Mozambican Women’s Day

This morning I awoke to the sound of running water in the backyard and sprung out of bed, not bothering to tie up my mosquito net. It’s the first time water has run on the compound in quite a few days so I wanted to take advantage and fill up our water barrels before it shut off again. The rough awakening put me in a bad mood and I was impatient with the pile of puppies I found outside my front door. They are cute but unvaccinated and crawling with mites so I took a broom and swept them and the accompanying pile of dirt off the veranda. I was short tempered also because of a lack of sleep in the past few weeks. My malaria prophylaxis gives me vivid dreams and sometimes I find myself wide awake and very disturbed at odd times of night. I resisted the urge to go back to bed and instead readied myself to walk over the bridge to the next village to celebrate Mozambican Women’s Day. We decided to go on Mozambican time (i.e. an hour late) and got there right as the festivities were beginning. I joined a mob of women and bought a capulana printed with Josina Machel’s face and the words “7 de Abril.” Josina was the wife of former president and revolutionary Samora Machel and she is a heroic female figure in the war of independence against the Portuguese.
I tried tying the capulana around my waist but was quickly intercepted by some ladies who tied it for me the proper Mozambican way. We then began singing songs in Changana and marched to an oddly shaped town monument that I have taken to calling “the lemon squeezer.” Dona Olga, Jenna’s friend from the hospital, translated the songs for me from Changana to Portuguese. The first sang about a mother’s irreplaceable love. The second was about Josina herself and how she went out to the battlefield with a baby on her back, a rifle on her shoulder and a pot of food for the soldiers on her head – a model Mozambican woman.
The celebrations brought people from the village and surrounding communities. All the women had on capulanas and some had head wraps. Babies were strapped to their backs or cradled in front, suckling unashamedly at their mother’s breast. That’s quite common here, by the way. Unlike in the States, breasts here are considered solely utilitarian and it’s not uncommon for a woman to pull one out, feed her baby and then forget to put it away.
After the placing of flowers on the lemon squeezer, we heard more songs and speeches and watched some traditional dancing by local school kids. When celebrations broke up we went “a passear” (“strolling”) through town. First we visited the home of a man who had been ill. We sat awkwardly in their unfinished cement-brick home on plastic chairs and straw mats, saying little. I was relieved to see that he looked strong and was feeling better. It could have been malaria, it could have been AIDS-related illness… but I won’t know since such things aren’t talked about openly.
We then visited the house of another friend and had an unsettling conversation about the civil war (the subject of the next post). After this we caught a ride to the city, got sandwiches for lunch and navigated the muddy market looking for produce. With the rains, the produce selection has greatly improved and I found such delicacies as pumpkin, plump eggplants and green bell peppers that are big enough to stuff.
When I returned home I unloaded groceries and was just settling in for a much-needed nap when our neighbor, Nelia, called me over to witness the roasting of cashews. I thought it an unremarkable event to disrupt my nap but went out anyway. They had a piece of metal roofing set on cinderblocks above a fire made with sugarcane husks. Two girls stood away from the fire and used long sticks to constantly turn over the nuts, still in their toxic husks. Nelia pulled me away from the fire and explained something, making quick gestures and spreading her fingers. I didn’t understand until the pile of nuts suddenly erupted in flames as if doused in gasoline. The girls squeeled and jumped back as the flames grew. Apparently the same compound that makes the husks toxic before roasting is also extremely flammable. They had to use sticks to turn over the metal sheet onto the grown, the flaming nuts spreading across the sand and the flame diminishing into a blue smoke. It was quite dramatic, the whole production, and it made me appreciate the roasted cashews I buy in plastic bags on the street.

Am I teaching English or Health Ed??

Another typical Mozambican conversation:

- Good afternoon!
- Good afternoon!
- All is well?
- All is well, except for this mud!
- Yes, but the rain is good.
- You are right. With rain we will have food.

The rains arrived the morning after I planted the first seeds in my garden and now I’m seeing sprouts. Other people’s gardens are farther along. On the way to school today I saw lots of green: corn, pumpkin, beans, garlic, onions, tomatoes, cacana, cassava…

People here live close to the land. Rains bring life, but too much brings cholera. Northern parts of Mozambique have had outbreaks in the past month. The hospital near my school has its cholera tents and beds prepared just in case. Luckily this area has been spared an outbreak the last few years, mainly thanks to successful water purification efforts (adding bleach) in surrounding rural communities.

Still, I worry about my students, many of whom do not treat their water. Last week they had trimester exams and I wrote the reading comprehension section about the transmission and prevention of cholera. Subliminal messaging? That’s what I’m going for. I try to throw health messages into my lessons wherever possible. Some miscellaneous examples from my 11th grade English classes:

1. I need to buy (buy) a mosquito net.
2. They decided to wait (wait) before having children.
3. They got (get) tested for HIV.
4. We chose (chose) to use a condom.
5. She knows her/hers HIV status.
6. There are two ways to treat your water. What are they?
7. What kind of disease is cholera?
8. What happens when women have children at a very young age?
9. What role do men play in the education of women?
10. What must Nelia and the children eat to stay healthy and strong?
11. How will Claudia and Paulo find out their HIV status?
12. Why must they use a condom even if they are HIV negative?
13. Who can get malaria?
14. How is malaria transmitted?

Sometimes when I talk about condoms in class, the kids will actually pull them out of their backpacks and hold them up. USAID donates them to my school and they are handed out for free in the library. Hurray for prevention! Safe sex is a part of the public school curriculum in Mozambique. Except for the Catholic mission schools, there is little controversy about it. When between 1/4 and 1/3 of your population is thought to be HIV positive, you can’t afford to rely on abstinence-only education.

I’m looking forward to teaching Biology in August. I got a taste of it last week when kids were studying for their finals in the library and asking me questions. I got to explain the lifecycle of the parasite that causes malaria. A student then asked me if you can get HIV from a mosquito bite and I explained why that is not possible. We got to talk about why HIV positive people are more susceptible to diseases like tuberculosis. They were intrigued to learn that it’s possible for an HIV positive women to have an HIV negative baby, and that even though breast milk carries HIV it’s recommended that she breast feed until the baby begins to eat solid foods (since most people can’t afford formula). We even got to have that valuable talk about why you should use a condom even if you trust your partner and have both been tested negative for HIV.

If you had asked me a few months ago if I would be comfortable having these conversations with Mozambican high schoolers I probably would have told you no, but it’s amazing how you learn to fill that teacher role. I care about my students and I want them to have the right information to make healthy decisions. It can be the difference between a great future and a life cut short.

More photos

Woman from riverside community

Cows pulling

Ladies carrying sticks on their heads

Cemetery with too many freshly dug graves

Here are some photos of the areas near my home.

Typical thatch roof mud house

Another cute house

Kids by the canal

Yours truly painting watercolors of the river


The river, said to be home to crocodiles, hippopotamus and schistosomiasis

Knowing the proper color and consistency of good manure

Hi blog readers! I was excited to hear how many people are reading this blog, so I am posting again.

It’s Sunday and I’m enjoying the breeze from my open door. It’s raining again. I can see neighbor kids run by in their underwear, splashing through puddles. I’m baking cookies for my girls group. We were supposed to paint a mural at a daycare today but it has been cancelled due to rain (i.e. due to mud).

I was working in my garden early this morning, when the rain started. At that point I welcomed the downpour because it forced me to stop (I was already exhausted) and because I could watch the drainage pattern off the roof and perfect my irrigation channels. The soil is compacted and I am digging very deep, so it’s exhausting work. Plus, the only tools I have are a hoe, buckets, and a borrowed wheel barrel.

The garden is an experiment really. I’m trying out a method we learned in training, a combination of permaculture and biointensive gardening. I dug irrigation channels and water holes with berms where I will plant perennials like papaya tree, aloe vera, lemon grass, sweet potato vine. In the center I’m digging two long, narrow beds for annuals. I dig deep so I can plant things close together. In one bed I will have corn, beans and pumpkin. In the other, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and onions. It’s polyculture. And it’s all organic. The only inputs are manure (later I will use compost), coal, ash, seeds/plants, and some hard work.

I’m learning a lot. For example, making a garden is definitely a community activity. It started with digging the ditches. I recruited neighbor kids to help me, seeing as they had nothing else to do. “OK teacher,” they said, “but what is our salary?” We decided that cookies were an appropriate payment. Once word got out that the American was paying in cookies, I had a whole hoard of children chipping away at the rock hard ground with hoes. I baked a lot of cookies the next day.

Next, I had to collect manure (a source of nutrients and helpful microbes). There are cows and bulls wandering around our school so I knew there was manure somewhere, but it proved surprisingly difficult to find. When my students saw me wandering around with a hoe, a bucket and a band of small children, they offered their services. It turns out that you can’t take any old cow poop and stick it in your garden. It has to be properly seasoned. I was instructed in the appropriate color and consistency of good manure and we filled several wheel barrels full.

Wood ash (minerals and pH balance) was also easily found. The students who live in the dorms cook over coals in an outdoor kitchen. Out back was a pile of used ash ripe for the gathering.

The last soil addition was charcoal fines. They hold water and house microbes. Plus, they sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, adding carbonic acid that loosens up soil nutrients for plants. How’s that for an off-set? They’re free too. My friend showed me where ladies sell charcoal in the market. There are always bits leftover that are too small to sell. I explained and then he translated to Xangana. The ladies agreed to let us fill our rice sack on the premise that I will bring them some of my corn so they can see if it really works.

Lastly, I needed seeds and plants. A friend who works for Africa Works, a faith-based NGO in town, offered to help me out. His wife fed us lunch and then we drove around all afternoon in his truck, gathering seeds from various stores and at the end of the day we visited the NGO’s fields. The sun was getting low and people were harvesting corn, cassava leaves, okra and other things to sell at the market in the morning. The fields are split up and managed by families affected by HIV/AIDS. The harvest is split three ways: the families keep some to eat, they must give some to neighbors in need, and the rest is sold to finance the project. A gas-powered pump takes water from the river to irrigate the fields and I could see that this corn was in much better shape than corn on smaller landholdings where people can’t afford irrigation. In the fields we met a beneficiary of the project who promised to get the perennials for my garden free of charge. He also gave me some fresh corn for the road.

In my garden quest I have found so many willing helpers asking for so little in return. It makes me feel like part of the community. They give to me and I will give back, be it in the form of cookies, corn from the garden or sharing the knowledge that I gain in the process.

Ultimately, I want to recruit my students to help me build gardens for people in surrounding communities. There are a lot of people suffering from HIV/AIDS in the area and they are often too sick to walk to their fields, but could easily tend a small plot near their home. There is less weeding and watering to be done because of the way we plant (close together, polyculture, natural fertilizer…) and they get high yields of a variety of foods right outside their front door. Another target group would be families whose children have suffered from malnutrition. A friend of mine works at a hospital that receives a lot of HIV/AIDS and malnutrition cases. We’re hoping to work together and make this happen.

All things take time, of course. First, I need to see if I can make anything grow at my own house! Also, this is one of several side projects on top of my regular teaching load. I’m busy, but it’s a good kind of busy. Things move slowly, so there is always time to stop and chat with neighbors, play with puppies, or watch the sunset.

Going native

Hello friends!

A lot has been going on here in Mozambique as I’m sure is true back home. Seems strange to think life stateside doesn’t just pause while I’m gone and start again when I come back. I’ll catch you up on various happenings over the course of the next few blog entries.

I am feeling more at home here. For example, I used to dread going to the big market, navigating the stalls, being catcalled… but now I love going. I go at the end of the day when it’s cool and the market ladies are finishing up. At that point they’ve had enough of selling and get very silly. We joke around and I practice my Xangana. I’ll say “inhlekani” and they’ll squeal “inhlekaaanniii! Hey everybody look! The mulungo speaks Xangana!!” Then they’ll start rapid-fire Xangana lessons and point to all the vegetables at their stalls. People at the market are even crazier now that it’s the season for making canyu (a fermented fruit juice) and they quit early to go dance and sing.
Some might say I’m “going native,” a little bit more every day. I wear a capulana around the house, I bought a hoe in town last week, I know how to grate coconut and pound peanut flour and cook xima. I find myself singing and dancing to the music blasting on chapas. I’ve even begun to adopt the Mozambican style of small talk that is, telling people what they are already doing.
- Good morning!
- Good morning!
- You are walking.
- Yes, I am walking.
- Me too, I am walking.
- Yes, good, we are together then.
- Yes, we are together.
- Good bye!
- Good bye!

Josefa (a friend we hire her to wash our clothes and clean our house) is convinced that we are getting fatter and darker and are going to marry a Mozambican, preferably her son. She’s probably right on two accounts, definitely not the third. Everyone wants to marry an American and go to the United States. I’m always getting asked if I will marry a Mozambican. If it’s a man, he’ll propose right there; if it’s a woman, she’ll set me up with her son.

There are ups and downs of course. Sometimes it hits you all at once (cultural barriers, ignorance, poverty, hunger, discrimination, homesickness…) but most of the time I feel good. I’m happy, and I feel incredibly lucky to be here.

Photos - my house
They're small files but they can give you an idea of what things look like.

My house in the professor's neighborhood on the school compound

Our guard dog, Rex

Our kitchen, complete with water barrel, gas stove and refridgerator

Our spacious living room. On the back wall is a list of words in Xangana.

My bedroom with fan and mosquito net

The chicken coop attached to our house. I hear students outside my window late at night and early in the morning taking care of the chicks.