town not 15 min walk from my house.
The house we approached was made entirely of palm leaves. There were five young children standing around in tattered clothes. There was a small table, a pot and a metal stand over a fire pit for the cooking. This was more or less the entirety of this family's possessions. The nurse went inside the house to check on the woman. Two minutes later the nurse came out shaking her head. “Its very bad,very very bad, very serious. This is now my responsibility.” The woman was suffering from advanced hypertension which causes paralysis in random parts of the body. For her, it had caused her face to go stiff. The woman was unable to move her mouth or even blink. In general she was very weak. The nurse got one of the neighbors to take the grandchildren away and care for them that afternoon. She then told the Gardner to get some men from the neighborhood to get a door or plank of wood to carry the woman to the main road where she could get a bus to the hospital. She told me that if she got to the hospital they could take care of her and in time she would completely recover. She also told me that there was nothing really left to be done, that it was now in the hands of her neighborhood to get her to the hospital, so I might as well go back home. So I went home assuming that everything was going to be taken care of. Four hours later the Maid came around the office and told me that the woman had died of dehydration. Her mouth and eyes had apparently completely dried out and she had diarrhea as well. No one in the community wanted to help get her to the road because her illness scarred them. On top of that no one wanted to give the 14 MTZ (mozambiquan currency 1USD=28 MTZ) to pay for her bus ride from the main road to the hospital.Later I found out the full story of this situation. The daughter of the dead woman was married to a man a couple years ago and had five children with him. Then he found out that she was having an affair with the Gardener at my office so he left her. When he left her the Gardener married her and she moved to his farm plot several miles away. But apparently Mozambiquans don't do stepchildren. So she left her five children to live with her mother (the woman that died). So the grandmother spent a year and a half taking care of her grandchildren struggling to survive with little to no resources. The stress of this lifestyle built up and physically manifested as hypertension (really really bad blood pressure), and untreated it turned into advanced hyper tension and that turned into face paralysis and death. I am not sure what ever happened to the children. There was some talk of them going to move in with an aunt or an uncle but it is possible that they have been sent to an orphanage. They may be the saddest part of this situation because they have effectively been abandoned.
Work
Work has been kind of slow. There is a woman who works in my office who makes arts and crafts and is trying to sell them. I am trying to see if there is any way I can help her expand her business. She is very smart and she is also teaching other women how to make the different crafts. I could see her shop as becoming a big woman's community empowerment project. Additionally, my org just got a very large project proposal accepted. They will be conducting HIV education focused on preventing the spread of the virus to young girls. I just finished up a small report covering what the curriculum should include and what learning tools should be used. I did a bunch of research first, wrote up a report in English and then translated it into Portuguese. It was a lot of work for a piece of paper with 20 bullet points but it was really fulfilling to have completed it and have something to show for my work. It felt a lot like the research and report writing I used to do in college and grad school. So it was cool to get to flex those mussels again. After peace corps I think I could see myself doing something along those lines and being happy (think tank or government research kind of thing). On another note. I am at the half way point of my service. I arrived in Mozambique over a year ago and I have one more year to go before I become a “normal American.” A person in peace corps training came up to my site for a few days to get an idea of things. Her group will start working in mid August. They will be with us for our second year and us with them for their first. Of the new people I met, they seemed pretty cool. So it will be fun to hang out with some new people over the next year.
