Who IS the Boss?

So in the 1980's, there was a wonderful (read typically cheesy) American sitcom called Who's the Boss?, starring one Tony Danza. As with most 80's sitcom stars, he's pretty washed up now. Haven't really seen him do ANYTHING in a long time. I did find though that he was in the Producers on Broadway for 6 months. When you get so unknown, what do you think of doing? REALITY SHOWS!!!

Tony Danza's newest venture, I'm not joking, is going to be a reality show in Philadelphia. He won't be at my school (thank GOD!!) but he will be teaching English at Northeast High in Philly! I just want to know what the Mayor of Philly and the School Chancellor are thinking! None of this makes sense. I mean how will the students even learn. I'm all for career changers, but folks teaching is harder than he thinks. You fake it and the students will eat you alive! It is kind of ironic how they are putting him in a rather "quiet" neighborhood school. Doesn't this reek of exploitation though? I just shudder at the thought of allowing school fights to happen so they can up the ratings.

Anyway, I was waiting for my friend in front of the school today and Tony Danza walked right up. He looks ROUGH! His hands are knarled from arthritis and my friend put it perfectly, "Damn he looks like beat up shoe leather!"

Oh yeah, this is the guy that the Tony Danza slap is named after because of his previous history. Look it up!

A Tale of Two Cars

America is obsessed with cars. The history of Detroit and the destruction of the railroad are proof. But I'm parking cars now to get me through until teaching starts. Let me tell you, I've seen some crazy cars. Two really stuck out in my mind today.

A mini-cooper drove up with the obligatory Union Jack sticker and I nearly fell over myself to get to drive that car. I have decided it is the perfect car for me - even though, quite frankly I would be PETRIFIED to take it out against some of the monster trucks that masquerade as private cars in this country. Even the owner of the car was cool. He looked very academic, silver hair, black glasses frames etc. He addressed me by my name and I complemented his car. Then I took the car on a four block joy ride to park it. Manual shift and all! (I said I could drive stick shift... white lies don't hurt do they?)

Around lunch time this boat pulls into the drive way. It is a white and silver Rolls Royce convertible. The doors open backwards and it just exudes snob. I half expected some Royal Family member to get out of the car. A jerk who thought he was royalty did. He left orders to "wipe down the car to get rid of the rain spots." That's what happens when it rains!!! Anyway, my boss wouldn't let any of us touch the car. Good thing, since I've lost my sea legs, I may have been ill inside it. The thing that got me was when Prince Jerk came back out of the Japanese restaurant on the corner. I went to collect the $20 fee for parking and he asked for "the other boy." What is this colonial Africa?!?!?! The other boy went and got a tip of $20 for "wiping the boat's bum." Made me think that I should have been nicer to my staff in Africa.

But you can rest assured I never called her "girl!"
(She actually couldn't pronounce my name very well and would call me boy!)

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…

Real Americans?

I believe in Karma and I'm a firm believer that it bites you in the ass if you are not careful. I've gotten bitten too many times here in Moz so I don't want to do anything more. But I've been reading up on this Sarah Palin and man is she an interesting one. She accuses the Democrats of talking too idealistic and not working for the "real american." We all know how well the GOP does that now don't we? What I want to know is if thinking everybody should have access to health care, a decent education and oh wait "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is too idealistic what plans do they have for us? I may just stay here otherwise....

ARRRRRGH

I warn you in advance, this is a bitchy post. Or should I say snarky?

Peace Corps kind of subliminally pushes us to do secondary projects. It's kind of a running joke while here. I'm sure anyone who has talked to me over the course of the last year knows what kind of fiasco the actual receiving the funds process turned into. Well, I thought maybe it was just a bad timing but nope. It seems to be repeating itself this year. I just got a call from Peace Corps telling me that I have to redo certain parts of the application because I'm too "negative." Well who the hell do they think made me negative?!!?!?!?!?!?! This is Peace Corps as well so I thought better of them. This is after I've been in contact with the review board about what else should I do to better the proposal. They said nothing. I faxed in the required signatures. 3 weeks later I hear they've gone missing. I faxed them back in. ARGH!!!! I'm just angry about it. But honestly, what's the point. I've since emailed my contact at the embassy to make sure that this doesn't happen with them.

Wish me luck!

Ah the wonders of Afrikaaners

The White Tribe of Africa. The Boers. The Europeans. The White Africans or just racists dumbasses. Whatever you want to call them, sometimes what they say (most of the time) is just astounding in there stupidity and down right mean! I was sitting in a restaurant here in town the other afternoon and got accosted by a Boer. He heard me speaking English on the telephone and came over for a chat even though he wasn't invited. If you don't speak die taal, you don't deserve any respect. Anyway, he sat down, I was a little high on life (hey it was Friday) so I chatted. He immediately started telling me how much he likes Americans. This was after he found out I am American and he said he just hoped we would f*** up our country by elected a black man like they did in South Africa. I just told him that a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or basically what he ishas already done a good job. On that note I left. Pretty good diplomacy huh?

Ties that bind

TIES THAT BIND

This month has been a month of visits – not a calendar month exactly, but a four week period. I’m loving it though because I’ve not had many visits to Mozambique. I usually have to go to a westernized country like South Africa or Swaziland to meet them. But I just had a friend from Swaziland come up to visit me and in 10 days I leave for Maputo to go pick up a certain person named Noel Hefele and Samantha McD (Noel said I spelled her name wrong last time I wrote it, so I’ll leave it at that) Yes it is true, Noel is actually leaving PA for more than just a few hours. People do change!! J But, I don’t want to talk about that yet, my friend’s visit from Swaziland was more important.

This friend is such a trouper. Murphey’s law has been a cannon law while this PCV has been in Africa. My friend is the poster child for the little handbook PC gives us called “Worst Case Scenario.” However, he/she is still here. “Time is over”, though and this PCV will be going home soon. But, s/he was here when my brother called last week and said something very interesting after I got off the phone with my brother. My friend’s grandma died while my friend’s been here and her family did not allow her to fly back home – ie my worst nightmare. Apparently it is my brother’s too. However, my friend and I were discussing that you do have to live your life for yourself. I’ve missed so many things since I’ve lived in Africa. I missed a family member’s birth. It still seems weird to me that I am an uncle. But things like this happen and I feel even more grateful for the time I have with family and friends because of it. It is not just with friends and family from the States, but friends and family from here too. It’s made me think a lot about what I want to do with my life when I am done here though. I don’t want to be coming back only once a year and never see people I care about. But stuff I’ve been looking at and mulling over in my head is making me strive to be true to myself. That’s not easy in this world and not easy at all in Africa. But I will try, and someone told me once here that the ties that bind a family together are an ancient magic. I’m beginning to wonder what the human race lost when it left Africa…

Stupid people suck

So, I'm back from Chimoio now and landed right into a mess. I just want to talk about the title of this blog for a little while. Stupid people, I don't know if Webster's or Oxford has a definition for who they are, they can come in all shapes and sizes as far as I know, but they do have one defining character - they suck. Now, there are about 15 volunteers within an hour or two drive of the city where I live now. So needless to say we see each other quite a lot. The majority of us have grown quite close over the past couple of years because hey, they are who you turn to when you have problems. One of the disadvantages of being a third year PCV is that you see a lot of people come and go. Sometimes it is good (meaning they finished) sometimes it is bad (meaning they got kicked out or for health reasons should be back in the States.) Now, one of the stalwarts from my zona just got sent home. No one knows why, except for one person who ain't talking. Now none of that really bothers me, because I've since found out that this guy is okay and that is really all I wanted to know. But, the thing that gets me is that he's since called every PCV in the zona and appologized for running off, explaining that it is in his character - which we all knew. I didn't get a phone call but my best friend here got told to keep his mouth shut because he doesn't want me to know anything because I talk too much! I've really got to work on this because I don't do any less talking than any of the PCVs around here. But then Mr. Robot (his nickname) is not exactly mister personality.

Chimoio was awesome, that comes for the next blog.