Even after two years

Yesterday was quite a weird day for me. Something I like so much about Africa is that everyday is really a new day. There is always the opportunity that you will wake up tomorrow and things will be better. It happened to me again today.

Yesterday, I had the second of 3 parts for the gender training sessions. This week was for the professors/teachers that will be helping out in the projects at the primary schools we have invited to participate this year. It is a wonderful program that really puts the power of after school programs into the hands of these schools - something I personally think is needed here. It gives the students an opportunity to do something else after school besides going to fetch water and the older ones get involved with teachers. Yes even in primary school. So we were on the back veranda of this old Portuguese sporting club. It looks right out into the bay over towards the capital city of the province. Right now there is a tropical cyclone in the channel between here and Madagascar, it's not supposed to come to land, but it is definitely affecting the weather around here. For the past couple of days, we have had TORRENTIAL rains that come through every half an hour or so. Sometimes it gets so much, you can't hear yourself over the pounding on the roof. Tin roofs in the tropics, i wonder who thought of that idea. Anyway, I saw some crazy big white caps raise up on the bay and just felt incredibly thankful for the development that I have seen on my side of the bay. I don't have to go over to the other side of the bay unless I want to go to certain restaurants. But, everyone in the training thought it was crazy that the boats were still going, I saw that they weren't loading them to heavy but that didn't matter, I saw a boat crest over a wave and the trough was just too deep. It didn't go down (thank God, most Mozambicans can't swim) but it definitely limped to shore. All of this for 12,50 meticais. Even in this former People's Republic, the people are still driven by money gods?!?!?!

The other thing I wanted to write about today is how grateful I am that I have a background that encouraged me to challenge, to question, to think outside the box and most importantly to be accepting of people who are not like you - even if you don't agree with them as I don't with republicans. Anyway, I know I don't speak Portuguese properly, but then again neither do Mozambicans. I speak it pretty damn well too and grammatically better than a lot of my fellow teachers at my old school. The thing that gets me is I had to lead these teachers (many of whom know me) in a cultural sensitivity class. I was talking and people weren't paying attention and then when they realized that I was speaking Portuguese and could be understood, they could TRY to understand but didn't. They just sat with these dumb looks on their faces. My favorite was when someone wanted to ask for another piece of poster paper to bring back to his group. I knew what he was asking for out of context and because I'm used to the way people try to speak English around here. But what he was either 4 free shits for group or group shits for free. I don't know! I couldn't contain myself and just handed him the "sheets." Later on in the day, I had to hand out the students guides for the ESH program. I had to hand out 6 each and then get them to sign off for them. Let me just say it was bedlam. I yelled at the teachers that we didn't have enough packs for everyone so I had to break them up into packs of 6 and couldn't give them a carrying case to bring them home. (You see the packs of ten were put into a nice little bundle to carry) Oh the bitching and complaining and the people jumping the lines so they could just do whatever they want. I let them take the packaging to wrap up their books, but then when they weren't looking I went and tore the packaging off so they couldn't use it. They all laughed. I hate it when I'm thought of as a complete idiot because the others around me can't think outside of the box. I wonder what I'll be like when I have children! Any thoughts?

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Now playing: Freshly Ground - Pot Belly
via FoxyTunes bay side sporting club.

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Now playing: Freshly Ground - Ma'cheri
via FoxyTunes

Gender Awareness when Women are not allowed to Speak

So as many of you know, I've moved jobs to a Mozambican run NGO where my duties have been completely changed around.  Basically I no longer teach kids who really don't give a crap about being in school.  I am now the local computer genius in my office, that spends his days making basic repairs on computers you can practically see through they are so riddled with worms.  They wonder why it takes so long for the computer to start up.

 

Anyway, last week was the first week that I actually got out of the office.  As my luck would have it, the 3 days I spent outside of my nice air conditioned office had to have temperatures of above 40 degrees Celsius and humidity of what felt like 150 percent.  My office runs this nationwide program Escola sem HIV/SIDA.  It's School Aids awareness program to get it into the heads of primary students the necessity of protecting yourself against AIDS.  Last week we had the principals of these elementary schools for a three day "gender mainstreaming" workshop.  I'm sure you don't even know what that means.  I sure didn't before I got to Peace Corps.  But I live in a society where girls aren't deemed worthy enough of higher education.  When a family has to choose between whether a girl or a guy has to go on to higher education, it will be the man without a second thought. Yet there were at least 6 female head teachers sitting in front of me at this conference.  The thing that annoyed me though was that they were doing just that.  They were sitting, nothing more.  My colleague asked at one point what everything thinks it means to be a man and a women.  The list that came up was hilarious.

Men are courageous, gallant, strong, handsome, hard workers, basically a perfect Adonis.

Now when the list came to be made for women, not one of them spoke!  The men made up this list of what it means to be a woman (since they are such experts!) subservient, obedient, mother, wife, basically everything  had to do with someone else and not with the woman herself.  I couldn't take it anymore and interrupted by getting up there and saying that none of the men knew anything about being a woman and never could because of pure "physical property" that is between their legs.  This was after a conversation about how men could never carry water and women could never work on the road was had.  I've carried water on my head 20 liters is heavy and it hurts!  Most times I pass by the road crews, I see them napping in the shade of a tree.  I went on by explaining that I come from a culture where the man carries everything for the woman, here it is the opposite.  I have Mag to thank about that.  Anyway, the participants laughed, thought I was weird and it went in one ear and out the other.

Is listening that hard?

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~Ian~
+258 825 232 821
www.weltwanderlust.blogspot.com

Communication is a Wonderful Thing

 

This year is such a different experience than my past two years of service.  Now that I am in the big city and have two site mates who are within a ten minute walk from my house, I feel that communication is so necessary that if anything goes wrong, it's not exactly like we can hide from each other.  There are 5 PCVs in this city, 2 live about 4 k further down the road.  Another thing about communication that I've seen in the past week is with my landlord.  He saw an opportunity to make an extra 350 MTn off of me and took the opportunity to tell me that my house had gone from 250 MTn to 600 Mtn in one night basically.  I talked to people at work and they handed me a couple of receipts that showed work they had done on the house and told me he had to pay them back now (which he won't) if he raises the rent (which he didn't.)  He has to come and discuss it with my boss because it is my organization that pays the whole $10 a month rent and not me.  He's not going to come to the office and I'm comfortable now talking to everyone as an equal at the office, as long as I don't have a bad Portuguese day!

 

The other thing that is changing my life so much this year is Internet access.  My job got broadband and they need someone to run the network and just make sure that viruses don't come in.  You should see how many I found when I did the first sweep with Norton, thanks Noel.  But this is letting me keep on top of keeping in touch this year, it lets me upload items and send this pithy blogs to you all which I know certain people are reading thanks to a friend of mine who gave me this link that makes me think she works for MI-6.  Hopefully I'm not blowing here cover and causing some sort of leak on the other side of the Atlantic!  J   When I was back in the States for my month home leave, I was astounded by so much of the technology I saw.  I got involved in Facebook and I think that's one of the best things I could have done.  It's so much cleaner than Myspace in my opinion and it doesn't take up the precious bandwidth that Myspace does when people put songs and god knows what else onto their pages.  But the best thing about Facebook for me is I found a friend who I wronged some years back for very stupid reasons.  I found this person and "friended" them on Facebook and to my complete and utter joy this person accepted!  I still haven't written a complete note to this person but I will soon.  There is a flip side to this inter-connected life we lead though.  I haven't heard from another friend in about a year – I have NO idea what for.  However with the help of some international "agents" who gave me the link I can see that this person is still reading the blog.  Twilight Zone material huh? 

 

 

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~Ian~
+258 825 232 821
www.weltwanderlust.blogspot.com

PRICE CONTROL GONE BAD

So the city of Maputo is blockaded today.  As we all now the war in Iraq is going so wonderfully and just pouring oil on to the global market so we all have access to whatever we want.  Oh wait, that's what the president thought would happen, but that is not what is happening.  We've basically managed to close Iraq off of the market and shoot ourselves in the diplomatic foot – but I don't want to get into that.  What I want to talk about is what is happening in Maputo today just in case anyone hears about it.  Kenya news made it home even before I did so I just want to be careful.  First thing, Maputo is 500 K away from me. That's 310 miles and the floods up north are 1000 K from me.  That's 620 miles.  So I'm safe by long shots on both sides.  I actually wish it would rain a bit here.  Just a little bit to keep the dust down and everything.  Anyway, the bus fare in the big cities in this country is absurdly cheap.  Most cities only have it pegged at 5 meticais.  That 20 American cents.  Gas has recently gone up to 35 meticais per liter.  There are 3.75 liters per gallon, so  if gas can cost $5 a gallon here in what was once the most destitute country in the world, it can go up in the States no?  All of these prices are causing consternation amongst the "chapa" owners and operators around the country.  In Maputo, the privately owned buses are raising the price of a ticket 100 percent from 5 meticais to 10.  That's a steep jump for people who earn very little a month, but that's just the thing, people in Maputo don't make nothing a month.  There are substantial amounts of NGOs and foreign companies that are now scrambling to get into Maputo and they pay western salaries.  So I don't understand why this is happening. The drivers want the raise in fare, the government says no, (good communist price control here) the drivers say lower the gas prices then.  The government says we don't have control over that.  The drivers say SCREW YOU then and blockade the city, tires a burning and the city is stopped.  I'm kind of envious of this all for one and one for all attitude.  Let's see though if anything can be accomplished.  In the meantime, I have bought myself a bicycle to get to and from work.

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~Ian~
+258 825 232 821
www.weltwanderlust.blogspot.com

Letter from the Prophet Marcus to the Mozambicans….

I don't know if I'm considered sacrilegious because of this title but maybe when I am finished with this blog ya'll will understand.   I've come back from the land of forever connected and now am back at the bottom of the world – or at least Africa that is.  I'm sitting in my cell block of an office after a hard morning of writing reports.  Now, let me tell you how this alter ego of Prophet Marcus showed up.  I'm living in a totally different town and even though it was the big city where I had to come for the past two years and get my mail, do my banking and send the homing pigeons out to Peace Corps on an occasional basis so they don't think I've disappeared into the bush, I was nervous because I didn't know the neighbors too much.  Man oh man do they know me.  Mozambique is a nation obsessed with two, well maybe three things.  The first is Football, or Soccer, the second is 2M (Noel you know what that is) and the third is Brazilian Soap Operas.  There is this new one that just started before I had left to the land of technology and it is called the Prophet and I look like the main character Marcus.  So I have rechristened myself to Marcus, but let me tell you I still don't answer to it at first impulse.  I think I have a certain Samantha McDonough to thank for the dye job.  J  The strangest thing is that I get some sort of preferential treatment because of this resemblance.  I'm not sure if everyone actually thinks I'm a famous Brazilian Soap Star, but they sure act like it.  I keep saying if I were Brazilian, would I have such a horribly foreign accent when I speak Portuguese?  I don't think so!  The other day though, I was by the mCel store waiting for a friend who was inside.  He was taking a long time, I was getting hungry so I went into the store and there was dead silence.  I got brought to the front right away, grabbed what needed to be done out of my friend's hand, got the number back that he wanted and left.  All of this took place in the span of 2 minutes.  The ladies at the desk were giggly and cute because Marcus the Prophet was in front of them.  I had been waiting for my friend for 15 minutes, and he is Mozambican!

 

Besides the new found fame, I've enjoyed being back.  I live in this cute little house.  It's a tiny bit smaller than my other house and the yard is smaller too, but when you move from the suburbs to the city, what can you expect?  I feel like I live in the white rabbit hole though.  Everything is so close and compact.  I don't have to go through my own yard, out the gate and then across a courtyard to get to my latrine.  It's 2 minutes to the side of my house and I've even got a light set up on that side.  I've got a two room little palm tree hut on one side of the house that has a light in it two and I'm going to get a plug put on that side of the house so I can watch movies on the weekend.  I've started my first office job too.  It's a little slow but that's normal in NGOs in this country since it is the start of the new school year.  What's nice is there is a direct internet connection from my office to you all.  So maybe I can put some more pictures up and a regular basis.  Don't forget the prophet is now on Google Pictures too!

 

MP

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~Ian~
+258 825 232 821
www.weltwanderlust.blogspot.com