Going Backwards in Africa

The 7 kilometers between our border post and the neighboring immigration office in Malawi has the worst cars of any no-man’s land we know, and we’ve crossed a lot of borders. These moribund taxis shuttle travelers between immigration posts at an inflated rate of almost two dollars per person, and they always wait until they have six passengers to cram into their sedan before departing. Since they escape regulation by either government it’s a free for all of exploitation, the victims are the hapless travelers who have no other choice than walking, which we have done plenty of times, but you have to be willing to work up a sweat. Our town is higher elevation, so going to Malawi, cars don’t even turn the engines on, they just coast all the way down in neutral. On the way back is the real workout. On our last foray through this unfortunate little strip of neglected territory, we grudgingly played along with this travesties of public transportation, squeezing into the back seat with two other passengers, while two large Zambian ladies shared the front chair next to the driver. Like always, the driver had to recruit some muscle from the group of men perpetually loitering near the border to give the dilapidated vehicle a literal jump-start. Chug chug chug we went up the hill. I think I can, I think I can. As we approached each successive climb, the driver shifted from third to second gear, then to first. Once we started to stall out in first, we knew we were in trouble. The driver turned around and we thought we were going to coast back to Malawi. Just as we were thinking how glad we were we hadn’t paid him yet, the crafty driver switched the car into reverse and powered up the last hill going backwards. The giggling Zambian mamas in the front seat switched from Chewa to English to half-jokingly tell us that things are backwards in Africa. Although we, as development workers, hope that Africa is actually moving forwards in most aspects of life, in this case they were right. There we were, barreling down the national highway backwards, to get where we needed to go.

Visiting our Old Site Mate in Mulanje

Just last month we had two Peace Corps Malawi site mates within walking distance of our town, Jordan and Os. Since then, Jordan has closed his service and Os transferred sites. Jordan arrived in country only a day before us, but due to some shifts in the Malawian academic year he finished his primary assignment three months early. He is currently backpacking across India. With Jordan gone, Peace Corps Malawi thought Os, the only remaining volunteer in the south western region, was too isolated, so they transferred him to a small cluster of volunteers on the other side of the skinny country. So now we are without site mates, but it turned out to be a boon since Os now lives in the middle of an old English tea estate under the highest mountain in the region. Mount Mulanje, the ‘island in the sky,’ is a massive granite outcropping soaring above the surrounding plains. It’s been nominated as a World Heritage Site, so it’s waiting to get on UNESCO prestigious list. Basically green carpets of tea extend in every direction with granite cliffs and waterfalls completing the scene. The region’s contrasting brown and yellow dry season color scheme typical of this time of year made the emerald carpet that much more exquisite. We hiked to Leith’s site, Os’ environment volunteer site mate, on the side of the mountain. We worked up a sweat under the sunny blue sky, but washed it away in some crystal pools on top of one of the tropical waterfalls we had been admiring from the distance. That evening we transformed raw materials from Leith’s Peace Corps garden into a lofty meal of eggplant ravioli with red sauce and fresh herbs; it was probably actually gourmet quality, not just PC gourmet, although we can’t totally trust our palate at this point. It’s always replenishing to escape the hecticness and routines of site for a weekend, and enjoy good-times with friends.

Unexpected Holiday

October 19th is not a national holiday. We even asked specifically if we would have classes on Wednesday and our acting director assured us we would. Then Radio Mozambique announced on the 18th that the following day would be a national holiday, so that’s how things work here. Luckily the last two weeks of school after finals are a joke, so we didn’t have to cancel anything too serious planned. October 19th commemorates the day in 1986 when Samora Machel, the first president of Mozambique, died in a suspicious plane crash during the tumultuous civil conflict period. We already celebrated the revolutionary figure’s death on February 3rd, Mozambican Heroes Day, but since this is the 25th anniversary of the tragic death, the entire year has been dedicated to him and the ruling party decided to make the actual day of the anniversary a holiday, albeit at the very last minute. This break makes it four weeks in a row with a school day cancelled due to a national holiday. We have serious holiday fatigue. The day off did give us a chance to settle our ongoing soccer feud with our rivals the border guards. Our last game ended in a tie two all, so they challenged us, the teachers, to one last game. The town mayor made it out for the kick off and promised a new soccer ball to the winning team. The border guards struck first, scoring off a fierce strike and they all danced in front of our students. But they celebrated too soon as we went on to score the next three goals and put the game away. Our acting principal was especially happy since he had mocked the students who had cheered for our opponents at morning assembly after our tie on Teacher’s Day.

Teacher's Day 2011

Teacher’s Day this year was jam-packed with activities. Both of us missed the 4am cleaning of the graves of past teachers. Apparently it involved some sort of an alcoholic offering and ceremony. The actual day started late, no surprise to us at this point of our service, but only by about an hour, so that’s actually almost on time for here. Once we got a critical mass of enough teachers to make a respectable showing, we paraded through the twisting pathways that make up our town, all wearing our teachers uniforms through a slight drizzle, calling teachers and students to join as we passed their homes. We caught one of our colleagues in the latrine, so we laughed and teased him until he joined our ranks. Teachers here have lots of songs, so we sang all the way to the praça, students out in front holding the posters they made with pro-teacher slogans, all of us teachers following in a sea of white lab-coat-like outfits.

After all the formalities in the town square we migrated to the football pitch for male and female soccer matches, which we both participated in much to the amusement of our students.

Then we all headed home to get fancied up for the party. Teachers Day is a big deal in Mozambique, especially for us teachers. Several faculty meetings had gone to planning our big party and we even had an organizing committee dedicated to working out the details. One of the main discussion points had been whether to hold the party on actual teachers day, October 12, which was a Wednesday, or postpone it until Saturday. The main fear was teachers would get so drunk they wouldn’t show up the next day to proctor final exams. Apparently many Mozambican schools just cancel classes the day after Teacher’s Day, or even take the rest of the week off, but since we’re a serious school, we all pledged to fulfill our duties, but just in case we set the starting time at 3pm so things wouldn’t get too out of control. Another point of contention was the sound system. Apparently there is no party if there is no sound system, so teachers were upset and threatening to boycott when they heard loud music would be absent. After all the fighting, we did end up with music. Each teacher contributed 500 meticais (about $20 US), which entitled him or her to two plates of food, one soda, and six half-liter beers. Luc decided to invite Janet as his guest, and since he doesn’t drink, Janet was stuck with the hefty task of disposing of all the liquid. She only made it half way through, but we convinced the other teacher’s to let us take the other three home. It was a great party, we got to meet everyone’s family, danced so much, and ate chicken.


It was especially fun to see the kids playing on playground equipment, just recently installed at the venue, our only restaurant in town. Their shining faces made it clear that none of them had ever seen slides or seesaws before. In fact, we’re pretty sure some of the teachers had never seen this before either, as they were playing and grinning too!

We made it home by 10:30pm just in time to beat the first storm of the summer. It really poured, so we felt bad for the teachers that had lingered after us, and the organizing committee that was still cleaning up. The next morning, to our surprise, everyone was on hand for invigilating exams, no one skipped out after the big discussion we’d had.

Day of Peace and Reconciliation

Lucas playing soccer with the teacher team

Student pyramid at the holiday celebration

Ceremonial wreath with border guards

October 4th is a national holiday here in Mozambique celebrating the signing in 1992 of the Rome Peace Accords, which ended over a decade of civil unrest and war between FRELIMO, the ruling party, and RENAMO, the armed opposition, which followed soon after the resolution of the armed conflict with the colonial Portuguese forces in 1975. Considering how peaceful our town has been during the past two years, it’s hard to imagine that the people now coexisting here were killing each other just twenty years ago. You can still find bombed out buildings, blown up bridges, and plenty of bullet holes throughout the country, but you never see firearms other than the Kalshnikovs the police and border guards carry. Even bandidos have a hard time getting guns and mainly use knives or machetes to commit their crimes. Most of the landmines in our region have been cleared out by Project Halo, a de-mining group sponsored mainly by USA, Japan, and Britain, but there are still swathes of countryside too dangerous to visit because of all the explosives laid down by both sides during the conflict. People rarely speak of the troubled time of conflict other than mentioning how hard life was. Many Mozambicans in our area fled to Malawi, living in refuge camps during the most violent parts of the war. Students and even most teachers are too young to really remember the war, and even those who were alive don’t like to remember the horrors. One neighbor has confided with us how his first family was killed when bandits, the term used by the government for the RENAMO fighters, bazooka-ed his home. Our host family during training also told us about hiding above the ceiling on the rafters while bandits pillaged through the house. In general, people seem to leave the violence in the past, and if it hadn’t been for all the books we’ve read, we wouldn’t know much about this troubled period in Mozambique’s recent past. So, like every other holiday, we celebrated laying a wreath of flowers at the star monument in our town square. Our kids performed a hilarious theater about cholera and our teacher team, including Luc, played a soccer match against the border guards. We tied 2-2. Most of the youngsters and many of our students didn’t even know what holiday we were celebrating, or exactly which conflict the Rome Peace Accords ended, they just enjoyed a the day off and the various festivities.

Steady Trickle of Visitors

As we quickly approach the end of service, volunteers eagerly attempt to notch up travel to those last few dream destinations like Victoria Falls or Lake Malawi they’ve postponed during the past two years. Since Tete province serves as a gateway to both Malawi and Zambia, we’ve benefited from some spill over visits. Others really feel a need to visit all 11 Mozambican provinces, and often times Tete is the last one for people to scratch off the list, so that’s drawn some visits. We also have the Cahora Bassa dam, which justifies the trek for some volunteers, and one volunteer, our friend Bao, came all the way to Tete just to see us, no other side agendas. As our once seemingly endless two year tour winds down to the last couple months, people are dashing around to say their good-byes, and check off the last few items on their “must see” lists, so even living on the very edge of Peace Corps Mozambican, we’ve received a steady trickle of visitors. The latest two were our buddies Matt and Lisa heading through our site for some fresh water diving at Lake Malawi.
Living in such a peripheral site we’re always trying to catch up on Peace Corps news, so we really appreciate any tid-bits of gossip our visitors bring along. At this stage of service the juiciest stories are about how people are dealing with amorous relationships which have flourished during service, but which face a difficult transition. Lots of volunteers are just calling it quits, especially for those with Mozambican significant others, but plenty of volunteers dating other volunteers are going to see if they can keep the relationship working back in the States and several volunteers have gotten engaged. Even for those of us without relationship drama, there are plenty of other anxieties concerning reentering life back in America to talk about, or on a more pleasant note, its always fun to hear about what kinds of exciting close of service trips people are planning. Although most of us are racing to make it home in time for Christmas holidays, most volunteers are still trying to tie in a few of those exciting African destinations in countries we would already be flying through or over like South Africa, Ethiopia, or Egypt. So everyone is trying to swap Lonely Planet travel guides and get last minute tips and recommendations. Our own close of service trip will involve a few days in Cape Town and then, since the cheapest tickets we could find were on Turkish Air, a brief visit to Istanbul to break up what would otherwise be 30+ hours of airplane and airport time.

New Monies

Living in a rural area in Mozambique we’re on the periphery of the metical zone. In fact we often see Malawian Kwacha competing with our national currency in the market place and products are often priced in both currency, although the recent economic crisis across the border dampened local enthusiasm for the foreign denomination. With no local banks here, its difficult for our money to circulate with any vigor with the larger Mozambican financial system. Sometimes I think we pass the same grubby bank note back and forth with the market ladies, each time slightly dirtier and smellier. The 20s are the worst, most of them are torn or have holes with the metallic security strip hanging out or missing. Few can pass as purple, there intended color, most just look a grubby shade of brown. The large big bills like the 1000 or 500 don’t change hands too often, so they’re rarely seen in these rural parts. That’s often what comes out of the ATM in the city, so even though they’re not as gross, it’s always a challenge to find someone with enough to accept one of these monster bills worth the equivalent of about $35 or $17.50 respectively, more money than most locals make in a month. The government has an idea for upgrading their embarrassingly dirty notes, new plastic money. We’ve only seen a couple so far, one down in the city, and one in the town square where one of our teacher colleagues was trying to confiscate it from some students during a holiday celebration. Considering we are still using the old Mozambican currency from before when they chopped of three zeros over five years ago, we’re not expecting to see too many of these new plastic monies before the end of service. Still, Malawi is were they really needed to update the money. Currently their highest valued note is 500 Kwacha, about $3 US, and that value is steadily eroding in their precarious national situation. It doesn’t take much wealth at all for a Malawian to boast a healthy looking wad of cash. They are really due for some larger bills.

Two Years in Country

On our first day in Namaacha, our training site, at church with our host mom and aunt

On October 1st we celebrated two years in country. Although we were too busy for any elaborate celebrations, it did get us thinking about the bigger picture. Our little house has a few more cracks, we have a few more drips during rain storms, our latrine is now almost full, the papaya tree we planted our first year here is now taller than our roof, our mattress has a big dent where we sleep. The kids who were little babies when we arrived in site are now stumbling around, yelling our names every time we pass, and plenty of new babies have been born during our stay. The pigs and chickens that wrecked our garden last year have all been killed and eaten and replaced by news crops of equally destructive animals. There are less mango trees now, and more brick houses dotting our neighborhood. The school has two less functioning computers in the lab, but we still have five survivors. We’ve caught dozens of kids cheating on tests during our stint, sent plenty to clean the latrines or dig trash pits, but we’ve had hundreds of students graduate from 10th grade as well. Sometimes it seems like not much has really changed and it’s hard to tell what kind of impact we’ve had on the community. We write semi-annual reports trying to quantify our service. We just filed our last one this week. It is nice seeing all of our activities written up, but its still hard to interpret what all the charts documenting the hundreds of kids that have received HIV/AIDS training or improved their grades due to our extracurricular activities really mean. Our Peace Corps Project Director was just here this week on one of the rare tours our staff makes to the nether regions of Mozambique. He met with our school administration to evaluate Peace Corp’s relationship with the community. We got to hear our directors say lots of positive things about us, rating our performance as A to A+, and ask us one more time to extend our service for a third year. Our PC Project Director seemed impressed by the quantity of secondary projects we have completed during our stay. All of this positive feedback reinforces what we really do think ourselves, that we’ve made a difference here. The past few public holidays our theater group has really made us proud, showing us how much they have matured, displaying leadership skills and confidence. The new group of Peace Corps teachers has now arrived in country and is just beginning their ten weeks of intensive training, just like we did two years ago. We’re lobbying hard to be replaced. We’ve really enjoyed our two years here in site, and our school is such a wonderful place for volunteers to serve, we think it would be great for another generation of Peace Corps. Most of all what we notice is the love and acceptance we feel here. Two years ago we were strangers from a foreign country, just another two azungus (white people). Now we are truly part of the community, we are Teacher Luka and Madame Janeti.

Reading Lists

We expected to devour books here in Africa with the rural pace of life and general absence of leisure activities, but as it turns out we’re averaging just under one book per month. Some of our Peace Corps buddies put us to shame in the literary department having read over a hundred titles during their stay. Volunteers have pooled all of their pirated e-books, making a nifty file with thousands of volumes, all accessible on Janet’s reader, so lack of material is not our excuse. We’re just too busy to pound the pages during the daytime, and after dinnertime we just want to sleep. Overland travel still provides some quality book time, although not without competition from the African landscapes passing in the windows. The opportunity cost of reading is substantially lower when our vehicle is not moving, which is not an inconsequential portion of time when you consider break downs, flat tires, passengers boarding and disembarking, rearranging the mountains of baggage, and just waiting for vehicles to fill before they depart. Even with full time jobs, we still find some time for reading at home. Even our anemic literary habits here impress the locals. Reading for pleasure is completely foreign. Passers by assume we’re reading religious material or studying. Romão still attempts to read a few words whenever he sees Luc with an open book, but can never put together an entire sentence (especially since Luc is usually reading in English). Everyone marvels at how our collection of printed materials fills an entire bookcase, more titles than the rest of the town combined. Only the schools have more books since they receive free government textbooks, especially at the primary level. We have access to the Peace Corps libraries where books have accumulated from previous generations of volunteers, although it’s unclear who would ever allot precious international baggage space to such trashy romance novels which always seem to abound. Maybe they’re just more visible because no one takes them to site. Janet reads widely: novels, historical fiction, biographies, while Luc has given up on made-up stories. He reads almost exclusively histories, travel guides, Peace Corps memoirs, and inspirational biographies about people who have given their lives to making the world a better place. After two years of enduring such a scarcity of printed material, it will be amazing to see a bookstore or an actual library when we get back to the United States.

Life Goals

Its funny how different people’s goals are here in rural Mozambique. Our fellow teachers have begun commenting on how lucky we are to have seen so much of Mozambique and the neighboring countries. At the same time, none of them have made any effort to explore their own region of the world. None of them have passports and only a few have ventured into Malawi beyond our immediate border town, all but the most ambitious never even having been to Blantyre, only two hours away, and none of them have seen the marvelous Lake Malawi, and definitely not the ocean or any of those beaches that grace Mozambique’s Indian Ocean shore. None of them have ever seen elephants or lions or any of the animals Africa is so famous for. Most of them have never been to the capital city, although that is more understandable since it would be about 40 hours of hard mini-bus travel. People here just aren’t that interested in what lies beyond the provincial borders. Occasionally people will make trips to neighboring provinces, but only to visit family. The other teachers always complain about how expensive it is to travel here in Mozambique, and it must be hard justifying scarce resources on something as seemingly inconsequential as traveling, but they always find a way to buy beer or new cell phones. The truth is, we make the same amount of money as our colleagues, and we have been able to stretch those meticals on some pretty amazing trips, but teachers here would just rather buy a TV or motorcycle or blow it all on a bender. We can’t say one way of spending money is better than the other, but we have really enjoyed getting to travel across this part of the continent, despite the physical discomforts, and really getting to know what it has to offer. Our neighbors seem content to invest their earnings in traditional beer and spending the afternoon gyrating drunkenly as close as possible to the giant speakers announcing the availability of alcohol.

Our Acting School Director

We love Guilherme, our acting principal since our previous school director was promoted to chief administrator in a neighboring post last trimester. He’s a hard worker, showing up every morning, afternoon, and evening. Unlike so many other administrators that look the other way, Guilherme calls people out when they blatantly flaunt the rules or egregiously fail to meet their duties. He loves calling students out during morning assembly. Last week he publicly humiliated a student who had been posing as a tenth grader even though he failed both eighth and ninth grades. Guilherme had discovered the fraud during the laborious review process, which would be so easy if our transcripts were digitized and not in huge stacks of folders in the corner of the teachers lounge. He’s not afraid of teachers either, pointing out how several colleagues had merely signed the term book documenting their teaching after only a brief chit chat with the students instead of the full 45 minutes of instruction. Last faculty meeting he told us how teachers were not using the latrine correctly and that there would be consequences if he found any more pools of urine on the cement floor. Guilherme really made things happen for Janet’s construction project. The entire community respects him, especially students (we still have corporal punishment here). He’s also the heart of our teacher’s soccer team. So even though he has his character flaws and is an alcoholic, we love working with him.

Sorcerer's Airplane?

The other day Romão woke us up with some strange news: Have you seen the airplane? Yes, a plane crashed last night in the neighborhood. Soon another neighbor confirmed the story: everyone is over there. We do not live under any commercial air paths; we have seen small charter planes flying over maybe once or twice during our two years here. We definitely hadn’t heard any unusual noises or explosions that night, so we investigated. A short walk exposed the mystery. Lying in our neighbor’s yard was some sort of pumpkin shell with handlebars and a broomstick type sitting area. It was clear enough to everybody else: a sorcerer’s airplane. Apparently the denizens of the home had noticed sorcerers flying above their hut so they engaged a witch doctor to protect their airspace with some defensive charms, and low and behold, the next day the sorcerer’s flying contraption falls out of the sky. People were disappointed that the sorcerer had escaped, but his/her vehicle certainly was generating plenty of gawking.

No More Shade for Hot Season

Luc stresses out every time we leave our little house imagining all the possible misfortunes that could befall our abode in our absence. Burglary persists as a worry, especially since our neighbor’s experience with the spaghetti thief, or with so much shoddy wiring and poor general construction it’s not unrealistic picturing coming back to find the house a mere pile of rubble. Our latest return from a Peace Corps gathering provided us with an unpleasant surprise; our majestic mango tree lay amputated in pieces all across our yard. All the aborted fruits that had already piqued our taste buds with anticipation for delicious mango season littered the walkway. Our landlady had decided to convert the tree into firewood in our absence to feed a brick project she was undertaking at her mother’s house. Of course all we could think about is where will we hide from the unforgiving sun during hot season in the absence of our mango’s deep foliage that provided cool refuge from many a scorcher last summer.