Culture comes to Xai-Xai

A couple weeks ago Xai-Xai was inundated with representatives from all 10 provinces in Mozambique as the 5th Annual National Cultural Festival kicked off on July 11. During the week, there were performances by theater, music and dance groups as well as a food expo, a craft fair and even films from Mozambican directors.

One of the things I have been bitching about since I got to Xai-Xai is that there is very little attention paid to cultural affairs/events. During holidays, there are the obligatory women’s/youth groups that dance and sing and say “Oye (insert occasion or organization here)!!!!” and “Mata SIDA!!!!!” (Kill AIDS!!!). But there is rarely an occasion where you see a mass gathering of people to just celebrate Mozambican (or Shangana) culture. Maybe it’s because most people “celebrate their culture” enough on any average day of living- the work that goes into their farms and houses and families seem like cultural staples that have been around quite a while.

I was very happy to see the festival come to Xai-Xai. It not only brought a lot of people to the Southern region of Mozambique who had never seen this part of the country before, but it injected a bit of life into the population here. It also got vendors and businesses excited enough so that many did some refurbishing of their businesses. It was great to just meet people on the way to work who were from places I have never seen like Tet and Niassa. The presence of the President and Minister of Culture also lit a fire under the provincial government’s butt to make some quick fixes to the road (which are already back to being horrible) and some construction of some new buildings in the downtown area that used to look like bombed out war relics (despite the fact that the war never really reached Xai-Xai; the condition is due only to negligence.)

A couple highlights:

- I was told by an acquaintance at the kick-off party that (and I’m paraphrasing) “Mozambique is so great that I could pass out drunk in the middle of this party [which was quite big] I would wake up in the morning with my wallet and keys and phone still in my pockets… that doesn’t happen in South Africa for sure!”

Well, thank god for that! That’s why I love Mozambique too!!!

- At the film night that I went to, they showed a film about a woman who is beaten by her husband while eventually becoming pregnant with his child. Soon after she is encouraged to get a HIV test, which comes out positive. Her sister convinces her husband to support the mother (read: not beat her and protect her against discrimination) and due to regular check-ups and treatment, the baby is born and raised HIV negative (the Dad also realizes that he is HIV-positive).

The film was good in the approach it takes to female empowerment and the importance of family in the fight against HIV. The only bummer was that the film was all in Shangana, a Bantu dialect that is spoken only below the Save River. All of those participants from Tet or Sofala or Cabo Delgado or Nampula (among others) couldn’t understand what the people were saying. Subtitles were obviously needed.

Good News: There were subtitles

Bad News: The subtitles were in ENGLISH!!! (Doh!)

- I had clam stew, chicken zambeziana (coconut and spices), and matapa with shrimp at the food expo- and that was just at the Zambezia stand! They totally beat the pants off the other provinces in the cooking department. Gaza was kind of boring, but still good. Nampula had dried fish… really?! Couldn’t get some regular fish?!?! Interesting that “Maputo City” had a different booth than “Maputo Province” and yet they ahd basically the same thing.

- The craft fair was cool. It was split into provinces like most other expositions. You could see that certain provinces have been much more influenced by western culture and art than others. For example, the Manica section, with a city close to the Zimbabwean border (which up until a few years ago was an advantage for getting supplies) had crafts that used a lot of synthetic paint as well as more mechanized ways of sculpting wood and other mediums. The Niassa section has contact with, well, no one, and it shows. Their crafts mostly dealt with mats, pants and hats made of pulverized and dyed reeds. IT was really cool to see the differences between the crafts that each area had to offer. Unfortunately, they only let “official photographers” take pictures.

- The Zambezia delegation included students from a fellow PCV’s JOMA theater group. If that isn’t proof that JOMA helps kids develop their skills in areas of communication that leads to better/interesting opportunities, then I will quit (go Mocuba!!!!)

- I went and saw the National ballet company. It was pretty interesting, esp for someone who has only watched about 2 hours worth of ballet (and that was because it was in the Robert Altman movie The Company, not one of his best). I just felt bad for the guys who were int he middle of their routine and the CD player kept skipping, sometimes throwing them off the beat. Can we get a CD in this country that isn’t scratched to hell?!?!?!For the National Ballet Company, please?!?!?!

- The kick-off concert was great. I showed you one of the clips as a test of the google video application, which seems to have worked. A couple more 30 second clips are posted below. It exhibited different languages, a bunch of really good Timbila players and some ridiculous dancing. Here are a couple more videos from the concert. I know that 30 seconds are such a tease, but it gives you some idea of the fun I had.

FYI- My Mom gets here in less than a week (Wednesday the 30th to be exact).

Holy crap is this going to be fun.

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!!!!!)

 

Northern Holiday Trip Pt 1- The Scenic Route: Maputo-Quelimane

Here we go. Finally, part one of the holiday trip that I took up to northern Mozambique. First, let me run down a quick list of where others went for holiday

• Mt. Kilimanjaro
• The Seychelles Islands
• Madagascar
• London, England
• Cape Town, SA
• Swaziland
• Paris, France
• Namibia
• Zambia
• Tanzania (Dar es Salaam and surrounding parks)
• Thailand
• HOME!

Quite a list, huh? And that doesn’t even include the places that the Moz 10 volunteers who were concluding their service went to before they went home. Compared with these ventures, hanging out in Moz seems pretty tame. If you are not already familiar with the original plan, here is an excerpt from the interest e-mail that I sent out last November.

“ [We're]…Maybe checking out some of Zambezia (let’s mooch off the newbies!!!) and Cabo (though we have pretty much nixed the idea of hitting Ilha de Moçambique), then heading up to Dar es Salaam (maybe by boat?! by car?! WHO THE HELL KNOWS! but probably not by plane!) and checking out the surrounding region, spec. ZANZIBAR! (think of it like Jack Black yells it on that Tenacious D song) Then, we are hoping to take a slow ride (talvez train-style, but not fo-sheezy) over to Malawi (i better see some goddamn monkeys and a croc) and down back into Tet and Manica before heading off to the Mid-Service Conference so that Abdul/Isadora can get a good look at/inside our (un)holiest of holy places, and so I can drill JOMA into your head for 3 days straight.
If this sounds remotely interesting, let me know and I will count you in on our preparation. Please keep in mind that:

1. we are on a budget (read: we are poor): this means a lot of tent camping and not a lot of 4-star hotels…or hotels in general… maybe have to nix the whole “eating” thing as well, as we get to the later stages of the trip.
2. we really have no f-ing idea what we are doing: with regards to travel planning (visas, hotel arrangements, not getting raped/murdered/kidneys stolen for use in a curandheiro ceremony.) we are not really worried, though we are trying to feebly research possibilities online.

This could end up being a complete disaster, but I think we are subscribing to the method of planning employed by my sitemates Mike and Justin:
Plan A: There is no plan.
Plan B: Refer to Plan A.
Plan X: PAULO!!!!!!!! HELP!!!!!!”

So, if you couldn’t really figure that mess out, I was planning a pretty ambitious trip that took us to Northern Moz, up to Tanzania, over to Malawi and down the coast of the lake, and back through Moz to get back just in time for Mid-Service Conference. Maybe ambitious is too tame a word. I’m thinking that “insane” is more applicable. Slowly, Elizabeth (a PCV in Pemba who I swindled into being my traveling partner) and I whittled down the trip. We cut out Malawi, had second thoughts about the game parks in Tanzania and pretty much forgot about hitting Western Moz.

In the end, it really came down to one goal: Zanzibar!

You all can do a little research about Zanzibar by clicking on the wiki link in the sentence above, but something that we found out quite early was that Zanzibar is VERY expensive. Like, “do NOT try to go there on your Peace Corps subsidy” expensive. But we each had some money saved up in the bank, and thought that seeing a unique paradise was worth the effort and money. I had a few issues with getting money in time for the trip, but I was still game. First, though, I had to get there.

So, to rewind a bit, the new group of Moz volunteers (Moz 12, or Moz Doze if you’re a nerd) swore in and got whisked off to their sites on December 9. My other two thirds, Mike and Justin, concluded their service and left on Dec 17. Work at SC had been pretty much a load of crap ever since about October due to awful things like “Summary Implementation Plan” and “Budgeting Monitoring Reports” and, my favorite, “WORKSHOPS”.

Quick Tangent: Oh, I have a favorite new waste of time at work. They’re called “flash meetings.” These are theoretically spur-of-the-moment encounters every couple of weeks (or whenever you are about to do something productive. ) We all gather around the backyard like we’re about to throw down in a game of red rover, but instead we bring up problems and incidents within the office. It’s not a bad idea, but it just takes SO DAMN LONG. Every time, the meeting is supposed to take “no more than 30 min” and usually lasts upwards of a couple hours. Even for Mozambique that’s a bit much. Usually, it’s on a Friday when everyone is scrambling to get everything done for the week (Fridays are short days when the office closes at 13:30). Yes, the “Flash Meeting” may soon supplant “workshop” as the phrase I least want to hear at the office.

So, work was crap and there was lots of confusão regarding PCVs exiting and entering sites. In the middle of this, I am trying to tie up all my loose ends with JOMA before the break as well as get some money in my pocket so I don’t arrive up north begging for street food. I got the hell out of Dodge on Dec 18^th and fled to Maputo, where I would wait for a new bank card to arrive as well as research the cheapest methods of getting from South to North. Planes are too expensive, and boleas are too unreliable (unless your name is Jacki) so I went out to Junta, the de facto ground transport hub for Maputo. It also doubles as a great place to eat really old bread, drink expired bottled water, buy your favorite Chuck Norris bootleg DVDs and mud wrestle with street kids. I ended up buying my ticket for a bus leaving on the 20^th for Quelimane, the provincial capital of Zambezia. I hung out with Jacki (see posts on Quissico) and her mom and sister at the Maputo Fish Market, then grabbed my stuff at dusk and headed out to the bus to sleep for the night before departing at 5am.

I’m not going to delve into much detail about my stay at Junta, but let’s just say that if you polled all volunteers who have ever been in Moz with this question; “Would you ever sleep overnight on a bus at Junta?” I’d say you’d get a response percentage ratio of 85/15…the 85% having responded “no”.

We’d also accept “Hell no.” or “F-no” or “What, do I look crazy?”

Not that Junta is that dangerous, it’s just…blecch. Anyway, I spent a sweltering night in the bus, and we departed at 6:30am the next morning for Quelimane.

So, I had a great seat, really! Back row, next to the window. More importantly was in control of my own window, which is almost as valuable as having sufficient legroom (I’ve given up chasing that dream, I’m an ogre here and I have accepted the fact). I was sitting next to a great guy heading back home after his first year at school in Maputo. Laurinho was quite the guy. We ended up being each other’s responsible party for the duration of the voyage. He was traveling with his much younger sister, who sat in front of us right next to my in-bus entertainment. Here is the little pistol (not Laurinho’s sis, the girl who seemed to have energizers implanted in her spine)

Among the other passengers were the requisite drunks, screaming babies, and grumpy old men. To keep myself entertained when the girls were taking powernaps, I took some pics. Here is a car accident that probably took place months ago, but the cars are still hangin out on the road.

Also, here is a guy who most likely does not know what is written on the back of his hat.

You know what? That’s not fair. Maybe he does. Maybe his English is great. That being said, this hat was given out in Mozambique (the other side sported a Moz NGO logo). To put HIV slogans in English in a country where most people don’t even speak the National Language (Portuguese) well- let alone English- just reinforces the arguments of some critics (me) of methods of international development that involve the obscene, wasteful spending by organizations. But hey, maybe he really does “know his status”

So, around Morrumbene (about an hour north of Maxixe in the province of Inhambane and about 12 hours into the trip, for those of you keeping score at home) we blew our first tire. They had 2 spares, so after grumbling for a bit, the motorist and co. changed the tire and the train rolled along. At around Vilanculos, we blew our second tire, and thus used our last get-out-of-jail-free card. Rolling on into the 21^st, we got up into Sofala. Every hour or two, someone complains at the cobrador about having to go to the bathroom, so there were many reluctant pee breaks. I understand the kids, but- get this on record Olivia and Jordan J- I have no pity for the drunks on the bus who knock back cheap whisky like it’s their job and then have to use the bathroom every half-hour. Get a bottle, holmes. Anyway, more drunk people on busses in future posts.

So, late afternoon we are rolling on through Northern Sofala. The tires put us a little behind schedule, but it doesn’t matter much as long as you get to the Rio Zambeze before 16:30pm, when the ferry there closes. About 30 km outside of Caia- the town that resides on the river where the new bridge is being constructed and where the ferry now resides- the motorista starts haulin ass. The sun was sinking fast and we were clamoring for the drivers head on a platter if her were to miss the ferry. Remember, this is the holiday season. Think of those psychos who you see on the news who beat the hell out of each other for wedding dresses the day after Thanksgiving. Well, Mozambicans have nothing so elaborate as Black Friday, but they definitely get a little antsy when it comes to going home to see the fam (See also: holiday episodes of that show Airline, documenting how shitty it really is to work for Southwest Airlines during Christmas) So, the motorista is praying that the ferry is a bit behind schedule, the passengers are praying that his foot magically can depress the gas pedal THROUGH the floor, and Lourinho and I are praying (he actually was praying, I was just reading All the King’s Men) that we don’t careen into a semi or a bicyclist or a herd of cows.

Well, none of the above actually ended up taking place because our collective luck had run out. With one synchronized deafening BLAM! both rear left tires blew out, ending our chances of arriving in Quelimane on time and possibly drastically reducing the average lifespan of bus drivers on our machimbombo. Here is my survey of the situation. In looking at how the bus was packed, it’s no freakin wonder why all 4 tires that we blew were on the left side.



“Sempre Seguro” my ass. That left side has so much weight on it. Guess where my pack is? Right at the very top. Who knows? Maybe that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Also, just so you know, these are old city buses from Maputo. They are NOT known for being efficient at traveling long distances. We waited for about 2 hours for the motorista to go to Caia and procure another couple tires for us. In the meantime, I took a few pics, read, and finger-dipped an entire packet of Gator-Ade. What? I had no water! Took me back to visions of summer rec, and buying Fun-Dip from Nikki Amadio at the concessions stand. See below.

So, our favorite man finally returned with some more tires. We rolled into the queue for the ferry right at dark. Sketchy place indeed. Lourinho had a great night, though, eating disgusting dried river fish and talking politics. The guy was really, really interested in Bill Clinton. I kept trying to focus on the current race, but he didn’t give two squats about Hillary. He was a big fan of Bill, though. Especially his work in the private sector since 2000.

We had another night similar to Junta in the bus at Caia. Lots of mosquitoes, lots of heat, not so much room. I was approached by a fellow passenger who asked me “Why aren’t you hitting on one of the waitresses [who work at one of the many shady bars at the riverside where the truckers who are stranded on one side or the other sleep] so they will take you back to their room and you won’t have to sleep on this bus?”

The guy did have a point. I was tempted to launch into how I would, EXCEPT for the tiny fact that the Sofala Province has a HIV prevalence of over 20%, and with truck drivers (part of the notorious transient population) accounting for a major spike in HIV transmission, I thought it would be not-smart to hook up with a random waitress at a truck stop. But I looked at my clock, and seeing how it was getting on 2200, I decided to let it pass and just politely say “maybe next time”.

The morning brought a renewed hope of completing the first leg of my journey. We all got off the bus and hopped onto the ferry- we were first in line!- and piled in at the other side of the river. By 8am we were moving along, all thinking about how another blown tire would surely mean death for the motorista and his companheiro. Below are the pics I took of the Caia river crossing at dawn, as well as a few of the bridgework being done before the massive Mozambican soldier with the shotgun (not pictured) told me to stop, national security being such a big issue here and all.

I’ll wrap this up by saying that I eventually arrived in Quelimane later that day… 60+hours since we had started in Maputo. It was quite a ride, and I wasn’t even to Pemba to meet Elizabeth yet! I hung with the area Moz 12ers, watched really awful horror movies and ate lots of amazing pineapple and eggplant curry. Such is the life you can have in Quelimane! Here, a couple more pics of the journey to Quelimane. Next up: My pitstop in Nampula and the nonstop adventure of Pemba. Hell, we’re just getting started!