I’m home. I got home a week ago, and my luggage got here yesterday. I’ve slept more than I ever thought possible, I’ve caught up on family time, I’ve bravely endured the permanent sniffles brought on by an abrupt change from 105 (plus humidity, obviously) to 22 degrees, and now I guess it’s time to update the blog. Where to start, though? The last two months of my stay in Mozambique I was too busy to eat, sleep, or breathe, let alone write. Not to mention that the new WV internet that I was so thrilled with started to show its true colors — by December it only worked about 1 day out of every 3, and usually on a day when I was traveling somewhere else in the province.
So it’s been awhile. I could talk about the long days in the field with the survey — it gets light at 4:30am in Quelimane these days, by the way — the endless process of trying to “randomly select” families to interview from the most unreliable lists I have ever seen. Typical case: the village secretary personally provided us with a list of families with children under three years of age. It was only when the survey team actually arrived in the village that it turned out that, well actually, half of the families didn’t really have children under 3, and if you wanted to be picky, well yes I suppose that the head-of-household on line 6 here is actually the wife of the head-of-household listed on the next page… and well yes, I guess that this “head of household” on line 43 might actually be their 12-year-old son. But of course all the other names are accurate… you want to go where? well, actually he doesn’t live here anymore. And the name below that, I’ve never heard of those people. Yes, I know I made the lists but that part must have been done by the head of the neighboring church. No, don’t know who that family is, either. Oh, and of course my name is on here, I made the lists. What? Children under 3? No, I don’t have any children at all. I must have been confused. But don’t worry, I can assure you that the rest of the list is completely accurate…
Or I could talk about the start of the rainy season and getting caught in torrential downpours, only to find that the ground 500 feet further on is completely dry. About rainbows and splotches of sunlight and looking into the distance and being able to say “It’s raining there… and there… and there.” About sticky heat and humidity, embarassing sunburns even with spf 45, endless mosquitos (the mosquitos in Quelimane aren’t big, but they’re much speedier than they should be and nearly impossible to catch), leaky roofs, and the amazing ability of Coca-Cola distribution to get a cold Coke to places that aren’t even on the map.
I could talk about Zambezian food — chima (kind of like flavorless polenta), mucuane (chopped-up, cooked greens with coconut), chicken stew, prawn curry with coconut, all kinds of seafood, giant fish, squid. Nadia, my Brazilian missionary housemate, also cooked amazing feijoada. And then there was the time that I came back to the house in Milange to find a goat tied up in the backyard, and having one of the survey enumerators introduce it as “dinner.” I like fresh food, but in all honesty my formerly-vegetarian self is much more comfortable with a bit more space between the live meal and my table…
The flip side of this, of course, is the people who don’t have enough food, or who don’t have the right kind of food — I saw too many malnourished children to count or keep track of, with enormous pot bellies and tiny legs and arms and heads and eyes that looked too big for their bodies. The stunted children that look 2 years younger than they are, the unnaturally apathetic and quiet toddlers sleeping in their mother’s arms, the tiny girls carrying huge loads on their heads and even smaller babies on their backs. And most heartbreaking of all, the severely malnourished children in the hospital, skin and bones and haunting eyes.
I could talk about the things that drove me crazy. How during my last week in Milange first the bank shut down, then the cellphone network collapsed. The electricity went out. And then all of the gas stations in town ran out of fuel. (But on the bright side, I finally made it to Malawi for real (in spite of a very uncooperative border guard looking for a Christmas bribe), and got the last, best sunburn of my stay in Mozambique). I could talk about the “customer service” again — how there’s such a complete disconnect between the idea that the customer has a problem, and the idea that the waiter/hotel rep/store clerk/whatever is supposed to do something about it. Case in point: I ordered a pizza with extra olives, for of course an extra charge. When it came it had exactly 2 olives. 2. olives. I stared at the pizza for a minute, then asked the waiter, is this all? Yes. So I am paying 25 cents per olive? Well, yes. Don’t you think that is awfully expensive? Oh yes, it is very expensive. Pause. I looked at him expectantly, he looked back completely uncomprehendingly. I gave up.
Or I could talk about the things that made me laugh. How no one ever walks anywhere if they can possibly avoid it — I acquired the reputation of a great walker because I regularly walked the 4 blocks between my apartment and the office; in general, anything over a block was enough to warrant a trip in the car. And speaking of cars, I could talk about how — just by coincidence, of course — the paving spree that preceded Quelimane’s hosting of the annual Frelimo (the ruling political party) conference somehow managed to hit nearly every street in town except a 20-meter stretch of road that just happened to be in front of the Quelimane Renamo (the opposition party) headquarters. Pure coincidence, of course.
I could talk about my Mozambiquan Portuguese — how they sh- their s’s, how I had to train myself to lose the Brazilian accent I’d picked up. When I was in Argentina, I was obsessed with speaking “good” Spanish. I wanted to have a pretty accent, I wanted to have a good vocabulary, I wanted to have perfect grammar. In Brazil, I started to let go of that — mostly because my Portuguese was so bad that it was a victory just to have someone understand me. And by the end of my stay in Quelimane, I’d given up the ghost. My Mozambiquan Portuguese is ugly — American, or with what I’m told is some other sort of mysterious accent, unapologetically indifferent grammar, mediocre vocabulary. But in a weird way, it works better than my Argentine Spanish ever did (when I could still speak it). Because I gave up being embarassed about getting a word wrong or messing up the subjunctive or not knowing the correct form of the preterite or not being able to pronounce something. The most important thing is being able to communicate; I finally stopped caring about the rest.
I could talk about the day I left Quelimane — the last, indescribeably frantic morning rushing around the office, and the moment of complete panic when a co-worker called from the airport to say that my flight to Maputo was leaving RIGHT NOW and why wasn’t I there yet? Apparently, they had moved the departure time to an hour earlier without bothering to notify me. Sometimes I hate Mozambique. Luckily, I could hitch a ride on another flight that made an unscheduled stop in Quelimane to pick me and a couple of other people up, then went on to Maputo via pretty much every other airport in the country. But at least I made it. Sometimes I love Mozambique.
It’s hard to sum things up; it’s a bit hard even now for me to make sense of everything that I saw and did. It’s hard to summarize neatly — it was a messy, exciting, stressful, fascinating, amazing 4 months. Would I go back to Mozambique? Yes, definitely — there’s so much I didn’t get to see, so much I’d still love to do there. I don’t know if or when I’ll have the chance, though. For now, I’m happy to be home, and looking on to the next thing — first Boston, then Brazil.
