The more important you are in this part of the world, the longer you can make people wait for you. We got another taste of this when our county chief administrator came to visit. All public employees were summoned to our local administrative post for an 8 o'clock meeting Thursday morning. Teachers had to leave students in charge of classes as we waited under the warm sun for things to get started. It seemed as if things were right on schedule when after only one hour of waiting we saw the chief and a carload of dignitaries drive up, but they just drove on, apparently to meet with another community first. Even though this not unusual here, our colleagues felt disrespected and upset. We had 3 more hours of waiting to talk about it. Since we had no information and the chief could show up at any moment, we couldn't go back to our school to teach. Luckily people here are pretty good at waiting, any type of group activity usual involves at least one hour of
waiting. It is frustrating for people like us who grew up in cultures that value productivity and efficiency, but people here made the best of the situation, chatting with the other public employees and making jokes about the African culture of wasting time. During this busy time of the school year we found it difficult not to think of all the tasks we had waiting to be done. Janet finally gave up at around 11 o'clock. Luc stayed for the actual meeting, which only lasted for about an hour. It consisted mainly of the administrator listening to people presenting complaints, no one mentioned our wasted morning. By the time the teachers got back to school, the entire morning session had been lost, and when word of this got around about half the afternoon students stayed home as well. It is easy to get frustrated with time management here, but dealing with it is part of Peace Corps. There is also a beauty to the relaxed approach to life; we don't always
appreciate it here, but we will probably miss it once we're back to the 'time is money culture' of America.
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Hi. Im a Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia. Im about to finish my 2 years and was planning on traveling through Zambia and Malawi to get to Mozambique; then well travel north to Dar Es Salam. I will be traveling with 3 other volunteers and were looking for information on Mozambique.
ReplyDeleteIf you can help me out send me an email at: natebloss@gmail.com. I would be happy to hear from you; we havnt been able to find much useful information on the internet.
Questions we have:
1. Where should we go? Is there anything in the north to see. Any nice beaches up there? We would prefer to cross Lake Malawi and hang out in the north before heading to Tanzania. But if all the nice beaches are in the South we'll want to travel in that direction.
2. How much are Visa costs, and whats the best way to get one.
3. Ideally we want to take a train from Mozambique to Dar Es Salam. Are there any trains? If not, can we hitch hike (free hike?). We free hike everywhere in Namibia and its safe...is it safe in Mozambique? If neither of these are options how are the buses?
4. Do you know any cheap backpackers on archipelago de pacaruto?
5. How would we get to archipelago de pacaruto?
6. How are prices on things?
7. Anything else we should know?
Sorry for all the questions; just answer what you have time to.
Thanks,
Nate