Headfirst into a 27 month river

Iºm working a lot...

2009-03-16T07:59:00.002-04:00

Hey all,

Those of you who have known me in college and elsewhere can recognize "Busy Greg" as Jamie Shelton called it. This is my relatively high stress and no nonsense productive state where Iºm hell bent on getting things done. Iºve been spending a lot of time as busy greg recently.
First we needed to finalize the scholarship project and tie up all loose ends before giving it to Peace Corps to print for distribution nationwide at the Regionals conferences. My friends Dan and Natalie translated it, and now there are plans to post the scholarship / university education guide online in a Wiki format so that other PCVs can correct and update it. I presented at the southern regionals and it was very well received, i love the feeling of being an authority on something.
Apart from that Iºve been busily organizing to start a life-skills building through ultimate frisbee project. I just got back from South Africa where I picked up 100 frisbees that were donated by an excellent organization called loveLife. They have already been doing this work and they are going to be behind us on this. Weºre going to ask PEPFAR for the money to make a hat tournament for the kids, along with interscholastic games. Once Iºve refined the curriculum Iºll post some excerpts to give you an idea of how exactly life-skills fits in.
My job satisfaction has been wonderful thanks to the change to Informatica teacher. Iºm giving IT lessons now and busy looking after the computers and solving all the daily maintenance issues that arise. My journalism group already got its first newspaper ready and should have printed it by now without my help. The laminated glass display cases are mounted in the markets so the students have a place to mount their writings. I just recently took one of my students to the natural gas refinery station run by the company that bought our computers and soon i will take other students to watch their own democratic process as the district level government decides who will receive government funded micro-loans. Tellingly, there seems to be no such notion of "conflict of interest" but I think weºll get there eventually.

Greg

Scholarship project / Bolsas de Estudo em Mocambique

2009-01-17T07:26:00.003-05:00

Vou escrever em Portugues primeiro para o beneficio dos alunos de Mocambique os quais encontraram esta pagina na sua procura de informacoes sobre como procurar uma bolsa de estudo para continuar os seus estudos apos da escola secundaria. O documento esta em ingles, mais ate no Marzo vamos traduzir ao Portugues. desculpe, as tablas do documento nao sairam bem e havia de tirar...

Hey everyone,

So I managed to compile all of the information that I gathered during the last year in order to better inform high school students in Moz about scholarships for study after high school. I disseminated it during our mid-service conference to 60 colleagues who work all over the country and who will certainly be asked for help by the youth in their area (these kids know enough to ask Americans to help with the money for school since Americans have money).

Here it is, sorry I can't post it as a word document and the tables didn't show well in the blog so I had to take them out...

Advising your student: University study in Mozambique or abroad?
It is recommended that you encourage your students to seek educational opportunities in Mozambique rather than abroad. The rationale of this recommendation is outlined below by Conor Bohan, RPCV Haiti ’98 and founder of the Haitian Education and Leadership Program (HELP) which as of 2008 was Haiti's largest university scholarship program:

HELP only sponsors students at local universities and I would recommend anyone else think about doing the same for several reasons. My experience is that poor kids in poor countries are interested in leaving and sending them abroad at 18 makes it easier for them not to return. Secondly, education abroad is many times more expensive than local education, so there is much more bang for the buck when you keep kids close to home which means you can support more deserving kids. Additionally poor kids, being less sophisticated than wealthy ones, have a hard time adjusting to university life in their own country so the adjustments are often overwhelming abroad. Lastly, every country needs to develop its own university system and sending top students to local schools strengthens the local system.

That being said… If your student shows an intense desire to study abroad, as a counselor you will want to support your student in researching these possibilities, outlined in the ‘international scholarships’ below.
Acceptance at a university is a prerequisite for students applying for a government scholarship. Encourage your brightest student(s) to bater the entrance exam with an impressive score and try to use that score for leverage during the search for money. Both Universidade Eduardo Mundlane (UEM) and Universidade Catolica de Moçambique (UCM) have independent means to support students (see University-based scholarships, below), or perhaps a Mozambican philanthropist or local church will be impressed by the score. Go for it! Nothing in life is guaranteed (especially here), but your student won’t know until she/he tries.

The Instituto de Bolsas de Estudo
The following information was collected during a conversation in December of 2008 with Miguel Inácio, Director Geral Adjunto of the Instituto de Bolsas de Estudo (IBE) and a conversation with the Gabinete de Bolsas de Estudo of Niassa in June of 2008.
IBE was created in August of 2007 as part of the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC). The first Conselho Nacional de Bolsas de Estudo was in April of 2008. During 2008, IBE had a budget of 100 million meticais, of which 80 million was to be given as scholarship money. IBE will provide scholarships for all Mozambican universities both public and private; however, fewer will be provided for private schools as they are more expensive (currently, Universidade Eduardo Mundlane (UEM) benefits from government subsidies which greatly reduce tuition fees).
Many provinces inherited their current scholarship programs from international donor scholarship projects (which usually targeted only one province). As of the close of 2008, the provinces of Inhambane, Manica, and Maputo still had not set up provincial scholarship offices, but the IBE has contacted the Direcção de Educação of each province to ask them to form a commission that will manage the scholarship program as of 2009 by establishing criteria for the selection of candidates and by reviewing candidates. Because evaluation criteria are decided at the provincial level, the extent to which the review committee will value your student’s past academic achievement will vary by province. The scholarship is not necessarily merit-based.

Government Scholarships are managed at the provincial level
Scholarships in Mozambique are centrally funded and provincially managed. The role of IBE is to perform oversight of provincial level implementation by establishing norms/guidelines, monitor provincial adherence to those guidelines, and assist the provinces through technical training. IBE allocates a certain number of vagas (vacancies) each year to its delegação or commisão in the Direcção de Educação of each province. The Province then earmarks these vacancies for specific disciplines (e.g. 8 for Economics, 4 for Agriculture, 3 for Maths). The Province allots vacancies based on its own foreseen labor needs (e.g. upon graduation, the scholarship winner is obliged to work for the provincial government for 5 years).
Once the vacancies are allotted, they are advertised in newspapers, on the radio, and with palestras (a lecture style announcement made by local Direcção de Educação) in the secondary schools. These advertisements outline the application process and also provide the data limite (deadline) for applications. The deadline is usually in or around the month of January/February; however, please note that the student must pass the University entrance exam before applying for the scholarship. According to Miguel of IBE, the entrance exam for UEM is administered locally after the Segunda Chamada (I don’t know how/when the student is told the results of the exam). Explore options for submitting the application locally through the Serviço de Educação, Juventude, e Tecnologia in order to avoid the trip to the provincial capitol.

In order to apply, students must submit the following documentation:
· Proof of completion of grade 12
· Proof of acceptance into a Mozambican university
· Declaration of poverty (referral from the student’s Chefe do Bairro indicating financial need must be brought to the Conselho Municipal in order to have this document issued)
· Declaração historical: Similar to a cover letter, in which the student describes their education and work history. *CV not required
· Ficha de candidatura: This is an official form in which the student’s personal details are provided, along with grades and a report on the student’s behavior provided by the Direction of the school
* Currently there is no application fee

The applications are evaluated by a committee in the Direcção Provincial. The review procedure for Niassa is as follows: a commission of about 10 people in chooses the scholarship winners (apurados). The evaluation of applications is done using a point system, with extra points being awarded for female candidates, disabled persons, younger candidates (under 20) and candidates from rural districts, a.k.a. the matu. The point system encourages awards to women and rural students because they have historically been underrepresented in the universities.
These students who win the scholarship must sign a contract before receiving funds and must renew the contract yearly. This contract specifies that the student must return to and work for the province which provided the scholarship for a few years. In the case of breach of contract, the matter is brought to the tribunal (the courts).

International Scholarships
As in the US, students must complete licenciatura before applying for post-graduate study. The majority of funding for study abroad is for post-graduate study (“mestrado” and “doutorado”), rather than undergraduate study (“licenciatura”). This makes sense because developed countries hope to court and absorb Mozambique’s best talent, creating the “brain drain.”
According to Miguel of IBE, the IBE has the role of liaison between embassies offering scholarships and the students who are applying. In other words, the IBE advertises the vacancies and is also responsible for collecting the applications which are then forwarded to the respective embassy. I am not sure whether IBE is responsible for selecting the candidates or simply forwards all applications. Miguel lamented that the embassies announce the scholarships with short deadlines which do not provide IBE with enough time to advertise, and said IBE is working with the embassies to fix this. Ideally the embassies would make their support more predictable by agreeing to provide scholarships for say 5 years, with x number of vacancies each year. Here is an example of an advertisement of two foreign scholarships as advertised on the IBE’s website (please note that applications must be submitted to IBE in Maputo).

O Ministério da Educação e Cultura – Instituto de Bolsas de Estudo, torna público que estão abertas candidaturas para (26) vinte e seis bolsas Bolsas de Estudo para licenciatura e Pós-Graduação, oferecidas pelo Governo da China, para o ano adémico 2008/2009, nas seguintes áreas:
• Agronomia e Veterinária; Medicina, Farmácia e Estomatologia;• Engenharia Civil, Química, Mecânica e Informática;• Arquitectura;• Economia, Gestão, Tecnologias de Informação e Sistemas de Informação;• Sociologia e Psicologia.
Requisitos para Licenciatura
a) Ser cidadão (a) Moçambicano (a) Solteiro (a);b) Possuir idade compreendida entre 17 e os 25 anos;c) Ter concluido a 12ª classe (ou equivalente) com a média mínima de 12 valores; d) Apresentar cópias autenticadas e homologadas dos certificados da 10ª 11ª e 12ª (esta última traduzido para o Inglês);
As Candidaturas deverão ser submetidas ao IBE, até dia 28 de Março de 2008.

5 scholarships for: Engenharia Mecânica, Engenharia Eléctrica e Electrónica, Engenharia Química e Engenharia Civil, Tecnologias de Informação e Sistemas de Informação, at the Licenciatura level. As candidaturas deverão ser submetidas ao IBE até ao dia 14 de Março de 2008

A place to look on the internet:
I did not do enough research here. A good place to start would be looking for scholarships for study in Portugal and Brasil.
I found the following during a five minute google search—I’m not endorsing it.

The International Education Financial Aid Website, www.IEFA.org , is the premier Internet resource listing financial aid information for students who wish to study in a foreign country. At this site you will find the most comprehensive listing of grants, scholarships, loan programs and other information to assist students in their quest to study abroad.
IEFA.org was created in January 1998. Since that time the site has developed a database of over 1,000 programs of financial aid for international education. Some resources are specific to the student's home country or field of study while others are more general.

As of July 2008, there were 220 scholarships listed in the IEFA database for the location ‘Unrestricted/Worldwide’ and 800 scholarships for all locations, including many scholarships to study in the U.S.
Search fields include:
Award type (fellowship, internship, grant, loan, scholarship, tuition waiver)
Location of school or organization offering scholarship
Field of study (various)

University-based scholarships at UCM and UEM
With the help of the UCM Foundation described on its website, UCM is able to provide financial assistance to some of its students on a case by case basis.
Because UEM is financed by the government and donors, tuition fees are greatly subsidized and represent only a small fraction of the cost of attending UEM. By contrast, the majority of the funding for Mozambique’s non-government funded universities are derived from student tuition fees, which makes them far more expensive to attend. This situation may change during the current structural reforms of UEM.
From page 89 of the Global Partnership Fund’s 2003 Case Study on Mozambique, we see that UEM has its own internal scholarship program with about 1000 spots awards are predominantly merit-based with some affirmative action. The Social Services Directorate (DSS) at UEM provides assistance for students in the form of subsidized accommodation and meals, mostly for scholarship recipients. It is rumored that UEM has a policy of reducing the overall financial aid package in correspondence to the number of classes failed or left incomplete during the previous school term. For example, a student who fails 50% of his classes will lose 50% of his financial aid.
Historically there have been instances where “Because of poor communications and labyrinthine bureaucracy, many students from the north or centre who gain scholarships to UEM find out too late that they have won them. By that time they have been taken up by better informed candidates.” (Case Study, p.33)

Universidade Católica de Moçambique (UCM)
www.ucm.ac.mz
Annual tuition fees (propina): 1,200USD, approximately 30,500mtn
When the Catholic Church hosted the 1992 peace talks and accord that ended the civil war, it promised to create a University in the Central and North regions for the express purpose of addressing the structural injustice/imbalance of having the country’s only university located in Maputo, out of reach of the Central and North regions, a situation which guaranteed that those people qualified for positions in government would be predominantly from the south. Following a 1995 government decree which allowed UCM to begin operations, UCM opened its University in Beira and has been rapidly expanding ever since (see chart below).
UCM does not have an entrance exam, anyone who can afford tuition can attend the university. Most of the non-government funded universities have what is called a ‘zero semester’ to prepare entering students for the rigors of their study (this semester can be skipped if the entering student has good grades coming in). UCM dedicates a whole ‘propaedeutic year’ to the same purposes.
The first step to applying is to sign up for classes during the período de inscrições. For the year 2009, sign-ups were from December 1, 2008 to January 9, 2009.
· Faculdade de Economia e Gestão, Beira (1996) – also Economics, IT, GIS (Urban Planning)
· Faculdade de Direito, Nampula (1996) – also Business Administration
· Faculdade de Educação e Comunicação, Nampula (1998) – also Social Work
· Faculdade de Agricultura, Cuamba (1999)
· Faculdade de Medicina, Beira (2000) – also Medicine, Nursing, Social Work
· Faculdade de Turismo e Informátic, Pemba (2002) – also IT and Tourism
· Centro de Ensino à Distância, Beira (2003)
· Faculdade de Economia e Gestão, Delegação Chimoio (2005)
· Faculdade de Economia e Gestão, Delegação Tete (2008) – also Accounting and IT

Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM)
www.uem.mz
The following information is from the Edital (course catalog) published by UEM for the 2009 schoolyear, allegedly available on the web at http://admissao.uem.mz/docs/Edital_UEM2009.pdf. The UEM campus is in Maputo city. You must pass the entrance exam to enroll. You must pay a 250mtn fee for each discipline whose entrance exam you want to take (300mtn if for night school). The entrance exam can be done on a Saturday during the 1st epoca (15, 22, 29 of Novemer, 2008) and 2nd epoca (1-6 of December, 2008) at the following sites.

Maputo: Campus Universitário Principal da UEM; Faculdade de Engenharias da UEM, Cidade de Maputo.
Gaza: Escola Pré-Universitária Joaquim Alberto Chissano – Cidade de Xai-xai
Inhambane: Escola Superior de Hotelaria e Turismo –Cidade de Inhambane, Escola Superior de Desenvolvimento Rural – Vilanculos
Sofala: Delegação da Faculdade de Direito – Cidade de Beira
Manica: Escola Pré-Universitária Samora Moisés Machel – Cidade de Chimoio
Tete: Escola Secundária de Tete – Cidade de Tete
Zambézia: Escola Secundária 25 de Setembro – Cidade de Quelimane
Nampula: Escola Secundária de Nampula – Cidade de Nampula
Cabo Delgado: Escola Secundária de Pemba – Cidade de Pemba
Niassa: Escola Secundária Paulo Samuel Kankhomba – Cidade de Lichinga

At least two weeks before exams begin, the list of candidates and test-room assignments will be posted at the same location of inscription (with the exception of Maputo, where the list will be posted at Escritorios da Comissão de Exames de Admissão, sita no edificio do Centro de Informática da UEM – Rés-do-chão, Campus Universitário Principal).
The results of the exam will be are supposed to be posted on the web at www.admissao.uem.mz but will also be posted at the sites listed above (with the exception of Maputo, where the results will be at Campus Universitário Principal da UEM, Escola Secundária Josina Machel do cidade de Maputo). There is no mention of when the results will be posted! If the results are posted too late, how will your student meet the proof of acceptance requirement for the provincial scholarship? Good luck.
The part of the Edital that discusses UEM scholarships was conveniently not available at the time of research.
For details on courses offered, please see the annexed statistics.

Universidade Pedagógico (UP)
Universidade Pedagógico is traditionally an option for students who want to continue their education but lack resources to attend one of the more prestigious 5-year universities.

Professional Development Scholarships
A common form of bolsas de estudo which you may hear about or be asked about by colleagues is awarded to a government employee in recognition of past achievement and a promising future. This could generally be considered as a promotion in which the funds for the scholarship are provided by the Instituto or branch of government which awarded it. This sort of scholarship is generally not relevant to our students.

Availability of Student Loans?
UCM tried to make arrangements with banks in Beira to benefit their students, but as far as I know this was not fruitful. The World Bank considered a students loan scheme in 2002 but rejected the idea as infeasible, preferring scholarships. Banks prefer secured loans so picture the following: parents with house, mortage on house, money for school. Probably not an option for our students.

Secondary School Scholarships
Although not officially considered scholarships, state aid is theoretically available for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) and Acção Social is the program which allows students without resources to enroll without paying matricula and go to school without an expensive uniform. Do you really expect the state to pay room and board costs for high school students?

Distance Learning
UCM is actively pursuing this method. Courses offered include history, geography, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, portuguese, and visual education. The courses last for 4 years for the bachelor’s degree and 5 for licenciatura (4 years of distance learning plus one full year on campus). Each academic year includes 4 mandatory “special presence” class sessions which take place over the weekends (never more than 4 days) where the student must travel to one of the cities as shown below.

UEM has a new program for distance learning but as of January 2009 the only course being offered was Gestão de Negocios (a 3 year course) and the courses are web-based and therefore require that the student have consistent internet access. 500 vagas in the 2009 course.

History of Scholarships and HEI Reform in Mozambique
NISOME
This scholarship project was financed by the Netherlands and was praised by both the World Bank and the Global Partnership for its effectiveness. The World Bank modeled its pilot program after NISOME.
PROANI
This organization operated in Niassa province and was financed by either Ireland or England, providing approximately 40 scholarships per year over 10 years.
Caritas Moçambicana/Espanhola
This organization also provided some scholarships (in Nampula province?) but gave control of their scholarships over to the government.
World Bank pilot scholarship
In 2002, the World Bank allocated US $60 million toward an overhaul of Mozambique’s higher education system. The majority of its reform efforts were targeted at UEM, which had become outdated and inefficient after years of top-down management and financing, as well as a substantial amount of time spent free from competition from other HEIs.
The overhaul also included a pilot Provincial Scholarship program which was the prototype of the current IBE system. $2 million were provided to 500 students for undergraduate scholarships for students in the provinces of Cabo Delgado, Gaza and Tete. World Bank project appraisal document of the Higher Education Project for Mozambique can be viewed at
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000094946_02021604022924
Global Partnership Fund
A collaborative effort of several foundations (Ford, Rockefellar, Carnegie, John and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation), this consortium does research and also provides targeted grants to improve quality of and access to higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their 2003 case study on Mozambique can be downloaded at:
http://www.foundation-partnership.org/pubs/mozambique/

Further reading
www.mec.gov.mz (has link to IBE)
www.portaldogoverno.gov.mz

Instituto de Bolsas de Estudo
Martires de Machava 231 (close to Hotel Africa II)
Tel.: 21 48 88 25 or 21 48 88 26

Thanks for your interest and please if you find information to make this guide better get in touch with one of us!

Greg Harris (Moz 12)
Dan Milroy (Moz 12)

Home stay in NJ, ME, AZ and New Years in NYC

2009-01-07T02:41:00.008-05:00

Later that night, after the NYC red carpet gala where i rubbed elbows with many strangers and my boys in this photo (and the photographer, Bruce). Preceding that I'd been with Durham from Davidson and my friend George from Mexico, both great people to talk to leaving me with food for thought.
Preceding NYC i was in Maine, to see my mom's beach house. Aside from seeing distant relatives at our local dive seafood restaurant and a visit to the family cemetary plot, there was a quick dip in the January 29th icy Atlantic Ocean that i may never do again, unless it's again 60 degrees out that time of year.
Succeeding NYC was a trip to Arizona to see my Dad's house out there. Funniest thing about that trip was our night out at the Elks lodge, ordinarily an old man's club but in the retirement country that is AZ we were surrounded by white hairs and old people dancing and acting young. kinda scary. We also played some golf, i had some good holes and mostly bad, but all said a pretty good outing. Titan II missile museum and copper mine tours were also a smash hit, I love that shit, marvels of modern engineering and a tribute to American ingenuity and certainly the reason why nothing succeeds like success. Even if the USSR had bombed the shit out of us, even after our continent was rocked by a hundred nuclear bombs, we'd have had enough surviving missile silos to dessimate their continent. End of story. Don't even try it, comrades.
NJ was cool too, got to see my old friends and play flag football, among other things.
Truth be told, though, it's a bit hard to be at home when it's no longer quite home, when the life i have fashioned to suit me in the environment that fits me lives over there, in Mozambique.

Greg the IT teacher with 23 computers at his disposal

2008-11-21T05:21:00.006-05:00

Like HIV, IT viruses seem to have high prevalence hereI'm looking forward to my trip home in mid-December, where i will try to find a FAST and safe computer to download my photos onto either the yahoo flickr photo account or direct onto the blog. My photo card from my camera has a trojan virus, I didn't even know that could happen but it burned when my photo card urinated and, when i put it into a computer with antivirus, the computer was not happy.
Did I mention that my school was given 31 computers and that 22 of them are for students to use that that I am the only teacher at school qualified to give the IT lessons? That's pretty exciting for me, since IT is so important and I think I will be able to win a lot more interest from the students than i did in my English classes. I had some problems such as convincing the school admin to put the protective fabric over the hard drive tower under the table, rather than over monitor on the table, and the windows in the once library study room now IT room are venetian style slats of glass that open and close like blinds, allowing the dust to come in during windstorms, of which there were several.
Anyway, the two of the computers have a virus, kxvo.exe, and I'm not enough of a computer nerd to fix them...yet. I'm doing lots of reading from windows help and today on the internet to try and become a computer guru as quickly as possible. Hopefully I'll even be able to learn something about hardware before the beginning of next year. If you are a computer nerd I would like to have your advice about what I can do to secure the computers, how to set up workgroups and etc. Mostly I need good virus removal programs that might remove viruses from flash drives and prevent new flash drives from infecting my computers (a "condom" if you will).
In other news, I recently made a bike trip with two friends to the old Mambone, the site where the Muslims and later Portuguese used to run their trade operations at the mouth of the Save River. There are no buildings there to be seen, it's just a beach but a beautiful one at that. I also got a ride with my friend Dr. Nilton who was going around to visit all of the hospitals in our rurul district, all the ones in the interior, far away from the beach and to the West of the national highway. For the first time I really had my eyes opened about what rural means in a rural context: it means the wilderness. Especially in one of the main destination towns, named Jofane, there's literally nothing there but the straw roofed homes and the health station, built by Save the Children UK after the 2000 floods, unfortunately its about 8 km to the nearest water source so I don't know why it was built where it is. The rest of the small communities seemed equally isolated but at least they were, you know, on the way to Jofane, so that my surprise upon reaching the destination was a shock. Not that it's all bad out there, there was a site named Matata that was on the river and I immediately thought of my grandfather's friend Norm, who likes to watch birds. There was a huge ledge where the river water made an ever-fresh swamp, FULL of birds, and nice views around, including a farm which made use of a water pump from the river to bolster production. After the day in the back of the Land Cruiser I was bruised considerably...on my ass, it hurt to sit down. I got to buy the front leg of an impala type animal for about $5 and the front leg of a wild pig (not a boar but a wild pig with squiggly tale) for a little over $2. The pig was already missing its head (the best part) and one hind leg when we saw it tied up on the back of a bicycle again...in the middle of nowhere or to be more clear on a dirt road no less than half an hour by fast moving car from the national highway.
What else I'm up to...making a handbag out of palm frongs with my local language teacher, whose helped me get much better in the local language, i can assist conversations now and stammer out some words now and then. I can fix my bike tire by myself now, whether a patch or replacing the tube. I also fixed my 200 liter water tank from which the nozzle had shot off, that was quite a project since I could not fit my hand into the barrel far enough to hold the nut on the inside of the tank. In short I could say that so much of the things I own are pirata (junk) and so Iºve gotten better at McGuyvering things.

1 year anti-anniversary

2008-09-29T11:55:00.002-04:00

so sept 27th was the one year anniversary of saying goodbye to my family, definately the longest i've been apart from them that is quite a challenge but other than that things are still going well here.

My favorite songs!!

2008-09-21T10:25:00.003-04:00

Download these or look for it on youtube.

artist: Lucky Dube
song: Remember me

This song is great because he is singing to his father who left his family and never came back. Many families have a similar situation and many children are growing up without a father, but this song is beautiful because the voice of the singers singing "Remember Me" can haunt the man who has left wife and children behind in the backcountry exactly where he feels its safe to hide from that sort of troublesome worry: in the bar. Lucky Dube is way popular and I picture a men in bars all over Johannesburg choking back regret and maybe, even planning to send some money back home as promised to their forgotten family.

Artist: Malaika
Song: 2bhobho

a bit more electric than i'd remembered. You'll feel it, how light and happy and cheerful it is, that's about how I feel about my life here, I'm still loving it. Just did a field trip with my journalism kids (ten of them) they met kids from another school here and, miraculously, the whole thing went off without a hitch. That is VERY unusual. Case in point, last weekend on the way to the English theater competition my chapa full of students broke down 3 times (it was overheating) and then we got sardined into a new chapa for the 6 hour bumpy ride and arived late.
I've been looking for the name of this song for about 9 months now and finally got the name of the song from a South African guy who runs the new internet cafe in Vilanculos.

Table of contents (asterisk means I updated an old post)

2008-09-05T10:42:00.000-04:00

Post-apocalyptic
2 travel stories from Lichinga
Driving (updated since March 14)
Done with vacation / Scholarship project progress
A honeymoon trip to Inhassoro
Community level Economic Development in action
Made a great friend in Inhambane City
Food, housing
Frustrating times
Cold Showers
My spiritual enlightenment and lampshading
The capulana
School atmosphere and African trees
Unplanned post
MP3s please
Newest insight about Africa
New photos uploaded
Why I love Mozambique!
My new phone number
White Devil
Ninja-ing lychee
Your Grandpa is growing up here
Africanized horseflies
Administering a test
Driving and hitch-hiking
Language classes with a charlatan
*Moz music 12/26, 1/4/08
Flooded out of my site 1/3/08
Brer Rabbit (o coelho) the African trickster 12/26
1st impressions of my site 12/26
New contact info / cell phones 12/26
Peace Corps cultural adjustment tips 12/26
My convo with Congressman Chris Smith 12/26
*Site Placement! Nov 30 , corrected 1/4/08
The freshman 15, Nov 30
The Chefe 11/30
Host family dynamics 11/30
My new NGO 11/30
The Chichi Bucket 11/30
Slaughtering a young dejected chicken/ Thanksgiving 11/30
*VISIT in 2009 or World Cup 2010, modified 11/30
Photos of my house 11/3
Photo of friends 11/3
Photo on flickr photo11/1
Rhymes with rabies 11/1/07Davidson profs offer advice - 9/23/07
Come visit me - 9/23/07
Highlights from PC welcome materials + MZ history lesson - 9/23/07
How to send mail to me - 9/23/07
Songs that evoke Africa – 9/21/07
*What I love(d) about Florida – 9/21/07, originally posted 8/23/07
My trip to Mexico – 8/9/07
*What people are saying about Africa – 9/20/07, originally posted 7/25/07
To do list while in Africa – 7/25/07
Interpretation of Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead – 7/24/07
Intro - 7/23/07

"Post-apocalyptic" has been the word

2008-09-05T09:30:00.002-04:00

There are two memorable quotes/insights from way back in training that I want to share. The first is from Dan: "The only running water I've seen is coming out my asshole."
The next is more profound, it was the adjective used by Michael, perhaps the oldest person in my group even though he's only 29 or was at the time. He used the word "post-apocalyptic" to describe Namaacha and I think it was pretty spot on. Any old city you visit here has splendid ruins of the Portuguese colonial rule, many of them are now in dis-repair but still constitute prime real estate. Thus it is not uncommon for me to enter what would seem to be a normal bathroom, and then use the manual flush method to get my turds under the water level of the bowl. In other words, you dip a bucket into a barrel of water and then pour that bucket into the bowl and voila, most of your poop is gone down the drain. Did you know that this was possible? I did not, and I still catch myself in a state of amazement now and then. Another thing that makes this post-apocalyptic is the pot-holes, but let me not go into that too much. I, for one, am a big fan of the post-apocalyptic architecture aesthetic as all of these buildings and rooms and ruins have SO MUCH CHARACTER just like the taxis and bicycles and whatever else you want. To hell with fresh paint jobs!

Two travel stories from Lichinga

2008-09-05T09:27:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone again I feel like it has been a very long time since I wrote. Let me start by saying that life in general is great. I’ve become a passable teacher and I will tell you my secret…my saving grace…I make fun of my students when they are disobedient in order to make them feel small and allow them to appreciate that I am, in fact, older and smarter than them. I’ve also gotten to a point where I can be silly in a way that suits me every once in a while and they like that. For example my Dad sent me a box full of random goodies that can be obtained at trade fairs (calculators, bouncy balls, hacky sacks, flashlights, calendar/notepads and other colorful trinkets) and I gave these out as prizes to my students who had improved their grade the most between 2nd trimester and 1st test of 3rd trimester. As you can imagine the situation sometimes got out of hand, what during the distribution, so I took to shooting wily students with the rubber band handgun trick, which people don’t know here. I also gave a calculator or two to the customs guys at the post office, who inspected everything that was sent, slowly, commenting how random it all was, and insisted that I really ought to have a receipt for everything in the box (which was impossible, since the stuff was free) before asking me all sly “So how much do you think all this stuff is worth?” As in “So how much money are you going to give me?” In the end I didn’t give them any money but did thank them for their “comprensão” after all I am using my personal savings while teaching your kids, scum-bag. Peace Corps had promised us a raise in March but I hear it is coming up short. Speaking of money, see my blog entry on local pedidos.

I live in my own house now, that is the biggest development that makes my life so enjoyable nowadays. My school director and I butted heads pretty severely while I lived in his house, which was miserable. I did, however, get started on a screenplay which I think will be a big hit. It is a sequel to the film, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” called “My Big Fat Stupid Wife” and did I mention how argumentative and irritating their houseboy “empregado” was and still is? But that’s all in the past, and now I just ignore my only neighbors to the greatest extent possible. Once I get outside the school, there are some neighbors that I do go and visit or say hi to. My favorite is the little kids, who say “dTah-dtah” (the d and t are lost in each other) which is their imitation of “boa tarde” or good afternoon, and they sound like teletubbies and make me smile immediately when they say it while getting all excited and waving. One of the biggest rewards for me is that I’m not scared of kids anymore like I was in the USA. I still don’t know how to hold a baby or change a diper, but I’m not scared of babies or toddlers anymore. Kind of like that treatment for arachnophobia where you overcome it by being COMPLETELY SURROUNDED by the thing you were scared of. Most of the women that you see around town are have a baby in tow on their back. That’s another thing…the capulana…I haven’t adequately described how wonderful it is. The capulana is a measure of one meter of colorful fabric which the women wear for skirt, maybe sown into a shirt or cut into a headwrap. To carry a baby in a capulana, you first bend over and lay the baby on your back, then you wrap the low end of the cloth under the baby’s butt (leave the legs hanging) and high end at about baby’s neck or head and then put one end of the cloth over your shoulder and the other end of the cloth under the opposite armpit, then tie in a knot in front. The babies look as comfortable as they could ever be, utterly content.
Two good travel stories I can share is from my week-long trip to Lichinga. What a party! And these are definitely my stories, as anyone who knows me well would be able to tell. Anyway, I had been developing feelings for a nearby PCV who was one of my best friends even from day 1 or 2 of training. Since her last name is also Harris, we were always in the same groups. I thought something might happen between her and I but enter a beautiful girl on summer break from App State (NC!), not Peace Corps, she had rafted up with some Peace Corps girls in Malawi and was now tagging along. Well our eyes were locked for the first minute at least of our conversation and I was feeling love at first site, but also in denial of it because I was already into the pangs loneliness pretty deep at that time and really would have preferred not to be distracted from a sustainable relationship I’d been working toward for some time. I talked to her too much and then accepted to go with her to Lake Niassa where she and the others had gotten off of the ferry that goes around the lake between Malawi and Mozambique. The ferry is called the “Ilala” and when I saw my friends get off that ship I would have sworn they were being redeemed from Bob Marley’s bottomless pit (they’d traveled second class, or steerage, the other white people had all stayed up on the top deck and enjoyed privelages like a place to lie down or use a nice bathroom and drink water during the more than 24 hour ride). This girl had not had her passport stamped, no one had, and rumors had her worried that she would have problems upon leaving the country if she did not have the stamp showing that she had returned to Mozambique. She did not speak good Portugues. She didn’t hardly know anyone. She was scared and oh so alone. OK, so when I went to get up with her at 4am in the bitter cold, my sweater and passport were in my bag which Rachel Harris was using as a pillow. I couldn’t bring myself to wake her up. So I used my survival blanket as a shawl and we went for the 3-4 hour ride out to the lake. It was so nice, though I tried not to notice or not to get swept up in my company, because I did not want to feel guilty when I got back home and saw Rachel, who I wasn’t even nearly dating at the time (thanks, a lot, Catholic upbringing, for my guilty guilty conscience). When we got to the customs office, luckily we were given a chance to explain our request before the guy asked to see both of our passports. Of course I didn’t have mine, I didn’t need it stamped, so I’d left it in Lichinga. So the guy calculated the fine for her to pay, she had been in country illegally for two days so…$2,000Mt (about $80USD) and it was difficult to play hardball when he could have been a jerk about me not having my passport but with a combination of displaying how frayed our nerves were and how scared we were of having messed up and been illegal and in the end after I asked him to show me the fee schedule where it outlines the fees for this specific situation he dropped the fine to a very reasonable $200Mt or so, which was, as I could see on the wall, the actual processing fee. But I want to point out something here and that is that people in Mozambique are great. He could have been a real jerk about my not having a passport as I am required by law to have it at all times but he’s a human being, he’s a good guy, he’s really only asking for the big sum of money because…why not? Maybe she would have happily paid to get the whole thing over with.
At the end of the trip, another damsel in distress appeared. This time it was Rachel, who wanted to try and get on board our flight if possible since it had originally sold out and forced her to get back to her site a few days late. As it turned out, check-in was a madhouse and Samantha and I (all 3 of us were good friends since our intensive language learning class together) decided to wait it out since, after all, we had confirmed reservations and would rather peacably enjoy company than elbow someone in the face for 1 hour while waiting in the 20 puppies per one tit check-in line. Eventually the tension in the line grew to fever pitch and I became aware that missing the flight was now more than just a possibility. We got in line and about half an hour later the engines started and the plane took off..without us. The First Lady had commandeered about 15 seats for her and her entourage to get back to Maputo. Tough luck, peasants. So we had an adventure trying to get things sorted out. The next day, we were back in the lines trying to get an ear of one of the 4 incompetent people in charge of check-in. Samantha had recommended that if Rachel and I pretended to be married (same last name) this might up the chances of her getting on board the flight. In the end, I think I deserved an oscar for my work as the wounded husband. I just want to travel with my wife, we’re teachers, etc. etc. and one kind soul behind the counter eventually just gave her a boarding pass. On the tarmac, someone came on board and tried to make her deboard the plane because there must have been some kind of mistake (the 2nd time I’ve seen this happen on my 5 flights in country, the first time it happened to me and 2 others) well WTF, man, then you shouldn’t have given her a boarding pass! She stayed on board it was fun. OK, you had to be there.

Driving and hitchhiking (originally posted March 14)

2008-09-05T00:00:00.000-04:00

Please see the recently added addendum to this entry, below.

The highway that passes by our school is the only paved road in the area, connecting the town of Mambone to National Highway # 1. While sitting in the passenger seat of my senor director’s car, I realized that a safety hazard exists because this road serves as a dual purpose playground for kids / audobon. Since maybe only 2-5 cars pass each hour, the road is predominantly used as a footpath. These cross-purposes of the road make for some interesting close calls, especially considering that pedestrians do not have the right of way. Liberal use of the horn gives the pedestrians loitering in the middle of the street about 5 seconds to clear out or be smashed by the fast moving car. Hitch-hiking is pretty safe here because it’s not like the U.S. where just anyone can have a car. Only someone of significant means and social standing can afford to have one, and they are often willing to pick up a neighbor as a spare passenger on the way to town or even pick up a well-seeming stranger. As a muzongo, people are automatically less suspicious of me and more interested in giving me a ride, but that’s not to say that all or even most rich Mozambicans will stop to pick me up. In fact, last time I saw lots of private cars pass before finally being picked up by a semi-truck, and I had to pay (usually in a private car the ride is free). That was cool, I got to sit way up high and see the life that country music singers so often talk about.

ADDENDUM
There was what is called here an "infelicidade" or an unhappiness, which I will tell you about.
Having read Newsweek in the ambulance which was illegally giving me a free ride (ssshhhhhh!) to Vilanculos with my friend the Dr., I mused on economics and particularly an op-ed by yet another foolishly hardy liberal who accused Reagan of not being an economic conservative because of his combination of deficit spending matched with tax cuts--a.k.a. the Reaganomics that won the Cold War--I decided definitevly that I will return to my old job at First American if they will take me back in order to create a better business environment between the US and Brazil, which I imagine would be needed for us to get into a healthy market and ease some of the pressure from domestic slow-down. Fresh on my mind was the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, images which evidenced the epic proportions of a penchant for empire and related ambitions and topped off by the truly moving finale of the gold medal winner of old, legendary, running in air, which wet my eyes when I stumbled into a televised living room just in time to see it. I want to see more US ecomonic involvement abroad, I think our companies are cleaner than the competition, say what you will. I slept, opposite a girl whose broken femur had not healed correctly and had left her with a 3rd knee, I fancied that my Wilderness Advanced First Aid (WAFA) training helped me understand why, the traction brace on her leg was made to tight and held the bones too far apart. I was awakened by the Dr., our car was stopped and there was talk of a child who had been run over by a car. I got my shoes on and hopped out with untied laces. Again the WAFA fantasy that I might be able to know or do something but I was with a Dr. so of course I quickly realized that he was the only person necessary at this time. I watched, he put his hand over the child's stomach under the ribs and waited, maybe 30 seconds to a minute, while family and the distraught driver that had hit him looked on, and pronounced the child dead. Of the 3 black men in the family, one had eyes that spoke particularly loud of remorse, pain, and deprivation, through redness and wetness. The white man present, the driver, a Zimbabwean, was helpless, distraught, innocent and concerned. His family, wife and 4 small children, remained crammed in the 3rd and final row of the parked car, which was loaded and was full of vacationer's happy bags and disorganized bundles, so out of key with the current mood. While the child continued to lay, lifeless, on the carbon fiber trailer, the turned to what to do now. They had been on their way to the hospital in Inhassoro when they flagged down the ambulance. I tried to pass responsibility on to my friends in Inhassoro but they did not answer their phones, and reluctantly I gave up my shot at internet in Vilanculos to be the translater. Hospital, police station, hospital, scene of the accident, and court date set for the following Monday. I have to say that I enjoyed all of this probably too much, it was just so interesting and out of the normal, and my position was certainly enviable, since I had nothing to lose, was not facing jailtime with a child's life on my conscience, had not lost a family member. Anyway, overall I thought the police were very civil and efficient in handling everything, just that the civil court extorted a bunch of money from the guy to be held "in escrow" until the insurance comes through, I can't believe he'll ever get it back. I felt like a lawyer, and even right before we parted ways I read his insurance policy when he had finally won back his freedom and advised him as best I could how to interpret the policy and that he had to insist on them showing him the exception, since he was otherwise covered for this incident as I could tell.
The child had run out a driveway, clear across one lane of traffic and into the opposite lane while chasing a bicycle tire rim he was pushing with a stick (a favorite game here) and despite skid and swerve the car hit him. The driver says he was going 80km/hr and I could tell he wasn't drunk at the time, innocent. So just remember, when you're driving in Africa, use your horn like it was going out of style, even before you see the kids near the street.

Done with my vacation

2008-07-27T22:08:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone...I just got done with vacation in Lichinga visiting my best friends from training and relaxing...by house/partying 5 days in a row. I'm sorry it's been so long and this entry will be entirely too short but it's for a good reason! I've been working on the scholarship project, finally, along with some other things like arranging funding for the Catholic University here (i promise to write about this university, the story of it's beginning is very interesting and I was told in person from the priest who essentially manages the school). Other news is that my school just got 30 computers from the south african company that does natural gas mining nearby (same company that built the school, hospital, road, power generator) and so I am going to try to be the obvious candidate for IT teacher, in which case my PC service just got a lot more interesting AND important. I also have done some reading on Mozambican land law, which is something very interesting I hope to write about at some time.
I will insert my draft of the scholarships information to be disseminated to all PCVs at mid/service. Not to blow my own horn or anything, but to date the only thing other pcvs have been willing to do for this project is specutative brainstorming and discussion, so what you see below is the result of things I do when I'm not writing the blog.

General talking points

It is recommended that you encourage your students to seek educational opportunities in Mozambique rather than abroad. The reasoning for this recommendation is outlined below in the words of Conor Bohan, RPCV Haiti ’98 and founder of the Haitian Education and Leadership Program (HELP) which as of 2008 was Haiti's largest university scholarship program:

HELP only sponsors students at local universities and I would recommend anyone else think about doing the same for several reasons. My experience is that poor kids in poor countries are interested in leaving and sending them abroad at 18 makes it easier for them not to return. Secondly, education abroad is many times more expensive than local education, so there is much more bang for the buck when you keep kids close to home which means you can support more deserving kids. Additionally poor kids, being less sophisticated than wealthy ones, have a hard time adjusting to university life in their own country so the adjustments are often overwhelming abroad. Lastly, every country needs to develop its own university system and sending top students to local schools strengthens the local system.

That being said… If your student shows an intense desire to study abroad, as a counselor you will want to support your student in researching these possibilities, so we have addressed that in the ‘international scholarships’ below.

Provincial Scholarships

Scholarships in Mozambique are centrally funded and provincially managed. The Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology allocates a certain number of vagas (vacancies) each year to the Direção de Educação of each province. These vacancies are usually earmarked for specific disciplines (e.g. 8 for Economics, 4 for Agriculture, 3 for Maths). Once the Provincial Gabinete de Bolsas de Estudo has this information, they advertise in newspapers and with palestras (a lecture style announcement made by local Direção de Educação) in the secondary schools. These advertisements outline the application process and also provide the data limite (deadline) for applications.

In order to apply, students must submit the following documentation:

· Proof of completion of grade 12

· Proof of acceptance into a Mozambican university

· Declaration of poverty (referral from the student’s Chefe do Bairro indicating financial need must be brought to the Conselho Municipal in order to have this document issued)

· Declaração historical: Similar to a cover letter, in which the student describes their education and work history. *CV not required

· Ficha de candidatura: This is an official form in which the student’s personal details are provided, along with grades and a report on the student’s behavior provided by the Direction of the school

The applications are evaluated by a committee (of about 10 people for Niassa) and the award winners (apurados) are selected. The evaluation of applications is done using a point system, with extra points being awarded for female candidates, disabled persons, younger candidates (under 20) and candidates from rural districts, a.k.a. the matu. ________________We need more info here on the rest of the criteria, are there merit-based points for good grades? How many? As you noticed, the point system encourages award to women and rural students who have historically been underrepresented in the HEIs.

These students who win the scholarship must sign a contract before receiving funds and renew the contract yearly. This contract specifies that the student must return to and work for the province which provided the scholarship for x number of years. In the case of breach of contract, the matter is brought to the tribunal (the courts).

There are plans to open a National Instituto de Bolsas de Estudo in or shortly after 2009. The Instituto will ___________ and will also As of 2008, the fundo provincial de bolsas de Nampula ran out of money and is waiting to receive more money from the Instituto when it opens.

List of existing Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and school costs

Because UEM is financed by the government and donors, tuition fees are greatly subsidized and represent only a small fraction of the cost of attending UEM. By contrast, the majority of the funding for Mozambique’s non-government funded HEIs are derived from student tuition fees, which makes them far more expensive to attend.

UP is traditionally an option for students who

From MESCT website?

History of HEI Reform and Scholarships in Mozambique

NISOME

This scholarship project was financed by the Netherlands and was praised by both the World Bank and the Global Partnership for its effectiveness. The World Bank modeled its pilot program after NISOME.

PROANI

This organization operated in Niassa province and was financed by either Ireland or England, providing approximately 40 scholarships per year over 10 years.

Caritas Moçambicana/Espanhola

This organization also provided some scholarships (in Nampula province?) but gave control of their scholarships over to the government.

World Bank pilot scholarship

In 2002, the World Bank allocated US $60 million toward an overhaul of Mozambique’s higher education system. The majority of its reform efforts were targeted at UEM, which had become outdated and inefficient after years of top-down management and financing, as well as a substantial amount of time spent free from competition from other HEIs.

The overhaul also included a pilot Provincial Scholarship program which was the impetus of the current system. $2 million were provided to 500 students for undergraduate scholarships for students in the provinces of Cabo Delgado, Gaza and Tete.

Global Partnership Fund

A collaborative effort of several foundations (Ford, Rockefellar, Carnegie, John and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation), this consortium does research and also provides targeted grants to improve quality of and access to higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa.

International Scholarships

The majority of funding for study abroad is for post-graduate study rather than undergraduate study, which may complicate your student’s ability to find an appropriate funding source.

In Brazil and Portugal:

In English-speaking countries:

Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships:

A place to get started on the internet:

From the website:

The International Education Financial Aid Website, www.IEFA.org , is the premier Internet resource listing financial aid information for students who wish to study in a foreign country. At this site you will find the most comprehensive listing of grants, scholarships, loan programs and other information to assist students in their quest to study abroad.

IEFA.org was created in January 1998. Since that time the site has developed a database of over 1,000 programs of financial aid for international education. Some resources are specific to the student's home country or field of study while others are more general.

As of July 2008, there were 220 scholarships listed in their database for the location ‘Unrestricted/Worldwide’ and 800 scholarships for all locations, including many scholarships to study in the U.S.

Fields include:

Award type (fellowship, internship, grant, loan, scholarship, tuition waiver)

Location of school or organization offering scholarship

Field of study (various)

Professional Development Scholarships

A common form of bolsas de estudo which you may hear about at site or be asked about by colleagues is awarded to a government employee in recognition of past achievement and a promising future. This could generally be considered as a promotion in which the funds for the scholarship are provided by the Instituto or branch of government which awarded it. This sort of scholarship is generally not relevant to our students.

Availability of Student Loans

Secondary School Scholarships

OVC and Acção Social

Distance Learning

Scholarships/Financial Aid at Catholic University

UCM was founded for the express purpose of addressing the structural injustice/imbalance of having the country’s only HEI located in Maputo, out of reach of the Central and North regions, thus guaranteeing that those qualified for positions in government would be predominantly from the south.

Most of the non-government funded HEIs have what is called a ‘zero semester’ to prepare entering students for the rigors of their study (this semester can be skipped if the entering student has good grades coming in). UCM dedicates a whole ‘propaedeutic year’ to the same purposes.

The non-governmental HEIs do not run their own

scholarship schemes. UCM is adamant that the provision of

scholarships should not be a function of the universities

themselves but of specific institutions set up for that purpose. (P. 91Case Study)

RE: the above quote, why does the UCM website advertise the newly created ‘UCM Foundation’ as a means to attract donor contributions. Case study says as of 2003 UCM was trying to start a student loan system with banks in Beira. Was that successful? How many students attending UCM get scholarships from their local parishes?

SCHOLARSHIPS FROM UEM

Historically there have been instances where “Because of poor communications and labyrinthine bureaucracy, many students from the north or centre who gain scholarships to UEM find out too late that they have won them. By that time they have been taken up by better informed candidates.” (Case Study, p.33)

From page 89 of the Case Study, we see that UEM has its own internal scholarship program with about 1000 spots awards are predominantly merit-based with some affirmative action. The Social Services Directorate (DSS) at UEM provides

assistance for students in the form of subsidized accommodation

and meals, mostly for scholarship recipients. how/when does one apply for a UEM scholarship and will they be displaced by the Instituto?

Many new posts, total disorganization

2008-06-07T06:55:00.001-04:00

Hey all, so I finally wrote again but this time I'm totally disorganized and the worst is that i'm out of time and won't get to post pictures. sorry, better luck next time i hope

A honeymoon type trip to Inhassoro and 1st cell phone bites the dust

2008-06-07T06:54:00.002-04:00

I made a trip down to Inhassoro, the next big shore town south from Mambone on the National Highway. My friends Dr. Nilton, the only doctor in the district, and Geraldine, a French woman working for Oxfam, went down on Friday but I stayed in town until Saturday to teach and have some free time, plus the students were supposed to dig my latrine on Saturday morning but they never showed up. I lost my phone on the chapa (taxi). More on this at the end of the story. So when I got to Inhassoro I went to the market and bought some food and headed off in the direction of the hotel, following the sign at the main road. Well I was told it was somewhere between 3 and 7 kilometers, and I imagined there would be some kind of sign, no matter how crude, to indicate once I’d arrived. No sign. So I walked past it even though I was persistently asking passersby they didn’t know because it’s a new hotel and did not involve the neighbors in the hotel. Once I passed it I was informed that the place I was looking for was quite a bit farther down the path on foot, way farther, but that sure enough there was a hotel out that way. As it turns out, that was a different hotel and once again I found myself lost in a strange and beautiful land with that same uncertain feeling about how this imaginably dangerous situation would end but faith that all would be right soon enough. Eventually I was turned back around and made it to the hotel, were I was given food and wine and well taken care of. From there on it was a blast. We three went to a new friend’s house. His name is Scott, he is Zimbabwean and new to Inhassoro. He is building his house here and currently living with a friend. He has a Land Cruiser that doesn’t have any breaks because at some point the beach lodge employees left it on the beach at low tide and it was inundated. I wasn’t able to ride in the back of the Land Cruiser because that would have been against Peace Corps policy, but if I had ridden on the beach in the back of it at night with a beer in my hand and offroading over dunes the next day I imagine that would have been quite a feeling of youthful exuberant vacation. Please see the photos to know more about this trip. As for the phone, I know it fell out of my pocket in the taxi but it was gone when I went back to look for it and I only found out 5 days later that there was a witness who saw the lady who had my phone and wanted to help me get it back. She denied having the phone when we confronted her and so we ended up taking her to the police where it was my witness’s word against hers, he says she took him aside after she got out of the chapa and asked him to remove the SIM card from my phone. Not knowing whose phone and what have you, he did so and only minutes later did he hear about the professor who lost his phone and put 2 and 2 together. By then both the “finder’s keeper’s” lady and me were both back on the road, again in the same chapa. She’s what we call a malandra, someone who goes about in a bad way. The police interrogation was quite interesting, I couldn’t imagine how they were planning to get her to give up the phone and essentially the tactic was to flex muscles and say, “pretty please? We know you have it..” and that’s as it should be, an allegation is not enough to invade someone’s privacy. So in the end I’m mostly satisfied with the way the local police handled it.

Community Consultative Process close-up, 7.000.000,00 meticais!!!!!

2008-06-07T06:54:00.001-04:00

There’s a centrally funded project where the government gives 7 million meticais to each district in order to run its own savings and loan type scheme with soliciting of proposals for rural development projects to be funded and then awarding funds as a loan to be paid back in x time. Thanks to Philip and his contacts, I was invited to attend the meeting for my district of Govuro where they decided where to give part 2 of this year’s loan money, 3.500.000,00 meticais, roughly $140,000.00US. The meeting lasted from 9am to about 8pm. Actually it started 10 or 10:30 when the District Administrator showed up fashionable late as usual. This was very interesting for me to see. The District Advisory Council which decides the grants is made up of important types from all over the district, including ex-military soldiers dressed in their uniforms even though the war ended long ago, and old guys and other random important people. I was surprised at how well they discussed and stewarded the funds but in the end they caved and gave the bulk of the money to where the head honcho people wanted it to go. The conflicts of interest were RAMPANT. Also, the “Technical Committee” picked a short list of about 15 proposals out of 120 and the rest of the District Advisory Committee essentially only discussed the short list. The rest of the proposals got a hearing that consisted of hearing the name of the person requesting and a categorical description of the project and amount requested. “John Doe. Fishing. 150.000,00Mts. Application DOA” after all that hard work. But this naming of names makes sense because they don’t have the resources to chase people down if someone uproots themselves and takes off with the money. So they make sure that someone in the committee can vouch for the identity and character of the person requesting the money. This process was interesting for me because the Mozambican Land Law allows for community ownership of land and thus relies on community leaders to do the negotiations with foreign investors interested in developing on the community land. Quite an investor’s nightmare since it ought to take so long, I think, but it does mean that the local community gets to benefit from the use of their land resources, which is only fair.

Making a great friend in Inhambane

2008-06-07T06:52:00.000-04:00

First about Inhambane, it’s the capital of the province on a peninsula and on the landward side of the bay is another city called Maxixe. You take a water taxi between the two cities it’s quite enjoyable. My German friend Adi from my Frisbee team in Florida told me to get in touch with his friend Philip once I’m here since Philip works in Mozambique. Upon meeting Philip in December, I saw he was genuine friendly and very obliging, he tried to give my friends and I a ride from Inhambane to Tofo beach even though he’d only just met me but too bad his wife had the car. Talking with him more I learned that he’s working on facilitating the implementation of Mozambique’s land law, which makes him a great career contact since that’s the sort of work I want to do. When my site was flooded in January he called to make sure I was alright and monitored the news about the floods for my benefit like he was looking out for me, he seemed more concerned about keeping me informed than Peace Corps did.
My most recent trip to Maxixe and Inhambane made me feel like he’s one of the best friends I have here, hard to explain why. Most of the expats I’ve met are incredibly interesting people, but they have hard eyes and personalities that for example steel up under my searching eye like a fortress raising a drawbridge over a moat. Expats are guarded people, I’ve decided, perhaps I will change my mind. Case in point, you are likely to be in some way anti-social if you choose to leave your own society. During my stay in Inhambane, I was supposed to stay at Philip’s house with his family—his parents were visiting from Germany and his kids were just too cute, I could tell his oldest son doesn’t have enough time with other kids because he took me by the hand and took me straight to the playroom section of the house but not like a brat, just like someone who immediately accepted me as a friend without first putting me through any kind of scrutiny or wanting me to be other than myself, a lot like his father took me as a friend. Anyway that was great because I’m only just now figuring out how to interact with kids and they are such a delight to be around when they’re not crying or pooping a.k.a. when they are toddlers.
When Philip and I went out to get pizza, by chance we crossed some other expats, one of whom I’d met before when his band came to my school and did a 20 minute anti-AIDS songs performance. Soon enough I was in a car with perfect strangers headed to a house party in swanky Tofo beach. Never ceases to amaze me how disinterested and unfriendly hippies can be, maaan. Seemed like no matter which circle of conversation I tried to nudge into people were too caught up to notice me or welcome me in, such a cool crowd like Hollywood or something. Some guys at the party were musicians and DAMN were they good! But otherwise kind of a bust and I wished I’d skipped the party.

Food, housing,

2008-06-07T06:51:00.000-04:00

I can buy 25 oranges or tangerines for a dollar, the same is mostly true for bananas. The amount of the citrus harvest is just incredible. Since they are still the most accessible source of fresh food, I eat A LOT of oranges and tangerines. The local farms are all full of recently planted tomato, lettuce, onion, and other goodies and when I get my own house I’ll finally be able to cook to my own taste for a change. I’ll still get to eat typical food when I find an empregada (maid). That reminds me, I’ve been doing my own laundry by hand once a week for almost nine months. It is quite a chore, takes me at least 2 hours every time usually more up to 4.

Frustrating times

2008-06-07T06:50:00.000-04:00

I'll run through a list of some of the challenges that, cumulatively, nearly broke my will to enjoy life here
1. Bank card. I hadn’t used my bank card in over a month and when I got to the ATM it seemed I had forgotten my PIN code but how? I only ever use 2 numbers. I must have changed it last time I used the bank and not taken enough note of it, so like me. As a result I was bankrupt during my trip to Maputo in March, for Regionals, and unable to buy the things I thought I needed (I stupidly went around a fancy store that is like Target of the U.S., picked all the stuff I thought I needed and found out at the register that they don’t take American Express. When I walked away, the realization that I didn’t actually need any of that crap on the check out table was a real liberation). I was told in Vilanculos that “the system” wasn’t working to make cards, try again later. Then while I was in Beira, 2nd biggest city, I spent two full days in the bank “waiting to hear back from Maputo” followed by “well you see, the system’s having trouble...” and in the end I was sent away without a new bank card. Shortly after I was talking with another PCV and learned that she too had PIN code trouble, the bank had forgot hers and she still didn’t have a new card. WHAT!? So it was the BANK that forgot MY pin code during its merger with Barclays? If I’d have known that during my two days in Beira I’d have pleaded my case a bit differently. Anyway shortly after back in the small city of Vilanculos I spent another whole day in the bank and at the close of business they finally gave me a card. I decided that if I work in Africa later in life it will be to fight the sort of idiotic inefficiency that keeps busy businessmen and women standing in line in UTTER unproductivity for hours on end.
2. Chapa drivers as kidnappers. Another funny thing about riding in the chapa is that you are at the mercy of the driver once you get inside. The worst drivers exploit this fully, not only in charging you up front for the trip in order to have money to stop for gas once you’re in the car, but also to make personal errands while the 15-16 passengers watch the minutes and hours of their day slipping through their hands like grains of sand.3. I’ve been waiting for my house to be built since December. It’s June 6th and it’s still not ready for me to move in though it’s REALLY close to being ready. Of the various problems that have interceded:- the original contracted builder got sick and went MIA before starting work, we ran out of straw to build the house 2/3 of the way through the walls—possibly due to shrinkage- the guy who was supposed to do the concrete floor drowned drunk in the river and was apparently paid in full before completing the work—all he finished of my house before his death was building the square foundation about two cinder blocks high and all around the house.

Cold Showers

2008-06-07T06:49:00.000-04:00

I haven’t kept you up to date on my bathing situation. So there’s a shower in the Senhor Director’s house, it is a cold shower. When I get into it in the morning, sometimes a chilly morning, I need to put my hand in a few seconds, followed by three shallow quick breaths followed by a jump in with my head under the water while I rub the cold water on my chest and shake off the convulsions that my body releases to convey its displeasure with my decision to do this yet again. So I usually only take the one shower a day, even if my feet are smelly before I go to bed (Chaco’s). If it weren’t for hygiene and body odor I’d steer clear of the cold shower. Soon enough I’ll be taking bucket baths again in my own house.

My spiritual enlightenment and subsequent lamp-shading

2008-06-07T06:44:00.002-04:00

One day in March I was having a watershed moment. For the first time I felt like I was home here in Mambone. Started on a Friday when I went to the Catholic Youth group meeting (I subsequently stole the youth group’s newly started journalism club and transplanted it into the secular school, not very Christian of me). The meeting was held in the church and Irma Lourdes, the Brazilian nun who runs the group, started off the meeting by playing her Portuguese guitar (nylon strings) and leading the songs with a voice approximating the lead singer of the Cranberries. I love karaoke, I love to sing, and it was really nice to be in a sing-a-long for the first time since training when we sang American Pie by Don McLean. Then on Sunday when I went to church I felt like the people around me were neighbors and friends, many familiar faces, they were not Africans or them as they had been the Sundays before. The church suddenly stopped being their futile poverty-stricken pitiable effort at a grand church, it was in fact the nicest living room in town and quite successful at being a beautiful place to worship. It always had been, it was just my assumption coming in that the church must be in some way lacking in resources, or struggling or failing just because it is in Africa. Distinct and relaxing aqua-drab color scheme with just the right amount of daylight shining in through the slat windows, and an eye-pleasing altar in which the mortar follows its own natural lines like cracks in shattered glass, or like a castle. Under the altar and flowing down the stairs a Persian rug. I realized that day that if you could see God’s face right now, he’d probably look like the most annoying person I know, someone whose presence/appearance/mannerisms I find intolerable annoying. I live with two such people, my school director’s wife and the houseboy. That reminds me, I’m working on a screenplay for a sequel to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” it’s called “My Big Fat Annoying Wife” but I won’t sell the script unless they agree to cast my inspiration as the lead role since it is mostly based on her life. Anyway, like I was saying, the challenge of the Christian is to overcome hatred and anger and annoyance and find a way to love. When the houseboy sees me scrubbing articles of my clothing in the laundry basin with soapy water and then asks me, “You doin’ laundry?” I want to scream at him and call him captain obvious, but theoretically if I do then the one who loses is me. I think my thinking on this was guided by the guy who came to Davidson and talked about the recruitment people of the KKK. They find young kids and start by getting them to talk about how they hate gays, and from gays they change the topic to jews one day, and then after a few weeks hanging out they broach the subject of hating blacks and voila! The theory goes like this: by harboring hatred where I think it’s safe, like in hating fat stupid annoying retards who lack social skills, I’m allowing hatred into my life, negativity, bad things. Being a Christian means indulging this person and overcoming, finding a way to not only tolerate but find a way to enjoy their company. I spend so much time feeling overfull of love and I’m going around and looking for that “special someone” who could be loved for the rest of my life. Meanwhile all these people that aren’t that one person I’m judging them and thereby secretly hating them when I could be loving them. Each person I judge and hate ends up condemned and exiled from my life, chained to a wall in my spiritual dungeon, unable to bring me joy. At this point in the theory I realized how a monk or nun can live a life of celibacy. They don’t suffer the burden of burning love with no one to give it to—the romantic source of loneliness that drives so much of our culture, pop music, sitcoms etc., because they find a way to give their love to everyone…in theory. Interesting to contrast this with Buddhist celibacy, where the goal is to avoid getting tangled up in the bonds of the flesh and the world that is merely physical.Anyway, I’m not sure that I’m cut out for this love at all costs. For now I’m opting for a balance between love and hate in my life, because when I recently lost it and told the kid that he’s stupid, to his face and several times in a row until he understood and when I make it painfully clear (whereas before I’d only been crystal clear) that we aren’t friends and that I don’t want anything to do with him, he leaves me alone and then I have peace. The problem is that his presence is still around because I still live in that house, and once you decide to go ahead and hate someone it’s hard to ignore that person when they’re around. Like Pandora’s box just half-open, you watch out the corner of your eye waiting to see what annoyance they will do next in order to fuel the fire.

The capulana, plus What else could I carry on my head?

2008-06-07T06:44:00.001-04:00

The capulana is a colorful piece of cloth about a meter long and half a meter wide. Thin. It is used by women for almost anything. Men have pants and shirts tailored out of them. Women, though..nothing they can’t do with a capulana. Babies slung on their back in capulanas, capulana as a skirt, as a shawl, as a towel, as a groundcloth to sit on when forced to sit on the dirty floor. OK I’m sure there’s other stuff but I’m tired been writing a while…I’ve seen many a women walking down the streets with one hoe balanced on her head—you could hardly imagine that’s easier and yet it’s done that way. Kids are trained from an early age to carry things on their head so that they get to the point where they can do it no hands. The most common thing to see is jugs of water, but some of the rest that makes its way onto the head is quite funny. They use a cloth folded into a donut shape on the head to make everything “easier”

The school atmosphere and African trees

2008-06-07T06:28:00.000-04:00

One of the funniest things about school here is that it’s prohibitively difficult and expensive to use photocopiers. That means that when I’m giving a test I need to write it all of the questions on large A1 aisle paper with markers and stick it to the front wall with sticky tack so that all can see the test (I find this a better method than writing it out on the blackboard seven times). When I’m standing in front of the room trying to look intimidating so that they know I’ll punish them for talking during the test I sometimes have to laugh because they look like Prarie Dogs or Meer Cats, first sitting up all erect and attentive and then bending down over the test, each student in their own rhythm. Another thing I wanted to mention about the school is that the schoolbell is an old tire rim suspended like a gong. The guy who tolls the bell is a young guy, maybe 20, who rings it mercilessly loud with a metal hammer and since the bell is just outside of the library it sometimes scares the crap out of me because it’s the last thing you expect to hear when you’re in a library. The schoolyard has two trees that I esteem highly: one is the Baobab at the far end of the row of classrooms and the other is the HUGE shade tree of unknown species with a mysterious resilience that has allowed it weather the many cyclones it must have seen during it’s long life here near the Mozambican Channel. The Baobab is a folklorical African tree, a Lion King type tree, but really what it reminds me of is Keebler Elves. It’s like a deciduous cactus, apparently hollow inside of its massive trunk where it stores water for the dry season.
I'm trying to upload the photos now, not much luck so slow

Unplanned post

2008-05-16T09:57:00.002-04:00

Hey guys, whatºs up? This will be free blog entry since i donºt have anything particularly planned. biggest new news is that i was introduced to new friends at site who bring me right back to college days hanging out with internationals, except difference is they are talking about their work in Mozambique and i learn heaps by listening tothem. in short, working here is a constant battle against the most ridiculous of obstacles and working conditions. Africa dares you to try and get something done, go ahead, make itºs day. The one friend is Dr. Nilton, who turned 25 yesterday (a real doogie howser) and he is the only doctor in the district. we hang out a fair amount now, probably more than iºd like to because when iºm hanging out at his house i feel like iºm back inthe U.S., what with normal spacious interior and English spoken on tv and by us. he even gets MTV and reads Menºs Health. I think he might be more American than me. The other firend is Geraldine, she is fromthe Basque country between Spain and France, way exotic. She has a cute French accent and lots of experience working as a short to long term consultant in Africa and all over the place. her stories are great.
School is tough, iºm too much of a disciplinarian but i'm teaching 8th grade and i guess thatºs about half of what it means to teach that grade. problem is a canºt loosen up around them because as soon as i do they think its ok to start acting like little punks again. iºm having anger issues. my favorite is the night school, a lot like the sitcom 'Night Court' which you might remember fondly as i do, though i was 3 when i saw it and understood nothing. the teachers hang out in the teachers lounge and bullshit to avoid going home, i guess, and the lessons themselves go SO MUCH BETTER because the students are adults and i can treat them more like equals. i can joke, they laugh at my joke, then we get back on task. one false move with the kids and they go out of control and there goes the rest of the lesson. The little children here, who are still in the rye-field, those kids are just plain beautiful, but...8th graders. iºm working on it, got to be more positive.
Also, my house is coming along. I guarantee you it will flood in the first medium to hard rain, no matter how many Mozambican engineers tell me 'no ha de entrar agua' which is 'water wonºt come into the house' just a simple assertion, repeated again and again despite the laws of physics, by the builders. Iºm in Maxixe now buying some stuff to make it more livable, like an electric hotplate. Write to me!

Send me MP3 cd's

2008-05-05T08:00:00.003-04:00

You wouldn't believe how bad the American music that makes it over here is. Some dumb Avril Lavigne songs, James Blunt...worst of all is that so many people REFUSE to believe me when I tell them that actually, Linkin Park sucks, you just don't know it because you've got nothing to compare it to. So please send me CDs at my address here,

Greg Harris
C.P. 16
Vilanculos
Mozambique

I recently bought an MP3 player and speakers that hook up to it, I promise I'll share your music with others here. later,

Greg

My newest insight about Africa

2008-05-05T07:54:00.003-04:00

The thing about Mozambique and probably Africa in general. It's easy and enjoyable to live here, but nearly impossible to get anything done. This has been a big challenge for me recently, as I've got more of a sense of urgency having seen a quarter of my time here gone by already so now i'm trying to get stuff done. All I have to show for so far is some work I did on finding info about scholarships for our students. As it turns out the Provincial Direction of the Ministry of Education is essentially the only place a student can turn to for a scholarship and with interest so high students loans are unfeasible. So there's only one thing to recommend for my best students, grit your teeth and push on the bureaucracy and hope that, in the end, their scholarship package and subsequent payments will get done. There's about 50 scholarhips for the whole province, i think they're awarded yearly.

I just added a bunch of photos

2008-04-17T13:18:00.003-04:00

Hey all,

I just uploaded a bunch of photos of my recent (and not so recent--I finally got to some fast internet here in Beira) travels, just follow the flickr photo link to the right if you want to see them. I regret that I did not bring the CD with the best photos taken by my kids at the journalism conference. I also got 2 amazing photos by our trainer, a veteran photo-journalist working out of Chimoio named Sergio Silva, but they are hard copy you'll have to wait till i have them scanned. He was a great guy, full of gripping stories. After all, he worked as a photographer for Save the Children during the war and you can imagine that working in that kind of environment he's seen, and photographed, a lot.
Hopefully I can fill in some gaps for you in some subsequent blog entries...basically the first trimester is over and I'm starting a photo-journalism group with funding from Peace Corps and I'm in the process of hopefully getting some more funding.
Call me sometime!!! You've got my number on this blog. Else write an email, or send me something in the mail, that address is on the website too. later my friends

Greg

Why I love Mozambique!

2008-04-12T10:41:00.002-04:00

Hey all,
I notice in looking back on what I've written so far that I probably have not sufficiently communicated how much I love this place. For starters you've got all these things that are pleasing to the eye. For example, unspoilt nighttime skies with shooting stars through a milky way that is just clear as day across the sky. Roads and walkways with texture brought about by erosion, nature is everywhere here, even in urban areas. The tall weedy grass does what it wants and people don't so much concern themselves with cutting it just because it's there. Clothes on children that testify to having lived themselves out to the point where you could hardly call that shirt a shirt--this reminds me of Ulysses drinking life to the dregs. The taxis I ride in are full of character and are utilized to the maximum possible. Once the car is full of people it just feels right, utilizing the resource and appreciating it in this way. Another thing is that in a world of few distractions and diversions the people around you become most important as your source of enjoyment in life. People have sincere interest during conversations, and I feel like the simple "good morning"s of passersby can replace a longer conversation in the states because they were spoken with such interest and sincerity and even enthusiasm. I'd say that is the main reason I love Mozambique, is the interpersonal relations. Worth highlighting is that I used to be scared of children, but now I love them.
And lets not forget that although I may be hungry for fresh produce at times, my ego is not all that hungry here. I get to be an important person, and enjoy status here as a result of my background, so it sometimes seems I'm more welcome than the average person to talk to head honchos in the community like Sr. Padre Amadeus, the head of the Catholic mission, or for example my namesake Greg, a South African guy who built a gas pipeline from Pande to Mambone and married a Mozambican woman and now lives here.
Another reason I love it here is because there's a lot of opportunity to serve others who are in need. I've not yet got to do that very much but now that I'm feeling well adjusted I'll be working more on outside projects other than school teaching.

My cell phone and new postal address + cell phones in Africa

2008-03-21T06:51:00.000-04:00

My new cell phone number is +258 84 239 5736 .
Of that number 258 is the country code and 84 is the prefix for my cell provider. I hear skype is a cheap way to call me…
Please SEND ME MAIL or carepackages at my local mailbox, but nothing to fancy and under contents please write "school supplies".
My postal address is as follows:
Greg Harris
C.P. 16
Vilanculos
Mozambique

On the subject of cell phones, I’d just like to say that the use of cellphones here is more widespread than you could possibly believe. It’s exceedingly rare that I make a friend who doesn’t have one. That doesn’t mean everyone has one, but it seems like most people have one.
The December 8th 2007 issue of the Economist gave out the annual “Innovation Awards” and gave one to Mo Ibrahim, founder of CelTel, for the promotion of mobile phones in Africa, showing that it’s possible to build a multi-billion dollar industry in Africa other than mining or oil.

Ee-see-quensoo-o-cha (it means White Devil)

2008-03-14T05:24:00.002-04:00

Whoever wrote the 2nd Ace Ventura movie definitely spent some time in Africa. This is one of the funniest cultural adjustment things for me. As an American I find it hilarious when children and occasionally youths up to adults who see me passing by say “moo-zoon-goo” at normal conversation audible level, if not a bit louder. Muzongo is the word for white people here, and since there are few of us it definitely has connotations. In other words, just picture if in a rich white suburb I saw a black person walk by and said audibly, “a black person! What’s he doing here?” In America we think these things and we do double takes but racial sensitivity prohibits most people from blurting out “honkey” or “darkey”.
Better still is when I’m in a crammed taxi and someone speaking the local language will say something about “muzungo” and of course I’m the only one around, so if I demonstrate my displeasure or say something to indicate I’m aware they act surprised and think that perhaps I speak the local language (again, Ace Ventura). Then I think they realize that they’re not the first person to call me muzongo. People have been quick to assure me that the origins of the word go back to “mu-lu-wanga” or something like that as spoken in Zulu of South Africa. When the first whites arrived there, as in America, they were friendly and so the origins of the word mean, “a good person”. I doubt if that’s what people are thinking when they call me muzongo, though I’m not sure exactly what they are thinking. I think its just standard labeling and distrust of foreigners being expressed with a word.

Ninja-ing lychee fruits

2008-03-14T05:24:00.001-04:00

In Mozambique, it’s not stealing if you see fruit on the ground under a tree in your neighbors yard and take that fruit. If you take it off the tree, that’s stealing. Also, the word ‘ninja’ is synonomous with ‘thief’ so if someone steals and you shout ‘ninja’ in the street people will know what you mean.During training my classmates and I were perpetually teased by the prospect of the impending fruit season. Most of all was the lychee fruit, perhaps the most delicious of fruits and also, as it turns out, elusive for us. As training was drawing toward a close, the lychee were ALMOST ready and my 4 classmates and I all knew and loved lychee and were driven into a lychee fever. Walking to our group sessions we would pass private yards with big trees with ripe red lychees hanging, but in the market no lychees were to be found. We were jones-ing so bad and, well, we did what we had to do, once in broad daylight and at other times in the cover of the night. Once we got back to someone’s room to gorge ourselves on our stash we’d always reach the bottom too quickly no matter how many lychees we ninja-ed, and we’d be left wanting more, which is how it should be for a fiend. During the last week we could finally buy them in the market and that I did, I ate a ton of them. It was a happy time for me.

Your Grandpa is growing up here

2008-03-14T05:23:00.002-04:00

I think it’s about time I wrote something about school, seeing as I’m now about 2 months in. Get this: some of these kids walk 7 km or more to get to school, and where grandpa did it in piles of snow these kids do it in sweltering mid-day tropical heat.
And before Grandpa can matriculate, he has to work in the schoolyard and clean the school grounds of the high grass that has accumulated over the summer break. They show up with a hoe and then have to turn the grass over with a hoe in order to kill because the school doesn’t have a lawnmower. Once the grass is dry it is gathered in put into heaps, again by students, and burned at night by the night-watchman, Sr. Joao. I have some photos to explain the process and will try to post.
The results is a surprisingly beautiful landscape where lush green grass grows up in the place where tall weeds used to be, as though Dr. Greenthumb had been used. Since I had to get used to giving orders to these kids, I was one of the overseers of this task during matricula. I did alright as a boss, but one day I was giving particularly large portions of grass per student and I swear there were about 15 kids all leaning on their hoes eyeing me and thinking of mutiny, I just barely managed to keep control and get them to go back to work.

Africanized Horse-flies

2008-03-14T05:23:00.001-04:00

You saw those images from save the children and Sally Struthers and the kid with the flies on his face and you thought to yourself, “that poor child, so starved he hasn’t got the energy to swat away the fly”. What you failed to realize is that the fly you saw was no ordinary fly, but an extremely aggressive and agile Africanized horse fly. When I step out my door in the mornings, I have between 5 and 10 seconds to enjoy the morning before a horse fly or two or three arrive to begin the indy 500, again, around my head. After years of living here people grow thick skin or at least they tame the nerves in the skin that cause one to flinch at horseflies. In church I see flies alight and hang out on first one person’s head, then another, then another, trying to distract people from the light and the way, and they miraculously do not swat at the fly, not unless it’s really being a jerk and all up in their face as Africanized horseflies sometimes do. Nevermind about that time when I was scaling some fish for lunch, so many horseflies I felt like a beekeeper. Heebie jeebies just thinking of it.

Administering a test

2008-03-14T05:22:00.001-04:00

So I was advised that cheating tends to be a problem here. I took lots of precautionary measures but from what I can tell hardly anyone was cheating. The funniest precaution was clipping on sunglass lenses over my normal glasses to control the room. I was trying to keep my tough guy persona, so crucial during the first few weeks, and not smile but you try and keep a straight face after you clip on your terminator glasses and the kids all bust out laughing.

Language classes with a Charlatan

2008-03-14T05:19:00.000-04:00

I started taking local language classes with a guy who turned out to be a charlatan. I thought he was the same guy who taught the local priests (several people had recommended I find “that guy who taught the priests” but when I thought I’d found him I was wrong. I did not make much headway during our lessons, and neither did he when he tried to hussle me for a table in his house at which he could plan lessons, or food, etc. He’s a really nice guy, but seems to be too accustomed to depending on the kindness of strangers, which gets annoying, so luckily school starting was a good excuse to discontinue our lessons indefinitely.The priest in the local church gave me an old manual for Portuguese to Ndau study, and the book is really helpful. The Bantu languages are very interesting. I have a will to learn the local language within the year so that I can really reach out into the community during year two.

Music that is popular here (Recommended and not recommended)

2008-01-04T06:52:00.000-05:00

My favorite song, and the song that I want you to buy on iTunes, is by a South African band named Malaika. I can't find the actual title of the song which drives me absolutely NUTS but I'm guessing it is the song 'Muntuzu (2 Bob)'

Songs that I hear EVERYWHERE and ALL THE TIME
DJ Ardiles - Foto . This song was WAYYY popular
Nelson Freitas featuring Kaysha – Deeper. This song is a passada that is, a song for a close slow dance, complete with cheesy sexy lyrics in English.
Marlene - Esse Marido e meu 'that husband is mine (hands off!)'
Liza (or Lizha) James - Wo kala nbuya
Akon - "Nobody want to see us together"

Popular Artists:
Lucky Dube, South African Reggae
Jimmy Gulglo
Mabulo Hlamalami, I think the name of the song is ‘outra vez’
Phil Collins

Popular not recommended:
James Blunt (‘you’re beautiful’), Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, mention rock and they will say, ‘yeah, The Scorpions (the 80s band that played, comicly appropriate in this cyclone prone area, ‘Rock you like a Hurricane’),

Flooded out of my site

2008-01-03T09:59:00.000-05:00

Hey all,
The big news is that I was evacuated out of my site on January 2nd due to Peace Corps Security Officer's concerns about floods at my site, Nova Mambone. You might be able to read about it on the news. Heavy rains in Zimbabwe drain in several rivers including the one that i live right nearby, and the road has been flooded in a few places. I'm hoping to write more about this at length tomorrow if i can get back to internet. Basically, though, a lot of the homes on the north side of the main road have been flooded and so people are out of their homes. The road was built in 2000 or 2003 or something, but it was designed very poorly and the experts didn't listen to the local people, including the Catholic priest at the mission near my house (who is very upset at the way things turned out). Basically, the road acts as a dam and keeps the floodwaters from passing through to the south side of the road, so many of the homes AND FARMS on the north side of the road are more prone to flooding as a result. It's plain to see that the road is to blame. At one point where the water was spilling over the road i observed a whirlpool on the one side, and on the other a 2 ft diameter concrete drain pipe spraying like a firehose into the lower lying south side of the road. the pipe was designed to alleviate the floodwaters, but the builders decided to skimp a little on the water management infrastructure and now that those builders have been paid and left its the community that bears the costs of their poorly executed project. I will need to do some more research into how this all came to pass. for photos see my flickr.com link to the right.

Brer Rabbit, the African trickster

2007-12-26T07:04:00.000-05:00

During training we were asked to do an activity that would help us learn about the local culture. Most people wove a basket or a straw mat (‘esteira’) which I thought was way boring. My friend Hans had an idea that I really liked: local stories, folklore, etc. When my project idea of learning how to play the Marimba (‘timbila’) fell through, I started gathering stories. The best, by far, were the stories about the rabbit (‘coelho’). Here are 2 of them:
FREE RIDER AT THE WATERING HOLE
There was a great drought in the land that caused all of the rivers and watering holes to dry up. Motivated by thirst, the animals convened a big meeting, a summit if you will, where it was resolved that they would all work together to dig a well. The rabbit left them to their work and did not help because he gets all the water he needs from the foliage he eats.
Upon finishing the well, the animals decided to elect a guard who would keep watch over the well and chose the monkey. In the meantime, the rabbit had thought of a way to use the well. He approached the guard and said:
‘Hey, friend. I’ve got some honey that I’d like to share with you.’
‘OK,’ said the monkey, ‘let me try it.’
‘Sure, but it’s hard to pour so just tilt your head back and lean back a little so that I don’t spill any on you.’
When the monkey did this, he leaned back on his hands and the rabbit swiftly tied them together and then, having gagged the guard, took a leisurely bath in the well.
The animals were plenty upset when they saw their guard this way the next morning. They elected a new guard and cleaned the well. Both the identity of the 2nd guard and the manner in which the rabbit outsmarts him were lost in translation, but sure enough the next day the second guard was found bound and gagged and the well had been bathed in again.
The animals now elected the snapping turtle to be the guard. He hid himself in the bottom of the well. When the rabbit arrived that day, he saw no one, and thought to himself, ‘Looks like they gave up on this idea. They couldn’t take it, I’m too smart for them.’ He stepped into the water to bath and his foot was caught fast by the snapping turtle. When the animals arrived they got even with the rabbit.

ROBBING THE MACHAMBA (THE FARM)
One day rabbit said to his friend monkey,
‘Hey, friend, would you like to eat some almendoim (peanuts).’
‘Yeah, do you have some?’
The rabbit, being very experto (a con artist), replied,
‘No, let’s go rob the farm. You down?’
And off they went. During the walk to the farm rabbit stopped and warned:
‘Friend, it’s best that we stay very quiet and be careful at the farm. The owner of this machamba is vigilant and does not like trespassers. If we see him coming, we’ll have to run for it.’
And they continued. Upon arriving at the farm, rabbit made short work of it and the farmer was nowhere in sight. Rabbit filled his bag with peanuts and tied it secure, and noticed that his friend was distracted. For each handful of peanuts monkey shoveled into his own bag, he shoveled another handful into his mouth. Rabbit snuck behind monkey and dug a hole in the ground behind him. He then placed monkey’s tail into the hole and buried it with dirt. Rabbit then picked up a stone and walked back to where his bag of peanuts was waiting. He threw the rock behind monkey and screamed,
“RUN! RUNNNN! The farmer is here!’
Monkey tried to run but could not get up, his tail was caught somehow. He tried again and still could not get up.
‘Friend, the farmer has you by the tail! Do something, run away!’
So the monkey mustered his effort and ran as hard as he could and his tail popped off. Monkey ran as fast as he could and managed to get away with his life. When he reached rabbit’s house, his friend offered him a bowl of peanuts since his were left at the farm, along with his tail. But before he got a chance to eat them he through the bowl to the ground in rage as the rabbit laughingly told him about the prank and how priceless the panicked look on monkey’s face had been. This is why the rabbit and the baboon are not friends.

A few 1st impressions of my site

2007-12-26T07:03:00.000-05:00

My town of Nova Mambone is a small river town. It is not a beach town, as it turns out, since the beach here is a big unpassable mangrove of mud and such (like the Everglades). The area has a very suburban feel, it seems like everywhere you look off the main road there are identical round mud huts with thatch roofs. Most people have the same model of fixed gear bicycle. I live inside of the school compound, which is surrounded by a chain link fence. I am currently living in the school directors house but they will build me a house with walls made out of caniso (yeah, I’m talking about straw, but the walls will be reinforced with mosquito netting and something solid to prevent people reaching through the wall to grab my ipod or whatever else they could get their hands on). This reminds me, the 3 little pigs story actually means something for the first time in my life. This is cyclone territory, and from what I can gather many people opt for permanently provisional housing, since whatever they build will probably be blown over within a few years.
The only blanket I sleep under here is a blanket of sweat. It’s summertime here, and it is humid with no AC. Sometimes I think that ought to be sexy because, you know, I’m in bed and covered in sweat, but really it’s not that sexy.
There’s a tv in the house and it plays the same adds over and over, maybe even worse than the U.S. There is a Brazilian soap that reminds me of Saved by the Bell and a Chinese soap that I am in awe of, like a bad sappy yet completely entertaining romance movie about friendship and love and doing the right thing, I’m compelled to watch it.
My school director is laid back and friendly, which is a blessing. I was worried that I might end up with someone on a permanent rank-pulling bureaucratic power trip, which happened to one volunteer I've talked to. Some mornings we walk a ways to a long stretch of sand near the river and do laps. Exercising in the sand reminded me of the way the Greeks would have had it in Olympia. The river has since risen over our Olympic sandbox.
The school is a young school, just a few years since it was built and the faculty are mostly around my age. They are being friendly to me even though I still can’t understand what they’re saying half the time, they just talk much faster and with a lot more slang than I’m used to.

My reactions to Peace Corps cultural adjustment tips

2007-12-26T06:50:00.000-05:00

From the text: “Being culturally sensitive means being aware of and alert to the norms and behaviors of the local culture and, as far as possible, not transgressing them. It does not mean liking or accepting all these norms, much less embracing them or substituting them for your own.” Right on, Peace Corps. I don’t know about you, but I was worried that they would be cultural relativist to some degree.
Also in the text: “The word accept is being used in a special sense here: it does not mean liking or approving, and especially not adopting, but rather accepting the inevitability and logic of a particular behavior, of trusting that, irritating as it may be, the behavior is nevertheless appropriate in the other culture.” (emphasis mine)
The worldview from within the other culture will be tinted by their assumptions about life. A European, for example, could find it hard to understand American public opinion and policies related to gun control because some of the most fundamental American values lead us to assume that an individual’s liberties should be protected to the greatest extent possible or feasible. Whatever facts might be presented for debate, this fundamental assumption will have an effect on the way the facts are viewed. The result is that someone who is not familiar with American cultural values, like Michael Moore for example, might become frustrated and even more righteously angry when Americans don’t reach what he would consider to be the logical conclusion. Granted this is a horrible example, but I like the idea of looking at American cultural assumptions from the outside. This is, in fact, step one for cultural adjustment. Step 2 is to accept the reality of your own cultural conditioning. Step 3 is to accept the reality that the others you will meet have also been conditioned by their own culture. Perhaps a more accessible example would be if your pet dog met one of Pavlov’s dogs. Pavlov’s dog would be shocked to see you feed your dog without ringing a bell first. That’s just the way it is, what are you doing? Are you really going to eat that?

Notes from my conversation w/ Congressman Chris Smith

2007-12-26T06:43:00.000-05:00

*These are notes from a conversation we had on September 25th, 2007, days before I left home. Due to the time passed and the incompleteness of my notes it’s hard to say how accurate this is and also where Hon. Smith’s points end and where my interpretations begin, but still food for thought.
www.house.gov/chrissmith
To begin the conversation, I explained to Congressman Smith why I personally believe that U.S. Americans can’t find Africa on the map. Such as, education and helping Africa and Iraq.
We then discussed other, less pretty topics, including
FAITH-BASED GROUPS AND ACCESS TO THE GLOBAL FUND
Hon. Smith estimated that Faith-based groups like Catholic Relief Services do about 40% of the work targeted by the Global Fund, and yet receive only 4% of the Global Fund grants. The Board that hands out the money is morally opposed to proselytizing of any sort, and so they avoid religious groups. This ends up causing perverse results where, for example, the Global Fund funds the building of a new hospital around the corner from an existing faith-based mission hospital which has already been serving the community for years. Faith-based groups have access to an often more dedicated work force willing to work on lower salaries because they are there TO SERVE. When the personal moral beliefs of someone hung up on freedom of religion ends up wasting resources and COSTING LIVES, something is wrong with the evaluation system. This is something I definitely agree with Hon. Smith on. In addition to faith-based orgs being better run than suitcase NGOs, I’d like to add that atheists should not complain since religion is opiate for the people anyway. I say give it to them!
CHINA
I really wanted to talk with Hon. Smith about China because he is a huge defender of human rights and China is a huge offender of human rights. For example the UN Human Rights Council, which remains stymied on most issues on account of an agreement that sounds like this: “If you don’t show them mine I won’t show them yours.” So the democratic defender of human rights conspires to stay quiet.
Hon. Smith also discussed a peripheral consequence of China’s growing influence in Africa. Just as USAID provides countries with “Roadmaps to development” China is exporting its own roadmap, including the notorious one-child policy. Rwanda apparently has a 3 child policy. They also have a tendency to promote dictatorships with centralized government and a lack of free press since that makes the international trade negotiations easier (fewer people to corrupt), something which directly counters our funding efforts for free and fair elections. Violence begins when opposition groups feel that their backs are against the wall and they have no other choice. There has also been some forced relocation of Chinese into Africa, much like in Tibet. The Chinese have bragged that they are helping Africans by bringing Africans to university study in China, where they are being schooled in the Chinese way of doing things.
One of the advantages that China has is it’s nack for populist PR. Whereas the US invests heaps of money into public health in these countries (I have been behind the scenes and have seen how it is done at the Academy for Educational Development and on the whole it seems to me that the programs are very results oriented and are not designed to buy grassroots goodwill toward the U.S.), China will just build a soccer stadium as a gift to a city. Which do you think holds more sway with the average African? Which does the most good for him/her?
As for my proposed career tracks, he recommended that infrastructure will be first and foremost in improving health care here (so much for health insurance schemes?) and also that the rule of law will be very important for increasing transparency and fighting corruption. Ways to track who owned what and hopefully ways to watch banking practices.

SITE PLACEMENT and local language

2007-11-30T06:19:00.000-05:00

Correction, the local language here is Ndau, because Mambone falls under the sphere of influence of Beira to the north. Any towns further south speak chitswa. This means that the self-study language book that peace corps gave me will not be of much use! I'm currently looking for a teacher and hope to study Ndau with the same guy who taught the priest and several others before me.
I received my site placement! I will be in Nove Mambone in the far north of Inhambane province next to the Save river and the beach. The river separates Inhambane province from Sofala province. Relatively isolated though there are other PCVs across the river and down the beach a ways. I’ll be the first PCV at the site. I will live with the school director for the first couple months while they build my house.
I will write more about it when I get there. I’m very excited about this site it sounds like just what I wanted, minus the mountains. As a consolation I’ll be able to continue my fishing habit developed in the Everglades and on the reservoir in NJ. Just need to make sure I stay out of the fresh water because there’s lots of NASTY parasites that live in there.
PC gave me a self study book to help me learn the local language, Chitswa (Shit-swuh). My favorite word is “kanimambo” which means thanks.

The freshman 15 and something funny

2007-11-30T06:11:00.000-05:00

So we were warned that women tend to gain weight during training and that the men tend to lose weight during training. PC and I have varying takes on this phenomenon. I think it demonstrates the amazing resilience of the female body, which can doggedly continue to gain weight even under the most adverse of conditions. PC would probably say that it is due to the diet being so heavy on carbs (think french fry sandwich on white rice or perhaps pasta sandwich, no joke, Angie was served a pasta sandwich). The bread is really good, by the way, my capacity for eating bread and butter is higher than it has ever been.

So during a demonstration on how to use condoms, the health lady used an empty soda bottle as the penis and when she was putting on the condom some of the leftover soda spilled out and while everyone was shocked by this I said "It's OK... really It's OK" which I made me stand out as a minute man but it was worth it because the people who got the joke, including myself, found it very funny.

The Chefe

2007-11-30T06:05:00.000-05:00

The chefe [chef-ee] is a very common role here in Moz and something I originally found strange but have gotten used to. In each classroom, there is a chefe de classe who is the representative of all students. There is also a chefe do cuadro who erases he chalkboard (cuadro) and a chefe de limpeza who rallies students to clean the classroom when the admin orders them to clean.
In each development of houses, there is a chefe do barrio (neighborhood) who mediates neighborhood affairs and serves as a representative for the people living in the area. I guess it just seems excessively bureaucratic.

Host family dynamics, including a bait and switch

2007-11-30T05:23:00.001-05:00

Without getting into too much detail, I'd like to address the group dynamics within my host family. Sheila is my host Mom, she is 24 like me and is a wonderful person. She takes her responsibilities seriously and likewise with partying she takes it seriously, goes to church regularly and is a fun sociable well educated person. She takes good care of me and is responsive when I express my likes/dislikes. She is a professor, she teaches 3rd grade. She has a 3 year old son with her fiance who is far away at med school. She is helping to pay his med school and after that he will help to pay for her higher education. I really hope he doesn't do her dirty by cutting out on his obligations or giving her AIDS, but this situation is not unreasonable here since women are so submissive in this culture.
Also in my house now is my aunt Lourde, who was empregada (maid) of Sheila's aunt. I'll tell what I know of the story, mostly related to me by Sheila. Years ago, the Lourde the empregada got pregnant by a man who was already married to someone else and the family said she was a disgrace and she lost her job, but one of Sheila's other relatives took the empregada in. When this relative had to move to Maputo for her job, she entrusted Lourde with looking after the house (the one where I live now). The empregada spent the electricity money on other things and now the house doesn't have electricity (why would the owner pay for electricity when she's not living there, I don't know, but Sheila blames our lack of electricity in the house on Lourde, the power company cut the power connection to the house). Sheila's aunt asked Sheila to live in the house and look after it since Lourde was not doing a good job. At some point the empregada had Carmen, this child is the one and same who gave me scabies. Carmen has a chronic problem with pilfering food and small amounts of money from both her Mom and Sheila, which angers Sheila greatly, especially when Carmen ate a whole bunch of homemade cookies that were a gift from one of Sheila's friend. I've tried to help Sheila explain to Carmen why stealing is bad. Carmen recently got bad burns on her head when she knocked over a soup pot while trying to see what was inside, i hope her hair will grow back. Carmen is what we call "indisciplinada" she is defiant even though she's only maybe 4 years old at most and fights back or laughs when being punished, and suffers no consequence for this.
Lourde also has a 2nd baby with the same deadbeat dad i think, and this baby stays up in the swaddling cloth on the current empregada's back most of the day. The baby has separation anxiety and cries as soon as it leaves the cloth, Sheila criticizes Lourde's child rearing tactics here too and i agree with her. The current empregada is about 11 years old and just failed 3rd grade for the second time. I think she considers Lourde to be her mom. How does one fail 3rd grade, you might ask? Lourde prevented her from going to the exams because she had to stay home with Lourde's baby when Lourde got called in to work in the kitchen at a bar.
Across the street is Lourde's Mom, Laurinda. Laurinda was the first person I met here, apparently Sheila wasn't there to sign the paperwork and this unsociable old lady across the street became the official caretaker. Laurinda also received the money from Peace Corps, and Sheila was always in a situation of asking the money from her. Surely Laurinda was pocketing some of it.
During the scabies outbreak in the house (around week 5), I told Sheila that she and everyone in the house would have to be treated at the same time. Sheila refused (but "I don't have scabies"), argued, and eventually I resorted to asking the PC homestay coordinator, Agueda, to talk with her to see if she couldn't convince Sheila. Agueda told me that I would have to move houses because she spoke with my Mom and my Mom refused to budge, but it later turned out that she only spoke with Lourde. The fact that I was to move houses was to be kept secret from the family until I actually moved. I explained to Agueda that she spoke with the wrong person, that Sheila was my Mom and that Sheila runs the house and makes decisions about who does what in that house. The next day the mean lady from across the street, who never invited me in nor said more than hello and took no interest in me other than to skim off the money from PC, she came over for lunch and told me that I was mistaken and that Lourde was my Mom. Why did Laurinda come into the house and make such a stupid assertion? I kept my calm throughout the conversation and explained that this all sounded very strange, and essentially that I wasn't born yesterday and to this day I'm perplexed did she really think I was that weak or stupid, or that I would cave under her seniority and just change Moms and start calling Lourde my Mom and I guess Lourde can make decisions about my well being? It didn't even matter at this point, since I was meant to leave anyway thanks to Lourde's refusal to cooperate with Agueda, I only wanted Sheila to have a chance to make things right. I kept using Socratic questions to lead Laurinda time and again to the conclusion, what she was saying was a lie, it was incredibly stupid, and that she was making no sense, but she wouldn't budge and just held to her assertions. The conversation was riduculous and I hope that I don't have to have many more conversations like this, where assertions mean more than reason in the argument. But then again I get the feeling that this will happen again, chalk it up to cultural differences.
In the end Sheila agreed to treat everyone, and finally the PC money went direct to Sheila so we are all happy now.

My new NGO and "Peel Out" is it's Name-O

2007-11-30T05:21:00.001-05:00

Thoreauvian amblers beware if you visit Mozambique! We are all aware of the risk posed by landmines leftover from the civil war, but this problem has been largely resolved through the work of de-mining NGO’s like Halo (Grant Salisbury, Davidson alum, travelled through here with Halo and debreifed me by email on this situation) and many of the mines are no longer functional due to corrosion. Stick to the well established footpaths and you’ll have no problem with mines.
I’m more concerned about a risk that is present on the footpaths and jeep-paths and roads themselves: spent banana peels. This risk becomes epidemic during banana season, though it is a year round threat. It’s as though Bowser from Mario Kart had joined forces with some slapstick cartoon character, the streets are littered with peels and I find it apalling and patently unsafe.
Once I get to site I will work on some grant applications to start my NGO, which will be called “Peel Out”

The Chichi [shee-shee] (pee pee) Bucket

2007-11-30T05:20:00.000-05:00

Since the bathroom is outside, I was given a bucket to pee in in the event that I need to take care of minor necessities during the night. It is a wonderful thing. I can also spit my toothpaste in the bucket so after dinner I can retire into my room if it’s been a long day and don’t need to worry about coming in and out of the room. Other PCTs turned down the chichi bucket and are sorry they did.

Slaughtering a young dejected chicken and later, Thanksgiving Turkey

2007-11-30T05:18:00.000-05:00

I killed my first chicken on Oct. 13th, quite a while ago, and subsequently killed my first turkey on the Friday after Thanksgiving so that us volunteers could eat turkey on that Saturday. We worked on Thursday, since we could not afford to take a day off during model school.
I was distressed by the way this chicken glared around, as though it were morbidly depressed, with eyes that reminded me of the kid that gets picked on in grade school. This was a pure white chicken for market, raised for meat. It hardly struggled for its life because its life had been so meaningless. I’d much rather it were one of the free roaming chickens that walk around Namaacha scratching where they please trying to stir up something nice for their chicks.
I had seen a couple of chickens slaughtered in the days before and so I had a pretty good idea of how it works:
1. grab young chook by the shoulders and pin wings together, can be carried like his with one hand
2. when ready to slaughter, other hand holds feet together
3. lay chook on its side and stand on its feet with one foot
4. other foot on chook’s wings
5. one hand holds back the head so as to expose the neck well, other hand saws with dull knife
6. once you’re through the air canal and the neck is snapped and nerves are severed, you can either take head off completely or let the rest hang there.
7. after the first bunch of blood comes out, hold chook upside down by feet and let the rest of the blood drain out.
8. give it to mom so that she can do the dirty work, which involves
a. soaking the bird in hot water so that the feathers can be pulled out easily
b. cutting a hole in birds abdomen just above anus to drag out entrails, including heart, stomach (which can be eaten after the contents are removed), intestines (whose contents are removed by pinching and squeezing out one end), liver (figaro), lungs
c. cut out and remove anus
d. wash bird again inside and out
e. we eat the chicken feet relatively often, you take off the leathery outer skin and cook what remains, the meaty part of the palm is delicious

As for the Thanksgiving turkey, there was a mishap as while I was sawing someone in the small crowd of other PCTs said they could still hear the turkey screaming even though I was sure I was through the airway and already heard the neck snap, so I took the whole head off. Just picture how long a turkey neck is. Once the head was off, the neck recoiled and started shooting the blood over its back instead of out straight. The PCT who I’ve had a crush on for a while was helping by standing on the wings, she got sprayed with turkey blood from the knee down, it was ugly. We have pictures of it, which I hope to share eventually.
The next day, the family we entrusted the birds to told us that they had moved them from the fridge to a freezer about 1/3 a mile away. WHY!!?!?! So Thanksgiving was delayed a few hours while we soaked the birds but eventually one of them made it into the oven while another made it into a stew and everyone at the party, 35-40 people, really liked the turkey. Everyone brought food, it was a great time and reminded me of Thanksgivings at home.

VISIT in 2009 or World Cup 2010 (here's when I'm free)

2007-11-29T02:18:00.000-05:00

If you're planning to visit me in Mozambique, try to make it next year (2009) when I have more freedom from PC obligations. Or lets talk about going to see the World CupThese are the dates when I’m free..
School breaks for:
1 week in April, TBD
2 weeks in June TBD
1 week in September, TBD
1 month Summer recess mid-December to late January (I'm currently planning to come home to NJ during Christmas 2008)

My home-stay back-yard and bathroom

2007-11-03T05:04:00.000-04:00

In the background is the casa de banho, to the right, and the latrine, to the left. As you may notice, the door to the latrine is a black plastic sheet which i lift from the bottom right corner when entering. The door to the bathhouse is a light cloth which sometimes comes unfastened and blows open in the breeze. In the foreground is the pool which is an old cistern that is no longer used, and troublingly it still collects some stagnant water. It is common to sweep the dirt in the yard of all litter, rather than mowing the lawn. lawns are undesireable as that would create habitat for snakes and other crawly things. Theres a mango tree and lychee tree in the yard, and the season is in December!

2007-11-03T05:00:00.000-04:00

This is me and a couple of good friends on our way to the "Cascatas" that is, the falls. sorry no photo of that yet, it's waayyy slow to upload

new flickr photo

2007-11-01T07:46:00.001-04:00

also, i manaed to post one photo to flickr, hope more to come

Rhymes with Rabies

2007-11-01T07:30:00.001-04:00

Hey all, so this will be unfortunately a skimpy post but it's what i have time for.
The most recent news is that I got scabies. It went like this: So I had this intense itch and later rash on my hand and later on less conspicuous places. At the time when the rash first became more noticeable and migrating, I also noticed that my little sister was scratching herself vigorously every night. With that in mind I contacted the medical officer and they said it sounded like scabies. The whole family would have to be treated at the same time because if someone else still has scabies it will come right back to me. One catch, though, Peace Corps can only pay for my medication. This will begin to sound more familiar as the years go by. So now I was in the position of telling my family that they had to all go out and spend money for something which they did not consider to be a very big deal. They also considered that hydrocortisone and anti-septic would be enough for some members of the family (that is not the case as far as I’m concerned). This has been a source of conflict in the house, since I am not an easy going person when my health is involved. I finally got the medication and just put it on for the first time today, it burned and my crotch was left smoldering for at least an hour afterward.
The rest of this entry will be in the style of Moby Dick:
THE BUCKET BATH
"Some people see half a glass of water and say: 'that glass is half empty.'" A PCV looks at that same glass of water and says, "Hey, I could bath in that!" - courtesy of my friend Hans from my language group. Portugues is going very well, btw
I felt pretty awkward squatting naked in the tin roofed, reed walled, cement floored 5x5 foot bathhouse splashing myself with handfulls of water that afternoon when i first got to site with my host family. the doorway is a semi-transparent thin offwhite cloth that would blow open in the breeze. iºve since purchased a plastic mug to use istead of my hands, and iºve figured out how to lock the 'door'.
The routine:
1. have mom or cinderella girl get up hearly to heat water in a large pot.
2. watch as mom or cinderella girl pours hot water into large plastic washbasin then mixes in cold water until its good bathwater
3. add 2 drops of bleach per liter of water and let stand 15 min.s if possible
4. Bring bar of soap in carrying cup, towel, and perhaps a change of clothes to the bathhouse, put clothes on clothesline inside bathhouse.
5. wet and lather naked body. shiver if a cold breeze comes by. perhaps wear a wool hat.
6. pour water onto right shoulder using right hand and wash under arm with left hand. switch. wash rest of body and dry
7. to put dry pants on in a room with a wet floor, bunch bottom of pant legs with the belt loops of the pants so that each pant is creased at the knee. balance on one leg while putting wet foot into leg of trousers at a 45 degree angle
8. change from crocs to flip flops at the door of the house so as not to track in mud.

TO BE CONTINUED... sorry
will include 'slaughtering a dejected young chicken'
elephant man of maputo/ if i were mayor
my new NGO and 'peel out' is itºs nam-o

I have arrived!

2007-10-06T11:10:00.000-04:00

Contents:
1. Staging
2. Good Times
3. Anxiety
4. Homestay
5. First full week

Chapter 1: staging in U.S.
I arrived for staging in Philadelphia on Sunday, Sept 23. I was expecting a group of maybe 10 Mozambique (MZ) volunteers (PCV’s) instead I found 69 of them. In a group that big, everyone´s personality is on steroids, so I projected mine as best as I could to keep up and be known. I was as extraverted as possible, and as such did not quite feel like myself, since I don´t prefer to be forcing my way into any conversation just to tell a joke or participate in the group discussion.
I brought donuts from Delicious Orchars, a local gourmet grocer from home, but had a rather hard time convincing people to accept them from me—again I attribute this to the group size. Then again there was the time when we were in an impossibly long and slow moving line at customs in South Africa. Someone suggested playing telephone and I tried to get that started, but whenever it hit a group of people already in a conversation the call was dropped like Cingular. I could complain more about other unpleasant instances like this but enough of all that.

Chapter 2: good times
I did not expect that there would be as many pretty girls in the group, and as expected there are more girls than guys and better yet I apparently misread the part of the manual regarding dating among volunteers—the prohibition is on dating between PC staff and volunteers. Phew.
I maintained my self-confidence throughout in Philadelphia, spoke well for myself during large group discussion, and made the 17 hour plane ride painlessly minus a sore tailbone.
Our arrival in Johannesburg was not what I expected: I sensed 5 star as soon as we pulled up to the hotel and sure enough, there was a table with elegant looking people pouring out full glasses of complementary South African wine in the lobby. Since we didn´t have enough RAND to eat dinner at the restaurant hotel and were forbidden to leave the premises, several of us made dinner on wine and the free cheese and crackers. I had a great time socializing that night.
At our last night of orientation in Maputo, we had a barbeque and the rain forced us under cover. After a while someone busted out a guitar and another played harmonica and it was on, we got to sing some songs together and that was a great thing for me, since karaoke had become an important outlet for me in Florida.

Chapter 3: Anxiety (how my mind works) over malaria, feeling of them out to get me, getting over that feeling...
Arriving in Johannesburg, we were told to claim $0.00 and nothing to declare. I had already written $500 and also claimed the maple syrup in my bag, since it is a plant product, and there were no extra slips at the line for customs, so I was stuck with my answer. I was a little shook at the prospect of being the one who féd up in customs. Luckily, when I asked the guy at the “nothing to declare” line whether my maple syrup was a problem, he just took my slip and didn´t say anything.
Nothing could have prepared me for the images I saw through the bus window when we arrived in Maputo (Ma-poo-too). It’s one thing to see another world roll by on your tv, another to see it roll by because you’re driving through it. “Holy shit. What am I doing here…physically here. I don’t belong here.”
Then we rolled into our hotel, which rooms consisted of round huts divided in 4ths, and across the internal hotel road was the pool and restaurant and party tent. 4 days of orientation there, and we didn’t leave the hotel but once on day 3 when we went to the American School for a field day with scavenger hunt. That was a huge help for me, sport it my #1 stress release and there were some people there who play ultimate.
Blaze about Malaria
But stress? How and why? Well, on day one I was calm, though I had spins all day thanks to binge drinking at the 5 star hotel. Then I found out that the Peace Corps would not be providing us with bed nets until we got to the training site. I also found out that the malaria prophylaxis drug I had been prescribed (Doxycycline) was only 80% effective whereas the once a week pill (Larium) which most people were taking was 97% effective. They hadn’t asked which pill I would like to take. I was not only distressed but also angry, here’s why: when I worked at AED, I occasionally assisted a USAID funded project which provides subsidies on ITNs (insecticide treated nets) in Africa. Now, as a taxpayer and government employee, I was expected to take this UNNECESSARY risk, thus allowing a greater probability that I might get sick during my first days in the country. If not me, perhaps one of the other 69 volunteers would get malaria due to this 4 nights of exposure. I was pissed, and with wild eyes pretty much demanded that the medical officers find me a bed net, do with the other volunteers as they wish. They could not find me a net, and I lost the illusion that my demands and opinion really mattered. OK, so I used the box shaped net that I had in my bag. In order to rig it up, I had to sleep on the floor in front of the door and be creative with bungee cords. In retrospect, two things can explain and mitigate for me slightly the Peace Corps 4 nights without bednets: I now know that there is a manner of therapy for malaria (ACTs) which I didn’t know before—I though ACT was a prophalaxis. Also, since the rooms in the hotel had sloped ceilings, the rooms couldn’t easily support our box shaped nets. Still, I stand by my decision to use my net and luckily my roommate was supportive and nice about it, there are a few in the group who would have amplified the way that I already felt about my decision at the time, I felt like a stupid maniac.
You know me, you know that I occasionally FLIP-OUT and not always for a valid reason. Once I lost my shit, I became painfully socially awkward, weak in my iris, and lost my vision of the whole endeavor of service. The medical staff and current volunteers who were running orientation were no longer my friends, they were wolves to me. They had seen me flip out, seen my weakness (a risk intolerance which would make me unfit for Peace Corps service), and were keeping an eye on me. One of the weak ones in the herd, perhaps to be encouraged to leave before the swearing in ceremony. At this time in orientation, the Country Director makes it very clear that PC service is not for everyone, and that training is the time to decide whether to stay or go home.
Interesting point of fact, its this kind of anxiety inducing pattern of thought that got me in the 80% malaria drug group in the first place. At first I had asked the medical officers to put me on Larium, but then I read one of the pages in our books and saw the pillbox insert for Larium. People with a history of severe anxiety or depression should not take this drug, period. The list of side effects sounded like my worse nightmare, just enough to push me into schizophrenia. Given how I was feeling at the time, that was more than enough to convince me that I should just use more DEET, find the wash-in mosquito repellant, and take the extra 17% risk.
In general, I am not happy with the way that the other Trainees and current PCVs dismiss malaria and its importance both for us and for MZ as a whole. Maybe they will get a chance to tell a family with a cerebral malaria case child that malaria isn’t really a big deal.

Chapter 4: Begin homestay, bucket bath!
I’m back to normal, largely thanks to the field day, and living with my host family now. If you’ve seen the film March of the Penguins then you have an idea what it’s like when we get dropped off at homestay. Roughly 30 trainees and as many host family members walking around calling out the name that will hopefully be recognized by their counterpart. The lady who picked me up was kind of anti-social, she mostly talked with her neighbors in full speed Portuguese during the walk back. Then she took me to my house, which is not her house, but rather her daughter’s house across the street. This makes me think that the instructions from Peace Corps regarding my hygiene were given to the old lady and never reached my de facto host Mom, which means I’ve had a lot of explaining to do. Given my Portuguese skill level, the explaining is not the best. I told her to bath my fruit and veggies with some bleach-water for 15 minutes and the next day there was bleach water in my shower bucket…it stings a little when you bath with it, not to mention my skin is white enough without bleach, thanks.
My host Mom and other family members are more sociable usually. The first night was particularly challenging, though, because Peace Corps requires a lock on my bedroom door and, just in time, the guy was there installing the lock when I arrived at the house. I was sitting at the head of the table, and my bedroom door was four feet from my head. Every other syllable I heard at the table was “BANG” so that made it hard to understand much.
The food is good but they use a lot of oil. At breakfast the other day I thought to myself “if I have to eat one more oily fried egg for breakfast…” and then realized that despite my tough talk, I will more than likely be eating many a fried egg for the next 2 months. I miss oatmeal…no oil in oatmeal.

Chapter 5: First week in Africa
Life’s easier now. Our language groups are small, 5 students, and I already liked everyone in my group even before we were assigned to each other. That’s not true of everyone in the larger group at this time, but I try to be friendly with everyone. Also, our professor is very good, and I usually benefit from the questions asked by other students in our class.
Yesterday we had “Mnaga” Time, that is to say, fun time. I taught our Mozambican families Rock, paper, scissors, and they taught us their version of duck duck goose which is much cooler because you can peg the person with the ball and all the people sitting down chant a beautiful African song.
I’ve had the flu and runny nose, followed by an upset stomach and a little fever. This is quite normal, having read the welcome materials, and I’m not concerned at this time. I have a pretty good idea how it started. Since I first met them, the kids in the house have had snot moustaches that sit on their lip for lack of a cloth to wipe it off.
Along with my host mom is her cousin, who has a baby but the Dad is off with another woman. Also in the house is a Cinderella girl who does chores all day and doesn’t go to school and is spoken to harshly. I think she is another daughter of the player who left my host-Aunt, and my guess is she has nowhere else to go.
No electricity because they weren’t able to pay the bill. No running water. The neighbors are really nice. Also, I don’t feel threatened when I walk down the main street or even side streets in the daylight. It’s hard to believe that I’m living in the specter that I saw rolling past the bus window upon arrival. I still don’t feel like I fit in here, that might take a while.

Life is so different for me now that it's hard to believe only 2 weeks separates me from my former life. I'll write again when I get a chance. Much love, everyone, I think about home and it makes me feel good.

Davidson profs impart final words of wisdom, and I didn't even pay them for it!

2007-09-23T02:19:00.000-04:00

On my way up from FL to NJ in late August, I stopped in at alma mater Davidson College to visit professors and see if I wouldn't know any students.

Mike Goode challenged me (naturally since he's Mr. challenge course guy) when I mentioned my consternation after Dr. Flanagan telling me that my purpose as a PCV was not to be happy. I had considered that my happiness should be a primary consideration, but Dr. Flanagan seemed to be implying that my fulfillment should be more linked to my mission or goal. Paraphrasing, Mike is of the opinion that people worry too much about being happy when really life encompasses a lot of things that might not make you happy, and you're less able to enjoy the entirety of your life when you're cherry picking for the happy parts of it. In striving for your goals you might even forego happiness to have the experiences that beckon you.

Dr. Hess compared our guesses at the next step in life or career to turning a magic 8 ball over. Eventually the answer to where I'm headed floats to the top as an answer to the question or what have you, the path reveals itself in this way.

Dr. Menkhaus. Angola's oil and farmland make good prospects if they can avoid the cleptocracy. Apart from private sector interests in Angola's resources, he suggested that development organisations may be interested in making Angola the breadbasket/cashcow of the region for the other countries around. I shared my naive thought that maybe starting PC in Angola would curry favor with government diplomatically as a way for the U.S. government to earn Angola's favor and get more of its resources, but he indicated that there are bigger fish to fry and that PC would most likely not be a bargaining chip in this oil deal. Touche

Keyne Chesire shared with me a book recommendation: "Waiting for theBarbarians" by Koetze

Dr. Holland: On the subject of travel writing, he recommends that after travelling to China, you should write your book within the first 6 months of returning, or else you will break your pen. The meaning of "break your pen" heclarified: the things you thought you understood about China at the time or at first will reveal themselves as far more complex and you will realize that you don't know what to write for lack of the ability to sufficiently comprehend China.

Dr. Flanagan insisted that I take my medications since she almost died from malaria she got in Chad. She recommended that I ask a lot ofquestions, and that I don't wait too long to start writing myimpressions because after just 3 months or so the newness andstrangeness will become familiar and won't be as recognizeable assomething different or shocking.

Dr. Paradise had lots of good news to share about Environmentalism at Davidson. Many of the projects that I had worked on are still going on, and what's even better is that there are new projects and a good amount of support from the administration. The students have made an "Eco-op" ecologically-minded co-operative house (think MTV's Real World). I crashed the first dinner party and was really happy to see that so many students in their most extracurricularly active year (sophomore year) will be working together so closely on greening the campus.

Speaking of students, I met Rex Salisbury whose brother Grant is in MZ as a minesweeper. After having spoken with Grant, I'm not as worried about the mines left over from the civil war, I was kind of worried when I first heard about them.

I asked Dr. Martin what books he might recommend considering that I never got to take his class and given that Africa is notorious for the paradox of abundant natural resources and economic hardship, he recommends:"Ecological Economics" by Daly and Farley "Environmentalism of the Poor" by Martinez-Alier "Choosing Environmental Policy" by Harrington, Morganstern and Sterner

While talking with Dr. Miller, I recalled what it's like to write non-fiction prose and thought that the context i was giving him verbally would be an important thing to write in the blog--about Portugal being the last to give up its colonies and how that perhaps exacerbated the civil war.

My favorite tidbits from the “Welcome to Peace Corps” materials:

2007-09-23T02:15:00.000-04:00

ON BEING A PCV
All of my income will be taxable (luckily I’ll be in a low tax bracket)
Real estate speculation is prohibited, so it looks like I won’t be buying any beachfront property in MZ after all (yes, I really was considering it, bummer)
No dating other PCVs (under the “Fraternization” subheading, Bummer)

Training will cover how to:
Teach English effectively
Communicate in Portuguese
Stay healthy (avoid disease)
Stay safe (avoid crime)
adapt to MZ culturally

ON MOZAMBIQUE
The northern half of MZ is a matriarchical tradition, the south half is patriarchical.
Key cash crops are sugar cane, cashews and corn.

HISTORICAL TIMELINE
Arabs arrive along the coastline in 300 A.D. The Portuguese arrive in 1498.
Portugal refused to give up its colonies after WWII and MZ. The war for independence began 1964 and ended in 1975 with a Marxist government in control. The civil war began in 1976, hostilities ended in 1992 and in 1994 they had peaceful elections. The government adopted free market policies, free press, privatization of state-owned enterprises and open to civil society (NGOs).
Peace Corps has been in MZ since 1999.

How to mail me in MZ

2007-09-23T01:08:00.000-04:00

Letters from the U.S. could take up to according to the USPS. My address until December 10 is:

Greg Harris, PCT
Peace Corps
C.P. 4398
Maputo, Mozambique

I'll update this when I get my address at my post.

Please write “Par Avion” and “Airmail” on the letter.

If you’re planning on sending me several letters, number them so that I will understand if they arrive out of sequence. Some of the mail might get lost, though this is supposedly a rare occurrence. I’m reminded of the scene from Mark Twain’s book Roughing It. The narrator is riding out west as a passenger in a mail wagon when a part of the wagon breaks and the driver explains why: "Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days' mail-- that's how it happened," said he. "And right here is the very direction which is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which was to be put out for the Injuns for to keep 'em quiet. It's most uncommon lucky, becuz it's so nation dark I should 'a' gone by unbeknowns if that air thoroughbrace hadn't broke."

The good things I'm leaving behind

2007-08-23T23:49:00.000-04:00

At first it was easy to commit to Peace Corps because it was idealistic. Then it was hard because I was fearful of the great unknown of Africa. Then the emphasis shifted and it became hard to leave because of the frisbee friends I have made and the work and office I have grown to really enjoy and the tropical place that has felt like home to me for the last few months together.

My life has been so happy here...

One picture is of my co-workers, another is my team doing a challenge course initiative (racing with 2/6 eyes available).

UPDATED 9/21/07 - pie-faced at my own going away party...nice, thanks Pompeii!

2007-08-09T00:30:00.000-04:00

In preparation of my trip to Mozambique (actually, that's a lie, I've been planning to go back to Mexico since I left in December just to see my friends and be tan felíz again), I went back to Mexico City for a long weekend last weekend. It was as much fun as I was hoping for. My roomates picked me up at the airport. They saw me first and Lola snuck up on me from behind while I was looking for them and put her hands over my eyes, I knew it was them of course. She went to work and then my other roomate, Angel, well we went to eat a rica hamburguesa and then shortly after we went to the Pulquería (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulque)

It was surprisingly packed considering it was about 2pm, with a live band and lots of old people drinking this slimy juicy tasty alcohol (I didn't say it tastes good, just tasty). Anyway, I made friends quickly in particular with Margarita, who is suprisingly limber despite being past her prime and we danced a little to the live music. The next picture is of Angel and I later that night at a karaoke bar--my favorite place to be--I got to sing Mana's "Te Solte La Reinda" with the help of a very pretty girl who was closer to my age. To make a long story short, Angel and I ended up wandering around drunk between 4 and 5 in the morning looking for a hotel but they were all closed, so I bought a hot drink (arroz con leche) and we sat down and waited for the metro to open at 6am. See, Mexico City isn't as dangerous as you thought. Anyway, best I get that sort of thing out of my system now because I don't plan on getting smashed and being that vulnerable in Mozambique.

People I'm talking to about Africa

2007-07-25T22:34:00.001-04:00

My friend John (Doe – anonymous for racial sensitivity issues) has traveled on business in 19 African countries, and sees incredible potential that is usually overlooked by Westerners and also incredible adversity in the form of corruption which keeps up the state of despair. He also sees two Africas, Saharan and Sub-Saharan. He seems to be more a fan of North Africa, and feels that Sub-saharan Africans have a culture which lacks a certain base level of respect for other human beings and themselves that would be a pre-requisite for development. Certainly the many stories of atrocities that go on all around the continent and have been going on since written history began in Africa don’t bring the word ‘humanism’ to mind, but then again when you see the way people (at least mothers) mourn in the face of killers such as underweight, malaria or AIDS in children, you can see the spirit of life hoping to overcome all of these adversities which include remorseless killers wearing or living in human flesh. I think he’s mostly trying to point out that brutality reaches levels in Sub-saharan Africa that are unheard-of in the present day elsewhere in the world.

Another friend, also a John, is in awe of Nelson Mandela and the political sandwich he created. Blacks controlling the government, a very predominantly white middle class and a vast lower class of blacks. The democratic and easy thing to do as a political leader, it would seem, would be to appeal to the masses by abusing the “others,” the whites with the economic power. Instead, he set in place a dynamic whereby political power of the blacks and economic power of the whites co-exists and produces economic growth to the great benefit of the country (over time). Someone in his group suffered head-trauma in a car accident while they were in Namibia, where all hospitals are government owned, government run and government staffed and the health care is “free and worth every penny.” Yes, Hillary, he is being sarcastic. It was here that he had an encounter with a life dis-respecting doctor who brashly told John, with a straight face, his friend would surely die unless they submitted immediately to 5 days of intensive care with the doctor at exorbitant rates and pay, of course, in cash. Hippocratic oath, anyone? The next hospital being at least a day away, John not being medically trained, he was unsure what to do but took the advice of a native-resident friend and left the quack's office. Are you a doctor or a con-man? Such a perversion of roles and a wolf in sheep’s clothes, it reminds me of the U.S. doctor who got women addicted to pain killers in order to abuse them as his junkies.

Greg Z., RPCV who worked down the hall from me at First American Title Insurance. Greg thinks that there's a chance that Peace Corps will start a program in Portuguese speaking Angola soon. If they do, they will probably want qualified volunteers to be the first people on the ground. Since my Grandpa was a Marine in WWII, I'm particularly drawn to this idea and if they offer me the chance to move to Angola after one year of service to be in the first group of volunteers there, I think I would go. A very exciting distant possibility for the future, I'm glad Greg advised of this possibility so that I can be ready for it if it happens.
Greg also taught me that even though PCVs tend to think the experience will be better if they get posted in a rural area, this is not always the case. He got posted in Lagos when it was just a big city (now it is HUGE). He also told me that the river that separates Tanzania and MZ (the Rovuma River) was plagued with the tse-tse fly, which causes sleeping sickness, when the American explorer Stanley passed through that way into the African interior. We hope the fly has gone somewhere else by now. He also let me borrow his copy of The White Nile by Alan Moorehead, which is a really good read about the misadventures of the first European explorers in East Africa.

Stan, a friend of a friend of a friend of my Dad's, who does real estate work in Africa. He taught me that my long term ambitions of spurring home-ownership and efficiency in African cities is possible, because he's already doing this and making a buck while he's at it. Maybe not the same rate of return you could get in some other continent, but it sounds like it's not necessarily a money-losing proposition. The property registries may be slow and backwards, but they function, and people are increasingly conscious of the importance of acquiring property rights. As he explained, there's lots of development happening right now in souther Sudan, since they are just getting out of a civil war. It seems to me that the whole continent is just getting out of a civil war, so hopefully the infrastructure building begins and the violence ends. He also warned that some NGOs (or at least people masked as NGOs) operate as loan-sharks rather than doing micro-lending in a helpful way. Coyotes. That is news to me, and I haven't looked into it yet.

Elizabeth M., an RCPV of the South Florida chapter the the PC association. She served in MZ. Learned: She figures taking care of my health should be a foremost concern. Also, she recommended that I should take with me some of those pants that zipper off into shorts, which I think is a great call since they are synthetic and will hold up to the washing by hand better than cotton work pants like Dockers.

Chris Smith, my local Congressman who has served in the House International Relations Subcommittee for a long time, tirelessly advancing Human Rights (particularly in Africa) in the face of (it seems to me) overwhelming apathy on the part of his colleagues, who think leadership involves something other than working hard to make the world look closer to the way you'd like to see it. My favorite is that (according to an editorial I read in the Washington Post) he stood up to Bush when the Executive tried to short-change veterans (he asked them to re-do the math, the funding was inadequate) and to get this money for he veterans he paid the predictable price of demotion after having served the interest of veterans for quite some time. This being at some point in 2005--yes, we were at war at that time. After countless attempts to contact him through his office, it sounds like they're going to let me meet with him either in August or September.

Things I need to do when I'm there based on what I've heard so far...to be continued

2007-07-25T22:28:00.000-04:00

1. My boss, Tuey, told me that in Nicaragua they grow cashews and that people use the plant for all kinds of stuff, including making tea out of the cashew flowers. I'm going to have to drink some of that tea, I hope they do that in MZ. Corn and cashews are their two biggest crops.
2. Brandon says that he has some friends in Johannesburg who would be good to talk with. That should give me a reason to go there, and I can look around for the stadiums that they ought to be building. I imagine there will be lots of Chinese engineering involved, which makes me think...I'm going to pay the extra money to get seats close to the field so that I dont' have to sit on or under any of the mezzanine balconies.
3. Carlos, my co-worker, has a friend who runs a Bed&Breakfast outside in Maputo. Hopefully I'll be able to make a weekend trip during training with some fellow PCVs to check out this bed and breakfast and chat it up with the host.

Interpretation of Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead

2007-07-24T23:48:00.000-04:00

I know I should be writing about Peace Corps and all, since this is only my second post, but Fake Plastic Trees is one of my favorite songs, and for the longest time I couldn't figure out what was going on in the lyrics but I think I've got a hold of it now, so I share with you:

The starting point to appreciating this song is understanding that the 3rd person voice describing the surgery victim woman and her plastic surgery performing husband/boyfriend changes to a first person voice about halfway through the song ("MY fake plastic love"). What's great about that is that we experience a bewilderingly rapid change from 3rd person voyerism to a more personal 1st person where we can better identify with the metaphorical characters who were just described, beautifully (I especially like the description of a "cracked polystyrene man"). So which one of them is it that fantasizes of escaping this relationship ("If I just turn, and run"), the man or the woman?
My interpretation of the 1st person stanza is that the man's voice begins by using the possessive "My," the last lines of the song are in the woman's voice that is so concerned with what her partner wants ("If I could be who YOU wanted" is the only use of the 2nd person in the song), and perhaps the lines inbetween which describe the fantasy of escape belong to both of them, since they both want something different ("But I can't help the feeling"). The last lines definately belong to the woman, she wants to be the object of his desire always, but you can tell from the tone of desperation that she knows that she won't be able to, and this makes her (and me) very very sad. Too bad he won't change and start loving her for who she is. She should drop that zero and get with me.
In the words of the Gorilla Biscuits, “A standard's set that I just can not live up to."
If you haven't heard the song, try finding it on youtube.com or just buy the CD you'll be glad you did.

27 months from now

2007-07-23T23:02:00.000-04:00

You will still recognize me 27 months from now, I'm sure, but it's pretty exciting to think how I'm likely to change once my world is turned upside down. Some things will never change, for example I'll always like thinking about dumb stuff (and I promise I'll come up with some real gems with so much free time and so much to think about in Mozambique, I'll have some "deep thoughts" posts now and then) and doing dumb stuff, such as jumping off high places into murky water. Now we're getting to the point of the first post: I love this picture because it frames my sentiments into something visual that we can all look at and be reminded of why this is exciting.
Explaining the photo of Giedra and I with JFK: Giedra was one of two ESL students I had while I was living in Fairfax, VA. Giedra (Lithuania) and Yadira (Colombia) were great students and they came whenever they could, even though the lessons were hit or miss or often foul ball. In Peace Corps, I'll have more time to dedicate to lesson planning, and I'll get more practice at having English teaching as my primary role.