Perspective

Last night, I was talking to my parents and we did a little run-down on the status of the packages they sent. Since I have been here, my friends and family have been wonderful about sending me cards and packages. I had been getting the feeling that my folks were sending me things almost as a form of therapy, helping them to feel like they were doing something about the fact that I am so far away and in a developing country where I may not always be comfortable or as safe as I was in the US; this feeling was confirmed by my father. Similarly, although I love every bite of chocolate and every sip of tea from what they send, the best part of getting mail is the feeling of connectedness it brings. The feeling that even though I am so far away, a little bit of home can arrive here.

But the mail here does come with some challenges. Boxes are frequently opened and things do go missing. Some letters arrive in 10 days, while others take two months. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the order in which they get here - not size, not place of origin - they just show up when they do. I have advised people who plan to send things that they shouldn't declare anything of any value, as this will make the package much more interesting to people in the post office here, but the definition of valuable is different in Mozambique. My dad had sent some episodes of the one TV show I am sad to be missing on a flash drive and had declared the drive on the package. I mentioned that that might not make it, since flash drives have been taken from packages before. But the I idea of a luxury item like recent episodes of a Showtime show not making it was hard to get upset over. I am very grateful to him for sending it, but the world will move on if it doesn't arrive. And I still get the warm fuzzies of knowing that he tried.

Evidence that Peace Corps life is good.

In terms of physical needs, because I ended up in a mid-sized city, I don't want for much here. I have a nice house, electricity, running water and (soon) internet in my own office at my school. I have easy access to a variety of food, including cheap, delicious fresh fruits and veggies without end, and a variety of proteins. Sure, I miss fresh seafood and soft-serve frozen yogurt cones, but those are luxuries I can easily live without. I don't even have to qualify my comfort level by comparing it to other people: I am just happy and comfortable here. [Editor's note: This is not to say that I don't jump at the opportunity to eat ice cream when I can. I did just eat an embarrassing amount of gelato in Maputo this past weekend.]

Basically, I have everything I need here and people send me the stuff I want; i.e. life is good. So I get a little surprised when people comment that I am taking the little difficulties well. There are  definitely things here that make life more complicated than in the US, but I expected that when coming here. I have found that by managing my expectations, most things are pretty easy to take in stride. (That, and doing yoga every day works miracles for patience!)

Life was good at the fish market in Maputo this weekend.

But in truth, what makes the biggest difference is the fact that I am here voluntarily. I sometimes take issue with the fact that I call myself a Peace Corps Volunteer when I am being given housing well above the standard of most of my Mozambican colleagues, have free healthcare that is better than that available to 99.9% of Mozambicans and get paid a decent (by local standards) stipend every month. But I am very aware of the fact that I volunteered to come here and can leave at any time I choose. This is certainly not the case for the vast majority of Mozambicans.

This point has been driven home painfully over the last week as the southern part of the country has been devastated by flooding. Rains hit the central region right around my birthday in early January and lots of roads in my area were impassable for a few days. Other than a papaya tree that fell in my backyard, I came through unaffected. My friends a few hours south live in a more traditional Mozambican house; they have an outdoor kitchen area and pit latrine outside, both of which took some serious damage due to the rains. And I am sure that many people living in mud-brick homes with grass or corrugated metal roofs had a much rougher time, too. But the situation in the South right now is a true disaster.

Scenes from Chockwé, Gaza Province. From USAID Mozambique and TimesLive

So far, more than 100,000 people have been driven from their homes and at 40-80 people have been killed, depending on the source you read. People are trapped on their rooftops, with reports of women giving birth on roofs. Roads that are were already bad have been washed out completely, leaving towns cut off from aid, or simply food and water, until boats or helicopters can be sent. I had seen pictures and read reports last week, but got to hear stories directly from evacuated volunteers when I went to Maputo for a meeting this past weekend. It turns out that most of the worst flooding came not because of the rain in Mozambique, but because the rain in South Africa led that country to open its dams, sending torrents of water down the Limpopo River into the Gaza Province of Mozambique. There are also reports that a South African crocodile farm let thousands of crocodiles out into the water. (There are crocodiles in lots of rivers here and many volunteers have friends and neighbors who have lost family members to them.)

Most of the volunteers who had been evacuated from their sites in Gaza and Inhambane, the province just north, were understandably upset that their houses had been flooded and they probably lost many of their belongings. Some were worried that they wouldn't be able to return to their communities and would be moved to a new site. But they were all acutely aware of how lucky they were to have been evacuated by the Peace Corps and got a somewhat haunted look when they started talking about the damage that had been done to their towns and what their neighbors, friends and colleagues would be facing to rebuild. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we have resources at our disposal that just aren't available to those we live and work with every day.

Disasters really highlight this difference, but it is always there. I can get frustrated with the fact that I am preparing to teach a course I have never taught before and live in a city without a real bookstore within a day's travel. I can get irritated when my flight is delayed indefinitely and the people at the gate don't know if the plane we will be taking has left its point of departure yet. I do shake my fist every time it is supposed to be trash day and despite the fact that I pay the city to pickup my garbage, they have left it and the neighborhood dogs have scattered it all over the sidewalk. But the truth is, if it is really so bad, I can leave. But the people living next to me will be facing the same reality while I am back in a country where ATM's usually have cash in them and most things follow some semblance of a schedule. Where physician density is above .027/1,000 people and HIV prevalence is below 11.5%. Where less than 21% of children under 5 are underweight and more than 56% of the population is literate. But I came here because Mozambique faces these problems and I want to do what I can to help. And for me, the good in life here significantly outweighs the bad.

What I am doing here? How did I get here?

A while ago, I wrote a post that was part love note to yoga and part musings on the sometimes-wandering path that led to where I was at the time, a project manager for a healthcare IT company.  Now, as I am settling into my new home in Mozambique, preparing to start teaching and finally beginning to really appreciate what an amazing position I find myself in, I am once again reflecting on what led me here. I think that the primary factor has been a willingness to stay open to new opportunities, even when I think I have a goal in mind and even when an opportunity may appear at first glance to be sending me in a different direction. 

First, a little on where “here” is. Yes, a little more than three months after arriving here in Mozambique, I can finally write some about what I will be doing for work. Although I came here and went through training to be a secondary school Math teacher, I lucked into an opportunity to work with a university in one of the larger cities in Mozambique. Classes still won’t begin for another month, but now that professors and administrators are returning from vacation, preparations for the coming semester have begun.

My director has been really open to working with Peace Corps volunteers to determine roles that will not just help the University grow and develop, but will do the same for the volunteers. I had expressed a preference for teaching business classes over math classes – although I love math, it is more likely that I will pursue work relating to business or entrepreneurship in developing countries post-PC than something math related. After meeting with the head of the MBA program and the University’s director, we decided that I would start out by coordinating the Communications for Development (Comunicação para o Desenvolvimento) department and teaching a Business Management (Gestão de Empresas) course within that department. I will probably pick up modules within the MBA program eventually, too. The MBA is taught in English, and occurs in 4- or 5-week modules with the class meeting three hours each evening.

Although my formal education is not in communications, my director wants to have more faculty members with graduate degrees heading up departments, and I do have plenty of work experience relevant to the administrative nature of the role, as well as work experience in communications and marketing. But most importantly for me, I am really excited to learn more about “development communications,” an area that is relatively new as a field of formal academic study.

The UN Development Programme provided me with the definition determined at the World Congress on Communication for Development:

A social process based on dialogue using a broad range of tools and methods. It is also about seeking change at different levels including listening, building trust, sharing knowledge and skills, building policies, debating and learning for sustained and meaningful change’.

Put simply, Communication for Development (C4D) enables people, particularly the most disadvantaged in society, to participate in shaping decisions that affect their lives.

So while communication media are an important area of study within development communications (community radio is huge), the real focus is on creating dialogue between the power structures in developing countries and those deeply affected by policy decisions who may struggle to have a voice. Information should be flowing in both directions. It needs to be disseminated to marginalized populations: they need to be aware of their rights, of services that are available to them, of pending changes to laws and regulations that may affect them.  Farmers need market information. Everyone needs health and family planning information. But also, these populations need channels to make their voices heard. Decision makers need to understand the lives of those their decisions impact. Development communications is all about facilitating these information flows, along with horizontal information sharing between communities.

Needless to say, I am nerding out something serious on the whole subject. I found as many articles and case studies as I could. I was thrilled to discover that my alma mater, UMass Amherst, is home to a center for Communication for Sustainable Social Change, headed by a professor of some renown. He was kind enough to send along some additional reading and link me to his blogs. Once I get through a few more articles, time to start learning all the Portuguese vocabulary!

The other part of my job with cooler-than I-ever-could-have-hoped-for potential is that my school is a good ways along in planning for a new radio station, which would be managed from the university side by the Communications department. As someone who always wanted to work at UMass’ station, but never had the guts to get involved (and, truthfully, had no interest at the time in any activity that would require waking up at ungodly early hours), this is a kind of dream come true. There are quite a few steps to go before the station is actually up and running: final licensing by the government, renovation of the studio space, equipment purchasing… but I am optimistic that it will happen within the two years I am here. And I think just being part of the planning will be a fantastic learning experience.

What I think is really the coolest part of where I find myself, though, was best stated by the local Bishop at a ceremony to mark the opening of a new part of our campus. The general idea was that, although Africa is politically independent of the former colonial powers, true independence will come through education, especially technical education. And that is the real mission of the school. The campus here in Chimoio is the Faculdade de Engenharia, or engineering campus. The flagship program is Engenharia Alimentar, or food engineering, focused on improving food processing and conservation methods. For a country with huge swaths of fertile land that imports most of its processed food, this is so important. There are also Civil Engineering, Public Administration, Education Management, Information Technology and Public Health programs, along with my Communication for Development department.

During training, I wrote some about the many educational challenges Mozambique has faced since independence, so I am beyond excited to be part of a higher ed institution working to create locally-trained, Mozambican professionals in areas that the country really needs. I am so excited be part of a program focused on improving methods of communication for development professionals, where those develpoment professionals are actually from the developing country in question. Moreover, most of the faculty and administration of the university are Mozambican as well. Obviously, as a relatively priviledged American here in Mozambique trying to help the development process along, I think we all can have a role to play (I won't even start in on my musings on the politics of development - that is for another blog, or better yet, a private converstation), but all the buzzword-heavy claims of "participatory communication needs assessment" and "local content" and "stakeholder dialogue" and "empowerment" and "giving the voice," sound less like buzzwords and more like good ideas when being taught by Mozambicans to Mozambicans.

So I am pretty happy "here," at the start of what promises to be a very interesting year. And all the stops on my roundabout path contributed getting me to the final destination, but it was definitely staying open to opportunities as they arose that guided the journey. Really, although I had ideas of what I wanted to get out of Peace Corps, I never would have ended up with such a great opportunity if I had insisted on following those initial intentions. Entrepreneurship and small business development was my primary focus, and I had the option of insisting on entering the Peace Corps' Small Business Development program, but my recruiter convinced me that education needed my Math degree and that I could pick up secondary projects relating to entrepreneurship. Now, I find myself in a position where I will be using expereince from nearly every phase of my life: teaching, administrative work, communications, project management, language, research... While at the same time I will be learning so many new things!

So, here is to staying open to what life throws at you and to not letting a plan keep you from ending up somewhere way cooler.

The Fabric of Our Mozambican Lives

Hi, my name is Anna, and I am a capulana addict. Only three and a half months in Mozambique and I am completely hooked on the swaths of colorful fabric that seem to hold life itself together here. Before I arrived, I had been told that it was cheap and easy to buy fabric here and have clothing made, so I packed with the plan to find a tailor who could make some skirts and dresses for school. I had also heard from volunteers in-country that there were miraculous pieces of cloth that could be used for just about anything from curtains to yoga mats, but I didn't really understand the magic of the capulana until I first held one in my hands. I bought a few to make dresses and was immediately enamoured. To be honest, I still don't fully understand the spell they have cast on me, but I know I can't stop buying them. 

My collection (I swear I have a plan for each); capulanas make for beatiful laundry; my soon-to-be kitchen curtains.

Capulanas are basically pieces of fabric about a yard wide, cut from a long roll. They come printed with patterns that range from bright and blocky to subtle and intricate. Many have beautiful borders that immediately make me want to turn them into a skirt. Some commemorate holidays, Mozambican heroes, or political parties. You can find them tie-dyed and batiked, on fine fabric or cheap rayon. The possibilities are endless.


Our host maes teaching us how to run a Mozambican house in their capulanas.

The uses are just as limitless. The primary use among Mozambican women is as a traditional wrapped skirt, as above. Women wear them while working in their machambas, around the house, when in mourning, or just about any time. In this form, they aren't seen as formal clothing appropriate for professional women, but luckily, they can also be used to create skirts, dresses, shirts and pants which can be worn in just about any setting. Even men wear capulana shirts and pants, although the pants are considered casual. I have already had three dresses and a skirt made for 200 and 100 meticais each, respectively, or about $7 and $3.50. One of the technical trainers during PST had some of the most fantastic outfits made from capulanas. She even had one made to match the capulanas we received from our host families and wore it to our homestay celebration.

Most of our training team, including Ana Paula's fabulous capulana outfit; Rafael and Edna at our homestay celebration in his capulana shirt.

The second most common use I have seen is to carry babies. Adorable little Mozambican children are slung around their mother's backs with their adorable little feet sticking out. Much easier and cheaper than a baby-bjorn, but to much the same effect. You also see older siblings carrying their brothers and sisters wrapped in capulanas on their backs, or as below, carrying their dolls when no child is available (only saw that this once, though). You would be amazed at the work that Mozambican women can accomplish with an infant capulana'd to their backs.

There is no such thing as an ugly Mozambican baby. Or child. At least as far as I have seen.

And capulanas find nearly infinite uses beyond clothing and baby slings. They serve well as curtains, tablecloths, and towels. Drape one over a cardboard box and - voila! - a perfectly good Peace Corps bedside table. Our Mozambican technical trainer gave a mini-lesson on force using a knotted capulana for tug-of-war. One visiting volunteer describe one of his methods to deter cheating during an exam using a capulana: he didn't want any students to have their materials near their desks, but they are extremely protective of their backpacks and refuse to put them directly on the ground. Once he covered a corner of the class with a capulana, he could finally convince them to pile up their bags on the cloth and could proceed with his test. I am starting to wonder how we make it without them in America.

My capulana curtains; a capulana tablecloth; capulana sheets - perfect for a cat nap (sorry!).

Since they are so useful, and so beautiful, I find it hard to stop buying them. Luckily, a good one only costs around 120 meticais, or just over $4. Seems worth it to me...

The capulana dress section of my closet; Anneke and I matching at swearing-in; arriving in Chimoio in style.

Happy New Year!

After the wonderful semi-craziness that was Mozambican Christmas, the last week has been a lovely, mellow respite. A few volunteers were here in Chimoio for New Year's Eve and we rang in 2013 with a very American dinner: pizza followed by cake and ice cream, but a more Mozambican midnight. We passed on champagne in favor of firecrackers in the street and pots, pans and bacias to bang on. We stood outside my house and watched as fireworks shot up all around us and noise filled every street.



Making noise to ring in the new year!

On New Year's Day, my family back home always has a traditional meal of black-eyed peas, collard greens and cornbread. It turns out that Sarah, a volunteer who grew up in Georgia and now lives forty-five minutes from me in Messica, has the same meal every year. Since I have been itching to get out of the city and Sarah and her roommate Anna have been wanting visitors, we bought what we needed here and jumped on a chapa to Messica to cook up a feast. Messica is a relatively small town and Sarah and Anna are the first Peace Corps Volunteers there. As we walked from where the chapa left us to their house, we were greeted with "Boas Festas!" and "Boas Entradas!" by nearly everyone we passed. Some stopped us to talk, recognizing that these must be the new teachers in town, and we met the man who sells the girls eggs at the market. It was a very different experience from walking down the street in Chimoio, where the city vibe leads to much more privacy, but also less open friendliness. I will definitely be visiting them more often to get a taste of the community experience they are having!

A flag-painted Chapa and the main road passing by Messica.

Two other girls who live nearby met us there and helped us cook and eat. We cooked up catarina beans in place of black-eyed peas, with chispe de porco (pieces of the leg and foot of a pig) instead of a ham bone, and had couve, a close relative of American collards steamed with tomatoes and onions. The cornbread was just like home and I saved a piece for one of my favorite women at the market. We had explained the meal we would be making when we bought the beans from her and she was skeptical of the idea of bolo de milho, the closest translation we could come up with for cornbread. But when I brought the piece back for her the next day, carefully guarded through a VERY tightly-packed and bumpy chapa ride, she understood.

Beans & pig parts; cooks hard at work; the final product, guaranteed to bring luck throughout 2013.

Other than that, I have had a few guests coming through, one who was meeting up with her friend fresh from the States who was kind enough to bring me a jug of maple syrup - Merry Christmas to me! I have been working on some of the many little home-improvement projects waiting now that the holiday dust is begininning to settle. I have also picked up a new hobby: making jam! When I first moved in, the men working on the house in back ate most of the ripe mangoes on our trees. Now that they are gone, there has been an avalanche of mangoes, way more than I can eat, so I decided to try my hand at cooking them up into jam. There is also a passionfruit vine along the fence in my yard, and that super sour fruit proved a perfect balance to the sugary mangoes. My first batch was mango-passionfruit-lime, with quite a bit of lime peel pushing the flavor towards marmalade. The second batch was mango-ginger, with just enough passionfruit to add a little pucker, while leaving the mango flavor in the forefront. I find myself wanting to give all of it away so that I can make more, but I need to find a consistent source of jars!

Raw materials and finished product: mango-ginger jam.

Now it is time for me to return home and start making some curtains. A friend who is a second year Peace Corps volunteer observed that she wasn't yet sure how much she had learned about economic development, but she is sure that her service had taught her a whole lot about being a homemaker. While The university is on vacation, it is keeping me busy and entertained!

So, until next week, happy New Year and take care. Please do send along news. Boas saidas e entradas!