Unrest

When I first told my parents that I was applying to the Peace Corps, one of them responded, "Okay, as long as you don't go to Africa." Most of the headlines that hit the papers in the US are about violence, conflict - armed or political, unrest, poverty, famine, etc. I assured them that Peace Corps didn't place Volunteers in countries in danger of conflict. When I was placed in Mozambique, I studied the history and current state. Although Mozambique has passed through two brutal wars to reach its current state of peace, stability and accelerating development, there has been little to no unrest since the peace accord was signed more than twenty years ago. In fact, Mozambique was ranked the 48th most peaceful country in the world on the Global Peace Index last year, compared to the US at 88th.

When I arrived here, I found a country full of people who want nothing less than they want another war. Here in Chimoio, economic development is really starting to take hold and I spend my time with Mozambicans who are working their butts off to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by a growing economy, improving educational system, increasing participation in the global economy and all the other things that come with peace and investment. There is still a looooong way to go for Mozambique to improve the lot of the general population, but it's starting to happen.

One unusual aspect of post-war political life in Mozambique is that both parties involved in the conflict - FRELIMO, the party behind Mozambique's independence from Portugal and RENAMO, the rebel force backed by colonial Rhodesia and South Africa - continued to be the main political parties ruling the country. FRELIMO has been in power since independence and RENAMO has continued to be the main opposition. Occasionally, aging RENAMO leadership has made threats to shake things up when it begins to feel irrelevant, but the general state of affairs has remained stable. International aid money has been pouring into the country and more recently, international investment dollars after the discovery of vast deposits of coal and natural gas.

Then suddenly, due to a convergence of factors, RENAMO's leader Alfonso Dhlakama started ramping up the rhetoric. He moved his troops to an old encampment in Gorongosa, Sofala, the province directly east of my province of Manica. Back in April, there was a series of three incidents between RENAMO and the Mozambican authorities, including an attack cars traveling on the EN1, the main highway connecting the northern and southern regions of the country. With municipal elections looming in November, Peace Corps Volunteers have been a little anxious about where this all would go, but things appeared to settle down. RENAMO and FRELIMO began talks in the capital to resolve the opposition party's demands for increased participation in the government and cuts of the revenue coming in from mineral resources.

But starting last week, the situation began to destabilize. It started with an attack  on an armory outside Sofala's provincial capital, Beira, in which seven Mozambican soldiers were killed. The following Wednesday, RENAMO declared they would "paralyze" service on the train line used to transport coal for export from Tete to the port at Beira and make transit through the central part of the country "fragile." Since then, passenger transit on the rail line has been halted and coal transport significantly reduced. Cars traveling through Sofala on the EN1 have been escorted by police in "columns," but there still have been a number of attacks on the highway. It is still unclear whether RENAMO has been behind all the attacks, if they have been by opportunistic bandits, or if they have been by RENAMO-affiliated bandits but not at the direction of party leadership. RENAMO has not taken credit for any of the incidents and disavowed involvement in some.

All in all, especially as an outsider, it is very difficult to know the seriousness of the situation. Mozambique does not have a robust domestic media infrastructure and fofoca flies unchecked through rural communities. On Monday, Peace Corps decided to consolidate PCVs in Sofala and parts of Manica here in Chimoio as a precaution. When they arrived, they described people in their communities as terrified for another civil war and reporting all sorts of different things without  a clear source: armed bands of RENAMO fighters marching towards Dombe one day and Tete city the next; tobacco farmers being attacked for their money and weapons; raids on arms stashes that never make the news. What we do know is that there have been a handful of confirmed attacks on cars traveling on the EN1, including a police-escorted column of traffic on Monday, and that people are scared.

Yesterday was Independence Day and we were all nervous that someone would see it as an opportunity to make a statement, but I have not yet heard of any major incidents. There have been a number of "peace marches" throughout the country by a population that may have problems with current leadership, but knows that armed conflict is not the way to resolve them.

Our Director of Safety and Security is scheduled to arrive here in Chimoio today to begin a "ground assessment" of the situation in the central region, then make a decision about whether or not the consolidated PCVs can return to their sites. I feel perfectly safe here in Chimoio, but my stomach turns at the thought that we might be pulled out of the country if the situation remains unstable; the idea of leaving the people I am just beginning to get to know because my government thinks that the situation is dangerous. How would I look my students and colleagues in the eye and tell them that I hope everything turns out alright for them, but I'm going to wait it out somewhere a little safer? Thinking of how hard they have worked to become university students and professors, their hopes and dreams for their futures, it just makes me angry to think that there are people who want to destroy that. But hopefully, everything will calm down and Mozambique will continue its peaceful march towards increased prosperity.

However this turns out, I have already gained a profound appreciation for the stability we all enjoy in the US. Even when a bomb goes off or a crazy person opens fire in a school or our government hurdles towards default on our debt, we don't have to fear that everything will suddenly collapse. As my friend and fellow PCV noted yesterday, what we have experienced here on a small scale over the last week is how thousands of people live everyday: with constant insecurity and fear of violence. I find myself hesitating to fully commit my time to lesson-planning for August when it's possible that I might not in fact be teaching Marketing here. What if the plans I wanted to make involved building a home, investing in my children's education or starting a business? It is clear why political stability is crucial for economic development, but it is different to have a taste of it firsthand.

CNN just ran a good article on what is happening now, but while the title is "Is Mozambique sliding back toward conflict?" I do want to call attention to the crucial statement:

Southern Africa is not what it was in 1992 when the civil war ended, and despite continued deep inequality and poverty, Mozambique has also changed. Renamo has demonstrated that it can pull off sporadic attacks with small numbers of armed men, but it lacks the resources or support to return the country to civil war.

During the civil war, there were large flows of cash and weapons coming in from neighboring countries, which are don't exist now. Similarly, the overall feeling from the population seems to be that they just want the violence to stop. The civil war came quickly on the heels of the luta armada, as the war for independence is known, but Mozambicans have now become accustomed to peace and they like it. My personal feeling is that Mozambique will not return to an all-out war, but my fear is that the environment will become unstable enough to deter further investment and will hinder continued growth. So I am hoping that cooler heads will prevail and Mozambique will continue to build on the progress it has made over the last twenty years of peace and security.

UPDATE (Thursday, June 27):  We met with Alfredo, the PC Moz Chief of Safety and Security, yesterday. He is leaving today to visit the sites of the PCVs who were consolidated for a "ground assessment." He has already met with the Chief of Police in Inchope, the town where the EN1 meets the EN6, the east-west highway connecting Beira to the border with Zimbabwe. They agreed that as long as vehicles require military escorts to pass through Sofala, it is better to keep PCVs away from their sites. The concern is less with their immediate safety within their communities, and more with the possibility of those communities being cut off by disruption of transit infrastructure.

Alfredo was very open with us. He made it clear that he also wasn't sure where all of this would go. His concern seemed to be limited mostly to the province of Sofala and he did not seem too worried that the unrest would spread beyond that region; however, he did mention that those who lived through the civil war know that this is how it started. This actually made me feel better, to know he is applying lessons learned from the past. Maybe I am being a blind optimist, but it just doesn't feel like Mozambique is poised to tumble into a country-wide conflict right now. Where I am at least, there just isn't a will for it and as I mentioned before, the critical factors such as outside funding aren't here this time. Although FRELIMO and RENAMO continue to have an antagonistic relationship, the up-and-coming third party gaining popularity in the central region is one that urges compromise. There is economic growth and increased foreign investment and people feel like they have something to lose if there is disruption. I am sure the feeling is different in areas outside a city like Chimoio, where the wealth and economic opportunity may not have arrived yet, but I will remain optimistic for now.

Uma Grande Confusão: Life Ouside my Culture Takes its Toll

When I arrived here, I was immersed in a new culture that functioned in multiple languages I didn't speak or understand. Even as I became more comfortable with Portuguese, a big part of life for Mozambicans in Namaacha was lived in Changana and remained a mystery to me. Most of my host mother's conversations with Isaura, the woman who worked in her house, or her friends that came by, were in this local dialeto and were completely incomprehensible. Even when they were punctuated by pauses during which they all turned and looked meaningfully in my direction. I would have loved to have learned some Changana, but just learning Portuguese - the language I would need to teach my classes - was challenging enough. Sometimes, when I would try to learn a few words of Changana, it felt like my brain was putting its foot down and actively rejecting this other language. "Can't you see I'm already overwhelmed here!" it would ask.

The idea of teaching in Portuguese terrified me!

And the truth is, it was overwhelmed by all the newness I was asking it to absorb, and not just the new language(s). When I had been living within my own culture, I had had an understanding of what was going on around me at a pretty profound level, something that was easy to take for granted while I remained there. Then, finding myself in the midst of a new culture, I realized that all those layers of understanding that reach down past the superficial were suddenly missing. Even when I did understand the words being spoken, I often didn't understand the why behind the situation. In the US I knew the culture, customs and norms. I knew the way things usually should go in most situations and could easily perceive when something was off. The greater cultural context was familiar, letting me piece things together when I didn't have all the background information in order to make sense of what was going on. All this was gone when I arrived in Mozambique. 

Taking all this familiarity away leaves you feeling pretty lost sometimes. To get by as I was learning the culture, I quickly got used to operating in a state of incomplete information, mild confusion and disorientation. I developed the habit of just shrugging things off if I didn't understand, knowing that either someone would explain it eventually, or understanding it fully wasn't really necessary. For example, I usually just go to the ATM when I need money, but a few months ago I had to go speak to a teller inside for the first time. I entered the bank and the guard directed me to the end of the 30+ person line. There were about five tellers with open windows, and as one person wrapped up their transaction, the next person in line would walk up and stand directly behind them until they could speak with the teller. Then, all of a sudden, a man walked in the door of the bank, paused to survey the line and proceeded to duck under the rope and stand behind the person at the second window until she had finished her transaction, at which point he took her place and made a withdrawal from the teller.

As I watched, I kept expecting the people waiting in line to get upset and tell the guy to wait his turn, but there was no reaction. My head kept jerking back and forth from the man to the line in disbelief of what appeared to be a simple case of a guy not wanting to wait his turn and a crowd of 30 people simply not caring that he cut them all. I kept wondering if I could do the same thing, or was this guy some sort of local celebrity or power-player? Was there a certain kind of transaction that let you sidestep the line? My indignation quickly faded to confusion, which was replaced by resignation to the fact that I was in yet another situation where I just didn't have the context and information to understand what was going on. And in the end, it didn't really matter. I would wait my turn, get my money and head back to school. Even if I knew why this guy had been able to walk straight to the teller without anyone even blinking, next time I needed money, I would still stand in line.

When I first arrived in Chimoio, everything was a mystery. I didn't know where to find anything in the huge market and had no idea who was there to help and who wanted to rip me off. I didn't eve know what some of the fruits and vegetables were. The bustling crowds of people in the center of town were overwhelming. I didn't know prices or quality or what people were yelling at me. My Portuguese has improved vastly in the past six months. I've made friends at the market and look forward to going there. At school, I am still learning the system and still spend a lot of time just waiting for someone to explain to me what is going on, but I usually feel comfortable. I finished a semester of teaching in Portuguese with very positive feedback from my students. I am starting to make some friends and generally feel much more at home here.

The market intimidated me when I arrived, but I went to church with this guy this morning!

That isn't to say that I have stopped feeling like I don't really know what is going on. Although I have learned lot since I arrived, both about language and about customs, I still miss most of the significance beyond the surface. This past Sunday, I went to church with a friend where much of the mass was in Chiute, the local dialeto here in Chimoio, which I have still not begun to learn. The sermons were translated to Portuguese, but much of the talk that would have explained the different parts of the mass were in dialeto. I was completely lost as to when to sit, when to stand, when to get up and introduce myself, when to throw a few meticais into the basket. But this didn't bother me. I just waited for a poke in the ribs to stand, figured it is never bad to give a little money, clapped my hands and enjoyed myself. It was just one more time where I was able to participate in an experience outside my own culture, which involves a bit of confusion, but leaves me feeling like I have grown some.

Last night, my power cut out just as I added a bunch of chopped tomatoes to a pan full of onions and garlic. I groaned, realizing that time had been passing so quickly lately that it had been almost a month since I last bought electricity. Here, I have to pre-pay for my power, bringing cash and the code on my meter to the Electricidade de Moçambique office down the street. They put credit on my account and print out a receipt with a code I type into the meter when I get home. It was only about 6:30 when my credit acabou, so I decided to see if the office was still open.

I arrived to find a line reaching past the end of the building. The door to the office was closed, there were only about three people inside and a couple of people were talking to the guard at the door, but everyone in line was sitting quietly, waiting. The people at the door turned and walked away, leaving the premises without having entered the building. I was confused, but there were only two questions that really mattered, and asked the guy at the end of the line "Ainda está aberto?" When he answered, "Sim," I followed up with, "Até que horas?" To which he responded, "21:00." Good. It was still open for another 2+ hours, so I wouldn't stand in line for an hour, only to have the door shut in my face as the office closed for the night. Beyond that, the way the line was being controlled didn't really matter. I would be able to cook dinner. I sat, thinking about this blog post, actually, and was presented with yet another illustrative example.

I'm getting used to livestock as a part of everyday life: even graduation ceremonies.

After about forty minutes, I was the fifth person in the outside line, close enough to the door to witness the following situation. Two young men who were probably Lebanese walked past the line and approached the guard at the door. One began to speak with him, but I was just far enough away and his Portuguese was just accented enough that I couldn't quite make out what they were saying. I could make out the word cão and was getting pretty confused as to why he would be talking to the guard at EDM about a dog. I assumed I had misheard. Then he turned, lifted the back of his tunic (thobe?) and rolled up the bottom part of the pant leg underneath to show the guard his calf where there were the marks of what appeared to be a recent dog bite. Now I was really confused. Had he been bitten on the EDM property while standing in line? The guard was shaking his head and talking, but no matter how much I strained to make out the words, I couldn't quite hear. The guy nodded, rolled down his pant leg and after a couple more exchanges, they men turned around and walked back to the motorbike parked in the EDM lot.

As they rode off, I tried to make sense of the interaction. The provincial hospital is across the street, so maybe they had been confused and thought that the EDM building was a clinic? The line outside did look like the line you often encounter outside clinics around here. But, both the EDM building and the hospital are pretty clearly marked. The guy spoke Portuguese but maybe he didn't read it? No one in the line looked very sick and almost every clinic line is full of mothers holding babies, which this one wasn't. But why else would someone walk up to an EDM office and show a dog bite to a guard at 7:30 at night? Once again, I accepted the confusion and shrugged it off. I still really have no idea what the who interaction was about.

So, why was I thinking about writing a blog post about how comfortable I have become being confused by what is going on around me? I recently had an experience that made me realize it has gone too far. It had nothing to do with Portuguese or Chiute or Mozambique. It happened when I watched the fourth episode of the second season of The Wire.

I have had dozens of people tell me how great the show is, so before I left for Moz, I made sure I had all five seasons. I haven't had as much time to watch it as I expected, but I'm making my way through. I loved the first season, but finished it a little confused as to why there was one episode that didn't seem to belong with the rest. At the end of the third episode, one of the characters had been taken in for questioning and then all of a sudden in the fourth episode, he was looking at making deals to get time knocked off his sentence. One of the characters, a usually plain-clothed detective, was suddenly back in uniform. I thought it was strange, and even double-checked that I was indeed watching episode four. Since I was, I shrugged it off, assuming that I had missed something of significance regarding the arrest and the uniform change. They introduced two new subplots that never went anywhere. The Wire is really tightly written, but sometimes I have watched shows that start down one path only to change directions. "I guess I just missed some details," I thought to myself, continuing along to finish the season.

The second season opened with a plot featuring the characters of one of the "abandoned" subplots. "How strange," I shrugged once again, "that they would make a whole isolated episode in the first season and only come back to it eight or nine episodes later. But who am I to judge how they choose to structure their show? I'm just along for the ride." Slowly but surely as the episodes progressed, it became clear that the action was happening prior to the episode I had already seen, and what had happened began to dawn on me. I had watched an entire episode of the second season completely out of order and simply shrugged off all the plot inconsistencies. I was so comfortable with things not always making sense that my brain did not balk at the fact that all the detectives were reassigned to a new detail that once again did not exist in the fifth episode. I simply accepted the fact that two main characters were suddenly in prison, having been sentenced without comment by the show.

Watching again in the right order, I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen what was going on the first time. I realized that my comfort with confusion has reached a dangerous level. Getting by here without going crazy requires that I turn down the voice in my head that is always demanding to know why people are doing what they are doing, why things are happening the way they are. But this can go too far. I think it is time to start reengaging some more!

Wisdom that Knows No Borders

I noticed recently I seem to be making lots of statements along the lines of, “My father once said to me…” or “My mother’s advice was always…” Basically, my parents are really smart, and I find myself passing their wisdom all the time. Although neither has ever been to Africa, let alone Mozambique, their insight knows no borders and is just as applicable here as it was in the US.

When I was in college and started studying math, I remember having long conversations with my father (at the time a second-grade teacher) about when and how things start to go wrong for kids who grow up to feel like they “just can’t do math.” I had started tutoring and ended up with a lot of students who were studying to pass the basic math requirement test. They would come in, months away from graduating, most very intelligent and confident when it came to English or History or Anthropology or whatever they were studying, but one look at one math problem and they would freeze up, staring helplessly at their tutor, hoping she held some magic key that would unlock the secret of finding the lowest common denominator, would make this hopelessly opaque concept suddenly clear. 

Of course, this isn’t how math works. Despite a pretty common idea that some people are “math people” and some people just aren’t, learning math is a process like any other subject: you have to learn the basic vocabulary, the basic rules, and then get comfortable with manipulating statements within this framework. Only in math, the statements are equations instead of sentences. My father is a “language person” more than a “math person,” but he always put an equal effort into teaching his kids the fundamentals of both areas. 

I remember coming to the conclusion after a few months of tutoring that fractions are where things first go wrong. The college-aged, fear-wracked students that I was encountering almost always froze up on fractions, something that they learned (or didn’t) during the time folks like my dad were in charge of their education. When I proposed this to my dad, it led to a fascinating conversation about the fear that some of his colleagues had of fractions and how this could be transmitted to their students. Beyond that, we started talking about what schools would do to address these problems, which in his experience often included training on the latest, greatest, best method for teaching math. They would bring in an expert who had developed a method, much better than previous methods, with plenty of studies showing this through improved test scores, etc. But of course, when it was implemented by other teachers, the results were never equivalent to those achieved by the one who had developed it and in a few years it was replaced by the newest-latest-greatest.

My father’s wise take on this was that the problem didn’t usually lie in any kind of fraud by the author of the new system, it probably had resulted in a huge improvement in the students learning directly from the person who had developed it. The problem was usually a lack of alignment between this process presented as a panacea that would make anyone a significantly better math teacher, and the specific skills of the teacher implementing it. Every teacher has strengths and weaknesses and making them use a system that does not play to their strengths will rarely lead to success.

This is something that has stayed with me through the adventure of becoming a teacher here in Mozambique. We went through ten weeks of training when we arrived that included numerous presentations by trainers, current volunteers and fellow trainees. There was a lot of discussion of the best ways to handle different subjects and different situations: the need to be a disciplinarian or the students won’t respect you; ways to structure lessons; ways to mark homework or they won’t do any of it. This definitely planted seeds that can spring up as self-doubt after a bad day. But I always come back to those conversations with my dad: every teacher has their strengths and I will have the best outcome if I emphasize those instead of trying to be someone I am not. I always try to be honest with myself about what I do well and what I don’t.

For example: I am NOT a disciplinarian. If I tried to be, the students would be able to see right through it and it would only harm my credibility. Sometimes I wish I could march into the classroom and make everyone snap to attention, but this just isn’t my style. Now, since I generally maintain a relaxed environment in the classroom, when I do snap at someone, it works. My strengths are more along the lines of keeping people engaged through participation and keeping them on my side with self-deprecating jokes about my Portuguese. All of my students have been extremely supportive and helpful with language throughout the semester and I think that mainly comes from the fact that I have the self-confidence to be honest about my abilities and my, um, disabilities. When I realized the wealth of experience my evening students were bringing to my Management class, it was a little intimidating. But I overcame this by focusing on my strength in facilitating conversations over my weakness stemming from my lack of experience in the Mozambican context. I frequently let the students become the teachers, sharing their relevant experience with the rest of the class. They ended up learning the concepts better than my day students (as measured by test scores) and I probably learned as much as they did over the course of the semester. 

And it all comes back to my wise father’s observation: when teachers are able to play to their strengths instead of being forced into using a method that isn’t natural for them, they will be better at their jobs. The same habits that make a teacher happier and more confident are the ones that make them more effective, so when I am true to myself, I am more likely to succeed.

My parents’ wisdom extends beyond the classroom, as well. My mother, more than anyone else I have ever met, can read people. Within moments of meeting someone, she has picked up on subtle nuances of their presentation and manner of interacting with people that give her more insight than most people can glean in years of contact with that person. Unfortunately, this is a skill that can’t be passed on in the form of advice. She once, however, gave me some advice about how to read interactions with people that I have found to be useful in every stage of my life. I don’t remember the context, but I can imagine it was a time that someone had said something that upset me, but I didn’t know why. She advised that, often times, the words a person uses are less important than how they make you feel. [Edit: While I originally attributed this advice to my dad, I believe it actually came from my mother. They are both so wise, sometime it is difficult to remember the origin of each individual counsel!]

This came up recently in a conversation with a PCV friend who was having problems with her school director. She and her roommate were the first volunteers to work at the school and the relationship got off to a rocky start. The director lived next to them and was a heavy drinker who would get overly friendly when coming home from the bar. He would call repeatedly and then start knocking on their windows well after they had gone to sleep. One night he started shining a light into her bedroom as she was sleeping. They had seen female students visiting him at his house and, in a country where trading grades for money or sex is not uncommon, it seemed clear that this guy was not above taking advantage of his position.

My friend had pushed back against his behavior and had eventually resorted to speaking with our Peace Corps program director, who spoke with the school director. This only worsened things between my friend and her director. He started making new rules weekly, mainly to limit when she was allowed to leave her site. The town is very small and isolated, requiring hours of travel to get to the nearest larger town or to another site to see a Peace Corps friend and now the director was making rules preventing her from taking the time she needed to resupply or just take a break from life at site. But these limits only had the effect of making her want to leave more. As we were sitting at my table, drinking tea and discussing this increasingly antagonistic situation, my mom’s advice came back to me. Even though she didn’t want to leave her site every weekend, the fact that she couldn’t was making her crazy. Why were his rules having this effect on her? It seemed to be that the conflict wasn’t really over her ability to travel, but over his need to show her that he was in control. She wanted to go visit her friend? Too bad. He was in charge and she had to stay. Accustomed to using his position to start sexual relationships, when she had said very clearly “No,” he found another way to show her he was boss: restricting her mobility in and out of site. In America or Mozambique, looking beyond someone’s words and scrutinizing their effect on you can provide insight into the dynamics behind the interaction. 

I could fill a book with the good advice my parents have given me and may come back to it in another post, but for now, in this time between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I will simply say “Thank you!” My parents have given me so many tools to find my way through complex situations at home and abroad, in my personal life and professional life. I am truly a lucky girl.