Christmas Day

“White Christmas” this year meant the white of foamy ocean waves instead of snow. Representing five countries (Portugal, Italy, Congo, United States, and of course Mozambique), this was the multi-cultural group that I celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with this year.

We celebrated Christmas Eve with the vigil mass in which the youth of our parish put on a play of the Christmas Story in the local language –Tchopi. After mass, the sisters, priests, other volunteers, two Italian visitors, two Mozambican visitors, and I had an international dinner of Italian “Risotti,” Portuguese “Bacalhau” and American cookies! For Christmas Day, we all went to mass in the morning and then the same group went out to Závora beach where we made a fire to grill chicken and beef and swam in the ocean for the day. Above, we all went up to the lighthouse overlooking the beautiful beach for one big group shot.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Today, I had a great experience driving home from Bilene, a small lake-beach in Southern Mozambique where the sisters have an old dormitory that serves as “vacation getaway” for the various houses of orphans throughout the country.

I was sitting in the front of the sister’s truck, smushed in between two Portuguese volunteers who had come down in the car to pick us up, with little Alice on my lap. We were going to leave Alice (pronounced uh-lee-see) in the city of Xai Xai on our way back to Inharrime where she would meet an aunt to visit for Christmas.

Alice held tight to my hands clasped around her waist – it was her first time every riding in the front seat of a car. After a few miles, the other volunteers and I heard a squeaky little voice start singing an old Portuguese Christmas carol that we had all sang at our Christmas party the week before. As Alice moved from this into The Itsy Bitsy Spider, the other volunteers and I looked at each other and smiled.

When Alice and the other little girls in the back seat started to doze, we turned on the radio. The first song that came on was that old American 80’s hit that goes something like:

Anything you want, you got it.
Anything you need, you got it.
Anything at all! You got it. Ooooh…

I smiled to myself and Pedro and I looked at each other and at almost the same time said, “This could be about Alice.” Our little girls here are so precious, and in such precarious life-situations – they simply steal our hearts and we’d do anything for them.

As the little girl dozed off in my arms and the palm trees whizzed by outside the windows or the truck, I hummed to myself… “Anything at all!” Life is good.

Merry Christmas from the Laura Vicuna Center!

We had our Christmas party a bit early because all of the little girls go to visit family members for the real holiday. The party was an absolute delight – the group of Portuguese doctors, the sisters, and I all decorated our big cafeteria for Christmas, and even made a makeshift Christmas tree out of a wooden post and four huge palm tree leaves. We all donned our best clothing – earrings, a touch of perfume, the seldom worn hair barrets.

Sister Lucília prepared buttered shrimp, delicious soup, French fries and cake for everyone. I made good ol’ fashioned American Christmas cookies complete with red and green frosting (that three of my girls helped me decorate.) After dinner, we all got simple presents, and then sang and danced to Christmas songs.

A former volunteer sent Christmas stockings and presents for all the girls. The contents: a picture of them in a frame with their name on it, a Christmas pencil and eraser, two or three little bags of candies, and two new pairs of underwear! They were all ridiculously excited to get new underwear.

Yolanda was so excited when she pulled out the picture of herself – she planted a big sloppy kiss right on her own face!

Julia, amazed and shocked at her good fortune to have received her very own stocking, kept running out to dance and sing with everyone after the present-opening, only to return every couple minutes to check and make sure her gifts were still there. When I asked her why she kept coming back, she just grinned and said, “This is the best Christmas present I’ve ever had!”

I, along with all the beautiful little ones, appreciated a very simple Christmas party this year – but what joy to see the light in a little girl’s eyes over a new pair of pink underwear! I hope you and your families all can share such joy, too, this Christmas season!

A few days ago, eight young Portuguese doctors arrived here at Laura Vicuña to volunteer for three weeks providing basic medical consults for all our girls and all of the children in our adopt-a-child program.

Since I’m on school break, I’ve gotten to spend a few days helping them out and it’s been really fun for me to observe some medicine again and see what they can do here.

The first day, a little girl who is our closest neighbor here was brought in by her slightly older sister with terribly burned feet. Only 2 or 3 years years old, she had been toddling around outside when she stuck her feet in her mothers cooking fire. One of the doctors asked me to help him hold her down, and watch how he bandaged her feet so that I could do it for her if she came back for new bandages after the doctors go back to Portugal. I was amazed at the little girl’s bravery! She did not cry at all until the very end as the doctor cut all the skin around her burn and put on cream and wrapped up the horrible-looking feet.

Another day, I asked the doctors if they would be willing to take a look at one of my students who has had chest pains for several years. One doctor here had told him it was asthma, and another a heart murmur, but his family doesn’t have the money he would need to buy a nebuilizer for asthma or to have a surgery for a heart murmur. My student, Lolo, arrived with his father, and they both were very nervous to see the doctors. But after a thorough examination – the doctors found nothing wrong! They asked him some other questions about stress in his life and were able to reasonable assume that his chest pain stems from stress and nervousness! As Lolo walked out of the makeshift doctor’s office, he looked so relieved. Neither of the two conditions he worried he might have existed, and the docs had given him some pills (in reality vitamins, hoping for a placebo effect) for him to take when he feels the pain to calm him down. Lolo was so grateful – it made the doctors’ whole trip worthwhile for me.

On another day, I followed one of the doctors around and just observed and helped with little things as she gave physicals. One of her basic questions to all the kids was, “Do you have any problems with your eyes or vision?” Usually the answer was no, but with one girl she answered yes and told us that she has a hard time seeing distances. She said all the teacher’s writing at school just looks like big white blobs on the blackboard. We felt terrible – there’s nothing we can do for her, and there’s no opthamalogist for her to go to anywhere except the capital city, and that she wouldn’t be able to afford. Mostly out of curiosity, I took off my own glasses and tried them on her face. I asked her what it looked like and her response was just a giggle, “Well, the world looks clearer.”

I don’t really think too much about medicine here. I know that when I go home, I’ll be going to medical school, but here I’m a teacher, a big sister, lots of things, but not in any way related to health. These days have been really good for me. It’s been nice to be reminded of what I want to do – to see how much good these people could do in a short time, and to remember that indeed this is the type of work I want to do, too, someday. How frustrating to be unable to help some people – to not know how to test vision and measure for glasses – and yet how wonderful to let another young man know he’s healthy and just needs to relax, or to keep a little girl from having scarred, deformed feet. I was very lucky to have this time to see and observe these things and it gave me a renewed sense of direction on what I will do when my time in Mozambique is over.

Thanksgiving

Mozambicans do not celebrate our American holiday “Thanksgiving,” but nonetheless, I brought our tradition here yesterday.

On Wednesday, I walked into town to the market in search of a pumpkin or sweet potatoes. The market in Inharrime is a haphazardly built conglomeration of straw tables and benches positioned behind a series of stores on the main highway that runs through the village. The result is a dark, maze-like structure filled with women selling the currently in season vegetables. I asked high and low for a pumpkin and explained to many of the market-women about the holiday in my county where we always make pumpkin pie. Each one tried to direct me to someone “down at the end of the line” who would have one last pumpkin, but to no avail – pumpkin season ended last week. By the time I came back through the market at the end – everyone was curious if I had found my much desired “abóbora.”

In the end, I made a banana-apple crisp instead of pumpkin pie, and, with the help of my Amercian-volunteer friend Stephanie, a feast of roast chicken, carrots, and mashed potatoes. The sisters and another Mozambican teacher that ate with us were impressed with their small taste of American culture.

And, in this faraway place, we transplanted Americans even took some time to reflect on what we’re thankful for this year. For me: The continued support of my family and friends from home topped the list. Thanks to everyone for your care even when I am far away. I miss you all and hope that your Thanksgivings were happy as well.

End of School ´´Festa``

Today was one of the best days I’ve had in Mozambique. The kids in the above picture spent the past three weeks preparing a small play as part of the “Theatre Group” during the mandatory three weeks of summer activities that go on at my school after the end of classes for the year.

At the end of the three weeks, on the day that final grades are posted, the school hosted a small festival and all the different groups of activities (basket-making, singing, dancing, theatre, sewing) presented their activities for their parents, teachers, and fellow students. My students from the theatre group, as well as the little group of boys who call themselves “Real Heat” and sing rap music about social change, presented. The audience reacted with laughs and cheers for the play, and clapped along to the music. I was very proud of my students, and happy to have seen a fruitful product of some time well spent with these kids.

Life in Mozambique n the past four months has been full: joyful, challenging, fun, interesting, difficult, exciting, and different -- all at the same time.

I live just outside a small town called Inharrime, only about 15 miles inland from the Indian Ocean. Amid the forests of coconut trees and brick-red dirt of “Centro Laura Vicuña,” I've spent the past 4 months working at a variety of jobs. Mainly, I've worked teaching explanation English classes for students at Laura Vicuña Secondary School, and helping teachers and teaching English classes at Domingos Sávio Professional School -- the technical/high school across the street from the sisters run by the Salesian Priests. I've also taught music class at the professional school, helped out with the small summer theatre group at the secondary school, and done lots of playing and working with the little girls on English and music.

Since most of my daily interactions here are conducted in Portuguese, I’ve been forced to pick it up rapidly during these months. Besides my brightest students and the other English teachers, no one speaks more than a sprinkling of English, so I've had to pick up the new language at a rapid pace. While I'm by no means a ''fluent'' speaker, I manage to carry on intelligent conversations and perceive the vast majority of things spoken to me at this point. I now even find myself accidentally sprinkling in Portuguese words when I speak English.

My initial few weeks and even months here were difficult -- not speaking the language, trying to decipher what my job and my ''place'' here should be, feeling quite alone and out of place when stuck into this community of nuns and little girls -- but things have improved. I have a lot of interesting work now. I love teaching and working with the students at my schools, I've gotten used to the some of the differences in cultural norms here, and also come to accept the fact that I will probably continue to feel ''out of the loop'' on some things because I just am a foreigner and there's no way around that. I've even become proficient at eating ''shima'' (a food something like mushed up rice, or wet, doughy bread) and ''fejão'' (beans) with my hands during our weekly ''eat outside with your hands'' meal that we have so the little girls don't forget their Mozambican traditional ways of eating.

As I've become more comfortable here, I've started to work on some interesting projects. I helped some other volunteers in my area organize an AIDS awareness day in which local high school students competed in a theatre contest where they presented short plays about responsibility, fidelity, equality of genders, and other AIDS prevention strategies. 6 groups from my two schools participated. I was also recently approached by a small group of boys who came to me asking for help with their rap music group. While I'm not really a rap fan, they sing all about social issues -- working to change systems of poverty, preventing the spread of AIDS and malaria, stopping early pregnancy and the abandonment of children -- so I'm going to help them out however I can.

It's difficult for me to distill my experience into a short description, but I wanted put up a general update here, and then make an effort to share more of my experiences from here. I hope that an important part of my being here can be to share some of what I learn with my friends and family at home who do not have this opportunity to travel to a new country and learn about a new culture.

For now, I close with a realization that Mozambique has become much more to me now that a faraway land or a foreign new environment: Now beyond the heat and my constantly dirty feet and the unusual foods, Mozambique is a sea of faces and names: Yolanda, Amélia, Julia, Ângela and the other cute little girls constantly following me around shouting ''Mana Maria!'' Lucília, Albertina, Verdiana, and Lúcia -- the sisters. Sérgio, Fanuel, Marta, Santos, Albazine, Mateus, Armando -- my students. Stephanie and Rita, Gildo, Herlagia, João -- other volunteers and teachers. Dona Rita, Tia Saquina, Senhor Camilo, Padre José Maria -- my neighbors. These people are Mozambique to me now.

I have been in Mozambique for one month and three days, and I think it is about time I wrote something home for everyone to hear about this place and what I have been doing.

I will say, I've thought about writing several times, but it is terribly difficult for me to put into words all I have seen and done. When I first got here, my head was filled with comparisons: “The restruants are just like the ones in El Salvador.” “The bread tastes just like Grandma Becker's.” “The women carrying everything on their heads is not like anything I have ever seen.'' Now that I have been here a little while, I have become accustumed to my surroundings and am not even sure where to start describing them.

I spent my first few weeks visiting Matt in a little village in Sofala, in the center of Mozambique. I had heard many stories of this place and I finally filled in all the gaps. I went to Matt's 8th and 11th grade biology classes and met many students who were eager to help me improve my limited Portuguese. One night we went with a friend to a small neighborhood where five men all played at once on a homemade Marimba (like a giant wooden xylophone with gourds below to echo the sound). We purchased fresh bread, tomatoes, onions and other local produce each day from the open-air market in the city. One day a student whose family runs a bakery invited us to come see how they make bread. The dough looked exactly like Grandma's used to – except that the ball of dough stretched the length of his whole living room as it lay on a giant black tarp to rise.

During my last week up north, Matt's boss from the Peace Corps came through town and offered to take us up north to visit Parque Nacional de Gorongosa, a wildlife reserve. We spent a night camping in the park, and took a drive through the next day catching looks at Impala, Warthogs, Monkeys, and many African birds. After that, we visited Matt's friend Kevin in a town called Caia. The area experienced great hardship during the Mozambican civil war, and its effects are still visible in abandoned houses and railroad cars which have stood vacant for twenty years.

After returning from Caia, we headed south to Inharrime – the area where I will living for the coming year. The general form of public transportation here – the “chapa'' – is a 15 passenger van always crammed with 20-25 people. These vans have no set schedule; they leave when they're full, charge purely based on distance travelled, and let people off an on at most any given place. I've become quite used to this form of travel and now find myself barely phased to be smushed between a man in a full suit and woman with a baby in one hand and a live chicken in the other.

Now, I have arrived in Inharrime at Casa Laura Vicuña – the home of the Salesian Sisters. The compound where I live is simply unbelievable. The main building houses the sisters, other volunteers and myself, as well as the office, kitchen, and dining room. Adjoing the main buidling in the dormitory where thirty-five girls aged 5-15 currently live. There is also a secondary school, a health building, a large garden, and two small guest buildings on the premises, as well as many building under construction (two more dormitory buildings, a bakery, a large cafeteria, and a primary school). The sisters run a top-notch project and we even have runing (drinkable) water, dependable electricity, and lots of rare foods through donations from European benefactors.

So now that I am here, my first task has been to try and settle in and find my niche within this already well-running project. I’m going to be working with the the older girls here teaching an English class each day, and helping the sisters with the younger girls however I can. They are working on starting a health post, so when that gets up and going, I hope to work on that, too. Right now, I am working on learning Portuguese, meeting people who live near our compound, and getting to know this area. Each day so far has been an adventure – I look forward to learning a lot in the coming year.

I leave for Mozambique tonight at 8pm!

I just thought I would start this site as a way to easily post thoughts and pictures for all to see.