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!