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.

Off to Manica

Just a little note for all the people that have gotten used to my constant internet this year (including me!!!!) So I wanted to tell all of ya that I'm going to Chimoio in the middle of the country for a week. It's for the annual boys conference. Hopefully I'll be in such a good mood when I get back!

A typical day at work

So, yesterday I was just sitting in my office doing some things and two colleagues come in. They ask me to come with them (bringing a digital camera) to a meeting of curandeiras (traditional healers or witches depending on your beliefs) Off I trotted. I thought it was just going to be running in, taking some pictures and leaving. It wasn't even really worth it for me to try and teach the colleagues how to use the digital camera - which had a disc in it. Never seen that before. Then, the chief of the women sat me down and let me talk to her a little bit. She even brought me into her 'house of healing.' I had to take my shoes off and then kneel in the room. It helped that the ceiling was so low but I understood that I couldn't tower over the spirits that had come to reside in that house. I guess it would get them upset. We were there though because one of the colleagues from the Maputo office is writing an article on these women because of their use of traditional medicine to fight AIDS. Some people will insist that the witchdoctors can cure AIDS, but Mama Ruth (the lady in the picture) said to me right away that she doesn't cure AIDS, she only helps with the symptoms for those people who wish for her help or don't have the means to get to a western based hospital. Very diplomatic I thought. But I was just astounded by their respect for me! Strange thought no?
Inside the "house of healing" all of the medicines and tools, except for the drums, were covered. Just the colors and the smells are enough to make you crazy. I wonder if this stuff really works. Maybe I have to go to these ladies when I'm sick next. Please stay tuned!

oh yeah, click on the link on the right ------------->
to see pictures

April 1 Dia Da Mentira

Today is a weird day. It's not a holiday and yet it is celebrated with a lot of gusto. None of us get the day off of work but that leads and lends itself to more practical jokes. It's celebrated the world over yet has slightly different "rules" in different countries. And it's a day I enjoy! But, something a friend and I were talking about yesterday, what kind of response do we really expect from people when we play a practical joke on them? "Oh thank you, you proved that I am in fact a gullible person and have insulted my intelligence!" Not likely... it would be more along the line of "YOU BASTARD"
"LIAR"
"F*&*&*"
Like I got today.

As I walked into the office, the games already started. The secretary asked whether or not I had heard that Robert Mugabe had been assassinated. I of course was very happy to hear he was out of the way, turned the internet on and found it wasn't true. He may get voted out, but that is a whole other blog. I took that joke and did it on a few other people. 2 believed me and ever spread it further. However, I think my crowning achievement was the trick i played on my brother. You see, he's coming to visit here in about a month and I've very excited. I emailed him saying I had gotten kicked out of Peace Corps and was on my way home, I was very sorry and I didn't know what to say. Needless to say, he was mad. His girlfriend was mad too. Thank God I was on the internet so he could talk to me about it before Sam called the airline! But the question is why are people so gullible? I've gotten Noel 3 years in a row now.

tchau

100

100 is playing a lot of importance in my life today. This is the 100th post to my blog. I think I was sitting in a cold library annex in Muswell Hill London when I started this post a little of 3 years ago. Now I'm sitting in a HOT office in Maxixe Mozambique. What a trip! The difference between Clinton and Obama is about 100 votes, the falting constituencies in Zimbabwe are about a 100, and its 100 degrees out. :) Lets all keep our fingers crossed that Mugabe gets voted out. Zimbabwe needs a change. America needs a change.


Oh and by the way liz, you got Iran, I got Kazakhstan. I think Borat is reading my blog!

Raining with the sun out….

Well at least the temperature has gone down. Yesterday was the crowning day of my hating the weather. It has been so hot and muggy for the past two weeks I found myself looking at pictures of Alaska and deep snow drifts on the internet just to try to cool my thoughts down. I think I have been itching for the past couple of days with last night being the culmination of it all! As I was eating dinner, I noticed that my ankles were really swollen and itchy. I looked down and saw that they basically were twice the normal size and had little red hive-y bumps all over them. I was ITCHY!!!!!!!! This morning I woke up and they were gone. I swear we just had an inch of rain dropped onto us and now the sun is out. I don’t know if this is global warming, or just Jokwe, the one day cyclone next day tropical storm friend of ours, off in the Mozambique Channel. Whatever it is, I’m looking forward to air conditioning and showers at the hotel in Maputo for the next couple of days.

Well, I’m back from Maputo and don’t think I posted this blog. It’s rainy and very stormy outside right now. I’m back in Maxixe for a little bit. Then I go up to Chimoio on the Zimbabwean Border for a week conference with some boys that I am still working with in Homoine. After that week, I’ll be back down in Maxixe for 2 or 3 more weeks and then Noel and Sam are coming!!!!! It’s my first visit from the States since I’ve been in Mozambique. I’m very excited and trying to save a bit every week so we can have fun while they’re here. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and put them up of when they are here. Back to rain again.

Ian

Itchy, itchy, itchy

 

Last night was the first night in my house where I thought dear God I'm in Africa, kill me now!  Those of you that know I have a flare for the dramatic are probably rolling your eyes, but it is so DAMN HOT HERE.  There's been a quick succession of storms about the size of Katrina that have hit the northern parts of Mozambique and Madagascar over the past couple of weeks.  3 I think in 3 weeks.  That has kept the humidity up for days.  I'm a prickly pear due to this heat rash I have and every single one of my friends is a crabby moody bastard.  Can you blame them though?  Remember East coast Augusts when you would be reading the newspaper and the whole thing would just be saturated?  That's what it's like here.  Just imagine 10-15 days of it in a row without the temperature ever really going down.  Kinda makes you lose your train of thought, like I just did.  I'm in my office right now with the curtains closed, the light off and the fan on high.  I'm desperate to just get the heat down.  The thing that is embarrassing, the Mozambicans are just so used to this, they hardly break a sweat… me I've got my own private Victoria Falls streaming down my forehead.

 

This weekend will be a nice break.  It's time for some regional meetings in Maputo.  We stay at this little holiday resort on the coast of the city called Kaya Kwanga.  It's a really nice place.  It was my first taste of Mozambique!  I remember when I got here I thought the place was a little sleezy but with some refurbishments, it's all nice a new now.  I'm looking forward to the chance just to get away for a couple of days.  It is my monthly shower time and I also heard that Sweeney Todd is  now being sold on the streets in Maputo.  Gotta go and get it.  J

 

 

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

The Weirdest Thing

 

Don't you just love it when you are right?  I mentioned yesterday something about my landlord just creating problems with my house.  Well, I talked to my boss and he said that he and only he can renegotiate a price for the rent.  So I told my landlord to come to the office and talk.  He showed up today and every single person in the office was shocked.  I didn't even recognize him.  He's usually wandering around shirtless and drunk in his yard.  Sitting in the office here, he looked like a Mafioso.  I swear to you, fake leather shoes and belt, black pants that were so creased it looked like they had tent poles in them, and dark glasses.  That gave it away that he was drunk.  But, my boss was really calm and collected; he asked what we were doing here, (Mozambican formalities) and then started the meeting by asking to look at the old rent agreement.  My landlord handed it over and the agreement said that it is automatically renewable for 2 years once it expired, which was about 6 months ago.  My landlord starts saying that nothing is owed by any party (he actually owes my boss 2,500 meticais because of repairs my work paid for on the house.  The landlord says that all the proper discounts have been made and he is just present to talk about renegotiating a contract.  My boss wanted to see proof of the discounts.  Senhor Lukas got in a huff, grabbed the paperwork, mumbled something about coming back, and ran off – that was two hours ago.  Most of my colleagues want me to move now because a "vida negra" will continue happening.  The landlord obviously wants 600 meticais a month rent for a house that we worked on.  Oh well, at lest I see that I've got a lot of people on my side!  I'll keep you updated.

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

Africa’s opportunists are……

Africa's opportunists are……

 

You fill in the blank here.  I am so fed up with people seeing white skin and thinking money, money, money.  I can take it when it's just beggars on the street, but when it's people like oh say my next door neighbor who has had other Peace Corps Volunteers live in his yard, then it drives me bonkers.  I do have to tell you though, and I'm not making this up, the man is stupid.  I don't know what he's thinking but he is just a STUPID human being.  He comes to me one night at 9:30 at night saying that my rent has gone up to 600 meticais a month.  My rent has been 250 meticais for as long as there has been a volunteer living in the house.  This guy said it is because of all the new things done to the house that the rent will go up.  To make a long story short, all of the repairs on the house have been done by Peace Corps or by ADECI, the organization I work for. 

 

This morning I woke up to him just being his sleazy self saying he couldn't come into the city to talk with ADECI because he doesn't know where the office is.  I'm sorry but that's bullshit.  He once proudly said to me that he is born and bred Maxixe, pretty much on the exact same land where the house now stands.  He's just trying to take advantage of me as a foreigner and as someone who "apparently doesn't know the system."  I've been visiting people at this house for months now.  I just feel so angry towards him because he knows I know he's trying to rip me off, but he's still trying.  If he would just let me alone for the 250 mets a month until I leave here, then he'd have a house full of stuff when I leave, if he continues to harass me, he'll be left with the four walls….grrrr….

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

Even after two years

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

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

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

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

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Now playing: Freshly Ground - Ma'cheri
via FoxyTunes

Gender Awareness when Women are not allowed to Speak

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

 

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

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

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

Is listening that hard?

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

Communication is a Wonderful Thing

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

PRICE CONTROL GONE BAD

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

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

Letter from the Prophet Marcus to the Mozambicans….

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

 

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

 

MP

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

Back in the land of....

So I've been busy in America for awhile, but I just wanted to tell ya'll that I'm back into the tell all mode of my life. I've got a new computer, the ability to put all of my photos on to a machine where it doesn't take too long to turn the picture right side up and now I'll share that all with you! But I just wanted to say, I am on Facebook now too. So, I've got Facebook, myspace... photos up to 2007 on kodakgallery and i'll be putting up web albums on Picasa soon. Flickr just doesn't work over here. I'll be typing up some more interesting blogs soon.

ian

Last post from Mozambique in 2007

Ola!

I'm sitting in the office after walking the 2 km from the hotel. Man it's HOT!!! I'm going off to the airport here in Maputo at 13h30 and REALLY excited. Everything is packed, hopefully there will be some good movies on the airplane and I will be going to see my family and also friends and NEW YORK CITY!!!

Some of you may have seen the people track thingy on this blog. A friend of mine in England gave it to me and it's always fun to see how small this world is getting.

I'll be in NYC tomorrow!

Ian

Only in Africa

So I am back from Swaziland. Got into Maputo today. I just wanted to write a quick note because it is 10 pm and I AM TIRED. However, yesterday I went dancing at the royal kraal of Swaziland. In American terms, I basically danced in the royal cow pasture. But what was cool was it was a real ceremony, meaning it would have happened if tourists were there or not. I was one of 6 tourists, all of us were there together from the backpackers I stayed at. The best part though is that the Queen Mother and King of Swaziland were there, the last absolute monarchs of Africa and as the only white people in the group of hundreds, we got brought to the front and danced in front of Their Majesties... with cow dung on our feet because we had to walk through well, the royal cow shit.

Hi from the Swaz!

Here I sit in Swaziland. I tried to get away to a country where I wouldn't be known. I don't think that is possible anymore. I feel like a minor celebrity in southern Africa. I woke up this morning in Mozambique and walked to Swaziland. The money changers and the border guards all recognized me as a PCV. I got the bus to the biggest city, Manzini and went to go to KFC, just because I could. I walk in and hear a you must be Ian, I knew you were coming here. A KFC in MANZINI come on people, can you get any more random then that? Anyway, I ate some food, went to the bank and tried to find the Spar supermarket. Considering I have a backpack it didn't work out. I went to Shoprite. Then I was walking to the bus station and passed by the internet cafe. I saw some more people that know me. Hopefully when I get to the game park, the zebras won't be recognizing me!

More soon

As I sit here listening to Diamonds

As I sit here listening to Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon, I think of what has happened in the past 2 years of my life – has it really been two years?   I love Africa dearly.  This has been the experience of a lifetime and I know all of you are thinking, with YFU, Friend's World, etc, doesn't this boy have his share of 'experiences of a lifetime.'   I don't think I have though.  Just today, I was freaking out because I realized I only have 2 weeks left in Homoine.   This is the town I've called home in Mozambique for two years.  Through think or thin Homoine has always been there for me.  Now it's time to say goodbye.   It's going to be hard, but it's time to move on to the next point in my life – even if it is only 21 kilometers away.  I'm just finished with my life at this stage.   Then I sit here and think how blessed I am that I can just say "I'm finished" and move on.  Please God, let me find some sort of career that enables me to continue along this line.   The joy of being in Africa is that if I have a bad day, I will always have tomorrow to look forward to.  Or in some cases, I can look forward to a time maybe about an hour later.   Life here tends to be an emotional whirlwind.  Mozambicans are always ready to party and take any excuse for it.   So I'm going to bow out gracefully and not through a party for my going away.  After all, I'm not going away.

 

I had an interesting conversation with the Brazilian in town today.  He recently got into a fight with some English ex-pats two towns over because of a project we had all done together.   I don't know if you remember, but I invited a group to my town to do a musical performance (concerning AIDS, as everything in my life seems to be concerning now) and we all went out for this crazy dinner afterwards.   Well, you put 2 Brazilians, a Portuguese, 2 Mozambicans, 2 Belgians, an Austrian, a Frenchman and an American at a table together and out comes a very interesting conversation – which was recorded, unbeknownst to everyone but the person who pressed play on the recording machine.   My friend, the Brazilian, got very mad because he is working on his own material and he wouldn't want this recording published unless he was certain of all that he said.   But getting back to the conversation I had with him today, he was calling them all under achievers in their own countries so they come here to an under developed country and suddenly they are gods.   That got me thinking, am I a second rate underachiever that doesn't have the ability to make it in my own country – or can't?

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~Ian~
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www.weltwanderlust.blogspot.com

As I sit here listening to Paul Simon

I wonder if there is anyone reading this out there still?