TIES THAT BIND
This month has been a month of visits – not a calendar month exactly, but a four week period. I’m loving it though because I’ve not had many visits to
This friend is such a trouper. Murphey’s law has been a cannon law while this PCV has been in
I just finished reading an article about the music industry reviving LPs to help and combat against the bags of money they are loosing in the battle against mp3 downloading over the internet. Let me just say they have a whole different level to deal with once they even take a look at
While living here, I've gotten to appreciate books and also just being social so much more than I did in the States or Europe. But the other night I was dreading going home because I was without power and going to be reading by candlelight or writing in my journal. So much self-analysis is not a very good thing. I had a pang of longing for the States or just the west because there "you have options." It's true you have options, but think about it, what would I be doing in down time in the States
Watching a movie
Reading a book
Watching tv
going out for food and/or beer
Well, I do all of that here too with and without friends. I may have to think twice now before I saw that Mozambicans and Americans or anyone else for that matter are really all that different.
Thoughts?
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
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.
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….
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.
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?
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.
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
