I Don't Know What I Expected (but it sure wasn't this!)

Last week, my school sent me to a formação – training or workshop – in Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city. Beira is on the Indian Ocean coast, about three or four hours from Chimoio by chapa, along a stretch of the EN6 (national highway) that has been left in such disrepair that it has reverted to a dirt road in places. Chimoio and Beira are the mid- and endpoints, respectively, of the Beira Corridor – what used to be a major transportation route across the narrow waist of the country for goods and people moving from Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at the time) to Beira’s ocean port. The complex politics of Mozambique’s civil war (that in reality involved a number of non-Mozambican players) and the period following it led to significant damage to transportation infrastructure and left Beira a still significant port city with tall buildings and deep potholes.  

One of my fellow travelers on the bumpy road to Beira.

Beira is still a beach city, too, and my hotel room had a beautiful ocean view. Unfortunately, the city’s untreated sewer water empties into the sea and the beaches are known for pickpockets, so when I had a couple of free hours between check-in and dinner, I decided to spend it inside, indulging in the wifi, air conditioning and view of waves and palm-trees. After taking my first hot shower since December 8, I settled in front of my laptop with a contented sigh and a thought that my Peace Corps experience sure was playing out differently than I had expected. And so when I later ended up on a Facebook chat with a friend back home, that’s what I ended up saying to him. Our connection dropped, though, so I didn’t have time to elaborate and he ended up sending a message later saying, “Tell me, how is the Peace Corps different from your expectations?” The hot shower and AC triggered the original comment I made to him, but seeing the question phrased like that has led to some deeper reflection. How exactly has this experience been different from my expectations?

On a campus tour during our formação.

Part of the difficulty in answering the question lies in the effort I put into not setting expectations before arriving. Between my RPCV friends and volunteers I had sought out specifically to ask about Mozambique, I knew that everyone’s experience is so different that expectations would be nearly useless. But somehow, despite going in with very few specific expectations, my experience has still managed to be outside those I had (or didn’t realize I had).

One clear expectation I had was regarding the pace of life for a PCV. I think that many Volunteers begin with an idea that they are being sent to a country with so many unmet needs that they will be inundated with things that need to be done and spend all of their time improving the quality of life in their community. Then, they arrive to find that their community, despite its deep level of need, moves at its own pace and there is only so much a single volunteer can do to affect change. To combat this shock, nearly everyone I spoke to warned me that the hardest part of Peace Corps service is the almost unending amounts of free time I would find myself struggling to fill. To prepare, I bought and loaded up a Kindle, invested in a number of yoga and anatomy manuals, brought knitting projects, journals, anything I could think of to fend off the boredom. I can tell you one problem I do not have here: free time I can’t fill.

In case your Anna’s Peace Corps Experience Cabula (cheat-sheet) isn’t handy, here are the essentials of my situation. I live in the fourth-largest city in Mozambique, along with four other PCVs, a few volunteers from other organizations and a small community of ex-pats, ie an instant friend network for a new PCV. Chimoio is also home to the Peace Corps office that serves the entire Central region of the country and there is a steady stream of Volunteers coming through the city. Chimoio is far from lonely.  

Although I arrived in training as a secondary Math teacher, I now work at the Engineering faculty of the largest private university in Mozambique as the coordinator of the Communications track. This means I have the privilege of attending about four hours of meetings each week, have to oversee the schedule, teachers and grades. I also teach two classes within that program, second-year English and Gestão de Empresas (Business Management), the latter in (sometimes still very broken) Portuguese.

My university

The experience of a PCV in this kind of setting is very different from that of one in a rural community or working for an underfunded community organization. Work is not hard to come by. Along with the work for the roles I already described, it has been easy to pick up side projects researching how best to improve the PC Mozambique website or trying to develop a curriculum for income-generating projects for secondary-school girls, simply because I am constantly exposed to the work being done by other volunteers and the gaps they need filled.

The university itself supplies a constant stream of extra projects, too. I was in Beira, where this train of thought began, for training on blended learning – the combination of classroom instruction and online learning – for English teachers at UCM. I left agreeing to help implement the new system since I have experience using e-learning platforms and as a project manager and a software company. I knew coming into Peace Corps that all my previous experience was up for grabs, but I sure didn’t expect this particular skill set to be tapped within the first four months of service. 

My English colleagues and the workshop presenters.

Also, I had my laptop in Beira because I found out two days before my trip that our MBA coordinator had left with four students still finishing work on their thesis. Don and I, the two PCVs with MBAs, were being tapped to help them through their final weeks of work. Since I was travelling, I would need my laptop to communicate with the student focused on Entrepreneurship who I would be helping. Luckily, three of the four students ended up working with another professor, leaving only the final editing for us. Either way, even editing someone’s masters-level thesis is not something I expected as part of my Peace Corps experience.

The level of connectivity I have has also been a surprise. I had been told that phone-based internet access and USB modems that use mobile phone SIM cards were changing everything about how people communicate in developing countries, but I arrived in Chimoio to find my house was a 10-minute walk from the PC office where there are two computers or free wireless access for laptops. Not a tiny smartphone screen or a modem I have to buy data packages to use, but regular old desktops and laptops with free access. BUT THEN, then I found out that I would also have an office with my own personal computer at school. So while I usually only use my phone at home, I have nearly unlimited access to internet in two places that are an easy walk from my house. Both connections suffer from some reliability problems (quite a few problems, actually) but it is still connectivity waaaay beyond anything I expected coming in, which may in reality contribute to the faster pace of life.

One of many (often food-based) Chimoio PCV gatherings

Being in a city also leads to things like giving directions to my house that end with “I’m the fourth house on the right after the stoplight,” which is not a phrase I expected to use as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I have a spare bedroom, power and running water. But this city still lacks many modern conveniences like a laundromat; so, I wash my clothes by hand on a concrete scrub-board. My house is large and nice by PC standards, but still has its share of problems, from a very crafty rat that my PCV neighbor finally helped eliminate, to the shower drain that currently will not empty in less than 24 hours. Until I hire an empregada to help with these things, they will keep using up plenty of time.

Right now, with so many things demanding time and attention, I force space into my schedule for the things that keep me balanced: running in the morning and yoga in the evenings. Blogging when I can. When I take my lunch break, I may run errands, but I almost never continue schoolwork over my meal. I try to keep my computer off and take an hour to read a book or one of the precious copies of The Economist my saintly mother mails me. Since I have morning and evening classes, I frequently arrive at school at 8:00 am and leave for the night at 8:00 pm, so turning off for lunch is necessary. But boredom is never a problem.

Sometimes, I find time to make jam!

All in all, this is a good thing. I am not having the more typical (if “typical” exists in the Peace Corps) experience of a smaller community and slower pace, but I am getting to know a different part of the Mozambican culture. My students and colleagues are part of the emerging middle class. All of my colleagues are just as busy – running programs, teaching classes, taking masters’ courses, or doing community projects. I have found that here, people who like to work tend to work a lot. Like any Peace Corps Volunteer, or probably most teachers in any setting, it’s hard to know if my work makes a difference. As we were told during training, we are here to plant seeds whose fruit we may never taste. But I am certainly growing from the experience and enjoying the work along the way.

Language and Power

“Mali is one of those barely governable countries which nobody except its hapless inhabitants much worries about, until disaster suddenly looms, threatening to spread poison beyond its borders.”

Thus begins an article on “France, Mali and Algeria” in a January issue of The Economist. The article goes on to advise France’s President François Hollande to make sure he doesn’t “get stuck” meddling in the affairs of the former French colony, ending with the wisdom:

Provided the south is reasonably safe, Europeans and others should help with economic development and military training. But for the country to have a hope of working properly, Malians must also sort out their chaotic politics. A year ago, soldiers at the head of Mali’s ragged army overthrew an elected government. On paper, civilians are back in charge, but no one is sure who really pulls the strings. Outsiders can clear the way, but in the end it is the Malians who must mend Mali.

My hackles went up with the first line and stayed up throughout the two-thirds of a page about the ongoing conflict in Mali and France’s involvement therein. I have never been to Mali nor have I met a Malian. I do love the music of Amadou & Mariam, but I couldn't tell you a single thing about the country other than the capital is Bamako and about a year ago, the Tuareg tribe in the north seized a large portion of the country away from the government. For all I know, all of Mali’s inhabitants, other than the aforementioned musical couple, are indeed hapless and deserve nothing but pity from the rest of the world. But I doubt it.

Maybe Mali is just “one of those countries,” you know, those barely governable ones. Like all those other ones. You know, the ones we needn't much worry about. At least, so long as the poison stays inside its borders. Until then, let the pitiable Malians sort out their chaotic politics. Us outsiders can just watch from a distance as the ragged army stirs up some problems, but just the kind that concern the hapless inhabitants. I mean, if it starts to spread in a way that might threaten some Europeans and/or others, we will have to get involved, but only until we can hand it off to the Africans, since it’s really their problem, after all.

I am still trying to figure out exactly what it is about how this tiny article was written that makes my blood border on boiling. It’s something about taking the entire country full of people and lumping it in is “one of those barely governable countries,” in such a dismissive way. Similarly, characterizing the entire population as “hapless,” is about as condescending as you can get. And the need to tack on “ragged” when describing the army. I’m sure it isn’t the high-tech war machine that America commands, but that extra adjective sure seems like an unnecessary dig that only serves to support the overall message that Mali is nothing but a dusty, undeveloped sandbox full of backwards people who are better left to their misery unless they can’t keep it within their own borders.

I currently live in a country that went through decades of internal struggle that cost thousands of lives and left its infrastructure (both physical and intellectual) decimated. Much of the educated “European and other” population fled by the end of the fight for independence and because of the colonial education system that excluded most native Mozambicans, the country is still struggling to build an adequate supply of skilled professionals. The roads and transit are still in disarray. The truth is, Mozambique just does not have the resources to clean up the mess that was left after Portuguese occupation and the civil war that followed without the help of “outsiders” who are here to help “clear the way” for Mozambique to run its own affairs. Some in the form of international NGOs, but many others in the form of  multinationals drawn here by immense mineral resources.

So an article like that in The Economist leaves me with many conflicting feelings. First, I can’t help but imagine that 25 year ago, such an article could have been written about my current home, characterizing it as another “one of those” countries. Using the same condescending, dismissive language to describe the people I see everyday. Some of my students and colleagues at school would have been part of that population of “hapless” inhabitants just wandering the chaotic streets trying to stay out of the way of the “ragged” army. But I know those people and they are not pitiable. They have been through a lot, but they are real people deserving of respect. My guess is, Malians deserve more respect, too.

Beyond that, I just don’t know how to feel about the advice the article gives. Sure, I agree that Mali and all other former colonies should have the right to decide their own futures. I think that it is crucial to let these populations rule themselves without Europeans (or Americans or Asians, for that matter) deciding who should run the countries or how they should be run. But something about the way it is presented feel less like advising France to leave Mali to be the decider of its own destiny - because it is a proud nation full of people who deserve independence - and more like The Economist feels that France ought to take a nice long-handled broom and sweep the “poison” back within Mali’s borders without getting any of the contamination on its own hands. Then France should hightail it out of there and let the Malians go back to whatever it is they were doing before the disaster started looming, while the rest of the world was busy not much worrying about it.

And the truth is, when the Europeans hightailed it out of Mozambique, sometimes destroying crucial equipment or infrastructure as they ran, they left a nation hungry to be the driver of its own destiny, but without the resources it needed to do so. Now, there are South African, Chinese, Brazilian, European and other companies moving in with offers to construct roads, ports, and railways in exchange for mineral rights. There are KFC franchises in Maputo. Many of the shop owners here in Chimoio are Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern or from other African nations. The “Europeans and others” are very present here, but many in roles that are looking to make money without a clear commitment to the betterment of the country.

So, is a country in dire need of infrastructure and educational investment really free to decide its own destiny just because the rich nations decide to stay politically disengaged? Not to say in any way that “Western intervention” is a good thing, just that an article like this makes me wonder about the intention of a policy or political decision versus its real-life consequences. Going into an “underdeveloped” country and telling the government what to do is just as condescending and disrespectful as dismissing the country as pitiable and not worth much worry. But the line between helping and meddling isn't always clear, and neither is the “optimal” level of support to offer a developing country. Where does aid end and subsidizing a broken system begin? If the system is broken, is best just to walk away?

But discussing any of these issues seems worthless if the people coming from positions of power, the ones who have the ability to invest in and support developing countries, use the kind of language that was used in this article. It seems to me to reflect a belief that Mali is not worthy of the diplomatic niceties of respectful speech, or even being clearly distinguished as a specific country, different from others also experiencing conflict. If this is the starting point, how can we in the “developed world” be trusted to take any action that is in such a country’s best interest? Maybe I am overreacting, parsing language down to its finest details is one of my greatest joys, but I do feel strongly that the words we choose reflect our values, and these words do not represent how I want the West to be perceived by the rest of the world.

Observations on a Silent Samba

This past weekend was Carnaval in Chimoio. Not to be confused with the feathers-and-sequins affair in Brazil, or the city-wide booze-soaked party of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carnaval in Chimoio features dozens of high school dance teams marching through the streets and finishing with a competition at the fairgrounds. The celebration isn’t publicized, so I didn’t learn it was happening until Saturday afternoon when a young Mozambican friend texted me an invite to watch the judging. I had spent most of the day planning my lessons, so a break to hear some music and watch some youngin’s shake their booties sounded pretty good.

We walked across town to the fairgrounds, chatting in English. This friend is a student at the Universidade Pedagógica here in Chimoio. He was born and raised in a tiny town in the neighboring province of Sofala and had multiple Peace Corps Volunteers as secondary school teachers. Without ever living in an English-speaking environment, he has achieved an impressive level of fluency. I have met a few young Mozambicans here with an astounding drive to learn English, especially those who recognize the opportunities that it can bring. I have given away all the magazines I have finished reading and passed around thumb drives full of music: there just is not much English-language material available here and most of the American music on the radio is NOT the kind that anyone should use to learn the language.  [Note: any Time/Newsweek/other accessible, preferably non-trashy magazines sent here will find a good home with a young English-learner. Mailing info can be found here.]

We arrived at the fairgrounds just as the last few dance groups were entering. After fighting through the crowd to buy our 25 meticais tickets – and repeatedly telling the kid who greeted me with “baby” that I was not in fact his baby and I would not be buying his ticket despite his switching to calling me “senhora” – we passed through the gates and were greeted with the delicious smell of grilling chicken and the sight of hundreds of secondary school students in brightly-colored costumes awaiting their turns to march to the judging area and show off their Mozambican-flavored samba skills for the audience.

They started with a mini-parade, each team dancing around a banner declaring their school’s name, wearing matching outfits consisting of layers of ruffled, satiny material in alternating colors. Mostly short skirts and bikini-style tops for the girls and knee-length shorts and vests for the boys. I don’t think I have written much about Mozambican dancing, but let me tell you, the vast majority of Mozambicans I have encountered can dance and they love it. They can stomp their feet and shake their hips with a velocity that seems to defy the limits of human physiology. And they do it effortlessly. As a muzungu with two left feet, I get pretty envious. (Most people here are pretty entertained when I explain that I have dois pés esquerdos.)

After the entrance parade, each team had the opportunity to strut their stuff for about fifteen minutes front and center. The first group was large, probably about 40 students, arrayed in two parallel lines, girls matched with boys. Then suddenly, about halfway through this first performance, the sound system cut out just as a new song was beginning. As the dancers paused and looked around at their teammates, a quiet murmur passed through the crowd of hundreds of paying customers. Then, instead of the building noise of an indignant crowd not getting its money’s worth, or the peeved stomping of teenagers who had spent weeks rehearsing a routine they now couldn’t perform, the crowd quieted, the dancers exchanged a last few glances, seemed to shrug, and restarted their routine without the benefit of music. They stayed pretty well synchronized and gradually regained a decent amount of energy and enthusiasm.

At first, I shook my head a little: “What are these kids doing, pretending like they still have music?! You can’t samba in silence!” Then it dawned on me what I was watching. These are teenagers who have experienced a lifetime of things like sudden power outages. Here, if you gave up every time there was an unexpected turn like no music for your dance competition, you wouldn’t get very far.

Very quickly during training in Namaacha, I got used to the power flickering off and on for varying stretches of time, particularly when the weather was bad. There were always candles on hand and I always knew where my headlamp was. The lights would go out, a few candles would be lit and life would continue. In my house here in Chimoio, it isn’t an infrequent experience to turn the faucet on in the middle of the day only to find there isn’t any water flowing from the pipes. I always have a few bottles of drinking water filled and buckets of wash water stored in the bathroom. A dinner party would be a challenge and laundry goes on hold, but life goes on. If the water stayed off, I have a holding tank in my front yard that I could boil and filter when needed. Here, unpredictability is routine.

Just this morning, I arrived at school to find that the power was out. I had planned to use Powerpoint slides and a projector, but that idea was out the window. Luckily, I could borrow a laptop to read my slides, as it was a class in Portuguese that would have been quite a challenge to give from memory. But, if the laptop hadn’t been there, I probably would have been flipping through my textbook to pull out the key phrases in Portuguese, and my students probably would not have blinked. As it was, I dictated the short case study I wanted them to analyze and for most of them, it was probably just a throwback to their secondary-school classes, where most teachers dictate large blocks of text to students who don’t have books of their own.

In the few experiences I have had traveling within Mozambique, my flights have been delayed for multiple hours with not real explanation of why. I have spent hours sitting in a chapa just waiting for it to fill before we can even start our trip to the next city. But the stories I have heard from people who travel frequently make these sound like a study in German efficiency.

Just when I think I have learned food prices, they change. Carrots in the market vary from 50 to 100 meticais per kilo, depending on the availability that day. Eggs go up and down from 5 a piece up to 6 and back down to 5. If you have the money and you want to avoid major price fluctuations, you can go to the giant, modern land of cans and jars and hermetically sealed plums: Shoprite. Just don’t assume that because they had chunky peanut butter last week, they will have it today. Or any peanut butter at all. They may have a broad variety of imported cheeses, or a completely empty dairy case.

Very little here is truly predictable. In just a few months, I have already learned to roll with it for the most part. Showed up for a meeting with someone who went on vacation without telling anyone? More time for lesson planning. The person who was supposed to clean the yard came at noon instead of 8:00 am? Gave me the morning to do laundry while I was waiting to let him in. A rat ate the bread I planned to use for my egg sandwich? I bet I could use agua e sal crackers to make a decent matzoh-brei.

For students who have grown up with this kind of unpredictability, the natural response to losing the music that accompanies their dance routine is to continue. At times, for those of us who are used to a more predictable environment, one that enables us to feel more in control of our circumstances, this comfort with things going awry can sometimes seem like an infuriating passivity. When something goes wrong, you are supposed to do something about it, dammit! But that presupposes a well-defined, predictable norm from which to stray. When awry is the norm, maybe having the tenacity to keep going according to your plan without letting your environment derail you is the best response. In the case of the Carnaval dancers, after a couple of minutes of dancing acapella, the music kicked back in, the crowd cheered and they continued without missing a beat.