Minha Nova Casa esta muito maravilhoso!

My new house is wonderful! Amy and I just went to our little dependencia to get the keys, and we came upon an amazing site. There were 3 men, including the dad of the house (Sr. Francesco), painting the walls and cleaning the floors, and ensuring that everything is functioning. Then they gave us the keys, and invited us to have lunch with them! Best landlords EVER! And to make the deal sweeter, two of the nice folks at FGH are loaning us mattresses. Now, all we have to do is get a little fridge, a hot plate (there is also an outdoor coal-powered grilling bucket of some sort we can use), hang curtains, and we're set! As they say in Mozambique: Óptimo!

GO BLUE!

Twas the night before kickoff of college football season and all through Monica's dependencia, not a person was sleeping, especially me. Ok, I know that doesn't remotely rhyme. As usual, the night before kickoff, I couldn't sleep...just like Christmas Eve. But alas! IT'S GAME DAY! I wanted to fashion a cow bell this morning and play the traditional 1011 State Street Go Blue wake-up song, but I refrained out of respect for sleepy Amy...don't say I never did anything nice for you, Amers!

Today is the last day of our 3 day FGH meeting extravaganza. Tomorrow we're moving into our new home! Portuguese bootcamp is still in full force, although we have to take a day off this week to drive to Malawi in order to renew our VISAs.

Yesterday Monica (the Brazilian doctor at Inhassunge) showed me pictures of some physical findings on her patients. She sees tons of Kaposi's Sarcoma and other HIV-related illnesses. I'm really looking forward to spending time at the clinics.

Singing in the Rain

Life lesson #3: when someone encourages you to sing in the shower, they probably have malevolent intentions. I only realized this about 5 minutes into my vocal escapade, when I noticed that Amy was taping me with her camera. Friends for life.

Phrase of the day:
What I tried to say: I'm going to boil water for coffee.
What I actually said: I'm going to burn down the kitchen.

Batucas and Bats in the Belfry

I finally made it to mass. It's freaky how much the Cathedral in Quelimane looks like Our Lady of the Concrete (St. Francis de Sales), in Muskegon. Picture St. Francis but replace the organ with drums (batucas....although I don't know how it's actually spelled). Then pepper in the occasional squeak from the bats who perch on the high concrete ceiling, and you've got mass in Mozambique! Everything was the same as mass in the USA, except that communion was total chaos. No order or method, just get in line whenever the spirit moves you.

Went to the ATM today to get money to pay rent, but the line was ridiculous. And one thing I've noticed about lines in Africa, is that there are no rules. Everyone cuts. Nobody stands single file. And yet, nobody seems to mind--except me.

The Universality of Elitism

First and foremost, Amy and I have found a place to live!!! We're renting a little dependencia about a block away from the FGH office here in Quelimane. It's very common for houses to have a small living quarters behind their home, which is often occupied by the empregada (maid). It is very clean and secure and wonderful! Two bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, living room, and a hallway that faces outside and joins all of the rooms. It costs 6,000 metacais a month, which is about $240 a month...divided by two. AND it includes water. Of course, we don't have hot water. But that's ok! The summer will be starting soon and I'm sure we'll be loving cold showers at that time. It's also very close to the loja de sorvette (ice cream shop) and Catholic church. So I can feed by belly and soul!

Life lesson #2: elitism knows no boundries. Normally, bedtime consists of Amy and I curled up under our mosquito nets, telling bedtime ghost stories or fairy tales. But last night we were laughing so hard, our bellies hurt! We have become the target of American ex-pat hypocritical academic elitism and snobbery. I thought people like this only existed around college campuses and buildings of higher education. But alas, we have discovered that this subset of "glass half empty" people exist in rural Africa as well. Who knew?!

I need to qualify this by saying that the VAST majority of people we've met here have been wonderful and are extremely supportive of our projects. But we've discovered a smattering of Americans who think that our arrival in Mozambique has ushered in the destruction of their little utopia. Yes, two pig-tail and baseball hat wearing girls are treated like the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse.

For example, when we are around these people in large groups, they make sure to let Amy and I know how smart they are. They also ask us unfriendly questions disguised as pleasant conversation like, "so, why exactly are you here?" "do you really think you'll be proficient in the language enough to carry out your research or are you expecting other people to do the work?" "do you really believe you understand the intricacies of the culture and villages in order to be culturally sensitive and effective with your studies?" "what are your thoughts on PEPFAR/president Bush's allocation of funds to a limited range of NGO's as opposed to giving the (insert my thought: semi-corrupt and quasi-unstable) African governments control of the (insert my thought: American tax payer's) money?"

At first, Amy and I attempted to give thoughtful responses, or honest responses like, "I don't know." But that just brought a smirk to their faces and they consequently dismissed us as being unworthy or unfit to be in Moz, doing what we're doing. So, Amy and I have decided the best way to fight elitist bullies is to resort to sarcasm and absurdity. This is why we were laughing till we cried...we came up with an arsenal of responses.

Question: Why exactly are you here?
Answer:
-We heard Mozambique has great beaches!
-Because coconut milk does wonders for my complection.
-I wanted to see which sunblock works best: Hawaiian Tropic, Banana Boat, or Coppertone.

Question: Do you really think you'll be proficient in the language enough to carry out your research or are you expecting other people to do the work?
Answer:
-It only took me 4 days to learn Mandarin, so I'm anticipating that Portuguese is no problem.
-I was Portuguese in a past life.
-I have no intention to bother with another language. Do you think I could hire a translator/pool boy?

Question: what are your thoughts on PEPFAR/president Bush's allocation of funds to a limited range of NGO's as opposed to giving the African governments control of the money?
Answer:
-Is PEPFAR like PETA?
-Is Bush still president? When is the next election anyhow?

August 21, 2008

Happy Quelimane day! Festa! Dia de feria! Yesterday was a holiday in Quelimane, and consequently, the internet decided to take a vacation. This proved to be troublesome because yesterday was the first time my parents and I attempted to skype call each other. I was able to briefly hear my mom and dad’s voices. And with many crackles and broken words, I heard my dad’s first words to me, after waving bye to me as I boarded a plane at O’Hare on August 3rd…“you better watch what you say on that blog!” Ah yes, even from thousands of miles away, my dad is disciplining me. To all my little cousins who are reading this: IT NEVER ENDS. Your parents never stop being your parents and they will attempt to guide you and discipline you throughout your entire life.

That being said, I want to assure everyone in my wonderful family that my little online diary here is for people of all ages, although may contain some questionable content. Although I will attempt to sensor the material to make it suitable for my favorite little cousins, I’m trying to keep it fairly honest and convey what life is like here. In other words, the language will be appropriate and the content will be edited, but might not be suitable for children of all ages. For example, I briefly wrote about going to a hidden bar just outside of the city. It was a VERY eye-opening experience and I attempted to convey a little bit about this without scaring the kiddies. It was culturally interesting on many levels, and I thought I did a decent job at making it appropriate, but according to Snuffy, I missed the mark. One more thing about blog content: I have a link to Amy’s blog which is NOT edited for content. It’s delightfully entertaining but is not targeted towards the younger crowd. That’s my disclaimer.

Anyway, here’s what Amy and I have been up to: We spend our days studying Portuguese and harassing the Vanderbilt IRB and Mozambican Ministry of Health. We’ve been meeting with people about our projects and are hoping to have it finalized soon. Troy and Mohsin have recruited a Mozambican pharmacy student who is interested in adherence, to work with me on my portion of the project. Meanwhile, Amy and I have intense Portuguese bootcamp with Olivia until the second week of September….after which, we’re on our own. Then we’ll begin piloting our studies, most likely at Inhassunge, a jungle-ish type clinic about an hour south of here.

Amy’s amazing Portuguese phrase of the day:
Me to Amy: Please translate, “Esta rua e muito barulhenta”
Amy: The moon is very shiny. (Esta lua e muito brilhante)
Me: OR, “this road is very loud.”
--I give her an A for effort. Other great phrases of recent days involved us asking for separate checks, which roughly translated into, “We need you have separate bills.” We’re kind of frustrated at the moment.

Last night we attended African dance class, held in the backyard of Dr. Paulo three nights a week. It was just Amy and I plus the two instructors. One teaches the moves while the other plays the drums. They unroll these giant mats and we take off our shoes and dance under the African stars while they play the drums. The class ends up being a cross between traditional African dancing and yoga. I look completely ridiculous because I have two left feet and am about as flexible as a chunk of steel. Despite these obvious shortcomings, we enjoyed ourselves immensely!

Lesson of the day: wash your undies on a daily basis. This was made apparent to me today by Regina, the lovely empregada who works here at Michele’s house (where we are currently staying). Yesterday I washed two weeks worth of undies and hung them up on the line to dry. Regina kindly pointed out to me that it’s not becoming of a lady to hang up 14 pairs of panties, and that it is much better to wash your undies at the end of the day and then hang them up one at a time, in an attempt to be discrete. I explained to her that I had always used a washing machine, and what we do in the USA is save up our laundry until the basket is full and we can do a load of clothes. She then said something that roughly translated into, “good luck finding a washing machine in Quelimane.”

On a final note, we met tons-o-peace corps volunteers this week. They flocked to FGH in Quelimane for their quarterly meeting. About 5 or 6 delightful people who are doing interesting projects throughout various districts in Zambézia Province.

Homeless

Our house hunting continues. Yesterday we saw two places. One was a two bedroom apartment near the Cathedral. It was fine except for the fact that it doesn't have running water from 10am-3pm every day. The second place we looked at was a dependencia behind a big two-story white house. It was completely fenced in and quite secure. Running water, but no hot water. No stove, so we'd have to get a hot plate. But it has an amazing front hallway that would be perfect to ride scooters down! We're hoping to move in there but our contact person is out of town for a couple days so we're back in limbo.