Walking the line.

The big-a** white 4x4 rumbled up to my hut, rolling over the miniature sand dunes and dwarfing my pathetically dead garden beds, the weeds shyly, curiously reaching out to tickle the massive treads. I had my capulana’ed butt up in the air like a typical Mozambican woman, bent over a bucket of soapy water. “We caught you missy, we caught you right in the act!” I whipped around with a priceless look of surprise, which upon seeing Christine’s grin morphed into its happy twin. We caught you being Mozambican!” Christine re-emphasized, it seemed a bit sympathetically. “What are you guys doing here?” I demanded, delightedly, yet hesitatingly, in English as my brain switched language gears. “We were on our way home and decided to swing by and see if you wanted to come stay the night on the farm with us!” Christine said, putting her hands on her hips and examining my dirt smudged face and frizzy, sweaty hair as her fiancé Cristo and his farm buddies hopped out of the covered truck bed. It’s exactly for this reason of my complete and utter homeliness that I’ve refused to buy a mirror for my hut so far. I have a general idea of how ragged and rough around the edges I may come across. And I sometimes try to do some triage work with my appearance. Yet, thankfully, not having the mirror allots me some grace. Some things you just… you just don’t wanna know. If you don’t know, there’s no problem. Remembering my manners, I quickly wiped my hands “clean” on my capulana, tucked my loose hair behind my ears and began hastily throwing some overnighter things in my trusty little backpack. I then threw it over my shoulder and pulled myself up into the left-side passenger seat of the off-roading monster. Christine threw a reverse, spun the wheel, and we roared back over the retreating weeds. A row of crianças had lined up along the fence and five pairs eyes turned to watch Teacher Karina and her Mulungo friends get whisked away in a white chariot.

And so, I got to spend the weekend at Christine and Cristo’s cattle ranch near the little village of Muabsa, about 30 minutes north-west from Mapinhane. I got a tour of the farm, walked through and examined their herd, helped feed the orphan calf living in their kitchen (ADORABLE), and enjoyed delicious fresh veggies from their garden along with the freshest beef I’ve ever eaten. We spent the evening with some of their neighboring ranchers and I was steeped in an evening of Afrikaaner-South African farming culture. And I got to be the token American with the funny accent. I am overwhelmingly a curiosity to white Africans. They simply cannot or will not understand why a blonde American girl with a good education came to live with nothing. And, I believe that despite my explanations of why what I’m doing is important, none of my white ex-pat friends actually, truly understand.

Overall, I really enjoy my ex-pat friendships and I love learning yet another narrative in the salad bowl of identities and histories that make up Mozambique. I am burning with curiosities myself! What is it like to be a cattle farmer here? What is it like to run a resort or tourism based business? How do foreigners make a living here? How do they impact local Mozambicans? Are they contributing to Mozambique’s development? Why did they come to Mozambique? When? Where are their families? The white ex-pat community is small and incestuous like any clan. But it is fascinating.

Yet, largely because of their views and misconceptions of local Mozambicans, I feel somewhat confused, frustrated, and guilty about my friendships with them too!

I tried explaining my mixed feelings to my parents like this: Here I am, a white American woman who is accepted in both the black Mozambican world (because of my commitment to language and Integration) and the white Mozambican world (because even though I’m “poor,” I’m white, so I’m automatically in). I have a rare ability to walk the racial “line” and pass through both worlds equally well; yet I know too that never will my friends on either side of the “line” ever meet each other in the middle (I feel I must even put “line” in quotations because race as a socially constructed phenomenon primarily implements social power structures AND moreover doesn’t allow for any nuance between extremes). This ability to “pass” in both worlds troubles me because in some ways it almost feels like a betrayal to the black Mozambicans I’m serving.  Mobility is the epitome of white privilege – and despite my desire to rid myself of all my racial baggage and extra privileges through making Integration my mantra – privilege inevitably rears its ugly head and comes rushing back in. The wealth. The mobility. My sheer ability to escape the hard days. The white chariot. The rumble of a 4x4 engine.

And it feels reaaaallyyy awkward, like a nauseating sinking feeling in my stomach coupled with the twinge of embarrassment – when I drive off happily, thinking of the hot shower and evening of conversational English awaiting me, waving to Prof. Angelica and Junior as they watch unsmilingly, waving slowly from their doorway.  

And that’s the worst part: My whiteness will always somehow separate me from the friends, neighbors, students and colleagues I have come to love here.  Ultimately, I haven’t been able to stop worrying: Is walking both worlds jeopardizing my Peace Corps experience? Is it possible for it to not?

Sophomore year at Willamette, we played this “game” in my American Ethnic Studies Intro course called the “Line game” in order to demonstrate how privilege affects our perceptions of race. My professor, Dr. Drew, took us outside one beautiful spring afternoon and lined us up on the concrete walkway on the backside of Eaton Hall. The lush green grass and the Oregon capital building lay before us, the Golden Man gleamed down at as. “Now, before we begin,” she said calmly, “here are the rules: I will ask you quite a few Yes/No questions about your life. Take one step forward to answer “yes,” and one step backwards for “no.” If you don’t want to respond or don’t know, stay where you are.” I glanced over at my bestie Heidi, and she shrugged her shoulders in her usual “let’s-just-wait-and-see” way. But we were curious now. We all began sizing each other up on the line. We all assumed that to “win” the game, you had to finish in front of everyone else. That was the point of pretty much every game, right?

Well, we were all in for a surprise.

With her series of simple “Yes or No” questions, Dr. Drew showed us just how much or how little privilege each of us had experienced in life.  “Do you parents work?” Did your parents graduate high school?” “Were you expected to go to college?” One by one, as the white students in the class took steps forward happily, our excitement turned to chagrin as we turned and looked behind us, slowly realizing the horrible reality. Each one of our non-white classmates had not only NOT moved beyond the starting line, but rather had dropped dramatically further and further behind. Moreover, even us white females couldn’t keep up with the “progress” our white male colleagues. By the end, the gap between everyone had widened so greatly that Dr. Drew had to raise her voice for all of us to hear her questions.

It was perhaps my first REAL understanding of privilege and how racism, classism, and sexism work to systematically disenfranchise and hurt EVERYONE. The class of “–isms” are part of a self-perpetuating machine that divides and conquers, pitting good people against each other. From that point on, I began looking at the world through lenses conscious to the forces of privilege and power that shape our status quos and our constructed ideas of “common sense.”

So, where does this consciousness fit in a Mozambican context? How does it fit into my Peace Corps service? Honestly, I’m frankly hoping to offset my privilege with my sheer dedication to serving growth and capacity building initiatives within my community. Peace Corps is about exchanging skills and knowledge to help someone else help themselves. And the process goes both ways.

And so, this last week when Prof. Gloria told me that I’m “a mulungo, but not an estrangiero [because]… Estrangeiros are peoples that have colonized, mulungos are just whiteys in general,” what she was insinuating is that although I’m white, I’m not as disenfranchising as “other whites.” My Americanness and my work here lends me some forgiveness I suppose, whereas if I was white South African, Afrikaaner, Zimbabwean, or Portuguese my integration would have to reckon with a long history of conflict, oppression, and exploitation here. Moreover, my attempt to achieve integration makes me fundamentally different than the “estrangeiros” who live and work in Mozambique and have not only self-segregated themselves but bring the racial paradigms of their home countries to Mozambique. Interestingly, many of my South African friends have fled to Mozambique because the “reverse racism” of South Africa – where now whites are experiencing economic discrimination in attempt to even the playing field – has not yet taken hold in Mozambique. Indeed, southern Mozambique is called the “terra dela boa gente” – “Land of the Good People” – because of the degree of compliance locals had to the Portuguese occupation.

This brings me to back to the main problem I’ve been wrestling with the last few weeks about how my mulungo privilege is impacting my effectiveness as a Peace Corps volunteer. Giving some of my time every month to hanging out and living the lives of my ex-pat friends feels at first somewhat wrong-minded and in contradiction to Peace Corps service. Yet, I cannot help but feel that there’s just as much importance in understanding the world of estrangeiros in Mozambique. Whether we like it or not, in our globalized world they also have a part to play in development work in Mozambique. And it has the potential to work out in a fair manner that can actually break the cycle of poverty that is crippling the majority of Mozambicans. For example, when Christine and Cristo started their farm in Muabsa five months ago, they employed 200+ local villagers, gave them technical training, give them sick days and health care, and pay them above minimum wage. Moreover, they don’t hire outside labor, only people in Muabsa. Thus, they essentially are jumpstarting a local economy.  They also built the village a school, and numerous community water tanks that keep the women and children from having to walk hours each way to the nearest well. Christine and Cristo are actually doing really important, effective, direct development work! It just has a different face to it than the one typically lent by international NGOs, government organizations, and other aid work.  And frankly, I kind of prefer the freedom from the red-tape that plagues any bureaucratic operation.

I believe skepticism is good. It keeps us evaluating and re-evaluating ourselves as anti-racist, social-justice oriented development workers. But it’s also important to be pragmatic and creative in looking at the problems of poverty and privilege and how the two are interconnected. Yes, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I am walking the colorlines in Mozambique. But, it is indeed a blurrier line than before.

Bringing Bras & Title IX to Mapinhane

I love how often the most mundane moments lend us the most astute insights.

Archimedes discovered displacement while taking a bath.  Einstein proved relativity while riding the trolley home from a dead-end job.  As for me, my recent moment of greater understanding, while admittedly more modest than the ideas of renown scientists, came when I was standing on the edge of the basketball court with my hands on my hips, pleading with my girls to at least break into a jog as they shuffled, grumbling, through their warm-up exercises. 

“Girls, why do you play basketball if you don’t even want to run?” I exasperatedly cajoled the group of teenage girls who stopped trudging around the court to size me up skeptically. The answer, of course, should have been obvious. With only a short pause and an exchange of sidelong glances, I was met with a resounding, screeching choral retort of “But Teaachaa Karinaaaaaa, we don’t liiiiike to ruuuuunnnnn!”

It’s a moment that most coaches face, yet for some odd reason rarely throw in the towel. If they did, coaches would have the highest turnover rate of all professions. Instead, like most of them I opted instead for a shaking of the head and a new game plan.

I suppose their answer shouldn’t have surprised me. It was a deja-vu flashback to the days that my Pops coached my elementary/middle-school recreational soccer team. We girls came in all shapes and sizes at that awkward stage of life. There was only one thing overall that united our team of misfits, nerds, misunderstood rebels, Goths, bible schoolers, and goodie two-shoes alike – a hatred of running laps. And my dad knew it. He also knew he held barely a thread of control on us rowdy and opinionated drama queens. So of course, laps quickly became a method used to keep us in line. Got to practice late? Run a lap. Forgot your ball? Run a lap. Brought the wrong uniform to the weekend game? Run until you were summoned back in, like a secret agent coming in from the cold. And we all ran. A lot. (Especially the coach’s daughter *cough cough*) Anyways. Ironically, although probably not surprisingly to my dad, it made us a better team. We even won our local championship that year and dominated the league for the next two. We consequentially, and rather appropriately, dubbed ourselves “The Force.”

And so, as I was taking in the obstinacy of the Mapinhane Girls Basketball team, I couldn't help wonder to myself what I was going to do to quench this most recent generation of lap-haters.  What was the root of their dissent?

Then, as I jumped in and rotated through their lines, running with them to tow the pace, I caught bouncing movement out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly, I grasped an inkling of the problem. My players were playing in bikini tops or had nothing at all under their jerseys to lock ‘n load their lady twins up top. Nadaaaa. “OUCHHH!” my mind hissed to itself, and I involuntarily grabbed my own breasts (which were thankfully secured by the tightest piece of mega-elastic south of the equator).  I knew instantly what needed to be done. But how?

As we began our stretches, I my mind spun furiously. How was I going to introduce the idea of sports bras to them? It is not the cultural norm in Mozambique to wear bras at all, let alone sports bras. But then, you don’t see many female athletes either! I didn’t want to be ethno-centric or impose Western values on them by expecting them to adopt the use of sports bras, but I wasn’t about to deny them the opportunity if they wanted it, especially if it was a factor contributing to their lack of hustle on the court.

So I posed the question to the group. It wasn’t without a significant amount of awkwardness.  “Er, umm, meninas…” I started haltingly, my mind scrambling to find words in Portuguese that I’d never had to know or use before.  “Voces tem problemas com suas… suas…” I then gestured with my hands to my chest and gave the lady twins up-top a squeeze. “SEIOS!!!!” they squealed gleefully in unison, incredulent that their mulungo Coach was bringing up the topic at all. Yes, breasts. Seios. Exactly. Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. “Tem… tem coisas para apoiar durante a practica?” (Do you have something to support them during practice?) I asked, flashing them my black UnderArmour racer-back bra strap from under my neon orange tee. The girls all cooed admiringly. “Naoooo, mas nos queremos!!” (Nooo, but we want that!) “Pensa que voce irao usar se eu posso encontrar?” (You think you’ll use them if I can find them?) “SIIII TEACHER SIIIIIII!!!!”  Ta bom. It was settled unanimously. The girls were incredibly excited. And the more I thought about it, the more I became excited about the opportunities that a small conversation about sports bras would give us to begin discussing as a whole the challenges of female athleticism in Mozambique.  Not only would sports bras remove their discomfort and increase their ability to hustle down the court without holding on to their own meninas (at at least rid them of an excuse), but as I thought about it more, it provided a  perfect venue for discussing positive body image and women’s rights overall.

Then, I wondered. How was I going to obtain enough bras for all eleven girls? My local searches for bras turned up nothing. Why? Let me explain quickly the general Mozambican culture regarding bras and breasts.

Simply put breasts are utilitarian and bras are luxury goods. This reality produces an interesting phenomenon here in Mapinhane – a woman who has the money to buy a bra will often purposefully leave it partially exposed out of her shirt as a fashion statement and as a way of expressing her class. And because breasts are viewed as solely utilitarian entities here in Mozambique, they are not sexualized in the way that they are in the West. Because of this, you’ll see women breastfeeding next to men on chapas or while haggling at the market or walking down the street. I’ve even seen women publicly taunt their children with their breasts, offering a free meal but then pull their nipples away at the last second and toss their heads back laughing as their kids start screaming tantrums. I’ve seen other women simply get busy with another task and forget to tuck their breast back into their shirts afterwards! The lack of reverence for the lady twins is a bit comic actually! Thus, unlike in the States where a mother will go out and buy her daughter a bra at the first sign of puberty in order to strap “the girls” down for gym class, girls grow up here completely bra free because they simply can’t afford it and their mothers and grandmothers have gone without for their whole lives.

Given this context, it’s no wonder that I struggled to find sports bras in the entire Inhambane province. And while I suspected sports bras were available in the capital city Maputo, I also expected them to be outrageously expensive. And so, I got momentarily stuck.

Then, I had a second breakthrough.  Rather unsurprisingly it came during a Sunday evening phone call with my mom.  

After giving her the full spiel and explaining to my mom the bra-blockade I’d encountered, we began to brainstorm. “Argh, what I would give for a bag of bras from Target,” I whined into the line, punching my mosquito net above me half-heartedly. “Well, shoot, that’s easy then honey! Just run a little fundraiser or campaign at home!” At home. Suddenly, we were rapid firing names and local groups we’re connected to that could be interested in supporting such a venture. “Kitsap Sports!” “YMCA” “Kitsap Rowing” “LOCR!”  “WU Crew!” “LISA B. AND THE KITSAP TRI BABES!!!”

Boom. There. We had it. My mom and I had both trained and competed with Lisa and the Tri-babes during my high school years. We loved the all-women’s group and what it represented and promoted in our community – healthy living, camaraderie, and girl-power. “Ok,” my mom said, “you send Lisa an email and heck! I’ll even try to call Title Nine Sports Co…or maybe Nike? They’d love this type of PR. Maybe they’ll send you something too!” “Whoaaaa, mom!” I said laughing yet fully understanding where her enthusiasm bubbled up from. That same type of excitement regularly bubbles unfiltered and unrestrained out of me, too.  “Let’s just wait to hear from Lisa first.” Besides, I really loved the idea of our team of atletas in Washington helping to sponsor my new team of atletas halfway across the world in Mozambique. It felt auspicious and of course, fulfills the second and third goals of Peace Corps: to improve understanding of Americans on the part of Mozambicans, and to improve the understanding of Mozambicans on the part of Americans.  Mom and I exchanged a few “I love you”s then we hung up and I got to work.

I’ve known Lisa B. since the summer I turned 15, when I trained for and competed in my very first triathlon. The Kitsap Tri-babes was (and remains!) a group of aspiring women who meet two to three times a week to train for triathlons together.  Lisa is an accomplished Ironwoman herself whose effervescence and compassion quickly (and somewhat incredibly) warms anyone up to the idea that it’s actually FUN to put yourself through the type of full-body and mind battles that are triathlons. Her can-do, encouraging “pink-tri-turtle-power-never-give-up!” mantra fed my own dedication to girl-power and transformed her quickly into an amazing role-model. And knowing Lisa, I knew she'd be the type to inspire action through her sheer enthusiasm. Thus, when I sent off a message explaining my interest in organizing and running a local sports-bra drive with the Kitsap Tri-babes to sponsor the Mapinhane Girls Basketball team, I was thrilled yet somewhat unsurprised when in response I received a very typical Lisa-type of message that oscillated between all-caps “AWESOME”s and a multitude of scattered exclamation points (eg.!!!!!!!). With Lisa's contagious energy, it took only a few exchanges regarding logistics, and Lisa and the Tri-babes were on board!

So, just as the Kitsap Tri-babes sweated and trained for their big race day this August, the Mapinhane girls basketball team hit the court for practice. When the Tri-babes were gutting through their Saturday BRICK workouts, I used scrimmage timeouts to pass around a team photo of the Tri-babes on my phone for my girls to see their sport-sisters in action half a world away.  Least to say, it became a wonderful exchange not only of athleticism, but also of solidarity through sports(wo)manship. Meanwhile, day by day, week by week, Lisa emailed me updates about the bra-drive on the home-front, and in Mapinhane I took the girls’ measurements, which turned into a morning of the girls giggling and teasing each other about how “big” or “small” they were. Finally, with the close of the Tri-babe training season, the bras were packaged up and sent! All I had to do was wait and cross my fingers that the box o’ bras arrived safely in the Vilankulos post office.

On one of my Tuesdays off from work, I decided to once again go to Vilankulos and eagerly check the post-office one more time… 

AND THERE IT WAS!! A GIGANTIC 20LB BOX OF BRAS. THEY’D MADE IT!! 

All-in-all, nearly 100 bras were raised and over $150 donated to ship the bras. Moreover, the bras successfully traveled over 12,000 miles from Seabeck, WA to Mapinhane, Mozambique. That's literally halfway across the world (no really, I ran some numbers/GoogleEarth'ed it!). 

After bantering with the customs guy at the postoffice about what the bras were for, I discarded the box for a capulana, wrapped up the bras inside, tied a knot at the top and swung them ontop of my head Mozambican style as I left the office.Of course, I had to carry the mega-bag of bras through the entire town of Vilankulos on my shopping errands... Not only did I earn some enthusiastic "Amerika, hoye!!" cheers but I also sparked an unprescendented level of fofoca (gossip). My sex appeal apparently skyrocketed (because it's not everyday you see a white girl carrying stuff on her head!). In addition to the marriage proposals, five different Mozambican mothers stopped me to set me up with their sons. It was hilarious!'

Finally, Saturday practice rolled around and I swung the bag of bras onto my bike and pedaled over to the court. Soon the girls arrived, and we sat down at the half-line circle and I led a discussion about what these bras meant, where they came from, who sent them, and of course, about how sports and playing basketball affects their life in Mozambique. Then, came the moment we'd all been patiently waiting for... unwrapping the bag and getting fitted with the newly arrived bras!! After dividing them into groups, I turned them lose. Chao commenced. All eleven of them dove into the bags, started stripping off their shirts right int the middle of the court and started trying them on. I then modeled the "bounce" test and soon all eleven girls were shrieking gleefully, hopping, jumping, skipping around the court to "test" out their new support system. I honestly couldn't stop grinning!!!

"Mulheres sao a fundacao" - Women are the foundation

The "before" photo. We discussed the role of sport in our lives, the perception of girls who play sports in Mozambique, and why they like playing basketball. Left to right: Chupina, Joana, Eliza, Laura, Cristina, Dulce, Isabel, Ramadane, Nelca, Edna, Madalena. 

Excitement and mayhem! I divided up the bras by size, then assigned the girls to pick out two bras from the bags according to their fittings. Screaming and giggling commenced!

The "after" photo: And a big,"THAAAAANK YOU KITSAP TRI-BABES!!"

Time to practice! Madalena taking the ball down the court. She's our captain :)

Dulce and Ramadana.

Isabel taking the shot! She needs to learn how to pass more, but she's a dynamic, agressive little player! A soon-to-be powerhouse! 

Now to bring it back around to what this all means. Our eureka moment.

Overwhelmingly, girls and women face a huge amount of social advancement obstacles and discrimination here in Mozambique. They bear the burden of housework, of children, of caring for family members, and of sacrificing their needs and desires for the benefit of men. Their subservience to men is best seen through literacy rates (61%), life expectancy rates, poverty, underage marriage, school enrollment ratios and dropout rates, lack of accessible/affordable to health care, financial dependence, and opportunity for higher education and career training. It's a reality of incredible, imposing odds that make standouts like Mozambican Olympic track and field champion Maria Lourdes Mutola dedicate their post-professional athletic careers to youth, especially female empowerment. The Maria Mutola Foundation works to provide youth the services and resources needed to further Mozambique's development through education, sport, and entrepreneurial opportunities. In other words, sports offer an excellent platform to reach out to at-risk youth and engage and encourage the development of important life-skills that could transform into real empowerment for girls and women as a whole.

And so, as we take this sweeping panoramic view of the situation of women in Mozambique, and zoom into the microcosm of Mapinhane, we find a group of girls who wanted to play basketball but had no one to coach them, who wanted to get active but lacked the resources. Now we have balls. We have bras. And we have a dedicated group of  women both here in Mapinhane and far across the world in Kitsap cheering them on. It's perhaps a small act, a mere blip on the radar of development work here in Mozambique. But, as Margaret Mead best surmises, "Never underestimate the the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, its the only thing that ever has."

And so, to sum it all up, I'd like to extend a HUGE heartfelt THANK YOU to Lisa B. and the Kitsap Tri-babes!!! Your compassion, sportsmanship, camaraderie, and overall sponsorship of the Mapinhane Girls Basketball team enriches the girls' athletic experience and provides a new context of making sport and healthy living a new and accessible reality. The work and mentorship continues here, but this form of people-to-people activism gives us a foundation to grow from! WE COULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS WITH OUT YOU!!

But don't let me speak for them! Check out the video below! :)

**Note: If you're a Kitsap Tri-Babe, I'd love to hear how you felt about the sports bra drive, what you felt compelled by, and what you thought about sharing the love of good health and an active lifestyle with these young Mozambican women. Please feel free to comment below or send me a message!! I'd like to compile your experiences as well!!