...uh, thanks I guess...

My housekeeper Raquia called me at work. She said she was sorry for interrupting but obviously couldn't contain her excitement. I asked her what the problem was and she just said she was excited about what she had done at my house. I asked her what she did, but she wouldn't tell me. She just said I needed to come home and find it out. So I finished the day and went home. Raquia had dug a MASSIVE new garbage pit for me. Can't tell you all that I was very excited because she put crocodiles at the bottom of it "to try and recycle." All I could really say was thank you for trying to recycle and pay her her month's wages. I was very confused when I went out and told some friends. Everyone was very excited about it except for my friend Anne. She just kept telling me "that's not how you recycle!" I believed her but didn't know what else I could do. She came over to help and all of a sudden the crocodiles started coming out of the hole and attacking us. Kuri, my dog, jumped in the way to defend me and ended up falling into the hole. I'll miss her, I thought as I ran away. You can't really outrun an African Croc though, trust me! Anne, who's always been braver than me, stepped on the croc, keeping its jaw shut while screaming at me to get something to beat it with. I woke up with my broom in my hand...

Oh I "love" lariam...

I Like Republicans or...

Okay, before all of you attack me for that blasphemy let me explain myself. A wise man (my uncle) once told me that I should read up on my enemy (the republicans) before I attack them. So I have been and LET ME TELL YOU! This could not be a better time to want to read about the Republicans. Sarah Palin and John McCain have just provided so much entertainment. Some of the quotes will go down in history. I think "I can see Russia from my house!" is my favorite. I wonder if the word LIPSTICK will ever be heard the same way again. I envision future generations of budding politicians just shouting LIPSTICK at each other, it having become an insult thanks to a hick from Alaska.

But I can't really make more than inflammatory comments about what's going on over there. Trust me though it makes for very interesting dinner convos at Campismo restaurant here amongst us Americans. The Republicans have afforded me with such wonderful practice and I am truly grateful. My republican friends here (yes I do have republican friends) afford me the practice to become more elequant in my speech as I show them the error of their ways. Someone who has 5 children under 20, believes she can see Russia from the middle of Alaska, and belongs to a church where it's believed homosexuality can be cured in 21 days really shouldn't be running the senate - is something I tell my friend Scott on regular occaisons. At least he finally believes that sexuality is not a choice! We're working on him.

What I'm even more appreciativve of though is the ability I've developed and the opportunities I've had to look at things from a different angle. Life is not about iced chai lattes from Starbucks, the newest bag from LV, or who has the best golfing average. Don't get me wrong, those things are nice - don't think I really care for any of them though. I don't like Starbucks, am not partial to handbags (even though I do have a lot of shoulder bags here for work) and have never golfed in my life. But going back. None of my friends here in Maxixe have probably experienced any of my 3 examples yet they live happy lives. I was talking to an American in California per google chat today and this person was explaining what happened this week with some what appeared to be unshakable American financial institutions who fell FLAT on their faces. A friend of his' Dad lost 6 million dollars in investments. See for me now, that money is just a figure. I see on a daily basis what such a difference $5 can make to buy a new mosquito net for someone sleeping in a reed shack. I hear people grumbling about gas just going up to 45 meticais a liter. About a pound a liter or $7 a gallon. Mozambique was the UN's most destitute country in the world from 75 to 95. The majority of cars here are rusted tin cans with wheels and trust me, do not get very good gas mileage. But Mozambicans aren't stopping to drive, A vida continua is the daily mantra.

We, as westerners, need to learn that. Personally I see good eventually coming out of this. But just think how much respect will be garnered for America and the West if we pull ourselves out of a mess that the world has never seen before. It was done in Germany. So let's all calm down, sort things out again, let Sarah Palin enjoy the view of Russia and realize that we are connected and need to work together. I know Africa would appreciate it and love to be able to eat 3 times a day again.

CALM DOWN!!!! Ian

So I have less than 3 months left. I've outfitted my house to good standards. I still live in a shack by western standards I am sure. But I have a fridge, lots of books, furniture that isn't a plastic chair. I've got pretty curtains and just a variety of nick-nacks that most people here don't have or don't know what they are. Honestly though, the majority of what I have has been collected over the years and passed down from volunteer to volunteer. I counted once, I've got over 200 books! You think I schlepped them over here? I may have brought ten.

Anyway, the vultures are starting. Every day I get some phone calls saying "Oh your leaving soon, can I have this?" I get these phone calls from people I don't even know! Or people I haven't heard from in MONTHS! There are some people I wouldn't mind giving things too. I'm going to do that. Other things I want to sell. I'm not going to sell them at full price - or even a markup (I'm not the Bush Administration) But it's things I paid for!!!! Last night was the worst of the phone calls. I got a phone call from someone yelling quickly HEY HELLO GUY, I WANT YOU..... then the phone would cut off. Needless to say I was a little freaked. I sent a message out and found out who it was but the phone network has been very weird recently so I couldn't get to talk to him. He wanted me to give him my laptop and camera... for free... grr. Today I got two phone calls asking for my iPod for free. Maybe I should do that since it's broken. One of the phone calls was from a student from Homoine. My best student.

Really you think you know people. I almost feel that Africa is more materialistic than the west.... well maybe not.

2nd annual AAA MTn

I'm alive and well after my second trip down the road of theatre direcrting/organizing hell. But I survived! I had 11 schools participating and 11 PCVs came along for the ride. What a ride it was!

My day started with nerves. My nerves were stretched taunt because all the week before it was overcast, "cold" and London-rainy. I woke up at one point in the night, having already taken "Betasleep" from South Africa to insure a night of verligting van slaaplosigheid, and heard the cacophony of rain on my tin roof. I just cringed and tried to sleep another hour or two.

I woke up to my friend Justino knocking on the bedroom door. I've known him since 2005 and he agreed to be a judge for me. Since he lives about 75 kilometers away, I told him he could stay the night. I woke up, nerves streched beyond belief. I could only stomach black tea and we went off to the camp ground where the competition was going to be. Oh yeah, this was after I had already gotten a text. I was expecting it from Anne, my closest neighbor and someone who helps me a lot in my projects here. Nope, it was from Rachel, the PCV with a group from Mapinhane, a town 200 kilometers away. SHE WAS ALREADY HERE!!! It was 6 o'clock in the morning!!!! Oh boy.

I had to run to get some chairs, tables and the bastedor which I stored at a house closer to the city center. A bastedor is just a giant sheet that acts as a backdrop but here in Mozambique, without the sheet there is no theatre. It gets me so frustrated because.... well I'm not going to go into it because it's not worth me getting this mad over. I run to Anne's house and get the keys from here. Justino and I unload everything from the office and put it out on the front lawn. We get to the office at 7:03 AM so I didn't think I was late, especially by African standards. I relax though, because Anne comes and then the girls who have be using this office as a rehearsal space come as well. I notice it's 7:30 AM, still no car to bring these props to the south side of Maxixe. I get another text message... two more groups have shown up and they've all said that the guard to the camp ground didn't know anything about the competition. I didn't expect him to, but I still was panicky at this point. I spent the rest of my cell phone airtime credit calling my brother the night before so all I could do was send text messages to the driver asking where the hell he was. He showed up at 8 AM. Thank God the south end of town is only about 5 minutes away.

Got there and got set up. Thankfully I have such good friends here and we were able to get the stage set in 10 minutes. My old students from Homoine were there as well (some who were involved last year) and they asked right away if they could do anything. My housekeeper came. I had given her a day off earlier in the week so I could get her to come. She's a wonderful lady because she controlled the food all day long and is fasting for Ramadan! More power to her because I certainly do not have that will power. :)

I had a panel of 3 judges that took their work very seriously and my little buddy the cashew seller (James, I DO know his name) came and kept time. If it weren't for him, I would still be there. The rule was for each school to perform for 10 minutes. I gave them a choice of either Portuguese or English and naturally the majority chose Portuguese but the ones that chose English were hysterical and really thought out. Unfortunately, I don't remember the plot of a single one. I don't remember much of the day. I'm still tired from it today but really enjoyed myself. We were able to get 11 groups of students together just to joke and chat and watch some theatre. TO MY eye it looked like it was all the same, but some students got some messages out of it I'm certain. It was a generally festive enviroment. We had morning snack (I felt like a kindergarten teacher all day counting, counting) and then whipped through 11 shows before the scheduled break for lunch at 1. Had lunch, gave out the prizes and kicked everybody out by 3 PM. Thank GOD!!!! No surprise though, the car was a half an hour late coming back to pick up the theatre pieces and bring them back to my office. Now, thanks for all the rain dances, the bottles you may have buried and the prayers I know were thrown my way. It DIDN'T rain. As you'll be able to see from the pictures, it was one of the most beautiful days I've seen here in a long time. I wish I could just remember more of the actual theatre!

That's all folks...

PSA

Hey guys, I didn't realize people held my writing skills so high. Deepak Chopra wrote the blog about Obama and the Palin effect. I wish I could write that well.

Check him out at

www.deepakchopra.com really interesting stuff.


I

Obama and the Palin effect

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the

national psyche

even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly

illustrated by the

rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican

convention in

Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice

President Dan

Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial

expertise in the

complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than

700,000

residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of

running one-tenth

of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering

international

figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness,

but her real

appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow,

deriding his

idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In

psychological

terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of

sight, countering

our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed

to face:

anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the

other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings,

but they

don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our

higher

selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory

kind. (Just

to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the

fact that Sen.

Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his

arrival on the

scene.)

I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually

not welcome by

the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here

to understand

Palin's message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a

rousing call to

those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a

higher vision.

Look at what she stands for:

--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a

return to

petty, small-minded parochialism.

--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair

America's image abroad.

--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a

claim for

social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't

need to be

heeded.

--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation

that these

issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.

--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.

--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out

corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who

doesn't

fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right,

which has been

in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that

minorities and

immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types, can be

ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is

a foreign

threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all

right,

Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony,

of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the

same time. She

can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing

forty years of

feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of

women who

stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are

voting against

their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national

elections by raising

shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and

narrow-mindedness.

Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a

vacuum.

The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just

conservatives possess a

shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the

two forces of

progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its

furtive appeal

become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov.

Palin is that

she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming

debate honest. It

would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona

was a stalking

horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the

demoralized state

we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.



Something I found on the internet. Good reading for ALL

Really?

This is just too good. I've been following things through a variety of news sources about the elections of super stars. Obama v. Palin. I'm sorry but McCain is just an accessory at this point. You gotta hand it to him. It's like Obama is running against Hillary again and it's kind of scary because people may vote for the republicans just because they have a woman on the ticket and not because of her track record... oh wait she doesn't have much of the latter. :) Take that Obama-bashers. But I found something interesting on the BBC website which made me laugh so hard.

It's called SARAH PALIN: 10 Things We've learnt
A couple of the points about things we've learned have shown me her "true" character. I know that's an oxymoron, you can never learn the true character of any politician. Number one caught my attention. It has to do with the names of her gaggle of children. The woman likes to live in Alaska. Why invite her to Washington? She's so tied down to Alaska that her children are burdened with geographic coordinates as names... thanks Mom. Number 4 quotes actor/presidential candidate (why do actors always go for the Republican party?) Fred Thompson as saying that Palin is "the only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field-dress a moose" And that's an important trait for the leader of the senate why? I guess there could be lots of moose in DC some day. Number 8 just tickled my funny bone to no end. I'm still laughing about it now. I want to know WHY HAS RELIGION BECOME PART OF POLITICS? What ever happen to separation of church and state? Being "religious" doesn't automatically make you a wholesome or good person. I remember this family of religious nutters that lived down the road from me growing up. They were some of the most stereotypically religious people yet some of the most hateful, ugly, and down right mean people I've ever met. So having a leader of the senate (remember the VP does have a constitutional job to do) who belongs to a non-denominational fundamentalist church that believes they can convert gays through the "power of prayer" just makes me want to go for the job myself. I guess the most basic thing for me is we don't need to burden a 44 year old mother of 5 (and soon to be grandma) with a son in Iraq, a pregnant out of wed lock (like that really matters in the 21st century) daughter and a child with down's syndrome, with all of our problems. She's got enough of her own!!!

But if she puts on some more lipstick, we may just have the Alaskan Evita. Oooo can't wait for THAT musical!!

What my mother taught me...

My mother taught me many things, but one thing I remember in particular is she always told me it's not polite to stare. Truthfully, I thought she was crazy. Now coming on to the middle of my 36th month in Mozambique (hot damn) I really understand why it's not polite. Walking to work this morning, two things happened to me that made me really look forward to the day when I won't be the mulungo anymore.

I was hacking out my 5th lung of the morning. My head cold still hasn't gone away. Some one in front of me started laughing. She came up and asked me if I were sick (I thought it was pretty obvious) and then just started laughing. I couldn't stop coughing, so I kept walking and so did she - right into a telephone post. She was too interested in my coughing (whoa! white people cough too!) About 5 feet later, the same thing happened. Not someone laughing at me in pain, but someone walking into a tree because they were more interested in me than in where they were going!

Am I that interesting?

Only in Africa

My dog is in heat. You know what that means. She drips across the floor, gives herself an examination and then fines it ABSOLUTELY necessary to come over and try to lick my face. I can deal with all those things because I'm usually able to tell when she's about to come over and keep her away. The thing I can't stand are the 5 to 10 horny romeos that come and circle my house like a pack of wolves almost every night. I try to keep Kuri inside because she is a smaller dog and I've seen some of the male dogs in my neighborhood and it wouldn't be a pretty picture. Kuri wouldn't have it at all though. She whined and whined and whined until I let her out! Two hours later I get woken up by this scared sounding bark coming from Kuri's little doggy ditch she dug under my wall to get in and out. I'm a little nervous for her so I go outside. She's desperately trying to get in under the wall, but for some reason can't. I try pulling her but either she (or something) is pulling back. I go and get the keys to unlock Fort Knox and go outside. Kuri is no longer on the other side of the wall, but I can hear her off on the other side of the compound. Keep in mind that this is all happening with my in my pj's and a small little maglite flash flight so I can see. "White man running around at night in his shorts" was not the local newspaper heading the next day, because we don't have one. Anyway, I start getting this feeling that someone is looking at me. KINDA FREAKY because it's about 1 in the morning at this time. I call Kuri, she comes running over hackles raised and stands between me and the darkness barking into the darkness. I'm freaked at this point and slowly raise up the light to see a HUGE dog like creature staring back at me. The dog was up to my waist I feel and just huge. I backed away slowly, grabbed my dog and ran into the compound. Did I mention the thing was huge? I think it was an African Wild Dog, but I talked to my neighbor the next day and he said I should be careful because there are reports of werewolves in the area. I thought I didn't understand him first, but then he said that it was a person changing from a human to an animal.

Gotta get me my mistletoe and silver dagger to keep next to my airhorn and pepper spray now.

Linguas

The human tongue is an amazing thing. It can make noises, it can lick your lips, it can hurt, it can taste, it can love. One thing I've tried training it to do is speak many different languages. I'm a complete dork and in my down time would gladly decline a German adjective. (Honestly, it's not that hard!) You just need to memorize 16 different endings and then figure out what part of the sentence the word is in. For example... no I won't bore you. Anyway, I pride myself in my language ability. It's the one thing I know I'm good at. Until I got to Mozambique anyway. Most Mozambicans can speak 5+ languages. My housekeeper speaks Portuguese, Xitswa, Bitonga, Ronga, Arabic (she's Muslim) and I'm teaching her some English. My best friend in Homoine speaks Portuguese, Machope, Bitonga, Xitswa, Changaan, Ronga, French, English. Here comes along the white man with his English, Portuguese, German, Spanish and I feel inadequate. Anyway, we went to our local bar the other night and my friend Scott asked the owner (who happened to be born in Austria) whether or not I spoke German well. He said, yeah I do but just a little slow. Considering I haven't been to a German speaking country in 3 years... I took that as a compliment! The reason for this post though is that I've slowly noticed over this past year how my brain and my tongue just don't keep up with each other. It doesn't matter what language I speak in, I speak slow. Here's a visual, the Simpsons making fun of starving philosophical artists speak. Or for those that know Noel... :)

I like to thing its my brain hard wiring me to speak like an interpreter. Like Nicole Kidman in that movie.

3 years......

This month will mark 3 years of my living in Africa. I landed in Johannesburg South Africa on the 29th of September 2005 and let me tell you, my clothes show it! I remember when Sam was here, she said it's better for clothes to be hand washed. I'm sorry Sam, I have to disagree with you/her. My clothes are horribly faded from the massive amounts of washing powder used. Honestly though, that is ok. Most of my clothes are going to stay here in Mozambique with anybody who wants them. The thing that bothers me is about my boxer shorts. My maid has suddenly been able to massacre the elastic in almost every single pair of my boxers. I wish I had a camera to show some pictures but I don't have the 12 hours to upload a picture here. So, the thought is new boxer shorts with the money that Peace Corps gives me.

:) Good weekend to all and to all......

My drug habit

Lariam has struck again! Let me first preface it with some back story. My dog has been in heat. Dogs get that twice a year and it lasts for about two weeks, according to vet.com. So I've been keeping her inside at night. Mainly because I don't want to have to deal with puppies as I'm leaving in December. Last night, she woke me up at 3 in the morning whining like the dog in heat that she is. I let her out which requires me to be fully awake getting through 3 dead bolt locks and two doors. I'm saying this so you know the state of mind I was in.

Yesterday I was supposed to wait for the new print cartridge coming up from Maputo. Like everything in this country though, you don't know where its coming in or when. I think the bus driver thought I was stalking him. I don't really care though. :) But anyway, this cold got so bad yesterday that I just had to go home. I'm glad I did because I got to go to sleep really early. I missed the print cartridge though. My friend muhurube went to pick it up and he said he was going to leave it at his sister's shop in the central market but I never heard from him. So when I went back to sleep this morning, I was worried what would happen.

I went to the central market and the guy at the shop said I couldn't pick up the ink until I paid 1000 MT or $40. I didn't have it so he drained the ink and put it into this giant clear plastic container kind of like what you find from the container store. I couldn't lift the container to bring it back so magically some wheels showed up on it like you see on luggage at the airport. I spent the whole walk through the city worrying about not splashing too much of the ink and then wondering how I was going to get it into my printer....

then I woke up.

Karma

I just finished reading a book that ended with a what goes around comes around moral. I've noticed it a lot recently. Now, I've been trying to take a personal day this entire week to get my theatre project in order. No such luck. Every day the accountant has called me asking for some sort of help saying I can stay home the next day. Now I'm typing this with an obvious fever and sweats even though it is a cold day! I feel like crap....

Now that I've bad mouthed Sarah Palin in two or three blogs I wonder what the GOP karma coming back to me will be.

Palin's experience

Just got this off the BBC

* Has she travelled outside the United States at all - other than an official trip to the Middle East last year?

* Does she have any appreciation of foreign or national security policy? Or any personal vision of the uses of American power?

* Did she improperly use her position as governor of Alaska to force the sacking of a senior state official for personal reasons? An investigation is under way in the Alaska legislature, and Governor Palin has retained a lawyer

* Was she a member of the Alaska Independence Party - a fringe group advocating secession from the United States - in the 1990s? The AIP says yes; her campaign says no

* Was she a supporter of the conservative Pat Buchanan, the one-time presidential candidate whose political star declined, especially among Jewish voters, after he was accused of anti-Semitism?

* What is her attitude to "pork" - the practice of lobbying for federal dollars from Washington to fund local projects and keep local supporters happy? She says she fought pork aggressively. Newspaper reports suggest she was adept at securing federal money when she was mayor of the town of Wasilla

* Does she really support the idea of teaching creationism - the belief that God created the world in six days, as stated in the Bible - in schools?

* What is her view of the causes of climate change?

* Did she oppose sex education in schools? Some commentators have noted a possible irony if she did, given her own pregnant teenage daughter.


WONDERFUL!!!!

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....

The latest and greatest

My job this year has morphed into being the technology guru here at the office. It’s fine by me because honestly, it has taught me a lot about windows and viruses that I didn’t know before. But I kind of regret what I’ve done now because in all honestly I’ve released a monster. I opened an email for the accountant so he could communicate with the head office in Maputo. I thought that was fine because he was willing to learn. Now, everyone has to have an email! There is one computer at work that has email. There are a couple places in town where you can pay to use the internet – but it’s 60 meticais an hour there or $ 2.40 or £1.50 so it’s a bit out of league. Everyone will be using this one computer to be sending emails to each other who they see in the office every day! It’s kind of cute but annoying at the same time. I just hope that I haven’t started something in a culture that is so good at communicating and saying things. Mozambicans talk a lot and I’m beginning to wonder if all communication will be in IM form now.

You all are probably laughing now, but just remember most of my colleagues don’t have running water but now they’ve got email. I’m having the damndest time trying to explain that an email just can’t be jose@gmail.com. You have to be a little more inventive then that. Passwords are even funnier. They person who wanted to open the above email thought up of this password 1234567890. Really imaginative! Google does this thing with security questions, here I think is my favorite. Please remember that I got this answer after I explained that a security question is a way for gmail to realize its you and for you to remember your password. The security question was DO YOU LOVE ME? And the response was YES I DO! Somehow this is supposed to make her remember the password CASTRO1984.

Apology

I just wanted to apologize for that last blog. It was written very haphazardly. I wanted to make up for it with another lariam installment.

DREAM

I was in Australia. It was on a trip back home that I decided to go back to Sydney to visit some friends that live there. Anyway, I was staying with the family that tolerated me for six months while I was at university in Australia. Except we were in a new house. It wasn't the house where I had stayed. I was excited just to see everybody while I was there. Then I woke up. For some reason I really felt compelled to check my email on my phone. It's normally slow and frustrating but I wanted to check it. The first email in the email box was from the family in New South Wales! They were just writing to tell me that they've settled into their new house in the central coast right on the water... eerie.

Maybe I should continue taking the lariam and become a psychic. I'll read your mins now. You are thinking that this has become a stupid blog....

I hate hypocrites...

Miriam-Webster's online dictionary defines hypocrites as follows

1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion 2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings


Now we can't hold Sarah Palin accountable for her daughters pregnancy. I'm sure life gets pretty boring in Alaska. I'd imagine it kind of similar to what teenagers have to do here in Maxixe... nothing, it's just colder in Alaska. But we can hold it against her that she is so judgmental about the subject and then when it happens to her family it's all hush hushed. Why does the media really care what goes on there? The only thing I am happy about is that it knocks the "wholesome family values" of the republican party of their pedestal! What could be better than that?

I wonder if this is the last little step before dementia for John McSame?

Oh my god.....99

I remember when I first joined the Peace Corps, I thought 27 months was an eternity. As of right now, I'm at 34 months. But the freak out now is I only have 99 days left!

AH!!!

More dreams

The past two weeks of Lariam dreams have been intense. Here are the ones I can remember from last night. In my dream...

I had gotten up and gone to the door between my two rooms. I opened the door and looked out into the living room. It was badly lit in the dream, but I could still see everything clearly. The room was covered in decorations of a deep purple and orange color. Everything was taken out of the room and my dog was sitting in the room looking up at me in a party hat with a poof ball on the top and one of those noise makers in her mouth. It didn't make sense!

The other part of the dream is much smaller but just as funny. I was turning on the TV and the newest soap opera from Brazil was coming on. It's title caught my eye. A familia de Hefele. The Hefele Family! Unfortunately I didn't get to watch any of it. But in my dream I didn't care. I just liked the fact that people were finally going to be able to spell my family's name and in Mozambique no less!

Technology in Mozambique

I'm really beginning to hate technology. It's common knowledge that under the four month mark, things start breaking down. I always laughed at the PCVs saying that because they just didn't make any sense. :) But Ladies and Gentlemen I'm here to say it is true. My flash drive has to be held together by ducktape if you want to put it in. My iPod is giving up its ghost because unless the headphones are in a certain position, it only plays out of one ear. (Anyone have any idea how I can fix this that doesn't involve duck tape and sticky tack?) This lovely bout of technological plague has extended and metastasized into all the printers and two computers. Luckily, the printers just need ink, but no store has it right now in Maxixe. One printer has ink but the cable to connect it to the computer is faulty. I've done pretty much everything I can think of, Google can think of and what the book is telling me to do. Nothing works! It's so freaking frustrating and I just want to go back to a place where duck tape is not how you fix an iPod!!!!!!!!!!

The trip from HELL

Tuesday this week was my trip back from Maputo. Now let me just explain how it is. I'm not ranting here, I just want everyone to understand what pure hell traveling is in this country. Nothing enjoyable about it like the train journeys of America and Europe.

Anyway, I was getting nervous the night before and had taken my lariam. So, between the anxiousness from the drug and the anxiety of the travel, I didn't get much sleep. 2 hours to be exact. I wasn't in a good mood when I set out. :O( My taxi was an hour late. I had two big bags to get on the bus and new one or both of them would be on my lap. Luckily only one of them was on my lap. The bus had a trailer, so I put the less valuable bag into the back. All of this took place at 8 o'clock in the morning. I paid my 300 meticais to go where I needed to go, took out my book and just tried to read. I fell asleep FAST! But that didn't last long because this music started blaring. Africa is a very LOUD continent. Most of the speakers are broken because the buses here are old school buses from Japan which does not make for pleasant listening. We get going an hour after I get on the bus. Time is not an issue in Africa. But I've learned not to get too excited because this usually just means we will be going to one of the two gas stations that are on the road out of town. Whichever one has the least amount of people and the most amount of gas I guess! So after all of this we finally get going at 9:30 in the morning.

Now I've never experienced blatant physical harassment in my life, until I moved to Africa. Normally I just shrug it off, but after two hours of sleep, I couldn't take it. There were these two Mozambican girls were fondling me through the seat back. I just started swatting them away and trying to make sure they didn't steal anything from me. I fell asleep. I get woken up by a poke poke poke into the ribs. That's never nice so I was not very pleased waking up. They wanted me to by them some cans of soda. It was annoying!!! I asked them for the money and they started laughing hysterically and announced to the bus that the mulungo (white man) didn't have 30 meticais, $1.25 to buy them soda. I turned up the volume on my iPod and tried to ignore them.

Little time had passed before we got stopped at a road block. I noticed that it wasn't the regular transport police who were doing the stopping - it was the army. My heart jumped a little bit because I realized that if they wanted to mess with me, they could. I pulled out my passport and hoped for the best. I got it. Everyone was ordered out of the bus, bags and persons were searched... except for me. It was wonderful yet aggravating at the same time. Why am I any different!?!?!?!

I get back on the bus and promptly fall asleep. Not less than 30 minutes later the freaks behind me wake me up my massaging my head and SNIFFING MY HAIR! I flipped. (Honestly though, I was stanky! Didn't have time to shower that morning) I'm so sick of this "do white people do/have...." Besides being woken up by having your hair pulled is not pleasant. So I grabbed her hair and pulled. IT CAME OFF IN MY HAND!!! I yelled at her and raised a ruckus. I think I got my point across and promptly went back to sleep undisturbed for the rest of my trip.

I think I scared the bus....

Ok

I feel bad now.  Just came back from getting my dictionaries.  I got them.  All 131 of them and they even gave me 10 percent off.


doh!

Epa Mocambique!

The title of this post is a phrase that is said here in Portuguese by pretty much every day. It means everything from c'est la vie to bugger this to WHAT THE F#$% ARE YOU DOING MOZAMBIQUE!

I just had an experience of this. As you know, I'm doing my second year of this Theatre competition. Part of the prizes are English/Portuguese dictionaries. Now I wanted 131 dictionaries. Its a lot of money I'm looking to spend. I want 130 mini dictionaries for the participants and a nice hard back dictionary as first prize. The minis cost 145 meticais each and the big one costs about 1,200 meticais. It's almost 20,000 meticais I want to spend! $800. You'd think they would roll out the red carpet for me. Nope. I need to leave tomorrow morning early to try and get the bus home but it doesn't look like that will be happening. My dictionaries will most likely not be avaliable until 9 am tomorrow. I'll be home around 6.... maybe. I'm just astounded that with such a big purchase I get bubkis. Communism at it's best ladies and gentlemen.

grrrr

Movie Musicals

I just finished watching the new Meryl Streep movie. All I can say if Mamma Mia! ROCKS!! I feel like I'm going to walk down to dinner singing an ABBA song. Who would have thought Meryl could sing? I just thought it interesting once because I remember in my big musical phase, I always bitched about the fact that they didn't make musicals anymore. I asked my dad why musicals weren't made anymore for the cinema and he told me that when times are good, movies are about desperate situations, and when times are bad (World War II, The golden age of Hollywood musicals time) movies show good times. So I just looked up the past eight years of musicals because I've just been noticing how at least one musical tends to come out a year. Remember W was put into office on January 20th 2001... keep that in mind

MUSICALS DURING THE RECENT BAD TIMES
2001 Moulin Rouge
2002 Chicago
2003 Nunsense
2004 A Christmas Carol
2005 The Phantom of the Opera
2006 Dream Girls
2007 Hairspray
2008 Mamma Mia!

Also keep in mind that through these years there are about 16 High School Musical Movies thrown in which I think is the definition of make people feel good when times are bad... or a nausea inducing candy binge. I may just have to vote for a republican to keep the movie musicals coming. Luckily I think things have been so messed up that the musicals will be coming even under a democratic administration.

Any thoughts on this "scientifically proven" research I've performed?

The Manchurian Candidate

My friends and I here in the area share our DVDs. It's a guilty pleasure that all of us indulge in. Denzel Washington's greatest hits... it's an 8 in 1 that they sell pirated here in Maxixe, showed up on my PCV netflix list. One of the films is the Manchurian Candidate.

I know the original is touted as better, but it has to do with Communists so the audience of 2004 (when the movie was made) wouldn't have related. We are supposed to be afraid of Corporations and Islamists... communists, who are they? I remember when I was very young and learning about the Red Scare. I asked my dad if he were really upset about the possibility of the Communists would invade America. I think this was during the whole duck and cover era in America. Anyway, his answer shocked me, he said yes! I think I laughed because I just couldn't imagine it happening. The only thing I could imagine would be the other way around. What got me thinking in this movie is how from 1962 (Communists) the antagonist could be easily moved to corporations and even Islamists. I think we should be afraid of the extremists on all sides (in a casa branca) and not just believe what's thrown at us. What's next? Should we be afraid of Polar Bears so we can feel less guilty when they are extinct?

?????

Happiness is infectious…

So I had the weirdest night last night. I went home and finally found the missing disc of 90210 that I had watched a couple of months back. I had a mind numbing day of sorting out depressing statistics from the last year of AIDS work. My job was to take 12 months of monthly reports on the HIV/AIDS awareness statistics and try and sort them into age brackets for 42 elementary schools and 17 associations. By the end of the day yesterday, when I closed my eyes, I saw an excel spreadsheet. Needless to say I was tired. So, when in Africa, I went home to escapist DVDs. I couldn’t move off of my couch. I fell asleep with my door wide open (not a good idea) and my dog very confused (which she is most of the time.) I struggle up to try and take a bath. Summer has finally come during the days, but at night it still gets down in the low 60’s (which is cold when you live in a concrete shack!) I’ll stop the parenthetical comments – my English teachers would hate me. But after the mind fluff of 90210 I wanted to watch another movie. My friend Shaun just gave me an 8 in 1 of Denzel Washington Movies. I watched this movie called John Q. Oh my God is all I have to say, well not really because if I did, the blog entry would be over here.

The movie is about this working class family in the age of high gas prices and wonky mortgages (now, {oh damn it!}) The son of the family has a heart defect that puts him into heart failure. He needs a new heart. The father says that’s fine, he has insurance. But he only works about 25-30 hours so he only qualified for tier 2 catastrophic insurance ie up to 20,000 dollars. Even writing about this now is making my blood boil. The guy starts selling of his house, he tries everything and this is where the movie gets interesting. He takes the heart surgeon and some people in the Emergency Room hostage. He doesn’t want to kill anyone, just wants a new heart for his son. Is that too much to ask? The majority of the movie takes place within the Emergency Room so it’s not packed with action, but all the while I couldn’t help cheering this guy on. He wasn’t taking no for an answer from the monolithic, money-hunger bureaucracy that is the American Health Care System. Truth be told, it wasn’t that well made of a movie, but it got me thinking. Who is in the wrong here? Any thoughts?

PS. My dog jumped onto the couch with me to hang out and then she suddenly decided that on top of the couch would be a more comfortable spot. Kinda like a cat. I've not laughed so hard in a really long time and I think that is what put me in such a good mood.

At war....

So as you know, I'm drugged out of my mind to fight against lariam by dear old Uncle Sam. The dreams that come out are crazy. Unfortunately now the other side effects of lariam are coming up, namely anxiety. I woke up this morning to one BAD case of anxiety because of my dream.

I was here in Mozambique in my dream, but watching TV. Apparently America had been bombing Moscow because of the Georgia problem. I thought, no problem! Maybe I was wrong though. Georgia was our friend, my friend Rhett lived there. Georgia the state, not Georgia the country. It gets worse though. In my dream Washington sent us all letters saying that because of the stupidity of the previous government, (whose?) they didn't have enough soldiers to fight Moscow. So therefore, DC was drafting all PCVs because they already did a background check on us. Saving money as always! I woke up this morning and ran for the radio thinking America can't bomb Moscow, America can't bomb Moscow, they are just not that stupid!!!!!! I then went onto my phone looking for prices for Maputo-Moscow flights.

Time to get off this medication?? I think so. ONLY 21 more pills to go.

My name is Ian...

and I'm your friendly neighborhood Staples Center. I swear if someone steals another pen, I'm going to use it to poke out someone's eyes. I keep one or two pens in a little plastic holder on my desk. I like having them there because well, pens come in quite useful in an office atmosphere don't you think. Yesterday I heard the BOSS say that I had a nice marker on my desk (hi lighter) and sent his secretary to ask me for it. That just made me laugh so hard when I got home that he has the exact same thing I do, but because it's mine it's better. So Staples has officially shut down and I'm going to keep everything in my bag... hidden well under my desk right next to my smelly feeet.


:OP

I think in Song. (warning, written out of bordom)

I remember when I was little I used to think how wonderful it would be to be able to just break out in song while walking down the street - ya know kind of like the old MGM musicals of the 1940's. But my brother always said how stupid that would be. I always hoped it would be true and now here in Mozambique, it is true...almost to the point of eerie. Mozambicans are ALWAYS breaking out into song. The sing and dance at the drop of the hat and I LOVE IT! Unfortunately they don't have the patients to teach my gangling mulungo body how to adapt to their rhythm so I just make it up as I go along... much to their amusement. The scary part though is when some new song comes out or a television jingle comes out EVERYBODY is singing it. It's absolutely astounding how many people can whistle the mCel tune. All I can think about is Big Brother from 1984. The reason I started thinking about this today is because of a couple of situations that happened today. Three friends came in to work. They needed to get stuff done from buying a phone to registering for the GRE. Somehow all was accomplished. As everybody left, so I could relax and surf the internet like a good PCV, I just heard the song from Hello Dolly creep into my head.

Now I'm going to ease on down the path to my house. Done for the day I hope!

Topics of office convos

Life around the world is suprisingly similar to life back in the States. I'm putting two conversations up on this blog just in case the writers of either the American or UK versions of the office are bored and looking for topics.

D or d

In Mozambique, I'm know as doctor Ian or Marcus. It doesn't matter that I've only been to undergrad. They still want to acknowledge the fact that I have studied past twelfth grade. After you do a Master's degree, you get a big D Doctor title. I appreciate the sentiment, but it makes for some interesting conversations - like what follows. One of our youth activists has recently been hired full time as the receptionist. She heard some one call me doctor Ian and started talking about how she wants that title too. She's currently doing 8th grade night school so therefore can't have the title. I was busy filing some work I did this morning and was hearing all this going on. The person who shares my office with me was talking about how a doctora has to present herself well to the world. This girl looks a hell of a lot better than I do in sneakers and a 3 day old beard. I said that and we moved on to the next topic.
My facial hair. Everyone! Absolutely EVERYONE had an opinion on what I should do with my beard. It's kind of funny. :) Even the 15 year old. So, they decided I should basically do a Puerto Rican jaw line thingy. No such luck, but I can take a hint. Now I'm off to shave.

:O)

Score one for Ian

So last week, you may remember a blog about my having to make a bank transfer for 10,500 Meticais and how I wished I had a rubber stamp? Well I had to go back and make a further deposit of 7,500 Meticais for the certificates I had printed out. Hopefully everything will get here in one piece! But, I came with all my papers CORRECTLY ordered out. The letter was signed by IAN HEFELE, I was attended right away. The receipt from last week's transfer was given to me along with the receipt for today's transfer and I was told to have a nice day.

Weird...........

A legacy

85 days and counting until we can vote out history's garbage. I'm holding my breath and hope to God that all Americans abroad have registered and will get their absentee ballots in time. (Including me!) But something happened to me the other day that just made me cry. I was out doing some shopping and passed by the local Indian Store to buy some of the dry goods I needed. There was a mother in there who wanted to buy her monthly sack of rice. 525 Meticais, or about $25. She was arguing that the price was going up too high and that last month it was 450 Meticais. Totally true, but the Indian shop owner couldn't budge because he would be losing money. The woman wanted to pay the 75 mets difference over the course of the next month. The shopkeeper couldn't except. The shopkeeper was explaining that because of oil prices, gasoline was expensive and the transport of his products was too expensive. Wasn't the invasion of Iraq supposed to insure low oil prices? I just got home and cried. I hope George Bush is proud of himself. This woman just wants the simple pleasure of being able to feed her family for the month. It got me mad that in 162 days Bush will leave to a comfortable retirement where he won't have to worry about $3 price difference in food to survive, he won't have to worry about $4 a gallon gas...


Some say that history will be the ultimate judge of this presidency. After seeing this woman in a shop in Maxixe, on the other side of the world from this man, I don't think we have to wait that long.

VOTE!

Why do we do this?

I'm just filling space, because so many of my friends have posted 200-500 posts and I'm at a paltry 160 +- posts. But I still wonder why I am doing this. Am I this interesting? Or is it just a lazy form of keeping in contact with everybody?

However, jealousy is a sin isn't it?

To stamp or not to Stamp

A while back, I heard a report on my favorite BBC podcast From Our Own Correspondent. It was a report from Belgrade, Serbia. This was within the last year so it was long after Communism collapsed in the former Yugoslavia. But the correspondent had some issues. She had to get her residency, no wait, she wanted to activate a land line... something very petty and simple or so you would think. Basically the moral of the story is she recommended anybody that anybody who moves to a socialist or former socialist country to invest in some rubber stamps. She couldn't get the phone line up and running until she had a stamped piece of paper from her local council saying she lived there, which in turn would send her to a court attesting to the fact that the council says the lady lives in Belgrade and thus issuing her with another stamped piece of paper. With these two pieces of paper, the phone line finally worked.

I had a similar experience today. I needed to do a money transfer to Maputo for a t shirt order I made in Maputo. I made SURE I had all the numbers, my passport, the amount AND a pen. I thought I was all set. I go in and the man at the first level of Dante's Socialist Inferno told me that I had to make the transfer "por escrito." "written" so I asked for the form. He said I could use a regular word document! I nearly died laughing. This is in Barclay's Bank! So I ran to my office and typed up the paper. It was along the rough English translation of this.

I IanHefele of the American Passport $%^&*^%^^ issued in Washington DC....



You get the picture. :) Anyway, Mozambique is very particular about their names. Everything official in this country tends to have me named as IAN PAUL HEFELE. Everywhere but Barclay's Bank that is. So I get there having flourished my signature over a piece of paper that just looked so....wrong. I got back and was told to sit. That I can do. Ivan Heefel was called many many times and I finally realized that was me. So apparently Ian PAUL Hefele doesn't exist. However seeing as I was already in the bank and already signed the paper, I wasn't going to do it again. The clerk was going to make me write it all again and come back later. All because of PAUL. (Thanks Dad!) I got a little snarky at him and asked for white out. He didn't understand. I told him I didn't have all day to play around in the bank, printing it out one more time would waste trees and NO I just wasn't going to do that. So, he told me to sign UNDER the dotted line and all would be well.

The moral of my story is if I had the rubber stamp saying ANYTHING in English, I could've stamped out the Paul part and saved the poor clerk some snark.

Happy Weekend

Are you Jon?

So I have taken roughly 135 pills of Larium. (I will admit I've maybe missed a couple here and there) and I have 21 left to do. That's okay, because I haven't been hit too hard with the side effects of it. Malaria is bad enough while taking the pills, I couldn't imagine what it would be like if I didn't take the pills. It's surprising how many PCVs around here don't though. Basically everyone who hears that we are supposed to take it for our entire time here flip out and call us every name in the book to insult our intelligence. It basically makes people crazy and is only 90 % effective. As many of you know I've got malaria multiple times and still take the pills. But dreams like last night make it totally worth it.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

My friend Anne's brother Jon was back for a visit from the States. However, he was visiting us all in Homoine, not Maxixe. He was back though looking for recruits for the ultimate battle against the Galactic Empire! He was desperate for us to join up with him because "we were strong in the ways..." What ways I don't know! That's all he would say. I agreed with him, as well as most of my friends. Then we went into the back room of one of the Indian run shops here. We were brought into a secret room of a secret room of "one of ours." This Indian guy was a trusted member of the Rebellion and transported new recruits to and from the Space Stations for training. Just as I was about to step into my transport, I started YELLING at Anne asking why she didn't tell me her brother was Luke Skywalker.

I woke up mad... weird.

The latest and greatest

Here in the fair city of Maxixe, you don't get much in the way of excitement - especially when anything and everything you and your circle of friends do is viewed as the excitement. But ladies and gentlemen, I would like to announce that the central market has a special. This weeks special is eggplant/aubergine for 20 meticais. I go to my local lady "Big Mama" who gives me good deal so the global price hike doesn't pinch my metical too much. Anyway, I made something absolutely awesome last night. I wish I had taken some pictures of it because it was so good. But hey, I can't be THAT tech savvy here in Africa now can I?

So I bought the eggplant, some tomatoes, onions, LOTS of garlic and some peppers. I basically put it all together and fried the hell out of it for almost an hour meanwhile adding tumeric, tandoori spice, ginger, more garlic, cumin, more garlic, salt and pepper. MY GOD was it good. I made some pooris along with it and it was amazing. But man was it spicey. I brought the left overs into work today for lunch and could barely stomach them because of the spice. They had been in the fridge over night too!

A friend of mine had been over to my house to type up some things on my computer. I agreed to help him do some translations as well. Instead of just staring at him as he cooked though, I decided to bake. Noel and Sam can tell you I cook over two flames basically. But I baked my kitchen clean of plates. I think my housekeeper HATED me this morning because the sink was FULL of plates. I think I only had one mug left over for my regulatory cup of PG TIPS (a hang over from the UK)! I made apple crisp and some butterscotch blondies with fresh cashew nuts in them.

Maybe I should change the title to something to do with food.

YUM!

A job interview is not always a job interview

I’m watching the funniest thing right now. My work is running a job search. It’s a good thing that they are hiring. It’ll assuage my fears that they are going out of business. But this is one of the funniest job interviews I’ve ever witnessed in my life! The first candidate has been here for 15 minutes already and they are only getting to his work related attributes now. The first questions were from the accountant here at ADECI and it was almost like a proof of identity quiz. The accountant was holding the applicants CV and asking him questions like “what’s your full name?” “Luis Ernesto Diego da Conceição” “What are the names of your family?”, was question two, I want to know what that has to do with anything. Maybe it’s some sort of background check. The questions are continuing. “You drink beer since how long?” “I don’t drink.” “Why not, we all like to drink here?” “Why did you give it up” “What church are you?” “When did you start praying there?” “When did you stop smoking?” “So you don’t smoke, you don’t drink, are you sure you are a man?” “Do you have the sickness of following skirts?” “You don’t?!?!?! You must be dead!” Seriously man, these are some of the questions that are coming up. I can’t wait until the next candidate comes in. I’m wondering though if all these random questions are some sort of background check. I mean, everyone knows everyone here and they don’t want any old random person working for us. I think they want to make sure a fellow from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ would apply. Oh my, now they are pounding into this guy. They told him even before he left that he didn’t get the job. I think they are telling him that just to see his reaction. 
The second guy is older and it’s hysterical. The first question out was if he knew where he was applying to. He didn’t know the name of the institution. Both guys were asked how much they wanted to receive per month. They are both applying for a guard job. Minimum wage is 1,678 MT a month or about $67. But it might be more money since I work for a bigger company I mean hell, I make 5,050 MT a month. That’s Peace Corps paying me though and not ADECI. Holy God, they were just talking about the war time. Apparently this guy was in the armed forces and fought against the rebels in Sofala and Manica provinces. The accountant is from up there and lost some family during the war… so he accused the applicant of killing his family! He said all this without a hint of irony. I don’t get the humor. There is a fear that they feel needs to be instilled in their subordinents that I don’t get. They almost had the poor guy in tears here saying he was in FRELIMO and not with the rebels.
Another interesting question is whether these guys know the difference between a state run business and a private business. I don’t know the importance of this question, but I can guess. Most things are part state owned here. Most companies have a shareholder system (score one for capitalism) but the biggest shareholder is someone who is with FRELIMO or FRELIMO itself (score one for communism.) The president of the company that I work for right now is Graça Machel who is currently the wife of Nelson Mandela, but was the Minister of Education here in Mozambique for YEARS and a champion of FRELIMO. This second guy just admitted he is HIV positive! He responded that he’s stopped smoking and drinking since he did the “teste da minha saúde.” The third guy is acting like an idiot. He is taking the thing to count to 3 before you answer to the nth degree. He hasn’t said anything for a what seems like a couple minutes. He’s not going to get the job and my colleagues are making fun of this lisp he has. However, he is acting like a student in my classes in Homoine. Instead of saying he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll stay silent. WHY?

Just thought you guys would enjoy hearing about run of the mill things. There were 3 applicants, lets see who gets it. I’ll keep you updated!

Oh it's good to be smart

Many people know that I'm trying to apply to school to start in the fall of 2009. Well, part of the application is for me to make a recording of where I am in the various languages I speak. They introduced me to this program called audacity. Well, part of this conference I've been at since the 21st of July is a Gospel Choir. But not in the African sense of the term - more in the middle aged white woman warbling away in church to something that was written in 0001. Yet somehow a group of Mozambicans can even make that sound amazing and amazingly spiritual.

So I schlepped my trusty computer to the coast to try and get some of these songs recorded. IT WORKED!!!! Considering I was recording in an old dank church built in 1890, I thought it came out ok. Everyone in the group says it has too much echo. I tell them it doesn't have too much echo because if I (the mulungo) can understand the Portuguese and the Xitswa being sung THERE IS NOT TOO MUCH ECHO. :) That and I didn't want to burn another 16 CDS. It's a rather boring task to do. But I got there and recorded some vocal exercises and 6 songs that they were singing. My favorite song has to be Hi ta Famba. We are marching in the light of God. I'll see if I can get it up onto here one day. Noel, Liz? Any suggestions? You two are good at this stuff.

The next morning, I spent all morning drinking chai and editing the audio much to the amusement of my maid. I don't think she's ever seen a computer before. So the fact that I could record my voice into the computer and play it back to her was just astounding. I really enjoyed it and hope I can edit my voice in German, Spanish and Portuguese so I sound like a native speaker!

New Theme Song

Anyone who has paid attention to this blog in the last 6 months will know that I've just been having a hard time dealing with the constant "being treated as a freak" way of life I live still. Well my dad was able to give me a new "I don't Care" song to help me keep my sanity while I let my freak flag fly throughout the rest of my time here.

So my dad just sent me a package which had a CD in it from someone I’ve long since forgotten about. It’s called Broadway My Way by Linda Eder. I saw her on Broadway a LONG time ago in Jekyll & Hyde and then actually met her at Sam’s Restaurant right around the corner. It was really cool but apparently not cool enough for me not to bury it in the back of my brain. J But, she sings really well. She takes the old Broadway classics and through a new spin on it. The first track is her rendition of a classic from the French Bird Cage. I am What I am. It's kind of making me happy to write this because I'm getting a wonderful mental picture of myself skipping around my palm tree lined neighborhood singing this and having a bright orange (don't know why) flag while Mozambicans who are watching just spontaneously combust because they can't process what they are seeing. What ever makes me happy right? Anyone care to artistically render that image for me??

:)

Back from the dead

Sorry for the lagging in blogs. I've recently found out a lot more people are reading this than I thought were. I basically thought it was a convenient way to communicate with my family back home. I just wanted to say I am back and better than ever now. I was away translating for Christ at a Methodist Church retreat for ten days. It's really nice to not be there anymore. But I gotta think of things to say to you all about that now.

More soon

I didn't even know

Coming to Africa, I've finally started gaining some pride in America. Seeing so many injustices happen to obtain a "democracy" that can only be labeled as farcical has made me start to appreciate what I've had at my disposal in America. I've defended American ness to South Africans, explained American ness to Mozambicans and pleaded American ness to visiting Europeans. Most of it is done with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

However, I stumbled across some news today that has made me very upset. The USA had a travel ban for HIV positive foreigners in the country. That means anyone with HIV who wasn't a citizen couldn't enter or leave the US without a waiver from the government. The other countries in the world that have a ban are Armenia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Lybia, Brunei, China, South Korea and Iraq. This is crazy. I think it's even crazier that I didn't know about this. But the good news is that as of July 16th 2008, the ban is no more. China repealed it earlier this year as well.

Maybe things really can change?

Freak Flag

So thanks to my brother and his wonderful computer, I've been watching WEEDS on these cold winter nights. The episode I watched yesterday was precious. There was this scene between the main kid Shane and his mother's friend Celia. Shane said he didn't like being a freak and hates to think about what other people think. Celia's parental advice was basically " fuck em, let your freak flag fly." I had heard this from someone who has been to visit from the States but you all know, I'm a little out of the loop. But how right was this character Celia. I'm going to let my freak flag fly because honestly I've tried to "find myself" so heard I've created a collage of facets of me that will most likely be a freak anywhere.

So here's to letting your freak flag fly!

Queues

This is something that's been bugging me recently. MOZAMBICANS CAN'T EFFIN QUEUE. Even at the hospital the other day, the queue wasn't so much a line as an amalgamation of people that never spoke to each other yet somehow knew what was going on and who came before whom. I haven't really paid attention to the line lethargy though because it's a losing battle. That is until recently. It's still a horribly losing battle, but I just can't take the GIMME GIMME GIMME atmosphere that this country seems to operate on. I understand it though. Nobody had anything for such a long time and now that materials have come they've got the gimmes. But I went to go get bread the other day. I was waiting in my spot at the counter and literally got pushed out of the way by this woman who wanted two breads. Later on as I was in this store we all call COSTCO buying some things, another woman came running in yelling HOW MUCH IS A CARTON OF SODA! The guy at the counter ignored her, rightly so. But then she reached over me and slapped down the money pushing me out of the way.

Having lived in the UK for two years, this is hard to stomach. I joked to my friend the other day about how wonderful it would have been if the British colonized Mozambique, there'd be lines. He got the joke and said that its not what the British could have taught the Mozambicans its what the Portuguese didn't teach.... thoughts

On the lighter side,

My maid thinks I wear woman's clothes. She thinks I'm a drag queen. :) In her sense of the term, I guess I am. I wear undershirts - wife beater, a shirt, vest, tank top, singlet whatever you want to call it style. Those are apparently viewed as a woman's shirt here. I have this one I think I got as a set in the Chinese Wal Mart they have in Maputo, so I'll leave what it looks like to the imagination. But, while Noel was here, he left this really cool button down short sleeve number. It has a little fancy embroidery on it but would totally be classified as metro in America and Europe... this whole concept hasn't reached Mozambique yet. I told Raquia that it was part of a style that hasn't made it into Maxixe. She bought it, I saved face and we are all happy!

15 minutes is sometimes a good thing

Yes, American Idol (or whatever version of Idol you subscribe to) has made it to Mozambique. Actually, it's been here for as long as I have but tends to be crap - as most of them are. You can look at stuff from last years show here at the FAMA SHOW. Lets just say thank god it's over for the year. But, there is this newer show called SHOW DE TALENTOS that's being run by the other cell phone company here Vodacom. I kind of like this show better because its not just singing off key contestants. There are also capoeira shows, major amounts of dancing and a first for Mozambique...two guys in drag. It's really worth the look. They are going to win this competition and are taking Mozambique by storm. They're all over the TV. Have shows in Maputo. These guys are big. They've come out as a couple as well and Vodacom is actually saying that they are ok. The thought and sight of two Mozambicans dressed in drag running around the stage lip synching to Like a Virgin and I will survive just makes me laugh. But they are GOOD!!! So what I'm trying to say is that Labiba and Lasanta's 15 minutes of fame may go down in History in Mozambique. Here's to them for opening this country up!

Its a little hard!

People are rough to each other. Mozambicans are some of the most friendly people I've ever come into contact with. But between themselves, they are brutal and won't trust you as far as they can through you. I guess this comes from the BRUTAL civil war that raged here for so long. But this morning was a test of my nerves. My housekeeper has been telling me about her sick brother. He was down in Maputo and she brought him back up here. She and I were talking about what was going on with him. Weight loss, loss of appetite, tiredness. They had gotten the malaria test. Negative. But the brother just kept getting worse. I mentioned an HIV test just to be sure. It's better to know than not! So I agreed to go with my housekeeper and her brother. With a white man in the hospital queue, you will not have to wait there all day. I agreed to have an AIDS test too. I'm at no risk so I figured why not.

As soon as I saw the brother I knew it was AIDS. He was skeletal. But we went. Of course it came back positive. I never thought I would have to experience, but it happens to a lot of us PCVs. It's not that experience that I hated, its the reaction when I got into work. But I quickly started talking to my housekeeper about how HIV is not a death sentence like it used to be. You can live 10-15 years with it if you REALLY take care of yourself. The brother is immediately offered counseling and they have taken him off to the provincial capital to get a CD4 count done. I went to work in a daze this morning. Mainly because I've seen this woman every day for the past 7 months and she was clearly upset and crying today. Luckily, she and I both turned out to be negative.

So I get into work and start asking around for material about living with HIV in Portuguese. All that I had at home in Portuguese was a nutritional book. I gave it to my housekeeper. But one of the guys here at work said to me after I mentioned that I had a horrible morning. "Oh that's nothing, you deal with it." He's insensitive, most likely has the virus himself but is some how right. Someone else here even laughed at my frantic reactions. That pissed me off, but I understood it too. Sympathy is not something shown very often here. That makes sense too when you look at life through an African perspective (something I'm not very good at.) Everyone suffered during the war, everyone suffers now. We all get through. The strength these people have is inspirational... but I guess when you don't really have a choice....

Obrigado por Noel

So the mail system is working again. I've finally figured out how to make sure to get things through. First of all, make it look like a bomb. (Sorry Noel that was close to PEACE CORPS GHETTO what you did with the envelope) Second scribble religious messages all over the package. Third, tape it up like you were chucking it in the ocean for it to get to me. Fourth, put a REALLY awesome DVD in that will keep me up until 1:30 and make me look like a vampire when I come to work the next day. Weeds rocks! Thank you and good night...

oh yeah

I like LOST and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT as well.

PSA

So in my true peace loving form I've never heard of this school. But now a couple of people have expressed surprise that I am applying there. So I did some research on it and here is what I found.

There are two big graduate schools in Monterey California. One is the Naval Postgraduate School founded in 1907 where I am NOT going or even applying to and the other is the Monterey Institute of International Studies founded in 1955 which I AM applying to and hopefully going to. So I'm not going to become a James Bond (Noel) or c3po (Marc) just a lowly translator. You should definitely check out this radio show that Jess gave me. It's the 4th of July broadcast of THIS AMERICAN LIFE and it's called By Proxy.

Tell me what you think, here's the link

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Archive.aspx

OK I take it all back

Okay I take it all back. I just got word that my theatre proposal has been approved. They are writing the paperwork out that I have to send back in and then they will deposit the money within a week!!!! Last year they gave me 3,000 bucks this years its nearly doubled! What a difference a few thousand dollars make in the mood of a lowly PCV.

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!

SNARKY

Am I snarky? I never even would have thought this was a real word Samantha but apparently it is. According to dictionary.com snarky means testy or irritable or ireverent or short. Its classified as mainly British Slang. But it's even in Webster's Dictionary and wikitionary. Any of you heard of this word before? Click on the word above. Its a Russian Rebel News Group. A Russian Rebel News Group using British slang as their domain name. Now that's snarky, don't ya think?

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?

HAPPY 4th!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!!


While all of my American friends are having fun on the beach, I'm headed to the beach!

Happy 4th

Will we ever need to leave home?

Google. Pretty soon the world is going to be pre Google age and Google age dated. Forget about BC and AD or BCE and CE. It's going to be PGA and GA. But really... I discovered something online today that was just AMAZING! It's Google's scanned in book partnership program. I vaguely remember hearing something about this, but let's just say I've been out of the loop for awhile. Anyway, I had gotten a request to do some translation between English Portuguese and Makhuwa. I don't speak Makhuwa but it is similar to Xitswa which I do speak a little of. Both of them were Bantu Languages so somewhat related. I went online to try and find the phrases and words I was looking for with a colleague from that area of Mozambique. Anyway, I found this digital library from Google. We were able to locate a scanned copy of this book from the early 1900's that is thought of as the leading example of Portuguese, English and Makhuwa translation. Funnily enough, it's written by a German for the Imperial Overseas Bantu Department. Ahhhh colonialism. Anyway, it was a big help to finish my work which lead me to completion of my first "professional" translation job. I remember the first time I got paid to act. $50 then and I thought it was amazing. With this work of, oh it maybe took me a half an hour, I made about 27,025,826.99 Zimbabwean dollars!

Death's a Bitch

She isn’t pretty, she’s comes too fast and here in this country she’s so damn unpredictable. There is this old guy that has been working in my place probably as long as it’s been running. I think he’s a founding member of the organization. Anyway before the move, he was fine. Now all of a sudden, he’s skinny skinny skinny, beady eyes, doesn’t eat or recognize anybody. This is all being told to me by a colleague. Now he’s on death’s door. Someone else that gave me a ride from Xai-Xai to Maxixe last year died. (AIDS) This man who’s been working with us… dare I say it? Almost made it 2 years and then 4 people close to me are close to dying in one year. Damn the fear of this disease.

Larium dream extraordinaire

Last night was definitely one of the weirdest dreams I have EVER had in this country. They thankfully had no physical repercussions the next day, but they still messed with my mind. One involved my dog and the other involved my friend Anne. Anne and I were in the Ian McEwan book called Atonement. It’s a pretty good book if you guys want to read it. But the premise of the movie was geared towards me, and it was Anne who ratted on me (the lowly servant boy) when he tried to make it with her older sister –resulting in my death. I was so confused though because Anne and I are good friends and I didn’t want her to be mad at me. But I called her in the morning and she was fine. 

The other dream is the dream that scared me a little bit. My dog has really grown attached to me recently. You all might remember when my other dog was killed. I was really upset. This dog now is wonderful. I think it’s been a long enough time from the other dog that I don’t compare the two anymore. Last night in my dream she was killed though. Mozambique is a very superstitious country, so my housekeeper (in my dream) told me the next morning when she came in that I had to petrify my dog to keep her with me. But, Kuri’s spirit would not go away until I buried her… in my living room floor. The thing that just got me, I was able to see her in such detail in my dream. She naturally didn’t fit in my floor. Things need to be confusing in Larium dreams! But I could really only fit her butt into the floor, so I cemented her in fearing that her spirit wouldn’t leave me alone if I didn’t. My conscious self doesn’t quite see the logic of having a petrified dog in your floor over the chance of having her spirit wandering around the yard where she could be keeping away the robbers.

WOW!

So many of you know, Mozambique was and still is a very poor country. For the entirety of its civil war, it was on the top of the list of miserable places to live. But we’ve come a long way baby. The road up to my town has just been paved in its entirety! Sorry Noel and Sam that you had to suffer through that. Broadband internet is now the way to go according to the phone company. They don’t offer anything less her now. But, the really phenomenal thing that has happened has to do with a certain MC Roger. He’s probably the most famous person in the country. Maybe an R. Kelly or Notorious B.I.G equivalent, you get the picture. He’s big. Well, he got caught with some male prostitutes in Maputo. Apparently, he likes to do that sort of thing – pay for prostitutes that is. I never understand why people who could honestly get anyone they want go out and pay for love. That’s the thing though. He didn’t want the millions of Mozambican women who through themselves at him. This is big people. Most people here don’t even know what homosexuality is or if they do, “it doesn’t exist in Mozambique” So, here’s the best thing, instead of pulling some American Republican “I had a moment of weakness, gone over to the dark side fufu dust” he came out on the evening news. You could almost feel the country’s jaw drop. Then they picked it up and moved on. I asked around what people thought about this news, and they still said he makes good music….

Bang bang

Tomorrow is the 33rd anniversary of independence and also this is the last posting I may do in a while. My office is moving. So I just wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSICA (tomorrow that is)

SAVED!

So in the depths of winter that we are in right now, I've been watching lots of movies with the dog and endless cups of tea. Unfortunately most of the movies have been merda, but I watched a very good movie called SAVED! the other night. It was so highly entertaining. It's a Brian Dannelly film and you can find it here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saved%21

One thing interesting in the movie was the quote the Jesus was the ultimate rebel. It was by the principal/priest of the school so I don't think it was said to be interpreted as I have interpreted it. But there is a gay character in the movie who gets booted out of school for his 'sickness.' "Jesus didn't love him" was what won character said. But if Jesus were the ultimate rebel, wouldn't he be happy about someone being different and having the courage to go against the grain just as he did? That's what the movie started saying in some weird ironic sense. Yet I want to know why the people that call themselves the holiest are actually the most evil inside?

Thoughts?

Sad sad time in Zimbabwe

Most of the world is watching with baited breath what is going on in Zimbabwe. This country used to be the most developed country in Africa outside South Africa. South Africans would sometimes send their children there when they wanted a good education but for a cheaper price than in the Republic of South Africa. Things were just as good in Zimbabwe, but a fraction of the price.
Now, it costs millions of Zimbabwean Dollars for a cup of coffee and that idiot in charge, along with the idiot in South Africa are saying nothing is wrong. Now, the opposition has withdrawn it's election candidate because they want an election and not war. The government's slogan is now WIN or WAR. Where are we going?

Go to nytimes.com and check it out.