Munch continues his endless, fierce and exhausting war with my shoelaces. To his credit he never relents, dodging back and forth, pouncing. He has spent hours hidden in a crouch a few inches from my feet, staring them down, waiting for the perfect time to strike…
23: the year of champions. The year where I shed the inadequacies of youth behind. 23 is the year I claim the mantle of manhood. Never again will I experience self doubt or weakness. My soul is now primed for the metamorphosis to blind, unencumbered perfection. Never again will I fail at anything. Ever. 23.
I was fully prepared for my birthday to pass without note. I was ready to act like it didn’t matter, to receive the requisite call from home, to sit in my house staring at the wall playing back through the Lord of The Rings trilogy in my head.
But, as it of course turns out, my birthday was not a slow dirge of despondent misery. Firstly, I didn’t know how to tell people that it was coming up, so I tried the “hello how are you tomorrow is my birthday!” approach. I did this dozens of time, blatantly and shamelessly seeking attention, and my efforts did bear fruit.
Thursday night: Italians take me out to dinner. Eight people, TEN LOBSTERS. Ten. On top of this four fish and half a chicken. I’ve been eating cold lobster leftovers for days. I was the youngest one there.
A side note, you leave college feeling old, entering the real world, this strange place that is your birthright. Looking down on your friends behind you, you get the sensation of adulthood for the first time. It’s a sobering and unforgettable type of fear that only the unknown and sharks can generate. Then you leave college, and you are younger than everyone, utterly without experience. I’m the youngest teacher at my school and younger than any of the Italians by at least five years.
On Friday I was told to buy two cases of soda for the party. Would I be reimbursed? I was assured by several colleagues that reimbursement was theoretically possible. So I brought the sodas in at the designated time and...no one showed. Well, my boss was there but we were having the party in her office. I found some colleagues and tried to keep my temper in check as I asked them why exactly I had spent a quarter of my monthly salary on @#$%ing sodas if no one was going to drink them. The party would happen, I was assured, at lunch.
At lunch no one showed. At my boiling point I considered sitting by the side of the road and selling the sodas for half price, but a kind colleague wouldn’t hear of it and summoned the others. A small party followed, I had even been bought a gift, a (cough) festive t shirt that would make any vacationing septuagenarian more than happy. And come cups, which I actually needed.
That day in class I gave out stickers and plastic spider to my students. That night I was invited over for dinner by a neighbor. This weekend I visited some Peace Corps peeps in our nearest big city.
So I hardly spent any time alone, as opposed to the dark loneliness I anticipated. I was reminded that my fledgling life here is developing, that I am on the right track, and that I still have a chance to live happily ever after. 23 is the beginning of all that, a life of victory and happiness and bounty and security and ease and puppies and candy and recognition and love and relaxation and...
Monday, May 31, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Orquido
Munch is still alive. He can now fully see and can recognize me. He can run now, and is working on his pounce. Being needed by the little fluffball does bring a maternal feeling of warmth to my house. He follows me around constantly, tugs on the hem of my pants, my shoelaces, or gnaws on my arm. The only way I can really get him (or her) to calm down is to put him in my lap and play my guitar. He falls asleep instantly.
I have, on occasions when I am hungry, tired, and just need a minute to relax when I get in the door, lost my patience with Munch. I have honestly thought about killing him in fleeting moments when my patience wavered. So again, no kids for a long, long time.
Everywhere I go now, every day, people greet me in Shitswa. I know how to greet people at different times of the day (there is a different way of asking “how are you” in the morning, at midday, in the evening, and another at night) and how to buy things in the market. I know some basic vocab, how to say where I am going, stuff like that.
I also know how to say “I love you” (and conversely: I don’t love you, which I’ve actually used a few times), “you are beautiful,” and several other handy game-spitting phrases, just in case I became smitten with a Mozambican women within 100 miles of where I am now. This is all thanks to my best friend in the market, Orquido.
I’ve mentioned him before; the twenty year old with whom I sit every weekend, sometimes for hours, exchanging English for Shitswa, and answering his constant barrage of questions about America, music, and anything else that happens to cross his mind. He talks so fast he often trips over his words, as if so excited that he cannot possibly wait until they all file out one by one. He has an easy smile, a giggle that rivals only a little girl in its out and out silliness, and a kind, goofy disposition.
Without exaggeration I can say that Orquido is one of the kindest people I have met, here in Moz or otherwise. He is the type of friend you hope to have, whom everyone likes. Many a lonely night have been followed by long sits with Orquido, who complains when I am not there, such that when I enter the market on Saturdays people often say “Orquido was asking for you” before I can even get to his shop.
And two days ago, during class, my friend Jessica called me. She told me she had some bad news: that Orquido had died in his sleep the night before. The doctor is unsure of the cause of death.
I have little experience with death. I have been lucky thus far to have not lost any close family members or friends. I was and remain stunned. No warning, just like that? I am not sure how to react or what to do. I feel guilty when I find myself thinking of other things, how can my mind stray so easily? I haven’t gone to the market since, but I will go later today and visit his shop.
I don’t mean to overstate the importance we had in each others lives, just that he was a good friend. I am going to find out today is there is something I can or should do. I am generally shocked, what can I do? What can be done? I am sad, yes, but more than that I am stunned. The kind of heart stopped feeling akin to fear or awe.
My birthday is tomorrow. 23 years old. One of those “huh,” birthdays that doesn’t mean anything. Munch and I will be spending some quality time.
I have, on occasions when I am hungry, tired, and just need a minute to relax when I get in the door, lost my patience with Munch. I have honestly thought about killing him in fleeting moments when my patience wavered. So again, no kids for a long, long time.
Everywhere I go now, every day, people greet me in Shitswa. I know how to greet people at different times of the day (there is a different way of asking “how are you” in the morning, at midday, in the evening, and another at night) and how to buy things in the market. I know some basic vocab, how to say where I am going, stuff like that.
I also know how to say “I love you” (and conversely: I don’t love you, which I’ve actually used a few times), “you are beautiful,” and several other handy game-spitting phrases, just in case I became smitten with a Mozambican women within 100 miles of where I am now. This is all thanks to my best friend in the market, Orquido.
I’ve mentioned him before; the twenty year old with whom I sit every weekend, sometimes for hours, exchanging English for Shitswa, and answering his constant barrage of questions about America, music, and anything else that happens to cross his mind. He talks so fast he often trips over his words, as if so excited that he cannot possibly wait until they all file out one by one. He has an easy smile, a giggle that rivals only a little girl in its out and out silliness, and a kind, goofy disposition.
Without exaggeration I can say that Orquido is one of the kindest people I have met, here in Moz or otherwise. He is the type of friend you hope to have, whom everyone likes. Many a lonely night have been followed by long sits with Orquido, who complains when I am not there, such that when I enter the market on Saturdays people often say “Orquido was asking for you” before I can even get to his shop.
And two days ago, during class, my friend Jessica called me. She told me she had some bad news: that Orquido had died in his sleep the night before. The doctor is unsure of the cause of death.
I have little experience with death. I have been lucky thus far to have not lost any close family members or friends. I was and remain stunned. No warning, just like that? I am not sure how to react or what to do. I feel guilty when I find myself thinking of other things, how can my mind stray so easily? I haven’t gone to the market since, but I will go later today and visit his shop.
I don’t mean to overstate the importance we had in each others lives, just that he was a good friend. I am going to find out today is there is something I can or should do. I am generally shocked, what can I do? What can be done? I am sad, yes, but more than that I am stunned. The kind of heart stopped feeling akin to fear or awe.
My birthday is tomorrow. 23 years old. One of those “huh,” birthdays that doesn’t mean anything. Munch and I will be spending some quality time.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Munch
Last Tuesday night my friend Sara, an Italian aid worker who also works at my school, showed up to my house. In her hands was a bundle of fabric with a little white thing in the folds.
“Look!” she said adoringly. I didn’t know what I was looking at. “I found it on the beach, alone. I didn’t want to leave it.” It was a kitten. A tiny, tiny little kitten. “Pequeniiiiiiiiiina (veeeeery small)! I was hoping to leave it with you until I get back from Italy.”
“Sara, I can’t!” I said, “I’ve never taken care of a kitten. I don’t know how to feed it or care for it. What if it dies? I have enough going on in my life right not.”
“Ok,” Sara said sadly, “I guess I’ll go put it out on the street.” Presumambly to die a horrible, slow death freezing to death, waiting for a gigantic man-eating spider to finish it off.
And so I took it in. Such a cliché, but what was I supposed to do? That first night the little bugger, who I’ve come to call Munch, cried all night long. I gave him a box to sleep in, swathed in blankets, but he just cried and howled. The only thing that seemed to calm him was my holding him. So I held him all night. Or her. Whatever. He crawled all over and around me all night, and neither of us slept.
Now I spend every waking moment worrying that Munch is going to die. I heat up milk for it (him? Her? How can you tell with a kitten?) which it seems to like. When it fusses, which is almost always, I hold it and sometimes that calms it down. When I’m in the house it sits in a joey pouch hanging from my neck, poking its tiny little head out and looking around with its little black eyes. Is it healthy? Should I be looking for medication for parasites? Or fleas? How old is Munch? Does it miss its mom? Am I going to come home after class one day to find my little Munchkin dead on the floor?
This experience has made me decide to put off parenting indefinitely.
My birthday is coming up. I don’t know what I should do to celebrate.
“Look!” she said adoringly. I didn’t know what I was looking at. “I found it on the beach, alone. I didn’t want to leave it.” It was a kitten. A tiny, tiny little kitten. “Pequeniiiiiiiiiina (veeeeery small)! I was hoping to leave it with you until I get back from Italy.”
“Sara, I can’t!” I said, “I’ve never taken care of a kitten. I don’t know how to feed it or care for it. What if it dies? I have enough going on in my life right not.”
“Ok,” Sara said sadly, “I guess I’ll go put it out on the street.” Presumambly to die a horrible, slow death freezing to death, waiting for a gigantic man-eating spider to finish it off.
And so I took it in. Such a cliché, but what was I supposed to do? That first night the little bugger, who I’ve come to call Munch, cried all night long. I gave him a box to sleep in, swathed in blankets, but he just cried and howled. The only thing that seemed to calm him was my holding him. So I held him all night. Or her. Whatever. He crawled all over and around me all night, and neither of us slept.
Now I spend every waking moment worrying that Munch is going to die. I heat up milk for it (him? Her? How can you tell with a kitten?) which it seems to like. When it fusses, which is almost always, I hold it and sometimes that calms it down. When I’m in the house it sits in a joey pouch hanging from my neck, poking its tiny little head out and looking around with its little black eyes. Is it healthy? Should I be looking for medication for parasites? Or fleas? How old is Munch? Does it miss its mom? Am I going to come home after class one day to find my little Munchkin dead on the floor?
This experience has made me decide to put off parenting indefinitely.
My birthday is coming up. I don’t know what I should do to celebrate.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Happy belated Six months
Six months! The mighty landmark, like a kyndey stone, did not pass easily.
The weather is finally cooling. After travelling to Maputo for a few days and visiting with other Peace Corps volunteers I was feeling weary from being away from home. But I was anxious about going back to site-- I was away for about ten days, by far the most amount of time I've spent away since arriving. I got back, and got sick, and had my first real slump since the robbery.
The are starting to feel normal here. I don't have to psyche myself up before going to the market anymore. I don't get freaked out by my colleagues any more. I have begun to settle into teaching. I even got a maid. So why the slump?
In starting to feel routine my life lost the buzz that surrounded it, the mystery that shrouded it. Every daily bother was a challenge. But now, daily bothers are just that, bothers. And my long term problems: integrating, making friends, dealing with homesickness persist, despite my life feeling more routine. Now that things are "normal" my problems have lost their glow, the glow that justified them. Now they are just problems, daily bothers that pimple any daily routine.
For two weeks or so my slump followed me around. I stopped playing the guitar, I mostly stopped exercising, I spent too much time in books and watching movies on my laptop. All of these choices, of course, jkust made things a little bit more slumpy. I wanted to update my blog, just to remember something, but niothing seemed special enough to mandate the effort.
What to do? Ultimately reason prevailed and I sought out my fellow volunteers for advice. As it turns out almost everyone in my group is going through this transition about now. I talked to a bunch of colleagues with the same inexplicable gloominess, the feeling of things losing their color. I travelled for a few days and visited people in my province, and when I came home I felt like I understood my situation on a wider scale.
And then things started to get better. My students even missed me, I had groups of students stop me in the halls to ask me where I had been. A bunch of people in town likewise missed me, in the market almost every vendor I stopped to talk to asked me where I'd been.
Little kids don't ask me for money anymore. Mostly they try to climb on me or speak shitswa to me (the really little ones don't understand that I speak anything BUT shitswa). I have people I've never met before calling me "Teacher Colin" as I walk through town. My relationships with my students are better than ever. I feel like I belong, except for the fact that my skin is fifteen shades lighter, I am twenty thousand miles from home and I can't understand what anyone is saying. Yeah, those obstacles persist.
A snapshot of my day. I am walking to class, just behind a group of my students on their way to the same class. They don't see me until I am walking right in their midst. I start walking faster. They see me and break into a run. We sprint for the door, I am in the lead except for at the last second one of my best and favorite students shoves me unapologetically with her elbow to get a step ahead. They all rush to their seats. One students lags way behind, screaming for me to wait as he sprints across the quad. I wait until he is five feet away then I slam the door. I laugh maniacally as half my students beg me to let him in and the other half urges me to keep him out for the rest of class. I let him in and write the date on the board like I always do...
I love my students. They mostly mean very well and are respectful. I have a few students whom I have fantasies about strangling, but only one or two in the couple hundred that I teach. They are always down to joke around, and one has to be careful in not letting them get too carried away. At the same time though joking around is fun, and as I walk across the quad I steal students' hats, fight in pretend karate, lie about my age (they have absolutely no idea), tell them I knew Tupac before he died...it's awesome. I was walking home today and a group of my oldest students asked me if I would teach them how to fight. I said I couldn't because I wouldn't want to accidentally kill any of them, at which point they all leapt around laughing and shouting as teenage boys are wont to do.
In the classroom my lessons are finally starting to go well. I know I haven't really written about my lessons yet, mostly because it's hard to write about something you suck at. I didn't even really understand why my lessons sucked so much, but now that they are starting to shape up I can feel the difference in a huge way. They are picking up on my accent, I have begun to use a smaller, more precise vocabulary that they can grasp. Occasionally I go on long, crass rants in English about random things (the Healthcare bill, a headache I have that day, Mario and Luigi as unhealthy Italian stereotypes...) that they can't understand, and I think they are getting used to that too. They just look at each other with that "he's crazy" look in their eyes.
I have started an English club. Yesterday we did directions, wherein I blindfolded three at a time and their friends had to guide them, using only English, through obstacles to a prize. This immediately devolved into the "guides" directing their blind comrades into desks and walls, or grabbing them and shoving them to the prize before the other groups. A good time was had by all, and some of my students really tried to speak English off the cuff for the first time ever.
Oh, and my mom has sent me stickers. When I first brought them out there was a frenzy. I had to break up fights over stickers, had to stop students from grabbing them from my hand and running away. It was insane. I gave a student a sheet that had about a third of its stickers left and the other kids mobbed him and roughed him up, despite his having every intention to give them out (he was fine by the way, a little dazed). I can't yet tell if stickers have been a success in that I get more volunteers than ever in class, or if it's been a complete disaster in that I have awoken a dark, vicious bloodlust in my students. Either way it's one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen first hand.
I have been hording candy that my mom and Katie's mom have sent me, I shudder to think what will happen when I use it.
In short, I love my students and I love my job. At least for the time being.
The weather is finally cooling. After travelling to Maputo for a few days and visiting with other Peace Corps volunteers I was feeling weary from being away from home. But I was anxious about going back to site-- I was away for about ten days, by far the most amount of time I've spent away since arriving. I got back, and got sick, and had my first real slump since the robbery.
The are starting to feel normal here. I don't have to psyche myself up before going to the market anymore. I don't get freaked out by my colleagues any more. I have begun to settle into teaching. I even got a maid. So why the slump?
In starting to feel routine my life lost the buzz that surrounded it, the mystery that shrouded it. Every daily bother was a challenge. But now, daily bothers are just that, bothers. And my long term problems: integrating, making friends, dealing with homesickness persist, despite my life feeling more routine. Now that things are "normal" my problems have lost their glow, the glow that justified them. Now they are just problems, daily bothers that pimple any daily routine.
For two weeks or so my slump followed me around. I stopped playing the guitar, I mostly stopped exercising, I spent too much time in books and watching movies on my laptop. All of these choices, of course, jkust made things a little bit more slumpy. I wanted to update my blog, just to remember something, but niothing seemed special enough to mandate the effort.
What to do? Ultimately reason prevailed and I sought out my fellow volunteers for advice. As it turns out almost everyone in my group is going through this transition about now. I talked to a bunch of colleagues with the same inexplicable gloominess, the feeling of things losing their color. I travelled for a few days and visited people in my province, and when I came home I felt like I understood my situation on a wider scale.
And then things started to get better. My students even missed me, I had groups of students stop me in the halls to ask me where I had been. A bunch of people in town likewise missed me, in the market almost every vendor I stopped to talk to asked me where I'd been.
Little kids don't ask me for money anymore. Mostly they try to climb on me or speak shitswa to me (the really little ones don't understand that I speak anything BUT shitswa). I have people I've never met before calling me "Teacher Colin" as I walk through town. My relationships with my students are better than ever. I feel like I belong, except for the fact that my skin is fifteen shades lighter, I am twenty thousand miles from home and I can't understand what anyone is saying. Yeah, those obstacles persist.
A snapshot of my day. I am walking to class, just behind a group of my students on their way to the same class. They don't see me until I am walking right in their midst. I start walking faster. They see me and break into a run. We sprint for the door, I am in the lead except for at the last second one of my best and favorite students shoves me unapologetically with her elbow to get a step ahead. They all rush to their seats. One students lags way behind, screaming for me to wait as he sprints across the quad. I wait until he is five feet away then I slam the door. I laugh maniacally as half my students beg me to let him in and the other half urges me to keep him out for the rest of class. I let him in and write the date on the board like I always do...
I love my students. They mostly mean very well and are respectful. I have a few students whom I have fantasies about strangling, but only one or two in the couple hundred that I teach. They are always down to joke around, and one has to be careful in not letting them get too carried away. At the same time though joking around is fun, and as I walk across the quad I steal students' hats, fight in pretend karate, lie about my age (they have absolutely no idea), tell them I knew Tupac before he died...it's awesome. I was walking home today and a group of my oldest students asked me if I would teach them how to fight. I said I couldn't because I wouldn't want to accidentally kill any of them, at which point they all leapt around laughing and shouting as teenage boys are wont to do.
In the classroom my lessons are finally starting to go well. I know I haven't really written about my lessons yet, mostly because it's hard to write about something you suck at. I didn't even really understand why my lessons sucked so much, but now that they are starting to shape up I can feel the difference in a huge way. They are picking up on my accent, I have begun to use a smaller, more precise vocabulary that they can grasp. Occasionally I go on long, crass rants in English about random things (the Healthcare bill, a headache I have that day, Mario and Luigi as unhealthy Italian stereotypes...) that they can't understand, and I think they are getting used to that too. They just look at each other with that "he's crazy" look in their eyes.
I have started an English club. Yesterday we did directions, wherein I blindfolded three at a time and their friends had to guide them, using only English, through obstacles to a prize. This immediately devolved into the "guides" directing their blind comrades into desks and walls, or grabbing them and shoving them to the prize before the other groups. A good time was had by all, and some of my students really tried to speak English off the cuff for the first time ever.
Oh, and my mom has sent me stickers. When I first brought them out there was a frenzy. I had to break up fights over stickers, had to stop students from grabbing them from my hand and running away. It was insane. I gave a student a sheet that had about a third of its stickers left and the other kids mobbed him and roughed him up, despite his having every intention to give them out (he was fine by the way, a little dazed). I can't yet tell if stickers have been a success in that I get more volunteers than ever in class, or if it's been a complete disaster in that I have awoken a dark, vicious bloodlust in my students. Either way it's one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen first hand.
I have been hording candy that my mom and Katie's mom have sent me, I shudder to think what will happen when I use it.
In short, I love my students and I love my job. At least for the time being.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Weird
I shake hands with a man a see around a lot. He is happy to see me and greets me in Shitswa, I stammer my response. He holds the handshake as we continue our greeting. How are you? How did you sleep? What are you doing right now? He begins to rub my hand. What are you buying in the market today? What are you doing this weekend? The stroking continues and his hands are callused and tough and that fact that I know this gives me the creeps. He's still petting my hand as I pull away, stifling an anglo-saxon impulse to scream "GETOFFA ME!!" and run away. The smile on his face never wavers.
And that's completely normal. The only thing different about it was how earnestly happy he was to shake my hand. I am still shaking it off when I leave the market. A group of women walk by carrying big baskets of fish, huge basins of water (water is really heavy fyi), bundles of wood, on their heads. On their heads! A little girl of maybe six follows the train with a baby tied to her back and just her mother's cell phone perched delicately on her own head. She's in obviously in training, but manages to wave at me without dropping either the infant or the phone. The women can do this for miles, all the while greeting everyone they pass and never spilling a drop. Men do it too, it's just more efficient to carry large amounts of weight that way. I saw a woman walking down the street with an unopened dvd player on her head. Another time with a bundle of machetes.
And nosepicking, my god! It's one of those things that isn't even on their radar. A kid will be asking a question in class and the whole time jamming his finger up to the second knuckle into his nostril, working it around to find the sneaky, hidden boogers.. A colleague, an adult, will be talking to you about nothing as he massages his brain through his nose, his finger nearly gone as he asks about your weekend. I earnestly hope they don't notice the look on my face. My boss in a meeting, a nun for christ's sake, with her whole hand in her nose. What is she hoping to find?
But I'm weird too. My teacher's smock, called a "bata", apparently got so dirty by Mozambican standards that a kid in class raised his hand and said more or less, "Teacher Colin, I don't want to offend you at all, but I mean come on."
"What?" I said, honestly confused, "What is it?"
"Your bata," he replied, "it's dirty." Mozambicans are very, very tidy people.
I had another conversation where several of my colleagues marvelled at my arm and leg hair (Mozambicans have very little and often no body hair at all). "It's so long!" they blurted incredulously, "It's...orange!"
"So are my eyelashes" I replied. At this they looked closely at my eyes for a moment and amazed, disbelieving laughter broke out.
Another wierd thing about me is that I have no native language. Or rather, my native language is my national language. Here, the native language is Shitswa and is representative of this and only a few other communities, spoken by less than a million people. One has a native language and learns the national language for things like business, travel and school. One's native language is representative of who he or she is, where he or she is from, a part of their identity. Language, literally the words you use to communicate, are specific to you and only a relatively few others relative to the country or the world at large. But me? My language is the most common language on earth, and so to a Mozambican part of my identity is just missing. It isn't a part of how I conceive of myself. That, I think, is the weirdest thing about me.
And that's completely normal. The only thing different about it was how earnestly happy he was to shake my hand. I am still shaking it off when I leave the market. A group of women walk by carrying big baskets of fish, huge basins of water (water is really heavy fyi), bundles of wood, on their heads. On their heads! A little girl of maybe six follows the train with a baby tied to her back and just her mother's cell phone perched delicately on her own head. She's in obviously in training, but manages to wave at me without dropping either the infant or the phone. The women can do this for miles, all the while greeting everyone they pass and never spilling a drop. Men do it too, it's just more efficient to carry large amounts of weight that way. I saw a woman walking down the street with an unopened dvd player on her head. Another time with a bundle of machetes.
And nosepicking, my god! It's one of those things that isn't even on their radar. A kid will be asking a question in class and the whole time jamming his finger up to the second knuckle into his nostril, working it around to find the sneaky, hidden boogers.. A colleague, an adult, will be talking to you about nothing as he massages his brain through his nose, his finger nearly gone as he asks about your weekend. I earnestly hope they don't notice the look on my face. My boss in a meeting, a nun for christ's sake, with her whole hand in her nose. What is she hoping to find?
But I'm weird too. My teacher's smock, called a "bata", apparently got so dirty by Mozambican standards that a kid in class raised his hand and said more or less, "Teacher Colin, I don't want to offend you at all, but I mean come on."
"What?" I said, honestly confused, "What is it?"
"Your bata," he replied, "it's dirty." Mozambicans are very, very tidy people.
I had another conversation where several of my colleagues marvelled at my arm and leg hair (Mozambicans have very little and often no body hair at all). "It's so long!" they blurted incredulously, "It's...orange!"
"So are my eyelashes" I replied. At this they looked closely at my eyes for a moment and amazed, disbelieving laughter broke out.
Another wierd thing about me is that I have no native language. Or rather, my native language is my national language. Here, the native language is Shitswa and is representative of this and only a few other communities, spoken by less than a million people. One has a native language and learns the national language for things like business, travel and school. One's native language is representative of who he or she is, where he or she is from, a part of their identity. Language, literally the words you use to communicate, are specific to you and only a relatively few others relative to the country or the world at large. But me? My language is the most common language on earth, and so to a Mozambican part of my identity is just missing. It isn't a part of how I conceive of myself. That, I think, is the weirdest thing about me.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
While you're away
The Escolinha in front of my house continues. The little ones have stopped trying to escape, even when I hold the gate open to provoke them. Now my new favorite thing about Escolinha is the little girl who is afraid of white people. Every time she sees me she breaks out into ridiculous cartoon tears, frozen to the spot staring at me in pure terror. I wave and smile at her. It always makes me laugh and I look forward to it whenever I leave my house. Is that bad?
The Peace Corps has many mantras and catchphrases. One of the many is "things at home happen while you're away." Prepare yourself, we were told, for life at home to change. Your friends may change, move on or move away, one volunteer's sister got breast implants. My family moved away from my childhood home.
As you may recall I live on a catholic Mission with an Italian priest and two Italian lay people. One of them, we'll call her Katherine, has been living in Mozambique for ten years with the Priest. Here they have built a mission, a professional school that is the first of its kind in the region, and in just a few months complete construction on a massive church. Last Friday she found out her father was near death. She left for the airport that night and was on a plane to Italy early the next morning.
It was explained to me that she is an only child. If her father survives he will likely be in a vegetative or low-functioning state. In this event she will likely need to stay in Italy to help care for him. If her father does die her elderly mother will be left more or less alone and she would more than likely need to stay in Italy to be with her.
Abroad for more than ten years. Late one afternoon disaster at home and her life changes faster than she can get on a plane. I was talking to the other lay person, and trying to imagine what could possibly be going through her head. How do you manage one of life's hairpin turns? This on top of leaving a life you have known for so long, to return to a life that you left behind. I have my own petty insecurities about not having friends to return to, how would it be after ten years?
But things happen and life at home does not stop without us. It is the ultimate nightmare for us. We were given presentations on the logistics, what the Peace Corps will do under what circumstances. We have all had the odd nightmare or cold chill when the thinking of that plane ride home. It's easy to forget about, which is a merciful characteristic of being human. But life is not fair, and it doesn't call ahead to clear your schedule.
In the end, you the only thing you can hope for is luck.
I hired a woman to do my laundry, probably the best decision I have ever made. Booyah!
The Peace Corps has many mantras and catchphrases. One of the many is "things at home happen while you're away." Prepare yourself, we were told, for life at home to change. Your friends may change, move on or move away, one volunteer's sister got breast implants. My family moved away from my childhood home.
As you may recall I live on a catholic Mission with an Italian priest and two Italian lay people. One of them, we'll call her Katherine, has been living in Mozambique for ten years with the Priest. Here they have built a mission, a professional school that is the first of its kind in the region, and in just a few months complete construction on a massive church. Last Friday she found out her father was near death. She left for the airport that night and was on a plane to Italy early the next morning.
It was explained to me that she is an only child. If her father survives he will likely be in a vegetative or low-functioning state. In this event she will likely need to stay in Italy to help care for him. If her father does die her elderly mother will be left more or less alone and she would more than likely need to stay in Italy to be with her.
Abroad for more than ten years. Late one afternoon disaster at home and her life changes faster than she can get on a plane. I was talking to the other lay person, and trying to imagine what could possibly be going through her head. How do you manage one of life's hairpin turns? This on top of leaving a life you have known for so long, to return to a life that you left behind. I have my own petty insecurities about not having friends to return to, how would it be after ten years?
But things happen and life at home does not stop without us. It is the ultimate nightmare for us. We were given presentations on the logistics, what the Peace Corps will do under what circumstances. We have all had the odd nightmare or cold chill when the thinking of that plane ride home. It's easy to forget about, which is a merciful characteristic of being human. But life is not fair, and it doesn't call ahead to clear your schedule.
In the end, you the only thing you can hope for is luck.
I hired a woman to do my laundry, probably the best decision I have ever made. Booyah!
Monday, March 1, 2010
The Globe
Sitting in my teacher's lounge is a globe of the world. I have an opening in my schedule and because I don't really have any friends I often sit in front of the globe and poke it. Mozambique is indeed pretty close to the opposite side of the earth as California. Sometimes it makes me feel inconcievable far from my home. It also makes the earth seem really small.
On this globe sits every country of the world in a different color and their major cities and capitals. With one strange exception: The United States. Every state has its own color, with every state capital and major city. It's the only country on earth displaying this feature, on a globe in a teacher's lounge in Mozambique.
Teaching is hard.
On this globe sits every country of the world in a different color and their major cities and capitals. With one strange exception: The United States. Every state has its own color, with every state capital and major city. It's the only country on earth displaying this feature, on a globe in a teacher's lounge in Mozambique.
Teaching is hard.
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