Back to the Start: Namaacha, one year later

“Paragem! Paragemmm!"I bubbled to the coborador excitedly. Minutes before, we had rolled past the bright blue “Cascadas” sign and crested the final hill into town. And now, after paying the driver, I was standing in front of the Mercado central where I was going to pick up some renown Namaacha pão – bread so wholesome and fluffy, it rivaled pao throughout the entire country. “Slap some bright yellow Rama on that and you’ve got yourself a lunche!”I thought happily to myself, giddily quasi-skipping into the bakery. Bread and fake popcorn-like butter. The lunche of champions. I then smiled wryly at myself, thinking of all the other wonders that have graced such warm buns. The bright pink Palony balone mystery meat that my Mae used to deep fry in oil for me every morning and slap between the doughy goodness. The angry purple jam. The blessed Gato Preto peanut butter that held me through fish head soup dinners. It made PST – or Pre-Service Training – feel like years ago instead of a simple 14 months. With the warm round loafs in a plastic bag and an easy grin, I sauntered out of the market and began the hike to Fronteira – the barrio on the other side of town where I would be staying at the PC guesthouse with my buddy and fellow 19er Matt.

It was an amazingly routine start to my week revisiting Namaacha – in some ways it was as if I’d never left. The fondness I found myself feeling while walking past certain homes and places around town was comparable to the love one has for their hometowns. Except this was my Mozambican hometown – where I came into my Mozambican self. Yet contradictingly, I was stunned by just how different it seemed in other ways. Similar to revisiting your elementary school as an adult – where the desks, chairs, and tetherball poles that had once seemed soooooo big before become magically dwarfed – I looked at Namaacha from a completely different perspective than when I arrived. For example, I remember not being particularly impressed by Namaacha. Yes, it was beautiful but it seemed so poor and undeveloped. My host-family’s cement block home with electricity and a private water pump once seemed decrepit and dirty – now its borderline palacial. And the Mercado that was so limited in its selection? Abundant with flavorful options and opportunity. Really, that first walk left me somewhat in awe, and I caught myself feeling that numerous times during my week in Namaacha.  Beautiful old homes, rich flowery gardens, decent roads, SIDEWALKS, and the greenest, lushest land I’ve ever seen.  Namaacha nearly transformed into a Mozambican nirvana. Funny how I didn’t know to appreciate it while I was there. Yet, how could I have known without enough time to learn to look in from the other side of the glass?

Leading PST instead of being in it was as refreshing a change as you can imagine. Matt and I prepped and facilitated nearly all of the CORE, TECH, and HUB sessions … which we really didn’t realize we’d signed up for but were happy with the responsibility anyways. And Matt and I made a good team!  I’ll admit I didn’t know Matt very well during our PST, and we got sent to opposite ends of the country for service, but I really enjoyed his company working in Namaacha. He is just such a GOOD human being. Fun, insightful, introspective, honest, complimentary.  We had some great convos and reflections about our own service, and how we’ve responded to the challenges of Peace Corps. Those convos helped balanced the stress of presenting 4-6+ hours of information straight. Experience offers perspective. I’d be reminded of that time and time again, especially with my interactions with the Moz 21ers. The Moz 21ers are cool, but very young it seems… which is funny because I’m actually the same age as them. “But,” I kept reminding myself, “They JUST got here! They’re in the PST bubble. They’ll learn ten times more once they get to site. They’ll grow up because they’ll have too. Like I did.” I remember that’s partly what the allure of Peace Corps was at the beginning – a fascination with the person I could become through the experiences of Peace Corps. And its funny, thinking back to the shenanigans of my PST just a year ago, I’m conflicted between wanting to bust out some fist-pumps and cringing in embarassment.  Such is the life of a PCT – member of an incestuous clan in which the main stress reliever is social drinking and mooching internet from the one fancy-ish hotel in town. Sooo yeahhhh. Not one to judge. We’ve all been there. Call it growing pains.

In any case, I did get to tear away from the group for my morning runs. Gah, it was soooo nice running in the RAIN!!! I loved it! My eyelashes filling up with raindrops, my shoes squishing with each step, the MATOPPEEEE (yep, that shit still stains everythinggg haha)!! I got to do all my favorite routes, like the cemetery loop, the border run, and the tres fronteiras (three borders) run/mountain climb. Sad to say, hills kill me now… they used to be my forte, you know, with these thunder thighs and all, but after a year of running on the N-1 pancake… dun dun duunnnnn. Anyways.

My favorite run to the Tres Fronteiras, or Three Borders (Mozambique, South Africa, and Swaziland) - Ever wanted to be in three countries at once? Come with me on my next run/hike! :)

 

Perhaps the highlight of returning to Namaacha was visiting my host family. I was a little nervous at first and let the craziness of PST work push my impending visit to the back of my mind. I hadn’t even told my host-family that I was going to be in town. My excuse was I wanted to surprise them… which was mostly true. But really, I was just nervous. When I left Namaacha last December, it was an awkward goodbye. I had begun having some small fights with my Mae over some of her little rules. I was fed up with being treated like a 14 year old with curfew. Mae and Pai were fed up having their four-person family live out of one bedroom. My departure, least to say, was overdue. That compounded by the guilt spiral of not keeping in frequent communication after I left was making me start to worry about how much I’d be welcome back. But, I told myself, I was just being dramatic. I’d be a coward to leave Namaacha and not have tried being a good host-daughter.

And so, the day before I was leaving to go back to Namaacha, I hitched a ride from the Peace Corps office to the market, bought some ananas (pinapple), stocked my backpack with goodies, dangled a squawking chicken from each hand, and strode up to the house. It was still the same simple cement exterior, with the same beautiful view overlooking the rolling hills. As I strode up I caught eyes with a very surprised Marina, still beautiful as ever, who quickly called for Mae and Elias. Pretty soon everyone was outside the house hugging and laughing. At some point during the enthusiastic welcome party, someone whisked away the chickens, which freed up my arms for some big bear hugs for Elias and primo Toni. Everyone was excited and all smiles. But little did I know, Mae had a surprise for me too! After I left Namaacha for Mapinhane, Mae became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy September 11, 2013!! Mae calls him affectionately her little “America baby” in honor of September 11.  They won’t officially name him for at least another year… babies here in Mozambique have to survive long enough to earn a name… but I was absolutely blown away by how beautiful he was!! I felt so proud, haha J

Mae's new addition to the family, her "America baby" born on September 11, 2013

In any case, we proceeded to have a spontaneous festa pequena with beer and of course all the relatives poured in to say hello to their American daughter. It was awesome. And after the first hour it felt like I blended right in with everyone else. Like I hadn’t even left. Except for one main thing.

Perhaps the best part of the visit was being able to show Mae just how much I’d learned in the past year. For the first time really, I could communicate easily in Portuguese, understand the conversation, laugh along with them during their fav telenovelas. I was 110% engaged. To prepare for our small celebration, Mae even put me in charge of preparing and cooking the chickens and cooking the xima, both of which exceeded expectation. I was “ïn.”  Finally. And because of this I realized to what degree I admire my host mom. I always understood that she ran the house and had her way of doing things, but seeing and understanding how she coaxed, cajoled, teased, and demanded things from Pai and the numerous uncles and cousins (and still got her way despite being the “woman”), really impressed me. Mae is smart, educated, professional, working teacher, mother who somehow cares for everyone. She is respected tremendously by everyone in the family. She knows how to balance fun with her role of being the boss. And, happily, my new and improved ability to communicate lent me some respect and admiration from Mae… and being one of my fairest and most constructive critics, her approval felt DAMN GOOD.



Marina, me, Mae, and Elias! My amaaaazing host family in Namaacha! It was a wonderful visit and I was excited to show them just how much I've grown in the past year!

 

I also got to chat with Elias, my host brother. He’s in seventh grade now! I told them that if they studied hard maybe I’d come back to Namaacha to be their teacher next year haha. This incited a fit of excited giggles that lit me up. Elias is a special special boy. I have yet to meet a little boy more caring, kind, compassionate, good-humored, and loving (especially to his new little brother!!). There is never a hint of jealousy or meanness in him. I think if anyone ever stripped Elias’s sheer goodness away from him, I’d come after them with a vengeance and a vendetta.  I hope beyond hope that he has the opportunity to grow into a wonderful, sweet young man that preserves that goodness. Humanity could certainly use it.

And Marina!! What a beautiful young woman she is already! Unfortunately I didn’t get to chat with her a lot because she had a church function… but she did walk me home partway so we could catch-up. Apparently, she LOVES chemistry and wants to go to school in Maputo to become a teacher!! I couldn’t be more thrilled! She’s also getting baptized this weekend. While I’m not religious, I love seeing a young girl with a big heart and convictions. Maybe one day I can help pay for both Marina and Elias to go to college or start a business or something… whatever their dreams may be. I just hope I’ll get to be there for them after Peace Corps. When Marina and I reached the turnaround point for her to return home, she started crying and it took three sets of hugs and goodbyes before we finally split. It felt really good to be missed and to be seen as a role-model for her. I’m so so glad that I didn’t let my reservations get the best of me. My one afternoon with my host family was incredibly transformative and rewarding. It feels good to finally belong and it erased whatever reservations I’d had.

And so, after Friday’s Halloween party, Matt and I packed up and left our little Peace Corps home to go back to our normal lives. I’m so glad I got to meet and connect with the new volunteers. They will put new energy into our ranks… we could use it, for sure. 

Two 21ers, Maria and Victor came back to Mapinhane with me for site visits. Of course, I first took them to Vilankulos/Chibuene where I introduced them to Pat and Mandy and the wonders of a beach town. Then I brought them back to Maps for a good “bush” tour. While it was testing week and they thus couldn’t sit in on classes, Maria and Victor had a blast getting to know my colleagues, walking around our little village, talking with the nuns, and even tutoring some of the students at the mission. I think they really enjoyed their break from Namaacha and I’m excited that I’ll get to share my amazing village with Maria and Sarah next year as new sitemates!!! So thrilled to finally have a friend in town, I was getting a bit lonely up here. Couple that with Amy coming down to Inhassoro… I’m thrilled!!

Perspective is earned through hard experience. It’s fair to say that my newfound understanding and connections is the product of a year+ of hardddd work. And I’m proud to see the progress I’ve made. Thank you Namaacha, for being my mirror with which I can reflect on my time here in Mozambique.

 

Tinderbox: when "if" becomes "when"

Another light thunderstorm is rolling through Mapinhane today. Not much rain with this one, but the ugly bruised black cloud and grumbly thunder sure talk the talk. It never ceases to amaze me just how deep the BOOM and CRAAAACKLE of thunder can be – like the direct hit of a two-ton bomb, or the tantrums of gods/goddesses throwing shit across the sky in a very public domestic dispute. A pot here.  A vase there. Oops, there goes the lamp by the loveseat. Our mortal eyes can follow the violence flicking across the sky. Our skin can feel the electricity. And the heavy accompanying silence.

The storm has offered a nice reprieve however – from the incredible heat that’s already set in, and from the misery of being sick with few amenities.  I haven’t been sick in awhile but I woke up this morning to run and felt all shaky and weak. I brushed it off in typical denial, ran anyways, and not even an hour later found myself curled up on the cool cement floor in the fetal position, shivering and angry with myself. Thankfully I passed out and slept most of the day. But not even my dreams were comforting.

I just finished reading the Hunger Games series last night. It’s a phenomenal series. Plus, I adore the protagonist Katniss – her strength, resiliency, and sincerity in the face of ever unfavorable odds is makes her a fiercely lovable fighter and heroine. Yet, all the fighting, gore, violence, struggle, sacrifice, death, and heartbreaking loss clung to my conscience. Even without reading the Hunger Games, the anti-malarial “black box” meds I’m on (Larium is easily the hardest drug I’ve ever used) bring intermittent waves of violent dreams anyways, and often transform otherwise mild nightmares into full-blown graphic death/murder scenes. On Larium, I’ve dreamt about people getting slashed apart, executed, thrown off balconies, always large pools of blood…  I’ve been hesitant to write about any of this in order to avoid concern or alarming anyone (I’m well monitored don’t worry, we have an excellent med unit here in PC). And while I’m obviously horrified, I’m secretly, sickly fascinated with this drug-induced revealing of my subconscious. Is this a hint of the darkness that we all have in us? That’s partly what the Hunger Games series challenges afterall – that our ability to tolerate or even enact cruelty exceptionalises no one.  After these awful dreams, I always wake up in my own pools of sweat and have to shake myself back into reality. The worst nightmares of course are the ones that substitute loved ones from my own life. Those dreams take a little longer to shake off. And so, as I tossed and turned on the floor in the midst of fever/Larium, Katniss’s fictional enemies quickly morphed into my own.

In the midst of all the civil unrest and RENAMO guerilla attacks against innocent people here in Mozambique, I dreamed that RENAMO was attacking Mapinhane and shooting my Mozambican friends, mowing them down from the back as they ran towards me. I was screaming and screaming and SCREAMING bloody murder, writhing, fighting someone’s iron grip around my waist, demanding that they let me go so I could run to them, protect them, shield them with my body, do SOMETHING. Instead, like a slow motion scene in a spy movie, I was knocked off my feet, and my eye caught the Peace Corps logo on the side of the van right before I was chucked into it and had the doors locked after me. We were driving away. Running away. Leaving everyone to die. I woke up bawling. It was a horrible, unrecoverable morning.

The tragic thing is, realistically, that’s more or less what would happen if war breaks out in Mozambique again. I, a privileged American get whisked out of danger while the people who’ve cared for me are left to fend/fight for themselves. If this nightmare were ever to be realized (perhaps not in the Hollywood-esque style of my nightmare, but more in the day-to-day slow way that dominos fall, aka PC decides to close its Mozambique program and we’re evac´d before there’s any danger), I’m positively sure it would break my heart.

Least to say, the civil unrest here in Mozambique has been on everyone’s minds the last few months or so, but especially the last two weeks with the waves of new civilian attacks.  RENAMO, in response to a supposed assassination attempt against their leader Dhakalama, has negated and withdrawn from the 1992 Peace Treaty that ended the last civil war. Moreover, RENAMO is rejecting talk offers from President Guebueza and FRELIMO that came too little and waaaay too late, and subsequently is now demanding that all elections are terminated before any negotiations can go forward. And, if the elections are not terminated, RENAMO will go to whatever length necessary to terminate them forcibly. Guebueza, arrogantly feeling that he has the stronger hand with the municipal elections underway and the presidential elections next November, is in no way compromising his position. And so, RENAMO is now using the opportunity of political fallout to justify clashes with police and military bases as well as wage a minor bush-league campaign of terror throughout Sofala province, particularly in Gorongosa National Park (where their bush military headquarters is located) and a 100km stretch of the National Highway (N-1) between the Rio Save and Muxungue.  Most notably, RENAMO guerillas have been opening fire on private vehicles, 16-wheelers, public buses, and chapas alike, killing dozens of innocent people. Last week, guerillas escalated their siege of the N-1 by literally digging a large trench across the highway, entrapping the armed convoy and opening fire. Such an attack mirrored strategies used in the last civil war, as did last weeks attack and ransacking of a community Heath Center in Nhamazi, Nganda Gorongosa. Meanwhile, FRELIMO’s bullying of any opposition political party was made especially clear when in Beira leading up to the elections, FRELIMO police broke up a peaceful political rally with gun shots, tear gas, and set cars on fire. Mozambique’s political process is clearly anything but fair and democratic.

Perhaps the saddest consequence of these attacks is how they are shaking up the national Mozambican psyche.  Within one week of this new slew of attacks, most Mozambicans I talked to shifted from saying “If there’s a war…”to “When the war reaches us…”

This past week when my colleagues and I were correcting the tenth grade national exams, Prof. Elisio and Prof. Juliao always had their radios on, listening through the static for information on the most recent attacks. The mood has understandably tended to be a bit glum.

Yet, an interesting thing has occurred too in the face of this instability and bad news – the use of humor to talk about things that are actually really scary to imagine. After many hours of the radio blaring bad news and the stacks of ungraded exams diminishing only slightly, Osvaldo stood up and declared proudly, “Well, that’s it. I have no choice but to become the next President and resolve all our problems.” We all laughed, rolling our eyes, asking him to explain his vision for Mozambique. He started by guaranteeing that each and every teacher would receive a pencil sharpener with their service and no longer would any teacher need to hassle the Ped. Director again! We were all clutching our sides, laughing our asses off at his mild and subtle satire of the ever-bribing-African-politician motif. Over the next few days, Osvaldo kept adding issues and ideas to his campaign platform, including the Mozambican ownership of Mozambican resources (*cough* CHINA *cough*) and a redistribution of wealth (*cough* CORRUPT MAPUTO MINISTERS *cough*) that seemed to echo a bit of Mozambique’s communist history, not to mention the freedom from hunger and the right to work.  Osvaldo then dubbed me his “branca Condoleeza Rice” and Prof. Elodio his Vice President, then sprinkled in a few token “God Bless America”s and “God Bless Mozambique”s in broken English to make sure he was reaching his entire audience. And so, in spite of the tensions and fears (for example, Prof. Bonde’s whole family is in Beira, trapped in Sofala and he can’t return to them for the holidays out of fear of attacks), we all had big grins lighting our faces for the rest of the day.

Election season is a tinderbox anywhere you go. But here in Mozambique, it’s crazy… crazy enough that Peace Corps has instated a 8-day travel ban spanning the entire week of the election. Last Saturday as I was walking around Vilanculos stocking up on groceries for the week, FRELIMO posters were plastered to every inch of space – on walls, road signs, market stalls, t-shirts, cars, motorbikes… EVERYTHING. My fav encounter? I even saw two dudes riding around on their 4x4s with big-ass FRELIMO flags jacked up on a pole flying high and streaming as they revved their engines and ripped around town. That particular example of showiness (and propaganda) could have been in Politico-land, USA. But was the most different than the States (and the most disconcerting) is just how one-sided politics and representation in Mozambique is! Sure, you can talk about the oppression of political respresentation, but until you can’t turn a corner without the glaring red flag and stoic face of one man staring down at you from every perch, political monopolization is just an idea. But now, its an overwhelming reality, a reality that has existed for a while but was too difficult to envision. There simply aren’t other political parties big enough to challenge FRELIMO. RENAMO has boycotted the elections and gone military, and MDM (Movimento Democratico de Mocambique) is so new and undeveloped that it hasn’t formed a base of supporters outside Beira yet to challenge the FRELIMO monopoly. If I were a Mozambican who wanted to vote, but didn’t like the FRELIMO platform, was boycotted by RENAMO, and knew my vote would be wasted with MDM, what choice would I really have? Not much. I’d wager most Mozambicans, especially uneducated Mozambicans probably say, “FORGET IT, I’m going back to my farm in the bush. The democratic process doesn’t impact me anyways!” OR, I’d buy into the FRELIMO corruption club and try to somehow get the vote buying and social politics of small town party rallies to support my family and make ends meet… maybe even send my kids to university with party money … at the expense of actually building a democratic state of course.

 

Really, democracy can’t work unless everyone is enabled to participate. Otherwise, it’s just cyclical abuse of "have-nots" by "haves." If you're not top dog, someone else would love to be.

Overall however, although the political system is corrupt and broken in Mozambique, and a group of young angry men with machine guns are taking advantage of poor, vulnerable people, actual civil war is still decent way off in the horizon.  I forsee only one main thing catalyzing these localized skirmishes into something that ignites the entire country – a proxy war. I'm talking for example about a global political chessboard where China decides to back RENAMO for an opportunity to monopolize the natural resources. Mozambique is RICH in undeveloped natural resources just waiting to be unearthed. Would that cause the USA to get involved? South Africa? Brasil? Would we have a proxy war on our hands? Would the international community even care??

I hope beyond hope that such an idea is only one of my darkest nightmares – a nightmare that dissipates with a new day and the optimism that accompanies morning sunshine. Mozambicans want peace and sovereignty. Let’s help them keep it.