Please tell me skinny jeans are still in

Mercado Municipal and Mozambican flag

Lovely downtown Maputo - the Baixa area where they filmed part of "Blood Diamond"

Dancers and musicians on Maputo Day, celebrating 120 years of its founding

Hey everyone,

Surprise! I am posting a few pictures from my last days in Mozambique! Yes, a change in plans has brought me home to the USA for Thanksgiving. I have had a stomach bug for over a month that I could not get rid of. When my roommates and colleagues pointed out that I was noticeably losing weight (not something I was striving for), I decided it was time to come home and find out what this is once and for all, since the local clinic could not figure it out. At this point, I am hoping it is a seven-foot long tapeworm that I can put in a jar on my bedside table and keep as a pet. It seems like an appropriate souvenir of Mozambique, and one that I can resell to any high school biology department to defray my travel expenses.

I am very disappointed to have had to leave earlier than expected, and believe me, I considered for a moment continuing my postings without revealing my location, but that would have been too dumb! I have some drafts that have been ruminating in the back of my mind--entries about development work, HIV/AIDS, expats and other reflections. I think I will still post them in the coming weeks as soon as I sort out my suitcase and do some laundry.

While I am really bummed to have to miss my last weeks planned in Africa, I am glad for the great experience I had and the fantastic people I met over the past three-and-something months. And they did ask me to come back, so I am not ruling anything out for now! I feel like my work with Africa is not finished.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I'll be seeing you real soon. /eal

Coworkers Joel, Paula and Juliao

Roommate Jessica, coworkers Azarias and Yolanda

Going away party with friends from South Africa, UK and France.

Dances with Lizards is put to the test

When I arrived in Quelimane this time, I realized that I kind of like it (see Dances with Lizards´ first report back from the field). It´s a slow-moving, small Mozambican town with plenty of palm trees and quintessential African scenes of men on bicycles and women carrying wood on their heads. I don´t know why I couldn´t see its charm the first time around, but it felt nice to return to a familiar place. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon and unpacked my bags in the guest house, only to hear that same haunting vocal music from across the street. I wandered over and found the youth choir holding their rehearsals in a dingy little room in the little building that served as their church. When they saw me lurking outside the entrance, they remembered me and invited me in to listen. It was relaxing and strangely familiar to sit in on a rehearsal, as I have done many times in my life as a musician, and listen to them work out the parts and put them all together.

humble site of beautiful sounds.....

The musical process was very similar to ours. For some reason, I had naïvely assumed that these kids were just born knowing their traditional harmonies and that the multi-layered songs poured out of them spontaneously when they opened their mouths. Not so—apparently, it takes practice to learn these parts and determine the phrasing and the entries and cutoffs. Just like at home, people snicker when your voice cracks and everyone laughs when the harmony falls apart. There was one young guy who appeared to be the musical leader, and his assistant was a teenage girl with a piercing soprano voice. The group sang churchy songs in Portuguese, their local language, Lomue, and even one song in English. Even though I didn´t know the words, I sat next to the weakest guy in the group and tried to help him get the notes for his part. I´m sure they thought it was kind of bizarre for me to just walk in and hum along, but it was hard to keep from singing in the midst of such beautiful sounds. I recorded several video clips that I know I won´t be able to upload here, but which I will be anxious to show everyone when I return.
workshops in Mopeia
Have I mentioned the phenomenon of Africa time? I have become somewhat accustomed to the slower pace of life here, but it is sometimes hard to remember that the word “schedule” is to be taken lightly. Any number of factors can throw off the plan, and I don´t mean by a few minutes or even hours, but by a day or more. So when no one showed up to pick me up at the airport in Quelimane, and the guest house was locked, I figured there was some miscommunication and found my way into town and got ahold of a set of keys from the guard. I waited and waited for my colleagues to show up for our Sunday evening departure to the field, but nobody showed. Eventually I got a phonecall saying the car wasn´t ready and we would have to wait until Monday to drive out. Finally, 24 hours later, we got the show on the road, and no one seemed to be the least bit concerned about the delay or missing an entire day of our purported business agenda. I am the first to admit that in my former life as a manager, a 24 hour delay for a meeting would have been accompanied by a lot of stress and copious apologies, but in my new life as Mozambican volunteer, I have learned to meet these inconveniences with a Bart Simpson-esque shrug.
Translation of what I am saying, "You! Give more example help children!"

The mission was to travel with Xavier and Janete, two Mozambican colleagues, to Mopeia to carry out a training with community groups on how to write a grant report. The participants were representatives of the local associations that had won small grants from Save the Children, and the deadline was nearing for them to submit their mid-term report on the progress of their projects. The training took place in a school building, which is to say, a cement structure in the middle of a dirt compound, with wide openings for windows (but no glass), old wooden school benches that looked like something from a 1950´s movie set, and walls that seemed to be plastered with moldy pieces of chewing gum. Once we started the lesson, it became evident that the sticky, brown residue on the walls was a leftover from years of sticking up posters and flip chart paper with stickum, that white gooey stuff that can be used to temporarily hang stuff on the wall. I hadn´t seen it since the 70´s. It was the only way to have a space for writing things, as there was no black board or easel for a flipchart. We also posted big pieces of paper on the wall as a background screen so that we could project word documents onto the wall. It was about 90 degrees that day and we were struggling to get the pieces of paper to stick to the walls with all the humidity. Every few minutes one would fall down and we would have to rush up and try to affix it with more gum. By the end, we, too, had covered the wall in sticky stuff that didn´t entirely come off the surface afterwards. Our training was successful, I think, and most participants (around 30 of them) were willing to contribute ideas and ask questions. One of the biggest challenges was the language barrier, and for once not just my own! These are folks that may or may not have gone to school and may or may not have learned Portuguese. They speak their local languages, primarily, and Portuguese is only used for academics or business transactions. There were one or two younger folks that were able to serve as translators from Portuguese into Sena or Lomue to make sure everyone was getting the message. It was inspiring to see folks coming from, virtually, some of the most remote places in the world---I imagine some may have walked for hours---to attend a training where the moderators are speaking in a foreign language about budgets and objectives and meeting deadlines, and using computers. Some of these folks don´t read or write---their grant agreements are signed with a fingerprint! Several attendees were mere kids, who sat through the entire training with everyone else and didn´t make any fuss whatsoever. A few women brought their babies. A big incentive to attend may have been the free sandwich and soda at break time and the lunch of rice and chicken at the end. Whatever the case, I was impressed with their willingness to share their experiences, get involved in the topics and honestly try to understand the obligations that were associated with the sum of money they had received.
Mozambican Ray Charles in the front row
Back in the village that night, I learned that the Cruz Vermelha, the Red Cross shelter where we had stayed the last time, was full. Well, full except for one room, which my colleagues insisted I take because it was the best accommodation in town. This meant that they would be staying down the street in other lodgings. But when we walked in, the Cruz Vermelha was packed with a crew of construction workers ranging in age from 18 to 50, all walking around with their skivvies on and having a bit of a bachelor party. It was quickly decided that this was no place for a proper lady (such as I) to spend the night. I would stay in the pousada with my colleagues, which was fine with me because it meant I didn´t have to be isolated—our cell phones were not getting a signal up there. A few minutes later, however, my coworkers promptly ditched me at the adjoining restaurant and said they were going to eat at the home of another coworker from the Mopeia office. There I was, alone and feeling slightly furious with them for abandoning me with little explanation, when a white truck pulled up alongside the patio…and who should jump out but Dr. Omar, the Spanish doctor. He remembered me and decided to stick around for dinner and keep me company. In talking with him, he assured me that my coworkers had left me there for valid reasons. One was that they wanted me to have the best quality food available in the village, and that was at the one restaurant in town. The second reason, which I hadn´t considered, was that they saw me as a part of the establishment, an auditor sent from Maputo that would report back on them to their boss. “They are going to drink wine and have a good time!”, Omar said, “they can´t do that in front of you. They don´t want the white woman to see them drinking or acting outside of their professional roles—don´t forget what you represent to them. As much as you feel like a peer, you are still the white administrator from the main office. This is their livelihood and they cannot afford to let their guard down in front of someone they barely know. Don´t take it personally, that is just how it works.” I felt a little less offended when he explained this, but was horrified by what he said next. “So you are staying at the pousada down the street? It is the most horrible place in the world! It is a place of prostitution, a motel by the hour: the bathrooms have a stench you can´t believe and the rooms are disgusting. I can´t believe they are letting you stay in those conditions. You just never know what has been going on in those beds!” I really wish he hadn´t told me that, because what ensued may have been the worst night of my trip so far.

It was bad. The rooms were dungeon-like with rough cement floors and mold-stained walls. A tiny little porthole window provided the only contact with fresh air and a dusty mosquito net full of holes hung over the bed from a rusty wire. If in fancy hotels, the maid comes round to “turn down the bed” for you and place a mint on your pillow, here the chamber boy comes round to spray some Baygon bug killer in the room to prepare it for sleeping. When I entered after the mist had settled, there were cockroaches belly up and legs wriggling around my bed (apparently, the pick-up service to remove the cadavers is extra). The bathroom cannot really be called a bathroom. There was a toilet commode with no seat or lid on it, no water tank or water inside it. In the corner was a sort of sink basin with no faucet, only a drain. Per standard, there was a big plastic bucket in the middle of the room with some water and a scooper, which you were supposed to use for everything from “flushing” the toilet to washing yourself off. A cardboard box in the corner had lixo (waste) written on it, and served as the repository for toilet paper, since there is no putting paper in these waterless toilets. It was pitch black outside when I arrived, there being little electricity in town, and virtually no illumination in the pousada save a lone lightbulb in my room.
The Bates Motel in Mopeia
Fish market

My only consolation was that I had brought my own, treated mosquito net with me for emergencies like this. Once I managed to get that hung up, there was the question of actually getting into the bed. With the words of Omar still ringing in my ears, I inspected the sheets and mattress. This was ill-advised---it would have been much better for me not to know, for example, that the lumpy, coil mattress had clumps of what appeared to be hair and dead larvae stuck to its surface. The sheets were some sort of synthetic/polyester material whose cleanliness was undetermined, but I wasn´t going to take any chances. I grabbed my capulana (African wrap) from my suitcase together with a few other pieces of clothing and spread them out over the sheets. Then I suited up in full body armour with long sweatpants and a hoodie covering my entire head to ensure that no part of my body was going to come in direct contact with that nasty bed! It must have been 90 degrees in the room and the fan, while providing some relief, could not do much more than circulate heavy air around the fetid chamber. In the corner through a hole in the wall, I heard the squeaking and scratching of what I hoped were just mice. Yes, just a few, cute, furry little mice, I told myself. I wanted to die. After all my bragging about being used to life in Africa, apparently there are some things I have not fully embraced yet.
School children and their hunky teacher
The next day was rough, as I had had a sleepless night and not much inspiration to wash myself in the putrid confines of the bathroom. When we reached Morrumbala, my coworkers again offered to put me in the nicer pension in town while they stayed at the Save the Children camp on the outskirts of town. Not wanting to be the white girl who has to stay in the fancy digs (and not wanting to be alone), I requested to stay with them even though I knew it would be outhouses and campfire for all my needs. I was actually looking forward to my bucket shower of water heated in the blackened cauldron, which gave everything from bathwater to soup a strong, smoky aroma that I only thought possible in Lapsang Souchong tea.
Janete and Xavier ride a burro
I am amazed by how much I continue to learn each time I go to the field. I was eager to attend the training because I had spent most of the month of October writing a training manual that was to be used for the occasion. I had incorporated some elements of Rotary trainings that I had done over the years, and had written modules to cover topics like project planning and implementation, roleplays on leadership and conflict resolution, and a general introduction and overview of Save the Children. At the time it seemed reasonable, and my boss took the time to read each section and provide feedback—she was enthusiastic about my ideas, the content and format. I figured she would know what would fly and what would not work as she has been living in Mozambique for over 13 years. However, as soon as I started to review my training outline with the field staff, they voiced their doubts. I started to see what they meant. How can you do a 45 minute introduction and overview of the organization when most of the participants struggle with understanding Portuguese and have a very limited attention span for classroom talk? Shouldn´t we be spending valuable time teaching them how to fill in a budget sheet or draft a narrative report? Why do we need to use pre-fabricated scenarios to do role-playing when it will take half and hour just to read through the scenario and get them to understand that it is just a game to learn about conflict resolution? Shouldn´t we just ask them for their own examples of conflict resolution so they can have more realistic examples? And, again, how are we going to use handouts that explain implementation of the project if many of the people cannot read? Ugh. It was frustrating. And disheartening to see my carefully crafted manual decimated before my eyes.
Making xima for lunch: xima, a paste made from cassava root or maize, is a stable of the Mozambican diet.
The only thing left intact in the end seemed to be my proposal of an open forum with the former grant winners, and even that was going to be a huge logistical challenge. An open forum panel discussion is not something people are accustomed to here; they were bringing 6 people chosen from 3 different villages in for a full day of training just to tell them how the session would unfold and what questions they should prepare for. A full day of training, with meals and lodging, just to prepare these folks on what to do in front of a group and answer questions from their own experience for an hour during a training session! The group of repeat grant winners that had been identified by local staff had extremely varied levels of education and communication skills. One woman, who spoke only in Sena, was terrified to say anything in front of me, a white woman. A teenage boy could not read or write, making it difficult for him to take notes or read the blackboard. [I have to admit that this same teenage boy, while very sweet, clearly had not washed in many days, and his clothes looked like they had not been cleaned for several weeks, if ever. The smell was so bad in the suffocating heat of the afternoon that I was getting a gag reflex just by sitting next to him. I´m embarrassed to admit I had to excuse myself at one point and go outside for air.] It hardly seemed worth all the effort, in the end. I felt like my idea drained their resources and they were only doing it because it had come down from the Maputo office. But it was a consolation they were doing the open forum at all, given the fate of all of my other material. I felt that at least one contribution was made on my part....now back to the ole drawing board.
I.M.A. rides again!
Back in Quelimane for the weekend I attended a Halloween party where the International Mosquito Assailant was able to make an encore appearance! The hosts were some of the same Americans (who else) that I had met on my first visit, and the turnout rate of excellent costumes was impressive! Most of the Mozambican guests showed up in drag and some Peace Corps volunteers showed a good effort with their electricians´ outfits (did they bring those orange jumpsuits all the way from home or what?). At one point, the djembes were unveiled and I played in a drumming circle for awhile. Then someone had a guitar and started a singalong of Eagles and Beatles hits. Even while I was enjoying experimenting with the djembe, I had to take a step back and note for the record that I was participating in a drum circle, something that I would have NO tolerance for at home, under any circumstances. It was kind of horrifying to realize how comforting it felt to sing along with Hotel California and Hey Jude, just because somebody else in the room knew the words. In fact, I will probably deny all of this when I get home.
Zambezi River in creepy Chimuara port town
I am back in Maputo now and have met my third roommate, another French woman named Myriam. My original flatmate, Sophie, has been reassigned to Quelimane permanently and the other one, Jessica, will end her term in a few weeks and probably go onto another assignment in Democratic Republic of Congo or Afghanistan. Such is the nature of development work. And now I get the big bedroom. /eal

Halloween Special Edition - The Adventures of International Mosquito Assailant

The International Mosquito Assailant (I.M.A.) travels the world protecting innocent victims from the scourge of malaria. Humble humanitarian aid worker by day, valiant superhero by night, I.M.A. rides the wings of her mosquito net cape and swoops in on offending mosquitos wherever they hide. Accomplice number one: the dreaded mosquito coil. Mosquitos hate the smell of this highly toxic subtance, which can be burned like incense inside or outside the home. I.M.A. always has a mosquito coil hanging around her neck to send mosquitos slinking away into the night, like so many vampires spurned with a clove of garlic. But don't eat the coil, it's toxic for humans, too.

Stubborn mosquitos buzzing around your living room at night? Can't watch t.v. or read a book in peace for fear of being bitten? This is a job for I.M.A. and weapon number two: Baygon aerosol. Watch as I.M.A. expertly locates the pesky critters and eliminates them with one fatal spray.
Not limited to commercial products, I.M.A. is able to find solutions to mosquito removal with common household items, such as a simple fly swatter. This may look like a burger turner to you, but within moments I.M.A. transforms it into a lethal arm, splattering mosquitos on walls and windows, leaving nothing more than a tell-tale scia of mosquito guts in her wake.
Don't forget to slather your body with DEET before heading out at night! Whether in spray form, cream or handywipe, I.M.A. advocates several applications per day, even in the office, to keep skeeters where they belong--in the graveyard!As we speak, International Mosquito Assailant is preparing for flight to the Zambezia Region in Central Mozambique where so many mosquitos await their judgment day.

Stay tuned for more adventures with International Mosquito Assailant, and have a Happy Halloween!

......To be continued......

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Long Walk to....the end of this blog posting

As with many of my blog entries, there is a caveat, one that I gave you fair warning about in my profile, and that is: I don´t know nothin´about nothin´, so don´t look for any actual facts or knowledge here, only opinions and experiences. I feel a need to remind you about this going into my coverage of South Africa because for readers looking for insight into the politics or history of the country, you aren´t going to find it here. Nelson Mandela´s 600-page autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, ought to give you an unabridged version of events in case you want to check it out and return to these pages in a few months for some lighter (but not much shorter) fare.
Cable car to the top of Table Mountain. Someone was terrified of making the ascent....and it wasn´t me.
I also feel I should provide some background for those who aren´t familiar with South Africa´s status within Africa: it´s not the total Wild Africa experience that one sees in National Geographic. South Africa is a sophisticated, wealthy country with all the infrastructure and amenities of the most developed western societies. It is the so-called jewel of the African continent, one that defies comparisons to any other country surrounding it. John Edwards talks about his theory of the two Americas and the differences in quality of life between upper-middle class and low-income America. If we look at a the region of Southern Africa, which could be comparable in size to the USA, South Africa would be the upper class elite compared to its poorer, country cousins just down the road. It´s like comparing Chicago to rural Illinois---sorry for you down-staters, but you get my drift: there is an abyss between the two. So in essence, my journey to Cape Town was more like a European vacation, a return to civilization after two and a half months of no-frills lifestyle. I´m not ashamed to admit that I was looking forward to it immensely.

What is it about me and airports? My travel companion Rob made it from the U.S. in 48 hours, catching all three connections with no problem, yet I couldn´t even get out of the country next door. My flight out of Maputo was cancelled with no explanation, no assistance offered, no apologies. But once I reached the blessed shores of the Cape, one day later than planned, all was forgiven.
Company Gardens and Table Mountain in the background
The first afternoon we boarded a ferry to Robben Island, the rocky and windswept island off the coast of Cape Town that is home to the jail where Nelson Mandela spent his 27 years of imprisonment. The ferry used for tourists today is the same boat that historically carried prisoners to the island, though I find it hard to believe the original detainees enjoyed café tables, leather booths and a fantastic view of Victoria and Albert Waterfront during their ride.
Craft market
Our tour guide around the compound did not hide his disdain for South African politics, and made a moving speech about violence, equal rights and the plight of black people. At a certain point, he asked the group to shout out where they came from, and we noted that tourists came from all parts of the globe in addition to South Africa. We also noticed that no one, including ourselves, claimed to be from the U.S.A. This was telling, not because it was odd not to find an American amongst the group (in fact, we knew there were other Americans on the bus with us), but because no one wanted to admit it! After the diatribe about peace, equality and transparency in government, who would raise his hand and announce he was from a country that was leading an unjustified war costing thousands of lives and millions of dollars? Take that, George W. Bush: we are all too embarrassed to associate ourselves with you! We are cowering in the back of the bus and frantically sewing Maple leaf flags onto our backpacks! Long gone are the days when being an American abroad brought provoked curiosity or admiration—in these times, our country represents something much different on the international scene.

Our second tour guide took us inside the prison cells, an environment he knew all too well as a former inmate of the facility. He was a young guy, in his forties, and had been imprisoned at Robben Island for five years during the late 80´s, overlapping for a few years with Nelson Mandela´s incarceration. He showed us the group cells, which could hold up to 50 people at a time, and the solitary cells. We wondered if being back in that place where so many injustices had occurred wouldn´t make him bitter or carry with it a host of conflicted feelings about the years of his life that had been confined to those walls. He was honest in his responses, and told stories of the confiscated mail, the good guards and bad guards, and his struggle to find books to continue his education in jail. The most shocking part for me was a menu board that clearly listed how much food was to be rationed for white inmates, coloreds and blacks: whites got a full meal with set portions and extras like butter, jam for their toast, sugar and milk for their coffee. Coloreds got slightly smaller rations, and blacks received not only the smallest portions of food, but no butter, no jam, no sugar, no coffee or milk at certain meals. It is preposterous to think that the injustices were so blatant and deliberate as to be written down as internal guidelines for the staff. Did no one question whether this was right or wrong?
Me and Elton John at the top of Table Mountain. I had to take a picture because he was wearing the worst jacket I´ve ever seen, with a nylon Versace knock-off stretched over his protruding paunch and light green loafers.
The trip to Robben Island was a good point of departure for the rest of the week as it was a reminder of the fact that this seemingly modern and progressive country just 15 years ago operated under an apartheid system that denied the rights of the vast majority of its citizens. Who among us does not remember 1990, the year when Nelson Mandela was freed? The first free and fair elections after apartheid was abolished took place in 1994—we are talking about very recent history. Under the sheen of South Africa´s industrialization and Cape Town´s cosmopolitan air, there was a country that was still struggling to get things right. There seemed to be a lingering racial tension and segregation in the city, visible in the lock-down of the poshy neighborhoods and the ratio of whites to blacks seen in the fancy downtown businesses. I am familiar with security precautions from Mozambique, but Rob commented on the weirdness of having to be buzzed through two sets of doors with a guard on duty each time you enter a hotel or nice restaurant. For a country where 80% of the population is black, where were all the black people?
Kids dancing in Company Gardens
If the political history was troublesome, Cape Town´s natural beauty was so overpowering it was impossible not to be charmed. It is a city with incredible visual impact. Nestled into the foot of Table Mountain and surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the city has beautiful colonial style buildings, pedestrian malls, public art and the fantastic Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. We enthusiastically did all the standard touristy stuff in the brisk spring weather, minus the doubledecker bus ride and Township tour. In hindsight, the township tour probably would have provided the reality check we needed, but at the time it seemed a bit staged and, after all, this was supposed to be my break from being in that dimension every day.
Magical Kirstenbosch.

Wish I knew what some of these plants were called.

Oh, and the food. I had almost forgotten the homey pleasure of being served warm carrot soup on a clean tablecloth with a multigrain roll just out of the oven. Or fresh milk in my tea---the long-conservation UHT variety has been serviceable over these past few months, but there is much to be said for fresh dairy, not to mention the luxury of clotted cream on scones. Heavenly! The game restaurant we found on Long Street one night provided a dazzling smorgasboard of grilled meat: we ordered a hanging kebob of game meat medallions that included springbok, kudu and impala, with an ostrich carpaccio as a starter. Thanks, no doubt, to Rob´s audible outbursts of culinary enjoyment, the waitress offered us a taste of their house biltong with a local feta cheese that was so creamy and smooth it had the texture of whipped butter. Biltong, a generic name for dried meat jerky products, turned out to be a favorite snack and there was a wealth of varieties to choose from: ostrich, impala, kudu, crocodile (sadly, no rat!).
High water travel pants: I´ll be ready when the flood comes to the Cape of Good Hope.
After a weekend full of luxuries, like stores with brand-name toiletries, we rented a car and drove down the Cape Peninsula stopping in Hout Bay for a lunch of snoek and chips. By the time we entered the national park that leads to the Cape of Good Hope, it had stopped raining, which was fortunate since we had to dodge the baboons that started to pop out from every bend in the road. The scenery went from quaint fishing village to a harsh, epic landscape within an hour. An endless horizon of jagged mountains reaching down to the choppy shoreline was eerily biblical: the panorama was awesome in the true sense of the word. One truly had the feeling of being at the end of the world.

We beared the icy winds of Cape Point, the south-westerly most tip of Africa, and headed back up through Simon´s Town to see the jackass penguins at Boulders Bay (though I am known for not being an animal lover, in this case jackass refers to the type of penguin and not a name I muttered under my breath at the beasts). They were actually pretty cute, and I swear that two of them made that cuddly heart-shaped formation with their heads just like in March of the Penguins! I have witnesses. As if penguins weren´t a bizarre enough sighting for one day, our next stop in Hermanus put us right in the path of the mating season for whales. Standing on the shores of False Bay it was a veritable whale-watching bonanza--we must have seen over a dozen Southern rite whales and an Orca as well. They were coming up everywhere, fluke and fin, putting on quite an impressive show of barnacles and blowholes. Now that I think of it, when I start my fanzine for whale enthusiasts, it will be called Barnacles and Blowholes. And I have all of your addresses.
Awwwwwww...... Now who´s cuter? Wait, don´t answer that.
The last stop was wine country, Stellenbosch and Franshhoek, the former a bit too full of “shoppes” and the latter more low-key (and it had a memorial to the Huguenots--weren´t they French or something?). We stayed at a B & B on the edge of town. I didn´t know that B & B´s frequently have themes, but this one went all out. At the Guinea Fowl Cottage everything (and I mean everything), from the soap dispenser to the accent pillows to the crotcheted toilet paper cozy, was emblazoned with the speckled guinea fowl, recognizable for its perky blue crown. Our hostess, Liz, was the most formal, old school South African I´ve ever met: stuffy in a Queen Elizabeth sort of way (she still referred to Maputo by its colonial name, Lorenço Marques) and yet hospitable like a spinster aunt with her china hutches filled with guinea fowl figurines. She answered questions with a drawn-out “Yaaayyzzz” that made me think of an English butler, and when she consistently referred to Rob as “Bob” we were both too petrified to correct her. Despite the matching guinea fowl placemats and the moth-ball stiffness of the whole place, there was, inexplicably, a placard posted on the shower stall that read: SAVE WATER, SHOWER WITH A FRIEND! Try as I might, I just couldn´t imagine Liz herself ever doing this, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn´t really want to imagine this scenario. Yaaayyzzz.
When dassies attack, Rob defends my honor with a big stick. Dassies are basically big rabbit-like rodents, but they´re so much cuter when they´re foreign rodents.
The following weekend Rob and I reconvened in Kruger Park, which is only about two hours from Maputo on the border between South Africa and Mozambique. I had a great adventure taking a crowded minibus for $6, which let me off at the border crossing where you walk through to get your passport stamped and magically appear on the other side. Kruger Dave, our host at KrugerView Lodge, came to pick me up in Komatipoort on the South African side, and drove me to the backpackers´ lodge where everyone had just returned from their game drives. The lodge was lovely, an old converted house with a thatched roof, wrought-iron stove, an indoor braai and a veranda that looked into the park. All you could hear at night was the snorting of hippos and the occasional eerie bird call.
Simon´s Town from the upper road
We shared the place with a few British & South African couples, a mentally fragile Norwegian fellow and three Belgian university students. When the conversation turned to Mozambique, it became clear that everyone thought Maputo was a hole—a disappointing vacation destination and an abominable excuse for a capital city. “It´s total crap,” one South African woman asserted. I surprised myself by coming to my fair city´s defense: “You just don´t know Maputo!” I said, “It can seem a bit run down or dingy, but it´s a great city, you just have to get used to it and learn your way around!” How´s that for a turn around in attitude from the first entries in these very blog pages? The South African woman continued to blather on, “We had planned on buying property in Mozambique because we heard it´s such a good value, but now that I´ve been there, I know I can´t live in Africa.” She was South African! Where does she think her hometown of Joburg is on the map? For me, this drove home my point about South Africa being different from the rest of Africa (though I don´t know if this attitude applies to both blacks and whites)--apparently white South Africans don´t even consider themselves Africans, they think they are from a different planet altogether. They are South Africans, and the less desireable side of their continent (which is to say, everything else) is merely "Africa." I took some satisfaction, however, in noticing that I had become fond enough of my current home to want to defend it in the face of ingenues and naysayers of The Beak.
Kruger View Lodge, bring your own net.
But back to Kruger, an immense park that is the size of Wales, however big that is. Now, I had been on game drives before, but Kruger Park was a different experience. The terrain was more rugged with rocks, brush and hills, making it a bit more challenging to see the wildlife than in the flat plains of the Savannah. You can drive around the park by yourself as long as you don´t get out of the car. There were six of us in our safari truck, and we all had a series of game sighting requests for our guide. We were already considering ourselves lucky when, not a mile into the park, we spied a cheetah going out for an early morning hunt. It was uncanny, but it seemed that every wish we voiced out loud was being granted. That´s when someone had the great idea of saying he wanted to see a snake. And then someone else chimed in and said he wanted to see a kill. What ensued was surreal.
Vulture sitting in a tree, a foreshadowing of impending doom......
If I hadn´t been there when the action happened, I never would have believed it. But there we were, gazing at a family of three bushbucks on the side of the road, and cooing over the baby buck who was impossibly adorable. Our car may have scared them because they perked up and darted away into the brush. We pulled around to follow their path and suddenly there was a flurry of activity coming from under a bush. As the mother and father bushbuck kept running, the baby buck emerged from the underbrush with an enormous white python imbedded on its back. The poor animal was bleating frantically and trying to shake free as the snake hissed and held on tight. In a split second, the python had wrapped itself around the body of the little buck and was continuing to bite the back of its neck. When the mother realized what was happening, she came back to the site and started kicking and biting the snake. The father also came round and got a swift kick in the shins from the mother, so he took off running. As we watched on in horror, the baby slowed down to a crawl and gradually succumbed to the poison. It lifted its head in one last attempt for air and then went limp with the python still in a stranglehold around it. The mother was running in panicked circles around her dead offspring, and eventually abandoned the scene as well.
Safari-goers douse their fears with ice cream, beer.....

....and biltong.

This was one of the most horrifying displays of violence I have ever witnessed! I basically saw a murder take place before my own eyes, a murder that we may have contributed to causing as a result of frightening the bucks into the woods. I felt responsible for the death of a baby, and was moved to tears. And here I had come to Africa to save children, not kill them!

The entire group was in shock for several hours afterwards. The reaction was intense. I mean, everyone knows about the law of the jungle and the circle of life and all that, but I never imagined that seeing an animal get killed in such a violent way would have such an impact on me (the animal hater!). Our guide said he had never seen anything like it in all his days at that park. The guy who had requested to see a snake simply said, “Cool! Can we see another one like that?” Unfortunately, he got his wish. The killer white python proceeded to try to get the dead buck into its fauces, but this proved too much even for his six-foot long body. When we drove by an hour or so later, the python had given up and the carcass lay there abandoned, fair game for hyenas, vultures or other prowlers. When we drove by yet a third time to check the scene of the crime, amazingly, there was a second huge python attempting to swallow the dead buck. This was a different snake altogether, with a dark colored pattern on its back. The thing that creeped me out the most was how hidden each of these snakes was in the environment—we never would have noticed the white python under the bush or the speckled python later on if we hadn´t known exactly where to look. This meant that there could be other pythons lurking underfoot or hanging from trees at any time. Yikes! It was enough incentive never to get out of the car until we had safely exited the park.
Though I had my camera in hand during the attack, it seemed too voyeuristic to take a shot. Perhaps with the help of a forensic detective, you can blow up this picture and see the buck with the second python next to it.

After that, the rest of the day was a tad anticlimactic. We couldn´t stop talking about the kill, how it had all seemed like a Discovery channel documentary in slow motion. And how we would probably be punished by the animal gods for taking the life of an innocent little bushbuck. I will have pangs of guilt forever! How strange to be forced to acknowledge the violence of nature in this way.

And with this, friends, I finally close my South African adventure. Don´t go walking under any bushes, now. /eal

Dance Party Mozambique

I have seen several dance performances in Mozambique, ranging from traditional African choreography to discoteque style. Everywhere I go, it seems, I am meeting people (mostly men) who are part of a dance troupe, who work with a children´s dance program, or who are collaborating on a humanitarian project involving dance. Dance seems to be the premiere art form of this country, a heritage that the Mozambicans are proud of and want to share. I should confess that I know precious little about dance in any form—I am not an aficionado of dance in the U.S. and consequently have little to compare this to, but I have noticed a few differences between what I know about classical Western dance and African dance. As you are probably aware, African dance is incredibly athletic. The movements are so stark and rhythmic and fast-paced. There is no slow, fluid development—it starts with fast drum beats and can get even faster as the dance progresses. The other difference I noticed is that men are featured more prominently than women in the performances I have seen. Men seem to be the protagonists of the choreography, and if women are involved at all, it is usually as a sort of ornament in the background or a shorter, cameo appearance en masse. When I think of Western classical dance, I picture the graceful ballerina around whom all things are centered, the men in neutral colored costumes that lift her up and a chorus of secondary ballerinas fluttering around her (dance mavens, please forgive my cliché notions of ballet). There is none of that here---it´s all about the strength and energy of the male dancers, all of whom have incredibly chiseled bodies. The woman are not lithe and languid—on the contrary, they can be stocky, muscle-clad and quite shapely, with a fervent energy that is almost intimidating. The differences between African dance and modern Western dance were never more clear to me than one day where I attended, back to back, a traditional Mozambican dance performance and then a European contemporary dance production on tour from Switzerland. The first performance was all power and aggressive physical movement. I felt exhausted watching the dancers come out again and again, dripping with sweat, to perform hard-pounding pieces of 20 minutes or longer. One felt an earthy, direct, visceral connection to the action, as if all its emotions were being laid out raw, no veil of interpretation between dancers and audience. The European production that I saw not an hour afterwards seemed ridiculous and pretentious in comparison! It was awful: cerebral, complicated, guarded in expression, trying to be intellectual but ultimately seeming childish. It communicated nothing to me except the extreme lameness of Western artistes trying to communicate their deepest, most ardent and sappy feelings through a series of pantomime-like gestures. Perhaps it is unfair to compare the two experiences, but I had the distinct reaction that African dance, where all the emotion, struggle and sweat is laid out there for you to see, was much more engaging and truthful than the highly-stylized and ultimately abstract expression of the Western counterparts. Am I being simplistic? Probably so.

This past Saturday morning Save the Children co-sponsored a community event to raise awareness about violence towards children and sexual abuse. We drove out to a bairro of Maputo called Chamanculo, where a dais was set up in the main square and red STC posters adorned every tree and fence post. The program of the day was to feature a few speakers about the serious stuff of child sexual abuse and violence and during the breaks invite community youth groups to perform theater and dance. We also announced the winners of an essay contest about violence against children and distributed t-shirts. There was a strong turnout for the festivities, about 500 people, mostly children. I´m not sure the kids knew exactly what was being talked about from the podium, but they knew about the free posters and t-shirts and that was enough to bring out the hordes. My coworker Jessica and I were among the only white people there, and the children followed us wherever we went, asking us to take photos and then show them how they looked in the digital display. There was a generator-powered loudspeaker where hip-hop music was being piped in at high volume, and all around, spontaneous groups of dancers were forming. These kids were doing amazing things with their bodies, things I had never thought possible at such a young age. I saw several girls under the age of 6 that would put Brittney Spears to shame--they were totally getting down! I suppose in the U.S. this might be perceived as offensive or not “age-appropriate”, and I wondered whether these sexified moves have the same connotation and social taboo here.

The morning was a success thanks to the enthusiasm of the crowd and the talented groups that performed---it seemed to be a great source of pride especially for the teenagers. Jessica and I danced with the kids afterwards and I couldn´t help but notice that the under-10 crowd was much more forgiving about my awkward moves. I thought about asking them for some lessons, but figured that asking kids to observe and critique my dancing might constitute a sort of violence against children in itself, which is strictly against STC policy.

I took some short videos on my camera and wanted to share them with you here to give you an idea of what it is like to attend these community events, but I wasn't able to get them to upload (connection too slow, I guess). Sorry, that was the whole point of this posting, but I am going to publish it anyway. Hope you enjoy the still photos. /eal

You can take a girl out of the Walmart but you can´t make her stop clogging

Editor´s note: based on some of the emails I have received, I feel I should clarify that my last entry was not meant to be a hint to send me a care package! I have everything I need and merely wanted to express my thanks, not instill feelings of guilt.

I have spent the last few days poring over issues of the Chicago Tribune, the Reader and the Onion, reading them cover to cover. Never have I read a Chicago newspaper with such voraciousness. I now know that Pavarotti died---I guess everyone is pretty much over it by now, but I am still in mourning. We have a new Attorney General. Hilary´s healthcare plan is getting better press than Barack´s. Yuppies are raising their kids without diapers. Women wash their hands more often than men (is that news?). People are dying from internet exhaustion. You just don´t get those gripping human interest stories in the daily Noticias!

It is really hitting home that I only have two more months left here and so many things I still want to do! Eight weeks to write a training manual at work, visit Swaziland, check out some neighboring towns, eat at the fish market, learn Portuguese. Below are a few episodes recounted from my daily life in Maputo. Nothing exciting, as you can see, but I am starting to feel as if Maputo is home. I have my little routine and certain people are starting to recognize me as a regular character: my grocer, the internet café owner, the cell phone credit vendor, the taxi service. No pics this time, but there will be plenty as soon as I collate my posting about South Africa. Cheers! /eal

Benedetta and I get pulled over by the police

In an attempt to resume some sort of aerobic activity, I have started going to a yoga class. The sessions are held in a circular hut with a high grass roof and cement floor. The room is lit by a single lamp with a scarf thrown over it and the air is filled with incense to set the mood and keep the mosquitos from bothering us. It is a far cry from the “ambience” of the Evanston Athletic Club with its super-foamy cushions and fluorescent overhead lights. I met an Italian girl at class who I pegged right away because she was making the same Italian-to-Portuguese vocabulary mistakes that I often fall into (her invented language made perfect sense to me!). A few nights later she gave me a lift home so I could save the taxi fare---my roundtrip transportation basically doubles the cost of the class. As is customary, no white person can drive down the street without being pulled over by the police for questioning. For this reason, we have been cautioned to always take a notarized copy of our passport and visa with us for identification purposes. However, that night, decked out in my yoga pants and not expecting to be traveling in a private car, I had neglected to bring my I.D. When I saw the roadblock I panicked, besieged with visions of spending the night in jail for being on the loose, gasp, unidentified! Before I knew it, Benedetta was rolling down her window and reaching for the car registration.

The officers peppered us with questions about what we were doing in Mozambique and how old we were. Benedetta calmly responded to each question with a big grin, spewing some of the most convincing lines of BS I´ve ever heard. “Oh yes,” I heard her say, “My husband is waiting for me at home! He is a good man, but very jealous. How old am I? How old do I look to you? 40? Yes, that’s right on the nose.” (she couldn´t be more than 25). She continued the story in earnest, mentioning that we were sisters-in-law and that we both had three kids waiting at home for dinner. About that time, the policeman remembered that he hadn´t asked me for my I.D., and I was forced to admit I could not produce it. “Senhora, get out of the car--- you will stay with us until you find it. Your sister can go ahead.” When I protested and made no indication of getting out of the car, he suggested, “Well, maybe you should think about giving the nice officer a refresco, then!” I was confused, thinking this meant he wanted a cold drink, which I didn´t happen to have. I found out later it is code for kickback or bribe. Benedetta laughed and said, “No, I don´t think so. If you don´t mind, we´ll be going back to our HUSBANDS and KIDS now. Goodnight!” As we pulled away, I told her I was impressed with her aplomb in the face of a potentially bad scene. She said that after working in Nigeria, she was unphased by this sort of thing, and we should just be glad they didn´t throw a nail-studded club under our tires to prevent us from leaving like they do in Lagos. In these situations, she claimed, the status of mater familias will get you out of anything because no one likes to be cruel to a mother, or get involved with the wife of a jealous expat. As soon as they know you aren´t young and single, they realize you´re no fun for them and move on. Here´s to another reason for being a wife and mother: it gets you out of all kinds of jams.


I am thwarted in barn dancing and told to ditch the glasses

What I got, Mozambican men don´t want. The Mozambican women are beautiful: wiry and strong, large breasted and bootylicious, so my waifish look doesn´t go over very well here as an object of desire. Or maybe it´s because I keep claiming to be married with kids? Whatever the case, I receive no male attention whatsoever (unless you count the guys trying to sell me batiks on the street) and seem to be undetectable on the average African male´s radar screen. Not that I´m bitter or anything--really!--this generally turns out to be convenient in that I don´t receive unwanted attention, either. I console my ego by reminding myself that most Africans think I am considerably younger than I am—many think I am still in college or a recent graduate. In one case, our driver bought me a youth pass upon entering a game park because he thought I was the age of his daughter: 16. Now that´s taking it a bit too far, and I am not too vain to see that he also saved some money on my ticket by convincing himself I was under 18 (but apparently not unvain enough not to tell you about it).

One night awhile back my friends and I went dancing at a very cool joint called the Franco-Mozambican Cultural Center, a sort of Old Town School that promotes French and African culture through dance, film, music and art. We were trying to mix with the locals and pull out our best dance moves. Sadly, my cabbage patch routine, which always gets at least a laugh in the U.S., was met with utter confusion and many raised eyebrows. My efforts to engage people in a do-si-do also proved unfruitful. I was beginning to suspect that clogging is not an international dance form. The Mozambicans can dance. It is a treat to watch. The men strut their stuff for one another with no inhibitions whatsoever, purely for the pleasure of cracking each other up and trying to outdo one other with their antics. I was deep into practicing my Tennessee flap when one of the young guys sidled up to our group and started to demonstrate some African steps. Appreciative of the guidance, I attempted to follow his lead, but after a few minutes, my new friend reached over, took my glasses off my face and put them in his pocket. This was not helping my coordination at all, and I asked to have them back, please. He wagged a finger in my face and said matter-of-factly, “Don´t wear those. No.” I tried to explain that the glasses were not a prop, but something I actually needed to see. When I reclaimed my frames and put them back on, he was shaking his head in disapproval and laughing, as if to say, “White girl! Why do you insist on bouncing around and wearing something so unattractive when I have just told you it is NOT GOOD?!” This routine went on a few more times, with him confiscating my glasses in disgust and me blindly flailing my arms to get them back. I suppose I should have thanked him for saving me from further ridicule on the dance floor, but have they no appreciation for spex appeal in this country?


We Got Game

Oh my god! I just found the Mozambican equivalent of Walmart. It is a megastore called GAME. Who knew Mozambique had megastores? I have been here for two months and never knew of its existence until tonight---and here I had been bemoaning the lack of proper ladies´ toiletries and limited choice of clothing detergent (why is there only one brand? It is called OMO, and it seems to have a monopoly on the handwash detergent market). I tried to conceal my joy at something so preposterous lurking on the outskirts of town, but I was lured in by the promise of office supplies, bulk snack foods and yes, fancy soap. Now I have GAME for all of my guilty capitalistic pleasures, the only store I´ve ever seen that carries everything from Quad bikes to pillow cases to Pringles and padded envelopes (I can´t find them anywhere! What do these people have against bubble wrap anyway?). I found everything I needed amongst its obscenely stocked aisles, including a curious type of chewing gum called “Stimorol”, which boasted three flavors: original, wild cherry and musk. This raised some challenging questions, questions no clerk was quite prepared to answer, such as, What kind of flavor is musk, exactly? and, What is the branding philosophy behind the name “Stimorol”? I was forced to conclude that it is some sort of laxative chiclet that smells like an old man. I had to have some.

What really sealed my love for GAME was ultimately not its similarity to a certain evil megastore chain, but the assembly-line donut machine in the lobby. Maybe you haven´t fully understood: a donut machine in the lobby! How can you walk past a donut machine and not stop? It is physically and psychologically impossible. There it was, a gleaming beacon of cholesterol, churning out one perfectly formed ring after another, dropping them piping hot onto a tray where they were sprinkled with sugar or coated with chocolate. I had to oblige (5 for a dollar!). The warm, greasy dough was delicious and quickly quenched any nostalgia I had for a Krispy Kreme or Dunkin´ Donuts chocolate glazed---never knew how much I missed them until tonight. But really, a steaming donut right out of the greasepot and waiting to be plopped into your hands as you walk through the front door? GAME, your product placement people are geniuses.

Muito obrigada

Many have written to ask why I haven't made a blog posting in awhile. I have been traveling the past month to Cape Town in South Africa, and Kruger Park at the border of Mozambique and South Africa. So I am behind in my writing, but hope to have something new in the next week or so!

I am officially half way through my stint in Mozambique and I want to say thank you to everyone who has written to me either through my blog, by email, by letter or postcard. I have been so appreciative of all of the support and kind words, and the fact that you took the time to think of me and drop a line. It really means a lot to me so far away---you can't imagine the excitement (and envy of others) when the delivery guy comes to my desk with mail.

Thanks also for the wonderful packages, which have contained crucial items such as pens, paper clips, napkins, loads of chocolate, tea, books, local newspapers, peds, handywipes, shower caps, and other goodies. Wow. I feel so lucky to have such thoughtful friends. And by the collection of items I have received, I can tell that some of you are reading this blog very carefully! Yes, I did buy a new digital camera (in South Africa), which is exactly the same model as my old one.

So thanks again for helping me stay connected while I am here. More to follow soon.

Abrazos,

Elizabeth