when i get home…

selfish things i want to do when i get back to the states:

- Make a bacon, tomato and white cheddar grilled cheese sandwich with basil and oregano (or  4)

- See UCF in a bowl game.

- Watch ‘The Dark Knight’…5 times in a row.

- Clean up my Mom’s computer.

- Get a haircut.

- Play with one of those new-fangled Wii’s.

- Hop in a canoe and shove off for a few hours by myself.

- Hop on a bike and reacquaint myself with Sanibel.

- Go to Washington and see Obama’s inaugural parade.

- Of course, see the fam (stops in Ohio, Philly, MD and DC are a must)

I know I’ve been absent from the blog. I have a few photos from the National Cultural Festival which was held in Xai-Xai last week. I am trying to get my 30-second videos that I took up on a site so I can post them here as well. If you have any ideas on where I can do that, let me know.

Mom’s going to be here is T-minus 9 days and counting!!!! Expect some good stories from that. I am hoping to get her to post to the blog while she is here.

Latest plan for post-PC travel: Cape Town/Western South Africa. Fly to Lisbon, wander over to Paris (to see Morgan) then back Stateside. I talk big, so we’ll see how things turn out.

 

ballotpedia

Hey folks,

Most have probably read the stories and clicked the kinks in my blog posts that are connected to Wikipedia. For those who are not int he know, wikipedia is an amazing site that compiles information about different topics. It lets regular people write and edit the entries. It is not a reliable source for use in academic research, but for everyday curiosity, it’s perfect.

Now there’s a site called Ballotpedia that runs the same way. Its purpose is to bring you simple presentations of what is going to be on your respective ballot come November. I love the wiki system since it allows rapid editing and critique of what is posted.

Below is the link for the amendments that are going to appear on the Florida State election ballot in November. Read them over and see where you stand before casting your vote. It also has links on each amendment page that go to related topics/stories/organizations involved with the amendment.

For the average Florida citizen (esp those who are out of the country and have limited access to daily news coverage) this is great.

2008 Proposed Florida Constitutional Amendments

There are definitely a couple amendments that are sure to cause a bit of a stir in the next few months (FL Marriage Amendment, Amendment 9 are the ones I am most interested in.)

Ok, tchau, ‘brigado!

 

i need you

I’m sitting in the office working on a a monthly report to present at our program meeting tomorrow. I have become office DJ, and I relish the role. Luisa and Chau (as well as anyone in the reception area since our office sits right across the aisle from Maria Anna’s desk) get to here a lot of interesting music- stuff they would’ve never heard (or wanted to hear) had I not graced Save the Children with my presence And I use music to get us motivated when, after a sweet cheese-sandwich-and-fanta lunch, we are dragging a bit of ass. It may seem a bit distracting to pump the folks full of Fugazi at 2pm, but it works. Trust me.

Lately, it’s been a lot of Yo la Tengo, Wilco, U2 (always in rotation, being that they’re Chau’s favorite band) and the Stax/Volt Label Soul Singles Collection. It’s a real treat to see all three of us jamming in our seats to Sam & Dave. Right now I am playing the Concert for George Disc that has artists like Eric Clapton and Jeff Lynne paying tribute to George Harrison following his death. It’s a great CD to put on as background music.

So, we just listened to Tom Petty cover “I Need You” and Luisa just starts up, singing the song word-for-word.

This may not seem like a big deal to most. However, I thought it was pretty awesome that of all the songs, Luisa can belt out “I Need You” (she also knows some Norah Jones and James Blunt, both staples of American music here in Moz).

I wonder what happens when I crank up the Led Zeppelin…

(5 min later)

Ok, no one knows “Misty Mountain Hop”.

 

Let the countdown begin?

In early May, the Moz 11s got a text message from the Maputo brass that read:

“Hi Moz 11. I can’t believe it’s time to talk about this, but… We are currently taking requests for early COS [Close of Service] dates. There are a total of 15 slots for November dates. If you would like one of these slots, please let me know asap. You can also set dates for December. Thanks!”

Cue the stress.

I got this text while I was pulling up to a primary school to have a session with a youth group in Chitlango (Bilene District). As soon as I read it, I went into a quasi-catatonic state.

Why are they taking requests so early?

Did this go out to everyone?

Do I want to leave in November?

How many spots are already taken?

Why THE HELL are they taking requests so early?

As these questions were racing through my head, I was getting texts from other volunteers asking me if I received the same text that they received. It was a big moment for us, and we were totally caught off guard.

Thinking quickly and talking it over with fellow PCVs, I made the decision to ask for a late-November COS date. I sent in the text and got my name on the list.

Since then, the system has undergone some changes. The process has been quite a freak out not only for the volunteers but for the staff. We will find out our dates at some point, but the point of this little story is that we really don’t have a lot of time left in Mozambique, at least as PCVs. I apologize for not having posted anything recently. I really haven’t had much to talk about except thinking about the future. The JOMA post kind of got lost in the midst of other things and effectively got tabled until further notice.

The chatter as of late (besides how bad McCain is going to get his tub thumped by Obama come November) has focused on reaching the last quarter of our two years at site. All of the COS talk has riled us up. For some of the Moz 11s it’s a big milestone, for others it’s business as usual. I’m somewhere in the muddled middle; I am excited to have come this far but don’t feel like doing “Ickey Shuffle” in the endzone quite yet. A lot of the time it does not feel like I have been in this country almost 20 months. Then I get to work and we look at our schedule for the upcoming few months and I say “holy crap, that has been on our list of things to get done since early mid 2007”. For instance, we have yet to integrate members of our youth groups into the community HIZV support groups (Don’t even get me started on “why?”). That’s when I say “damn, it’s time to go home.”

I love where I am right now, but every so often I get extremely excited about getting back to the States. Now that my Mom is a lock for a visit in late July-August, I have been really missing seeing friends and family. A lot of volunteers are either getting visitors right now or planning trips for friends and family, so I think there is a popular feeling of what is known is Portuguese as “saudades”, which can be defined as longing or homesickness or having a fondness for something, depending on the context. Simply put, eu tenho saudades for you folks back home.

I may have said this a few (dozen) times before, but every day I wake up feeling different about my presence in Mozambique. Now, instead of “What the hell am I doing here?” I sometimes replace that question with “What the hell am I going to do AFTER this?” It can honestly be stressful. I have been doing a lot of trips to the field lately (which I love) which means a lot of time in the car to think about things. Good luck writing a word while bouncing along on the road to Mandlakaze. I usually end up reflecting about my time here and what I can possibly do with myself when I return to the States. Here’s what I have come with so far:

1. I like the kind of work I am doing here, and I would not mind continuing to work in the public health field. Monitoring and Evaluation has become increasingly interesting, though I haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of learning how to develop tools and strategies for M&E. What I enjoy is the process that goes along with M&E, and I think that his would be a good place to start in whatever job I get following PC.

2. I would like to spend a bit of time in the States, preferably outside of Florida. I have lived in Florida all of my life and I want to get an idea of what else the US has to offer. I’m open to almost anything, though I would really like to spend some time in an urban setting. Not sure if I will like it, but there’s only one way to find out, right?

3. Grad school is not an option right now. I don’t know what I would study, so there is no point in going into debt for a degree I may never even use. I will go to grad school, just not in the next year.

4. If I have a nervous breakdown, you can find me on the Appalachian Trail. It’s what I will do if nothing else comes along (though I highly doubt NOTHING will come along)

That’s pretty much it. Nothing specific or life-changing. In fact, it freaks me out a bit when I start thinking about specific scenarios regarding my life post- PC, even though I know that come August 22^nd (my birthday and coincidentally the last day of our COS conference where we get the details about the steps we need to take to conclude our time here as a PCV) I will have to start to think hard about where to go from here.

Once again, cue the stress.

But you know me, I can’t complain. In this kind of work, when isn’t it time to cue the stress?

É normal.

 

Is Obama a Muslim?

Really, does it matter? Not at all.

But if you need to know, your Answer is here

Now that that’s settled, can we just get on to him winning already?

 

a note from the mgmt (not the band)

As some of you have already found out, this blog can be found on search engine site like Google and Yahoo. Every time someone does a search and ends up clicking on the link that takes them to this blog, WordPress registers it. I cannot see who is typing these terms to access my blog, but sometimes it is pretty entertaining to see how people arrive at my blog.

One of the most popular topics is people searching for info on Mango worms. I think that the post about the worm in my toe is my second most-viewed post on my blog.

Another is people looking for information about Mozambique. In this case, I saw yesterday that someone searched for something like “things to do and see in Xai-Xai”. I would bet money that this is my Mom, but if not, I can save you the time of an exhaustive afternoon combing through portuguese and South African sites about Mozambican property and lodges.

In Xai-Xai, you eat, drink and be merry… on a beach if the weather is good.

I encourage people who have questions about Xai-Xai or anything else to write me. I’m not exactly fully integrated, but I can give you some decent advice about traveling in Southern Mozambique if you need it.

And I apologize to the person who was looking for “remedies for sticky-tack stuck in hair”. I just don’t have the remedy for that problem on this site, though if I hear of one I will post it.

ok, tchau, ‘brigado.

 

It’s news to them: Botha’s a Monster

UPDATE: 18-06-08

I have not been able to find any credible source that lists this speech as having everbeen written or presented by PW Botha. I am taking the link to the “speech” off, but I still think it’s fascinating how riled up my colleagues got over this. When I told them it was a fake, they were a bit hesitant in believing me. I told them that this doesn’t meant that Botha wasn’t a monster, but this particular piece was probably not written by him. They accepted my claim based on the fact that none of them could find the speech on the internet AT ALL.Oh, and my apologies to Abdner- I spelled his name wrong below. My bad, mano.

Yesterday I was in the field with Chau, Luisa, Abdiner (one of our field workers) and our Community Development, Sr. Titos Langa. Our visit to Macia (south of Xai-Xai) largely focused on the implementation of a program that teaches parents how to talk to their kids about issues like HIV. The problm is that there is such a strong stigma attached to HIV that parents in rural areas have rarely showed that they have the technical knowledge not to mention the vontade (voice) to sit down with their children and have a frank discussion about safe sex. We are trying to adapt a method that was used successfully in Malawi to sensitize parents to HIV as well as make them comfortable talking about such touchy subjects. It’s a manual that requires the community to act together, so yesterday we went to different communities to talk to the neighborhood leadership to get permission to proceed with the program. Such is the custom that before you do anything in a community, you need to inform the community leaders. These leaders can be school or church directors, and some are elected officials. And then there are the leaders who have inherited some measure of influence under the traditional community structure that still is very strong in Mozambique. Trying to talk to some of these people, some of which are educated and some of which never passed third grade, can be interesting, especially when it comes to topics like HIV. We have all known the kind of leader that refuses to hear information that contradicts his/her way of thinking, right?!

So, we arrived at the first community for a 1000hrs meeting. We got there at 0950. We waited until 1145 until we finally got in touch with the head of the council, who said that people were “on their way”. No surprise, but we had places to be, so we left them.

Such is life here, but you may be wondering what we do for over 2 1/2 hours in the field waiting for a meeting to start. Well, in this case,  Titos randomly whipped out a copy of some sort of speech or document written by former South African President P.W. Botha. Botha was everyone’s favorite racist state leader who continued the Apartheid regime in South Africa- a regime that not only oppressed Black Africans within its own borders but funded the conflicts that destroyed entire nations (see: wars in Angola, Namibia, Mozambique among others). Here is a link to the speech in english:

Botha “speech”- 1985- Removed: 18-6-08

I put quotations around the speech because I have since looked up the speech and found that there are people saying that it is fake. I honestly haven’t done a lot of research on it yet so I won’t yet say if it is a real speech, but that really isn’t the point of this story.

The point is that we passed around the speech for about 45 minutes. Chau ended up reading most of it out loud to us. In it, “Botha” repeatedly refers to blacks as inferior beings to whites. Among other things, they are incapable of leading a country. It is vile stuff, but I was surprised by my colleagues’ reactions. As Chau read it, you could see his blood pressure rise like one of those cartoons where their bodies turn into thermometers. You see the mercury rising in Foghorn Leghorn moments before he blows his stack. That’s what chau reminded me of, only not in a comical way. I really saw the passion in him as he read from the speech. You could tell that if Botha were standing there, Chau would like to probably take a swing at him.

Luisa and Titos and Abdiner had similar responses. They just couldn’t understand how someone exhibits so much hate for other people. Whether or not the speech is true is trivial. We know that hatred exists, and it surprises/pleases me that my colleagues get so worked up about this. Luisa, Chau and Abdiner are all under 30, so I expect them to be a bit removed from blatent racism that accompanied the 70’s and 80’s in Southern Africa. Titos, however, was also worked up. This is a guy who I have never seen raise his voice in anger to ANYONE. The only time he gets really worked up is when he can’t stop laughing. The words ‘jovial’ and ‘wise’ come to mind. At Save, he is one of the patriarchal figures who is always used as the voice of reason.

And yet, Titos looked like he wanted a piece of Botha too. How is it that these folks still get so pissed about something so little as a speech from 20 years ago. I asked them if this type of thing is ever discussed in school. Most had never seen anything so controversial in any type of school, even university (of which all 4 are enrolled  in or have completed to some extent). They said that even in their families, this kind of thing is not normally analyzed. It is only through the distribution at work or through friends that this kind of material reaches their hands. It has also been much easier since they learned how to use the internet.

My main point is that even though we didn’t really get a lot done in the 2 1/2 hours of sitting waiting for a meeting that never happened, we were able to have an amazing discourse on racism and politics in Africa. Something that never would have happened in their classes or at home. Aided by technology and the presence of an American, these folks were able to express themselves about race as well as discuss concepts that don’t normally get a lot of attention during your average workday.

This brings me to another point. Technology in a developing country can be extremely dangerous. I love showing my colleagues how to use e-mail, or how to navigate the internet (Chau is obsessed with Wikipedia). But just imagine how easy it would be to send a statement around that says “Fidel Castro reassumes power: starts nuclear weapons program”. It happens here with spam messages that people think are real offers (“You may have already won the $1,000,000.00 prize!!!!!! Just give us your credit card number!”) and I worry that a lot of people will/have been taken advantage of because of their naivety. I know it happens in the States as well, but we are talking about entire countries who don’t even have widespread secondary school education being able to look at the internet on their phone. Makes for an interesting situation.

Makes me realize how important it is to not just propogate any story you hear to others, esp on the internet. I know that it’s easy to say, but I wonder how many of us have read things on the internet and not realized it was a pice of trash imagined by some whackjob in a basement in Idaho… or Sanibel (minus the basement), or wherever!

But I’m really happy to see folks here get passionat about something. Too often I hear about people in the world (US and Mozambique alike) that just aren’t interested in politics or history,a nd it encourages me when I see “the spark” go off in someone. I just hope that Botha story is true, though if it isn’t I will duly inform my colleagues that it is a piece of crap. And it’ll be off my blog ASAP.

 

Holiday Trip North: Wrapping it Up!

So, 4 months later, I am finishing up my retelling of the Northern Trip I took with a couple other PCVs. Quickly, this was our route that we took

Friday Dec 28^th- Bussed up to Moçímboa da Praia. Camped on the beach and ate freshly fried fish for the nights of the 28^th and 29^th.

Sunday Dec 30^th- Went back down south to Pangane, a fishing village with a beautiful spit of peninsula barely wider than a tennis court is long. Stayed there for one glorious night, where we found expired bottles of water (the last five in the town), a ‘Save Darfur’ shirt that doesn’t really fit me, and a lot of eager fisherman ready to take us to the islands in exchange for a king’s ransom.

Monday Dec 31^st- Took a sailboat down to Ibo island. We celebrated the New Year with fresh fish, beers, and this guy!

Stayed there the nights of the 31^st and the 1^st to hike around the island and see the fort that’s there.

Wednesday Jan 2^nd- Went to Quirimbas Island to hang with the fishermen, see Vasco de Gama’s Rock (or at least a concrete pillar where Vasco de Gama’s Rock used to be), see a monitor lizard, and chill at the Praça de Paz (Plaza of Peace)

Thursday Jan 3^rd- Hopped on another boat to Mefumvo Island, where we crashed at a fish-packing house, bought 3 kilos of fish for 20 Mets/kilo (that’s a dollar for 2 pounds of fish!) and could finally charge our phones.

Friday Jan 4^th- Our return trip by boat to Pemba, complete with the most discreet instance of a guy pooping over the side of a 20 foot boat with 15 people in the boat.

If you look at a map of where we went, we didn’t actually cover all that much ground for a week of travel. When you take into account the use of sailboats and realizing how bad some sections of road can be in the North (see the previous trip post on my passage through Zambezia), we did pretty well. The trip was relaxing and yet eventful. There are a couple of the many stories that I want to share, followed by pictures from the different parts of the trip.

First, I would like you to meet this guy.

He was our source of entertainment on our ride up to Moçímboa de Praia. He was sitting across the aisle from Elizabeth and Paulo and diagonal from Maggia and myself. I forget his name now, but it doesn’t matter, because we called him “Ok, tchau, ‘brigado” for the rest of the trip. Why? Because every 5 minutes, he would start up a new conversation about pretty much the same topic- putting younger folk in their place. Whether or not he was a real professor, he liked to impart his wisdom on the whole bus.

And he was completely hammered the entire trip.

When he would finish his beer that he had, he would get another at the next town we stopped at for snacks. When there was no town to stop at, he simply whipped out his trusty bottle of Rhino (a brand in the North) Gin and take a few swigs (as seen inthe pics). Meanwhile, he is telling us about how much we have to learn about EVERYTHING. But the funniest part was, at the end of every conversation, it was like he was going to get off the bus. He would wrap it up by saying “Ok, tchau, ‘brigado” (Ok, bye, thanks). EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!!! It got so that we would just start to crack up every time he said it, so he would think he was really funny and start in on his “you kids don’t know anything” speech once again. He was quite the source of entertainment. It may not seem like much to you folks reading this, but I had to give this guy a shout-out on behalf of Maggie, Paulo and Elizabeth.

Next up, let’s fast-forward to the morning that we left Ibo Island. We read in the Lonely Planet Guide that it is possible to walk from Ibo to Quirimbas at low tide, so we contracted out a guide to lead us through the mangroves. This is our guide, ready to take us to the other side.

We were up at 3am sharp, ready to catch the tide at its lowest. The walk through the neighborhoods on Ibo that early was so surreal. The mist hung heavy that morning, and it gave the decrepit structures that may have once housed affluent Portuguese slave traders an eerie, almost unsettling disposition as you passed by. The guide books say that Ibo has a ghostly feel to it, and I totally agree after walking through at twilight.

As we reached the mangroves, our guide picked up the pace. The clouds of mosquitoes thickened as we slogged through puddles that turned into calf-high pools that eventually turned into something of a stream that came up to our knees. We went from walking on firm muddy ground to coral, which was bad news for the girls, who only had flip-flops. Paulo and I had crocs and chacos, respectively, but Maggie and Elizabeth were unable to shield their feet from the razor-sharp rocks. Uncovered skin that was in the water was getting cut to shreds. Uncovered skin out of the water was getting chewed to bits. Floridians who’ve done some trekking in the mangroves know exactly what it is like to half-heartedly slap your arm and take out a half-dozen mosquitoes in one fell swoop. The ladies from Michigan were not used to such things. Hell, none of us were comfortable. Once we made it out of the stream, we were in soul-sucking mud that almost devoured Maggie whole. Here are a couple pics from the mangrove forest.

This is just the beginning, though. We came out of the mangroves on a mud flat right at sunrise. It was quite a beautiful site

We still had to cross the pass between Ibo and Quirimbas. Our trusty guide (who spoke almost no Portuguese- this was about the 100^th time that we thanked god that we had Paulo along to help us) took off his pants (as seen above) and set off with one of our bags across the pass. Here we are right before I put my camera away, going into the water.

Notice the sticks used to guide the way across the pass. Well, we quickly found out that we were a little TOO early for low tide. As in an hour or two too early. As in the water was too high to walk with bags. I may have been able to do it alone, but I have a good 5-6 inches on Paulo, Maggie and Elizabeth. Of course, our guide didn’t realize all of this until he had led us to the middle of the pass. With all of our shit on our heads and water up to our chests, the guide told Paulo “maybe we can go this way” and pointed to a part that looked much deeper. He went and explored alone, but as soon as the water hit his chin he came back and needlessly told us “nope, too deep”. So, we were about to wade back to the Ibo shore to wait for the tide to go out some more when we saw a small outrigger boat paddling across the channel. We waded until water was at waist level, then had Paulo negotiate our passage with the captain of the vessel. It looked like the kind of boat that would hold 2-3 people max, but it ended up holding five soggy rats, plus baggage. Our guide got half his payment for going halfway, and the captain got the rest.

It felt like we took the whole morning to get to Quirimbas, but when we hit the shore it was only 7:30am. The boat master (I think his name was Adolfo, but one of my companions can correct me) ended up taking us back to his place where his wife prepared us hot milk-water and some of the best begias (I still have no idea how to spell that) that I’ve ever had. After our snack we took naps, then were led on a tour of the island by Adolfo. Never have I been in a more random situation where such a gracious person took care of me. He let us set up our tents in his yard, use his water, and had his wife prepare food for us. He didn’t request any money except for food supplies, but we ended up leaving him a generous tip for hospitality services rendered.

His tour alone was worth the trouble of the mangrove forest from hell. We walked across to the other side of Quirimbas, showing us sites where the island was supposed to be constructing a new school and administrative post. We got to the other side and he showed us this.

This is Vasco de Gama’s rock. Well, there was a post here that was supposedly erected by Vasco de Gama when he explored the island. It was there for hundreds of years, until the 1990s when some mysterious people came to the island one day. They went to the rock and destroyed it. Adolfo said that they removed something that had been inside the rock, and then erected the marker that you can now see. Kind of a poor substitute, but it makes you wonder what the hell was inside the original rock that warranted such action. Elizabeth and Paulo actually related a similar story about a school near Pemba where one day, a Portuguese man who had was a descendant of one of the founders of the school many, many years ago came to Pemba. The school was being torn down, but before everything was finished, he came in with a team and excavated underneath the school, removing some unknown quantity of valuables that belonged to his ancestors. No one knows exactly what he took but it’s a famous story, and I think that it reflects the average Mozambican’s attitude towards the Portuguese as primarily interested in money and valuables.

Adolfo gave us quite the complete tour, including a chance encounter with a monitor lizard (!!!!!!!), this old church, and the Praça de Paz where we took a bunch of group shots.

At night, Adolfo’s house sat right next to the local movie house that was showing the Terminator trilogy that night. Even with the generator running full blast and Arnold’s “Come with me if you want to live!!!” blaring next door, Quirimbas was still one of the more serene places I have visited, and you just can’t beat an island with only two streetlamps for stargazing. Quirimbas was my personal high-point of the trip, though there were many positive moments throughout.

I think I will just post pictures now and write a little about some of the more interesting shots.

Moçímboa da Praia

Check out the size of this boat! There are more pics on my picasa site of it. It looks as if these guys were building the successor to Noah’s Ark… except that Moçimboa da Praia is a heavily Muslim community.

This is where we camped for the two nights we were at Moçimboa. If you look closely at the first picture, you’ll see a basket sitting under Maggie. That is a basket that had 4 kilos of small mangoes that we got on the bus that we took up there. That basket cost 10 Mtn (less than 50 cents). We killed all of them in less than 24 hours. Oh, the glory that is mango season. How I will miss thee.

The second picture shows the friends that we made while we were there. This was our first of many “thank god we have Paulo” moments. I had just taken a dip in the ocean and wanted to wash off with fresh water. There was a well about 50m from our tents, which apparently cost 1mtn to use. Yes, that is practically nothing, but we still felt that the only reason we were charged was because we were a group with three white folks. I exchanged words with the leader, which did not go well. Paulo smoothed things over, though. Eventually, he got them to let us use their fire and pan to cook fish (see below). They even protected us and our stuff from other people (read: drunks) on the beach.

Check this picture as well as the others on picasa. That is a massive baobob tree sitting on a mini-peninsula of sorts. Whoever owns that house has one of the coolest pieces of real estate that I’ve seen in this country so far.

Notice anything interesting about this picture? I guess that’s kind of a stupid question, but there’s one thing in particular… it’s the reason I took the picture in the first place. The guy that is talking to Paulo and Elizabeth (this was during a negotiation session for a boat to the islands, before we decided to go down part of the way by road) is wearing a capulana. This is common in the north, at least where we were in Cabo Delgado. If I were to walk down the street in a capulana and I was not in a parade or going to some really special ceremony, people would think I was absolutely nuts. Up there, though, men wear them as normal everyday garments.

I wish that the South would embrace this kind of clothing. It is so hot in summer, and this would make things so much more comfortable.

Below is one of the monuments at Moçimboa da Praia. The map above is part of another (Gaza got a little screwed in terms of coastline on that map, but I’ll let it slide). From what I have heard, the monuments are much more common in areas where the War for Independence was hotly contested. Somewhere like Xai-Xai has the one obligatory monument in the city square, but Moçimboa (and even Pemba) have murals and statues and monuments up all over the cities commemorating the leaders and movements against the Portuguese. I got a little to close to take a picture, in fact. In front of the Administrative Post in Moçimboa, I walked up to a plaque to pop off a photo. Apparently, the only people who are supposed to walk on that square are the President and Community Leaders. Oops.

Oh, and there is Paulo’s fish. It was delicious.

Pangane

Here are a couple shots of our ride from Moçimboa da Praia. I started the day off on a sour note, having called Chana and learned of UCF’s defeat at the hands of Mississippi State in the Liberty Bowl. One day, guys, we’ll get there.

Below are shots of Elizabeth and Maggie looking less than enthused about the ride, which was packed with folks. For most of the ride i had a lit’l one sitting on my lap. People were jokingly trying to sell him to me. Or were they joking? There reasoning was pretty sound: if I could get him back to wherever it was I lived, he would have a much better life than growing up to be a fisherman in Mozambique. I couldn’t argue with that, but I told them I did have a policy of not taking kids unless the parents could come with me as well. They told me they were too busy to leave, so we didn’t have a deal

Also, there is a shot of my favorite one-eyed bearded fish street vendor. That fish looks disgusting. No one bought it.

Look at all of the fishing boats. This was the time (high tide) when they all came in with their catches. It was the same everywhere we went- a makeshift market on the beach. Blankets of varying types of seafood ready to be sold for the right price (which was usually quite cheap). After the nets got emptied out, there were also some very beautiful shells that got left as refuse. The sensible islander in me spent a good 45 mnutes walking up the beach throwing back live shells.

This is the view from the place where we camped. It’s an official lodge, with some of the best fresh squid I’ve ever had. The wind was quite wild when we got there, but by the next day it was perfect sailing weather for the trip to Ibo.

These kids are so damn cute. They wanted their picture taken so bad, so I doubt it’s the first time that a foreigner has stopped to capture their awe-inspiring cuteness.

I did this in the morning waiting for the boat to take us to Ibo. It reminds me of something my Mom would do. That’s a good thing, of course

Ibo Island

Here’s the boat ride to Ibo the next morning. We started at around 0630hrs and got to Ibo at around 1030, i think. We made pretty good time, I remember. It was us 4, an Italian family of 3 (including a little girl with an iPod) and a horrendously annoying belgian woman who wouldn’t shut up about her property that she bought on the island. I didn’t feel that she warranted a picture. However, we have pics of Maggie and Paulo with their game faces on.

When we got to Ibo, the tide was out, so we had to walk in about about 500m. The Mom from the Italian family was the first in the water, barefoot. As she landed on the mudflat in about 2 feet of water, she yelped and cursed. She had gotten stuck by a sea urchin. The rest of us, secretly thankful for her being the guinea pig, put on our sandals and waded to shore as the Italian cussed out the boatmen (who spoke little to no Portuguese) for not warning her. In the end, she made them wait as she took out her tweezers, plucked out the spines, and waded to shore. She almost had them take her and her family back to Pangane (which would’ve been hilarious, since they didn’t look like they were liking the boat ride too much). We never saw them for the rest of the time we were on the island

Here is some of the architecture of Ibo. We quickly drew the attention of some local kids who have the jobs of attracting people to certain houses used as lodging. The one we ended up choosing was run by a kindly older woman. Her arrangement (unbeknown st to us at the time) was part of a community tourism initiative that the Ministry of Tourism sponsored along with US AID to bolster the industry on the island. For every registered guest at her place, the tourism board takes a cut and she keeps the rest. In exchange for giving money to the Ministry, she receives publicity on Park (since we were now in the National Park of the Quirimbas Islands) literature and stipends to maintain her house. I thought this was very cool- in fact it was one of the coolest programs I had seen in Moz so far.

Here is another monstrous ark, as well as a boat that I thought my Dad would really like. It was a beautiful little sailboat, something I can see him oogling over if he were with me.

Here are a few random shots of the beautiful Ibo island including one of what I thought was Royal Poinciana tree (my Mom’s favorite). Turns out I am in the same Family (the Fabaceae Family, to be specific; thanks Wikipedia) but these are in fact Acacia trees. Oh well. Mom, when you come, you will see a lot of your favorite tree’s cousins.

Check out what’s in that coral formation. It’s a sea turtle shell. We are pretty sure someone stashed it there to pick up later. Totally illegal, of course.

We found this graveyard right on the coast of the island. Elizabeth informed me that Muslims bury their dead with a marker at each end of the body (see below). I felt weird taking pictures of a graveyard, but I think it was worth it just to show you all.

This is one of my favorite pictures that I’ve taken so far. He’s right outside the fort that you see above (I think he’s actually sitting on a water cistern)

So, these are a few New Year’s Eve-themed photos (as well as our main man pictured near the top of the post). This first guy is explaining what is written on the wall. It basically say that as of Jan 2, 2008, all drunks should not drink for at least 2 months to recover from the party. You can see that we were the life of the party that night. Maggie- wtf? It’s new year’s eve! Oh, not with the bf, I get it Well, we had a pretty good time anyway. The TV shot is of the mayor of Maputo City ringing in the New Year on the state-run TV station. It was almost like Dick Clark!

Here are pictures from the main fort on the island. Now, the coolest part about it is that you can buy silver jewelry from the silversmiths inside. They melt down everything from casings to coins to make their wares. I found these kids wandering around the fort. They belonged to someone, but Mom was not around at the time, so I told them to pose for me. Paulo, Elizabeth and Maggie had gone to the beach so I took advantage of my subjects, since my Mom always tells me you should have SOMEONE in the picture. There are more with the kids on Picasa.

This place reminded me a lot of my trip with my dad to Fort Jefferson that we took when I was in high school. One of my favorite memories of that trip is playing frisbee in the fort. This fort was a little too small to play frisbee in.

Quirimbas Island

I showed most of my good photos already, but here are a couple more from my favorite day of the trip. I think this makes the second fisherman in a hardhat that I have photographed in Mozambique (see my post on Machanga)

Mefumvo Island

These are really the only two photos I have from Mefumvo. Paulo cooking us a whole hell of a lot of fish, and the place where we stayed. Notice that just over Paulo’s shoulder, again, is the water. Island-hopping is amazing.

The Return to Pemba

This was our return to Pemba. I had ripped my foot open on a nail on the boatride to Mefumvo, so I whipped out the gauze and duct tape. Worked like a charm! The boat ride was a little choppy, as you can tell from Elizabeth’s face.

We hit land in Pemba’s “old district” where the poor folks live. Coincidentally (not), the worst flooding in the city happens here. Youc an tell it’s a charming place after a good rain

At least we had a welcoming party!!!!!

We hopped in a truck to go back to E’s house. THis was my parting shot of the bay where we landed in Note the weather that day, and check out what it looked like 24 hours later (to the right). Yeesh!

After we got back to the land of amazing street food, I spent a couple nights in Pemba as well as a night each in Nampula and Quelimane. The trip back, I will say, was much less painful. Whereas my trip up to Quelimane was about 60 hours, the trip back was about 28. I finished what has turned out to be one of my favorite books that I have read in-country “All the King’s Men”. I definitely could not have asked for a better use of 2 ½ weeks of holiday, followed immediately by a great week in Maputo at the Moz 11 Mid-Service Conference. But those stories will not be told here. In the coming posts I will post on the JOMA conferences from which I just returned.

Ok, tchau, ‘brigado.

 

Northern Holiday Trip Pt 2- Quelimane-Pemba

Getting a little behind on the posts. They’ll be a little brief, and the pictures of the latter part of the trip kind of speak for themselves anyway.

So, I rolled into Quelimane hoping to get a ticket for a Nampula-bound bus with a company called Mecula. If you go to the North, you will live and die transport-wise by the Mecula transport schedule. There are relatively few chapas and busses outside of the Mecula that run inter-provincial transport. And forget boleias, the number of people who have cars up there is miniscule compared with the South. It all seemingly has something to do with the tiny fact that there is no permanent structure connecting the North and South on the eastern side of the country.

Ferries just aren’t very efficient these days.

So, it being the holiday season, I got to the bus “station” (read: dirt lot) early to wait for the bus. Each bus has I think about 60+ seats, and I was about number 30 in line, so I thought this would be a piece of cake.

I should’ve known better. As soon as the bus came (the bus window acting as the ticket window, the driver being the ticket vendor) the line devolved into a mob that would’ve made those Monseuirs of the Jacobin Club pretty proud, except it was for bus tickets, not political change. It was a freakin sight to see: women literally scaling the up the side of the bus, stepping on whoever in order to buy their tickets. The worst part: these people were buying tickets in bulk. 5, 10 tickets at a time were being sold to folks. The bus driver was not even trying to be fair. I give him top honors for a**hole of the day for letting people do that.

I told myself “f**k this.”

I give the runner-up award to a woman who bought 12 tickets after being boosted up by a friend, stepping on a man’s face, and then crying when she only got 10 of her tickets (they had sold out). I was in a bitter mood by that point. People were offering to get “the branco” (me) a ticket, but i refused to be that guy…but i did sneer and sarcastically clap and tell the crying woman what an honorable, kind person she was.

So, I went off and bought some sweet pineapples with my bus ticket money. The next day, I got a chapa to Mocuba, then got in the back of a truck to go from Mocuba to Alto-Molocue.

Worst/Best decision of the day.

At the end of the 7 hours it took to get from Mocuba to Molocue, my butt felt like I had sat on the business end of an operational jackhammer the whole ride. Just so you know, the distance from Mocuba to Alto Molocue is about the same as Xai Xai to Inhambane. XX-I’bane is about 4 hours, whereas the other is 7+. Gives you an idea of how shitty the roads are. Here is a visual.

Boy, it was fun playing chicken with the semi’s. At one point I felt like Dennis Weaver’s character in Duel

Yeah, his expression pretty much says it all, only I internalized it so I wouldn’t freak everyone else out.

But man, it was so beautiful driving through that part of the country. Ditto for Nampula. Rocky outcrops just bursting forth from the ground. The place was so GREEN, I just wantd to hop off the truck and take a walk into the bush. My photos don’t quite capture the majesty of this place, but I definitely put Zambezia as one of the top three most beautiful places I have ever visited. The other two are Algonquin National Park in Ontario, Canada and the Northern Highlands of Scotland (note that there is no beach mentioned anywhere: guess I’m just a bit beached-out at this point in my career).

I kind of went overboard in taking scenary pics, but i was just in love with the place. Now, every time I see or talk to Brian McHenry, one of my JOMA cohorts who is living in Mocuba, I express my jealousy at his location (horrible transport excluded)

I got to Molocue in the mid-afternoon hoping that the next car I rode in had giant beanbags for seats. I actually got pretty lucky, in that there was a taxi who had been called to take someone to Nampula. The passenger never appeared, so the taxi was willing to take anyone for the price of a chapa! I slept the whole way to Nampula.

Getting in around dusk, I checked into the hotel and met up with Maggie, a Moz 12 who had just arrived to site not 3 weeks before my arrival. She was staying with her supervisor at the time while the finishing touches were beign put on her house. We went out to eat in a downpour (an event that turned out to be a theme that characterized out journey). I invited Maggie along on our adventure, saying that we really didn’t know what we were going to do but we knew it would be fun. Her office was closed down for the holiday season, so she accepted.

We departed the next morning on a packed bus (no crazy ticket riots but we ended up being wedged in like drunk frat guys in a phone-booth-stuffing contest). I was once again caught in the northern migration for the holidays. We actually stood the whole 7 hours to Pemba, which is longer than I think I have ever stood in one place (save for a couple brief bathroom breaks). Complete withcrying babies, a police chcekpoint and some drunk punk who refused to pay for his ticket because he wasn’t being let off at exactly the right place (it was later found out that he did not have the money to pay for the full ticket), the Nampula-Pemba ride was long but relatively conflict-free.

Maggie and I got into Pemba on Christmas Eve. It was great seeing Elizabeth, who I had not seen in quite a while. We met Elizabeth’s friend Paulo, a local Pemban who ended up being our guide/savior throughout the rest of our trip. Pemba was in the midst of a change in seasons, so the weather was not exactly fantastic. Here are some pics from the few days we spent in Pemba. It rained, or threatened to rain most of the time we were there. We ended up snorkelling in 2 ft chop and a light gale (we couldn’t see jack squat because all of the sediment was being kicked up, but I did succeed in breaking my mask trying to adjust the headstrap!)

Yes, Pemba beaches are wonderful, though they were covered in seaweed the entire time we were there. And yes, Maggie has an unhealthy obsession with goats

And yes, in the picture below, that sailboat got wet. What was HE thinking?!

The big story from Pemba was the company we met when we arrived. Two PCVs from Namibia- Jeremy and Lisa- were making a trip from their host country to Moz over land. Here’s Jeremy and Lisa:

They had arrived safely in Pemba and were planning on heading down the coast after Christmas to check out the beaches, until disaster int he form of some asshole construction workers struck.

They were camping in a backpacker’s hostel in a tent they had brought. One day, J and L took to the beach to do some swimming. Upon returning, they discovered that all of Lisa’s stuff was gone, as well as Jeremy’s phone and camera. This included Lisa’s clothes, money, and- most importantly- her passport.

Uh-oh.

Apparently, the construction workers next door had gotten brave and decided to do some pilfering. They slit the tent and dragged out the goods.

This left Lisa and Jeremy in a bit of a predicament. Neither spoke Portuguese, they didn’t have a lot of money, and Lisa was passport-less, so crossing international boundaries was something of a slight problem.

Add to that fact that trying to get anything done around the hollidays is simply impossible. So they holed up in Elizabeth’s house, as seen below, with Elizabeth, Maggie and me.

Whereas my house is big and empty with an aesthetic quality reminiscent of the Delta house in “Animal House”, Elizabeth’s house is quaint, organized and simple (I have no film analogy to accompany her digs). I set up my tent out on the veranda, which ended up being the good choice since Elizabeth’s floor also becomes overridden at night with evil black ants whose bites are worse than fire ants. We had a quiet Christmas Eve dinner where we saw news of the assisination of Pakistani former PM Benazir Bhutto.

Christmas came. We decided to try to cook some sweet mango-spaghetti and garlic bread. We went to the beach, hiked around on the coast a bit, checked out the city a bit.

I have to give major props to Lisa- the girl lost everything but her swimsuit, a change of clothes, and her cell phone, and she had a smile on the whole time we hung out together. She even had a good time! I think that’s the sign of a PCV- something like that can happen and there is an almost immediate acceptance of the event- for better or for worse- and the ability to move on. Not many people lose their passport in a foreign country where the police speak about 20 words of english and go to the beach the next day.

Anyway, we hung out in Pemba to help Jeremy and Lisa with the Immigration jokers as well as talk with our Saint of a Safety and Security Officer- Paulo- to work out a POA to get them back to Namibia. It was the first time that I acted as a part-time translator, yikes! We also had Elizabeth practice her sweet barber skills on Jeremy and me (it was her first time ever cutting hair). If you look at the last of the three pics below, you will notice there are 3 houses, ALL of which have people cutting or in some other way modifying someone elses hair. Apparently it was determined that the day after Christmas (family day in Mozambique) is “hair day”.

Who IS that sexy devil?

But we got the information we needed and after assessing our options…we decided that it would be best to send them ON A 3 DAY BUS RIDE TO MAPUTO!!! Hahahahahahaha! Suckers.

No, really, they didn’t have much money so this was really the best option. And it was a direct bus. I hear they got in ‘pretty-much’ on time, and had a nice ‘relaxing’ time in Maputo while Peace Corps sorted out the details for their travel.

Here is the parting shot from Lisa and Jeremy, taken on the same day as our departure North. FYI, it’s 0330 hrs. Also, a shot that looks like it’s out of a Maytag holiday ad…only at 0330 hrs. Weird.


How much farther North could we get? Well, guess you’ll have to wait for the next post.

Until then, a few more pics from the road trip and of Pemba- land of amazing street food (frozen street yogurt, chamussas, and peanut brittle among others) and ridiculously high prices for everything except mangoes (120 Mtn for a kilo of tomatoes! Robbery!!!!!)

 

falta de palavras

I tried to come up with a concise, professional, reasonable response to the Strauss article that I posted a little while back.

I wrote about 4 different drafts, but every one of them got off topic on rants and tangents that ended up convoluting the whole point of my response. I really can’t convey my attitude towards Strauss without getting a little too worked up. Profanity is usually present. It can get ugly. Also, just in case you have never heard me tell stories or jokes, that is pretty much my schtick (the rambling, not the ugly profanity). Ask someone who spends a lot of time with me about my storytelling style and you’ll get a response that sounds something like this:

“yeah… he gets to the point/punchline, just takes him about 3 deviations and 10 minutes to get there.”

I ramble in my posts a lot too, but I didn’t want to ramble in my response about this. It’s too important to me. So I’ll just leave you with insight from a great man I know.

“This [view of PC] may be Robert Strauss’s Peace Corps, but it certainly isn’t our Peace Corps.”

That’s it.

Thanks for everything, chará.

By the way here are the three goals of Peace Corps:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.