Well I'm considering today the halfway point of my trip to Mozambique, because I left the USA on the 18th on January, and my flight home leaves on the 18th on March. But, with the length of travel, I guess there are a number of days I could consider a halfway point.
Regardless, since I'm at the halfway point, I wanted to commemorate the occasion with a blog, even though not much has happened since I last wrote. Dieudonne has been out all day every day this week, and without him around, I've been pretty lazy, pretty much the only work I've done has been feeding the chickens.
I think in some of my posts, I have talked about things that have been difficult for me to get used to here, and I don't think I've put enough emphasis on the fact that honestly, even though the lifestyle I'm living would not be considered particularly pleasant in America, that I consider myself incredibly lucky to be living the way I am. This is because compared to probably 95% of the people I see every day, I'm living the high life. It's a bit annoying that the only way to cool off is by taking cold showers, but, at least we have running water. It's a bit annoying how repetitive the meal selection can be, but, at least we have enough food to go around. It's annoying that bugs and little lizards climb around your room at night, but at least we have mosquito nets and a house. And I absolutely am not allowing myself to get annoyed when it takes 10 minutes to load a page on the internet, since I'm at one of a handful of places in the entire area with the internet at all.
On this same note, everyone has been asking me about how much pictures I've been taking, and I'm doing my best to take pictures, but what I've found from the moment I left the airport in Maputo, every day, the most compelling thing about Mozambique is the people themselves. Since I don't feel particularly comfortable taking pictures of people going about their daily lives, I'm not capturing very much in photographs what to me at least, is the essence of Africa.
One of the things I didn't realize was that there would be people everywhere. It's difficult even to explain. You can drive off road for a mile, and there are people there, living. Driving along the highway in the country, there are people walking on either side as if you were in the middle of a city. Dieudonne said it very well, when I mentioned this. He said, "you see, in America you are always inside. What are you doing? Watching TV? They do not have TV. Using the computer or the internet? They do not have computers. Playing games? They do not have games. Reading books? They do not have books. So, what do they do? They go outside, they walk, they talk, or they just sit."
One of the coolest things has been when we go for drives. Cambine is at the end of a long dirt road, that comes up from the main paved road. When we get to the paved road, and start driving along it, every few miles we come to small village centers, or to crossroads where other dirt roads go off. And at every one of these crossroads, there are hordes of people, most of them selling things. It's quite something to see. If we stop the car anywhere near here, within 5 seconds, there will be a crowd of 20 people around the car, holding up fruit, vegetables, fish, shrimp, craps, chickens, etc. It's absolutely incredible to see. When you pass a river, there are always people there who are selling fish that they have just caught, they'll shove the fish right into your window if you're dumb enough to roll it down all the way. And, after buying food from these people, one usually comes away with the feeling that you have stolen, because they charge you basically nothing. We paid the equivalent of 75 cents one day for a huge bushel of bananas. Another day, we paid the equivalent of $1 at a store for a six pack of Heineken.
On the work front, I just wanted to let whomever it may concern know that work has just started on the new dormitory for the boys at the orphanage. It is going to be separate from the rest of the orphanage, giving them a little more independence. As for me, I've still got plenty I can help with. I've seen most of the things I had hoped to see, the one major exception being we haven't been to the beach yet. That won't be the case much longer, as our current plan is to go to Inhambane and the beach this weekend.
Well, when I sat down to write, I was thinking I would just write about whatever came to mind, and didn't think there would be much to say. Was I ever wrong. I could keep going for some time, but that might leave less to write about in future posts. So, I will leave it here for tonight. I miss all of you, and I thank you for continuing to read these posts and posting replies, even through the very weak medium of seeing your names accompanied by a few friendly words, I feel a little bit closer to all of you.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Rice Farming and heat
Hey!
Well yet another week has passed by and I'm closing in on the halfway point of my trip. This has been a good week, although the last few days have been the hottest since I arrived here. We only have cold showers here, which is perfectly fine, in fact it's preferable in the heat, but it's gotten to the point where it's so humid, I can take a long cold shower, and within 10 minutes of it I am sweating again.
Aside from the heat though, it has been a good week. I watched the Super Bowl by myself Sunday morning, and enjoyed it a lot, although I thought The Who was morbidly depressing. I noticed the sky outside lightening right around the time Manning threw that interception, and I could hear roosters crowing as I went to sleep. At halftime I went outside to try and call home, but I was unsuccessful, cell signals are hard to come by here. But the reason I'm mentioning it is I don't think I've mentioned the stars yet here. The sky is practically alive with light, the stars are so clear. I thought all the stars in the Southern Hemisphere were different, but it must be a mixture of the same and different ones, because I definitely spotted Orion, or there's a carbon copy of Orion in the Southern Hemisphere, I don't know.
The first couple of days this week we worked more on preparing a chicken coop and pig pen for the orphanage. On Wednesday, we brought in 500 chicks which was one of the cutest things ever until one of them peed on my hand. So the orphanage now has all these chicks, although of course they won't be able to get eggs from them for a while, but work is still not complete on the pig pen, so obviously the pigs won't be able to come in until that's done.
The last couple of days I've been working on the rice farm again. It's been pretty strenuous work, but I enjoy it. When you're growing rice, it grows on one field for a while, and then it has to be dug up and moved to another field. That's what we've been doing. It grows in huge tufts that look like big tufts of tall grass. You have to pull these tufts up, cut them down shorter with a machete, then we'd move them to Dieudonne's truck, where he would drive close to the other field, then we had to carry them out to his field, and dig little holes to put them back into the ground there. Friday I spent pulling the rice up at the first field, and then yesterday I was one of the people planting it at the second field. Both were quite tiring, although I still think the heat was the most tiring. We started before sunrise, but even really early in the morning, once the sun comes up it gets pretty damn hot. The rice fields are out on a plain though, and both days we had an absoluutely beautiful sunrise and I was smart enough to bring my camera the second day and got some great pictures of it.
That's about all I can think of at the moment, although of course it's hardly all that has happened. Thanks as always for taking the time to read, I look forward to hearing your responses.
Well yet another week has passed by and I'm closing in on the halfway point of my trip. This has been a good week, although the last few days have been the hottest since I arrived here. We only have cold showers here, which is perfectly fine, in fact it's preferable in the heat, but it's gotten to the point where it's so humid, I can take a long cold shower, and within 10 minutes of it I am sweating again.
Aside from the heat though, it has been a good week. I watched the Super Bowl by myself Sunday morning, and enjoyed it a lot, although I thought The Who was morbidly depressing. I noticed the sky outside lightening right around the time Manning threw that interception, and I could hear roosters crowing as I went to sleep. At halftime I went outside to try and call home, but I was unsuccessful, cell signals are hard to come by here. But the reason I'm mentioning it is I don't think I've mentioned the stars yet here. The sky is practically alive with light, the stars are so clear. I thought all the stars in the Southern Hemisphere were different, but it must be a mixture of the same and different ones, because I definitely spotted Orion, or there's a carbon copy of Orion in the Southern Hemisphere, I don't know.
The first couple of days this week we worked more on preparing a chicken coop and pig pen for the orphanage. On Wednesday, we brought in 500 chicks which was one of the cutest things ever until one of them peed on my hand. So the orphanage now has all these chicks, although of course they won't be able to get eggs from them for a while, but work is still not complete on the pig pen, so obviously the pigs won't be able to come in until that's done.
The last couple of days I've been working on the rice farm again. It's been pretty strenuous work, but I enjoy it. When you're growing rice, it grows on one field for a while, and then it has to be dug up and moved to another field. That's what we've been doing. It grows in huge tufts that look like big tufts of tall grass. You have to pull these tufts up, cut them down shorter with a machete, then we'd move them to Dieudonne's truck, where he would drive close to the other field, then we had to carry them out to his field, and dig little holes to put them back into the ground there. Friday I spent pulling the rice up at the first field, and then yesterday I was one of the people planting it at the second field. Both were quite tiring, although I still think the heat was the most tiring. We started before sunrise, but even really early in the morning, once the sun comes up it gets pretty damn hot. The rice fields are out on a plain though, and both days we had an absoluutely beautiful sunrise and I was smart enough to bring my camera the second day and got some great pictures of it.
That's about all I can think of at the moment, although of course it's hardly all that has happened. Thanks as always for taking the time to read, I look forward to hearing your responses.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Another Week Gone
Hello again everyone.
It's been a great week here in Mozambique, although there isn't a lot to talk about. Most of the week, I've been working down at the orphanage, where we have been building a little structure to house some pigs that are the orphanage is going to receive. It's been strenuous work, but I've enjoyed it a lot. Aside from the work, I haven't been doing a whole lot. On Monday, we went to Maxixe again and I met the family of Lola, Dieudonne's fiancee. They were very nice although they didn't speak English, so our communication was limited. I'm learning some Portuguese just from speaking it with people a bit, and Dieudonne is giving me lessons, but I'm still a ways from being able to have real conversations with people.
On Wednesday or Thursday, I can't remember which, I went for a walk with a few kids from the orphanage to the river near Cambine. We had to walk about half of a mile on trails and when we got to the river it was very cool. It felt like you were pretty much in the middle of the jungle, even though we knew the village wasn't far away. The plants were beautiful, and we even saw a couple of monkeys. After coming out, there was an organized soccer game going on on the field in the middle of town, so we stopped to watch this. I was really impressed with how well the guys playing could control the ball, because they were playing on about the worst field I've ever seen. The whole field was on a slope, and on one side it sloped down really steep. There were sections that were pretty tall grass, and other parts that were just dirt. But, they didn't seem to mind. The game ended abruptly though, when one team walked out in protest of a decision the referee made, even though those of us watching all thought it was clearly the right decision.
Today I went to my first church service here, and it was really quite interesting. The service is done in the local dialect Shiswa (don't know if that's how it's spelled), which I thought was very good, although I of course didn't understand a single word of it. Dieudonne doesn't speak Shiswa either though, since he isn't native to Mozambique, so for the first time I was actually with someone who also had no idea what was being talked about.
The service was really nice at times, and painful at other times. The greeting time was probably my favorite part of the service. As opposed to in the US, where the preacher will usually say something, and then everyone half-heartedly greets the people sitting in front of and behind them, at the service here, everyone started singing a song in Shiswa and clapping or banging their hands on the pews, and then everyone ran around the whole church trying to greet as many people as they can. The pastor even came down and started circling around shaking hands. But the singing and banging and all made for a really exciting atmosphere.
As a guest, I was asked to introduce myself to the congregation. Dieudonne translated for me, as I didn't want to butcher my Portuguese and embarrass myself, and it ended up being him who embarrassed himself as he tried to translate what I was saying into Shiswa. His attempts to speak it brought the house down.
The first half was really nice because it was mostly singing, which I enjoyed even though I didn't understand the words. The second half was sermons and prayers, and it was brutal. I even saw the pastor making the classic John Paul II face at one point while someone was reading a prayer. And as for the sermon, well, I always thought people tuned Rabbi Koch out, but it was nothing compared to this. I could actually look around and count how many people were paying attention. After about 2.5 hours (yes, 2.5 hours) Dieudonne said to me that we should probably just leave. He said nobody would be offended that I didn't stay since I was with him, and he has a reputation for leaving early. For the most part though, that was a cool experience. I doubt I'll be going every week though.
Thanks again for reading. I look forward to reading your comments. And go Saints!
It's been a great week here in Mozambique, although there isn't a lot to talk about. Most of the week, I've been working down at the orphanage, where we have been building a little structure to house some pigs that are the orphanage is going to receive. It's been strenuous work, but I've enjoyed it a lot. Aside from the work, I haven't been doing a whole lot. On Monday, we went to Maxixe again and I met the family of Lola, Dieudonne's fiancee. They were very nice although they didn't speak English, so our communication was limited. I'm learning some Portuguese just from speaking it with people a bit, and Dieudonne is giving me lessons, but I'm still a ways from being able to have real conversations with people.
On Wednesday or Thursday, I can't remember which, I went for a walk with a few kids from the orphanage to the river near Cambine. We had to walk about half of a mile on trails and when we got to the river it was very cool. It felt like you were pretty much in the middle of the jungle, even though we knew the village wasn't far away. The plants were beautiful, and we even saw a couple of monkeys. After coming out, there was an organized soccer game going on on the field in the middle of town, so we stopped to watch this. I was really impressed with how well the guys playing could control the ball, because they were playing on about the worst field I've ever seen. The whole field was on a slope, and on one side it sloped down really steep. There were sections that were pretty tall grass, and other parts that were just dirt. But, they didn't seem to mind. The game ended abruptly though, when one team walked out in protest of a decision the referee made, even though those of us watching all thought it was clearly the right decision.
Today I went to my first church service here, and it was really quite interesting. The service is done in the local dialect Shiswa (don't know if that's how it's spelled), which I thought was very good, although I of course didn't understand a single word of it. Dieudonne doesn't speak Shiswa either though, since he isn't native to Mozambique, so for the first time I was actually with someone who also had no idea what was being talked about.
The service was really nice at times, and painful at other times. The greeting time was probably my favorite part of the service. As opposed to in the US, where the preacher will usually say something, and then everyone half-heartedly greets the people sitting in front of and behind them, at the service here, everyone started singing a song in Shiswa and clapping or banging their hands on the pews, and then everyone ran around the whole church trying to greet as many people as they can. The pastor even came down and started circling around shaking hands. But the singing and banging and all made for a really exciting atmosphere.
As a guest, I was asked to introduce myself to the congregation. Dieudonne translated for me, as I didn't want to butcher my Portuguese and embarrass myself, and it ended up being him who embarrassed himself as he tried to translate what I was saying into Shiswa. His attempts to speak it brought the house down.
The first half was really nice because it was mostly singing, which I enjoyed even though I didn't understand the words. The second half was sermons and prayers, and it was brutal. I even saw the pastor making the classic John Paul II face at one point while someone was reading a prayer. And as for the sermon, well, I always thought people tuned Rabbi Koch out, but it was nothing compared to this. I could actually look around and count how many people were paying attention. After about 2.5 hours (yes, 2.5 hours) Dieudonne said to me that we should probably just leave. He said nobody would be offended that I didn't stay since I was with him, and he has a reputation for leaving early. For the most part though, that was a cool experience. I doubt I'll be going every week though.
Thanks again for reading. I look forward to reading your comments. And go Saints!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
1/4 of the Way?
Hard to believe it has already been over two weeks since I left the US and that 1/4 of my trip is already past me. Not a lot has happened worth writing about since I last posted, but as a quarter of my trip is already done, I wanted to just write about some of the daily experiences I've been having that I haven't mentioend yet.
Yesterday and today have been the two hottest days since I've got here, so hot that you really don't feel like doing anything but lying around all day. At night it can cool down nicely (which is probably still like 90 degrees, but it feels nice), but in the middle of the day, it's devastatingly hot. I've started getting used to it a little bit only because you can't escape it with air-conditioning, because there is no air-conditioning. But, I've found that the only way for me to stop sweating is to take off my shirt and socks and lie completely still. If I do that, after like 20 minutes I stop sweating.
Every day, from the moment I step outside I am constantly conscious of how different a world I am in now, because EVERYTHING looks different than it does at home. Even the grass looks different, not to mention the trees and plants. The scenery around Cambine is beautiful, but it gives you a strange feeling, especially when we are driving around, because one moment you will be looking at a beautiful natural scene, the next moment you are passing by houses made of sticks and people in rags and stuff.
However, the thing that stands out to me the most about the poverty here is not how little many of the people have, it's how different the things people do have are. Some people have cell phones, but they all look like models from 10 years ago. Some people have TVs, but the ones they have are small with what we would consider horrible picture. A very small percentage of people have cars, but the cars all almost all old and run down- the choppas I talked about last week were so old that people had to push them before the drivers could coax the engines to life.
I think the greatest experiences I've had so far are when we have gone out of town and off the roads to meet people who are pretty much living in the bush. When we were planting rice, we came across one fellow who was living under a makeshift shelter, which was basically a bunch of bark held up by some branches, and had a little area around it where he was growing a few vegetables. The same day, I went for a walk by myself and came across a 3 or 4 year old kid who surely had never seen a white person before, because he stopped walking when he saw me approaching and stared at me very apprehensively until I got to him. I greeted him and asked him how he was in Portuguese, which I guess made him feel a little better. To me, I think the coolest part of my trip has been moments like that.
I talked about this with a few people before I left, and I just wanted to confirm that it looks like I will be able to watch the Super Bowl. Dieudonne gets ESPN International, and they showed the Jets-Colts game, but not the other. I didn't find out until a few days later that the other game had ended partly thanks to a terrible Favre interception, which brightened my day considerably. Everyone here is big soccer fans though, this month there was a tournament to determine the African champion that people had been coming over every day to watch, but it ended on Sunday with Egypt winning. So that was also a fun experience.
I want to again thank everyone who has been taking the time to read this. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of your comments, it's great to hear from everyone. So far my internet success rate is around 50/50, so I will try to have another post up Friday or Saturday. Until then...
Yesterday and today have been the two hottest days since I've got here, so hot that you really don't feel like doing anything but lying around all day. At night it can cool down nicely (which is probably still like 90 degrees, but it feels nice), but in the middle of the day, it's devastatingly hot. I've started getting used to it a little bit only because you can't escape it with air-conditioning, because there is no air-conditioning. But, I've found that the only way for me to stop sweating is to take off my shirt and socks and lie completely still. If I do that, after like 20 minutes I stop sweating.
Every day, from the moment I step outside I am constantly conscious of how different a world I am in now, because EVERYTHING looks different than it does at home. Even the grass looks different, not to mention the trees and plants. The scenery around Cambine is beautiful, but it gives you a strange feeling, especially when we are driving around, because one moment you will be looking at a beautiful natural scene, the next moment you are passing by houses made of sticks and people in rags and stuff.
However, the thing that stands out to me the most about the poverty here is not how little many of the people have, it's how different the things people do have are. Some people have cell phones, but they all look like models from 10 years ago. Some people have TVs, but the ones they have are small with what we would consider horrible picture. A very small percentage of people have cars, but the cars all almost all old and run down- the choppas I talked about last week were so old that people had to push them before the drivers could coax the engines to life.
I think the greatest experiences I've had so far are when we have gone out of town and off the roads to meet people who are pretty much living in the bush. When we were planting rice, we came across one fellow who was living under a makeshift shelter, which was basically a bunch of bark held up by some branches, and had a little area around it where he was growing a few vegetables. The same day, I went for a walk by myself and came across a 3 or 4 year old kid who surely had never seen a white person before, because he stopped walking when he saw me approaching and stared at me very apprehensively until I got to him. I greeted him and asked him how he was in Portuguese, which I guess made him feel a little better. To me, I think the coolest part of my trip has been moments like that.
I talked about this with a few people before I left, and I just wanted to confirm that it looks like I will be able to watch the Super Bowl. Dieudonne gets ESPN International, and they showed the Jets-Colts game, but not the other. I didn't find out until a few days later that the other game had ended partly thanks to a terrible Favre interception, which brightened my day considerably. Everyone here is big soccer fans though, this month there was a tournament to determine the African champion that people had been coming over every day to watch, but it ended on Sunday with Egypt winning. So that was also a fun experience.
I want to again thank everyone who has been taking the time to read this. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of your comments, it's great to hear from everyone. So far my internet success rate is around 50/50, so I will try to have another post up Friday or Saturday. Until then...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)