A View From Hell

A view from Hell.

Don’t yell at me, call me names or say I’m racist please. After all, I’ve lived here for 3 years. But I live in my personal view of hell. For those of you that have seen my pictures, you may be confused or think I’m whining – but I’m not. This past weekend I went to a town about 80 km south of Maxixe (50 miles.) I had a wonderful ride down, I even got the front seat. But when I was sitting there in the front of the car watching BEAUTIFUL Inhambane Province roll by, I realized Africa is only going to change if Africans change it. The entire first world could come here and do 2 or 3 years of work but that’s only a surface band-aid. I realized it is hell for me because people don’t question. People accept the status-quo and have resigned themselves to it “because we are poor and we can’t change a thing.” This idea, never to question always to accept just gets my blood boiling!!!!! There’s about a billion people on this continent, while the “West” only has about 700 million people in it. Look what we were able to accomplish! Took a long time, but now 99 percent of the west has running water, electricity, etc. Imagine what Africa could accomplish if people stopped accepting the status quo. I noticed this status quo so much this past 24 hours. Here are some examples.

When I was coming back from Inharrime, I went to the chapa stop. I was excited about getting the front seat again. Then I noticed the chapa was empty. These chapas won’t get going before they have at the VERY LEAST 15 people in them. It was going to be a long wait – an hour and a half long. It didn’t matter because I had this really good book to read. But reading it for an hour and a half straight sitting in the African sun isn’t that enjoyable. People FINALLY started coming. The ride should be about an hour long, but could be as long as 2… or so I thought. We started off finally and went straight to the gas station, even though the driver had left the car idling for about 40 minutes. (think of the saved gas!!!) We proceeded out of town and stopped about every other tree. A cute girl would run out to stop the car, low cut shirt, shapely skirt, you get the idea and the driver would stop. An old grandmother that probably needed to go to the hospital came out to stop the car. No luck, we passed her by. By the third every other tree, I got so pissed. I’ve seen bus queues in England longer than what the difference was between trees. Then the music started. That is the one down side of sitting in the front. You see, in the front, you control the windows, don’t usually have someone sitting next to you, have ample music and the broken sound system blaring right in front of you. The volume level usually needs to be loud enough for EVERYONE you pass by to hear it. I looked back into the main part of the car and everyone was clearly in discomfort, BUT NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. I finally acted like I was reaching into my bag and pulled the wires out of the radio. This is a trick I learned early on and have used on multiple occasions. J I personally am in principal TOTALLY against the act of waiting for a car to fill up a longer time than it takes to get to where I’m going. Does that make sense? Yet no one questions the logic. They’ll just say, what other way is there to do it?

This morning, when I came into the office, the straw broke my back. I’ve been opening email accounts for everyone here. The newest thing is to send chain Powerpoint presentations around. Most are pornographic. Today’s is mainly geared at women but two men are reading it right now. (30 and 45 respectively) It’s about signs of breast cancer. I thought it would be very informational and maybe helpful for them to use because breast cancer is on the rise here. Nope. It was obviously written for male pleasure only. There are white women posed very naked in the back of each slide. These two horn dogs are laughing about it still… it’s clearly achieved it’s goal…