A Tale of Five Cheeses

Once upon a time there were five cheeses that shared a very special destiny:
-Sir "Shoprite Gratted Cheese" the Spagehtti Ready.from Springfield, NJ
-Lord "Laughing Cow Processed Cheese" the Egg Sandie Perfecter from Gurue,Zambezia
-Baron "Barry Farms Cheddar Powder" the Mac N Cheeser from Wapakoinck, Ohio
-Duke "Parmalat Cheddar Flavored Cheese Slices" the Grilled Cheesiest from Nampula
-and the mysterious nameless black waxed cheese from former Alto Molocue PCV Zach

Collected through various trial and tribulations, they all found themselves on a cheese and cracker platter prepared for a very special occasion. You see, the 3 young Americans residing in Alto Molocue, Northern Mozambique were devoted to a popular TV show involving ferocious wolves, snow zombies, dragons, and incest. But while their friends and family back in Americaland could watch the show the day it came on the air, the 3 young Americans had to wait for the season premier to be available online. Once they had acquired a sacred artifact, "The Modem of Unlimited Megabitivity", they were able to download the hallowed video and prepare for its revealing.  But as they were so devoted to the show, a demonstration of adoration was deemed necessary. So the 3 young Americans gathered together an array of their most prized possessions, and hoped it would please the Lactose gods.

Our humble offering to the show that made being
in love with dragons acceptable

Finally, on a slightly chilly Sunday evening one week after the show's premier, they gathered together in front of a laptop and gazed with wonder as their imagination was turned into reality. While cheese was placed, spread, and sticked (crackers were licked then dabbed in powdered cheese) on Agua e Sal crackers, an epic story of magic, betrayal, love, and war played out before their eyes. By the time it was over (actually it was only a little after minute 14), the 5 cheeses had reached their destiny and were forever bonded by their induction to the honored "Order of the Digestive System" .

For the North!!

A Country Run on Personal Favors

Good thing I've got them, we're flush in personal favors

We all have that smug friend, who just after getting a sweet job offer reminds you that“it’s not what you know, but who you know.” Though this cliché might be saying that your smug friend can be successful despite being a complete idiot, it is definitely true. All the more so when a young nation grows at an uncontrollably break neck pace. As a result, Mozambique doesn't run on family honor, or pride in a hard day’s work, or even personal responsibility. Instead, for better or worse, it runs on personal favors.

Our event had a pretty good draw: over 80 people attended

This fact of life affects the way most things here operate. When my colleagues at the school want to withdraw their salary from their bank account in one lump sum as opposed to small installments from the ATM, it has very little to do with if they filled out sufficient paperwork. It does have very much to do with if they have shared sufficient cups of beer or church services with the bank tellers. If I want to use the photocopier in my school’s office, I better have given the pedagogical director on duty that day one of the Statue of Liberty magnets that I brought back from the US, because otherwise they’ll probably be out of paper. And when a bus is stopped at a police checkpoint, whether the police check all the drivers’ documents has a lot to do with how many family members they share

This cultural aspect became especially obvious this

Our municipal police commander handing the winner of  the

poster contest his prize.  This is why uniforms are important:

without this caption he'd just be a random guy.

 past weekend. On Saturday, weeks of planning, inviting, practicing, chatting, and pleading came to fruition when the Escuteiros de Alto Molocue held their first major event: A Baixo Acidentes das Motociclistas (Down with Motorcycle Accidents). Sparked by a series of high speed helmetless motorcycle crashes that killed several students from our school, the scouts had decided to host an event on the importance of motorcycle safety. Through radio announcements, flyers posted around town, announcements at the school, and personal invitations to motorcycle taxi drivers, community members were invited to the Casa de Cultura (House of Culture) for the 2 hours of theater, lectures, and contests. The motorcycle safety lecture was of particular importance, as it would be led by a uniformed member of the police. Not only would this add weight to the message of “slow down, use lights at night, and wear a helmet”, but it would also add legitimacy to the event overall.

A couple days before the event, all the pieces were in place: authorization from the Municipal Council had been given, the Casa de Cultura was reserved, judges for the poster contest were confirmed, and props for the scout’s theater piece had been procured. Only one thing was missing: a police officer to do the lecture. You would think that with us having sent invitations to all of Alto Molocue’s 3 police forces (national, municipal, and transit), one would be able to send a representative. But come Thursday afternoon, not one had responded in the affirmative. Most vexing was the response of the commander of the transit police, who’s direct responsibility it is to prevent motor vehicle accidents. It seemed that some combination of a church services, carnival dancing, and a possible future car accident would make him unavailable. But I knew the real reason: spite. You see, a few weeks earlier, a certain volunteer (me) hadn’t shown up to a very informally planned night time private English lesson. As a result, he was going to just ignore this event. But my guilt ridden text messages (Mr Commander, our fellow citizens are dying and we need to do something!) must have been successful. Because at the last minute he decided to call in a personal favor with the commander of the municipal police, who showed up and gave the lecture. Sure, he might not have been wearing a uniform, but maybe I should have thought to bring him a Statue of Liberty magnet, or at least a Michael Jackson billion dollar bill.

So lesson learned, informally planned or not I should show up all my appointments. Here, your most powerful currency is friendship, after bacon of course.

Adam Smith and Bacon

Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations and owner of one of the blandest names to have every existed, wisely stated that “All money is a matter of belief.” Well, I now have a fervent belief that bacon is money, so therefore it is.

Last month, my site mate Dylan received a very anxiously expected care package. His parents had sent him 148 strips of Hormel Pre-Cooked Bacon, which might be the greatest thing to happen to food since baby carrots. After patting humanity on the back for inventing 8-month-shelf-stable-pre-cooked-bacon technology, Dylan, Eric, and I immediately got to bargaining and trading our care package items on the basis of the bacon price. Though many were negotiated and discussed, only one was ever realized: my 8 fun sized Baby Ruths for 15 strips of Dylan’s bacon. Immediately after, disaster stuck. Despite both traders walking away satisfied, a suggested 5 strips of bacon for  1 bar of Eric’s Trader Joes Dark Chocolate caused a market collapse. Investor confidence was shattered as pundits and analysts scrambled to figure out how the economy would survive. Luckily for our taste buds, paralysis did not last for long. Though bacon was no longer traded (Dylan loves his bacon), lighters, cheese, calendars, and even months of fridge space became acceptable currency. The market had rebounded and a depression was averted.

The Strategic Junk Food Reserve

Of course, without a regulatory framework, some buyers were taken advantage of. In one famous case, a hapless buyer (me) was offered a Chocolate Chip Cliff Bar immediately after summiting a local mountain, which was immediately eaten. Unfortunately, the price of said Cliff Bar was only settled after it had been turned into liquid (digested) assets. This resulted in what many experts suspect to be one of the worst cases of price gouging that the AME (Alto Molócuè Exchange) has ever seen, 1 Cliff Bar for 2sqin of Cote d’Or Belgian Chocolate Covered Marzipan. Gasp! The horror! Since then, consumer (literally) protection laws have been put in place.

Unfortunately, there is a down side to using food items as currency: inflation. That hungry bugger aggressively lowers the value of savings accounts and strategic reserves alike. Just today, inflation ate two Cote d’Or Dark Chocolate Mignonettes and a large spoonful of Nutela. Greedy inflation. The hope among all market players is that a long awaited stimulus package of currency arrives soon so that trading can continue. Anyone have a suggested price for a tablespoon of cheese powder?

SAOW Part 2

It's that time of year again folks: the Superfluous Amounts of Water are back!

Pop quiz: is this a photo of a:

a. Sea wall

b. Cinder-block walk (boards just don't cut it)

c. The only bridge over the Rio Molocue for 5 miles in either direction

d. Retaining wall for the worlds largest glass of chocolate milk

If you answered a or b, I'm sorry but your wrong. If you answered d, you're also wrong, but I like your hopeful creativity. No the correct answer was c folks. With all the rain we've been getting these past few weeks, Molocue's infrastructure has taken a beating. But collapsed houses, cracking bridges, eroded roadways, and unpredictable power cuts are only part of the story. Much in town has ground to a halt from the countless people who are either very late or just completely fail to show up to work. Classes are stopped for hours at a time  because the tin roofs turn every drop into a waterfall (Coldplay was't being melodramatic on this one) . Market prices have jumped from 1mt to 1.5mts a tomato, 40mts/kg to 60mts/kg of feijao mantega (butter beans), 60mts to 100mts for a bag of carvao (charcoal), and 320mts to 420mts for a bag of cemento (I think you can figure that one out). Travel plans have been cancelled because bridges are not where they used to be. Volunteers have been evacuated and relocated because their houses aren't where they used to be. Thousands of Mozambiqueans have become weather refugees. Rainy season here is no joke, much more so this year than the last.

Sure, there are a few upsides: effortlessly collecting all my water off the roof, lower temperatures and refreshing winds, early in the season cana (sugar cane) being particularly sweat, and cuddle parties during thunderstorms with my dog Sticky (Coco's race tolerant and less aggressive offspring). But these don't make up for 2-3 months of forced, vigorous baths. Mozambqiue is clean, chega! (enough). Unfortunately, the rain gods have seen fit to keep it up for at least a bit longer, with not one, but two cyclones on Mozambique's radar. Thankfully, they seem to be passing on both sides of Zambezia, but my heart goes out those who are in their path.

Cyclone 1 passed over Nampula and into Malawi,
while Cyclone 2 is headed straight for Chimoio

Stay dry everyone.

Impregnating Papaya Trees?

Pop Quiz: How does one ensure that their Papaya tree bears fruit?

Answer: By having a cord-cob impregnate it of course!

Tojo and I each planted trees at the same time
as a race for the first fruit

This is the little nugget of wisdom I received from Tojo upon return form my week long trip to Maputo for Mid-Service Conference. Held approximately half way through your service, MSC is a chance to swap challenges, successes, anxieties, and aspirations with the other volunteers from your training group after your first year of service. Though I have seen many of the Moz 17ers  in the past year, particularly those which live in the North, there were several which I hadn't seen since the last time we were in Maputo together. Hanging out in the capital city and taking advantage of the wide variety of food choices, shopping opportunities, freely flowing beer, and air conditioned hotel rooms with them was fantastic. The real reason for the conference's existence though is to have the Peace Corps Medical Office check in on each volunteers health. In years past, this had meant a battery of diagnostic tests, extensive dental exams, and the ever famous stool samples. Much to my dismay, PCMO had determined that having volunteers poop in a cup three times during the week and sending said cups to a lab for analysis was an expensive way to find out very little. So the stool samples got cut in the most recent budget cycle and none of us had the opportunity to win the Toblerone chocolate bar traditionally given to the volunteer who was first able to complete a hat-trick.

The tree I planted. Before this intervention,
my tree was about 4 in taller than his

Instead, we had a boring simple physical and dental check, with blood tests and other exams tailored to each PCVs specific medical needs. Of course, there was a big group discussion about safe sex practices and the status of HIV/AIDS in Mozambique (11.5% of the population, which is much lower than what I had told many during my trip home). Following that vein, I was welcomed back to my house by the sight of two young papaya trees having been impaled by cord cobs. Hoping to figure out what sort of crazy shenanigans Tojo had been up to in my absence, I asked him why was he stabbing my trees with food waste. He promptly reminded me that a week earlier we had talked about the possibility of the trees being male, and therefore not giving fruit. Knowing nothing about fruit trees, I deferred to his better judgement and asked him what we should do about it. The solution he told me was to force a sex change by cutting a hole in the tree. Since I thought that he was joking, I told him to go right ahead and perform the papaya tree right of passage.


Well here is the result, a tennis ball sized hole in each tree with a corn-cob phallus stabbed through the middle.  Beyond the insanely obvious symbolism, I can't see any way that this could help the tree's give fruit, but perhaps someone more agriculturally inclined could prove me wrong. The question I ask now is, will the trees start growing hair in weird places and break out in zits?





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On another note, I saw my second ever chameleon today on my way to the mercado and snapped a picture of it. Eric and I stopped and watched it for a while just to see if it would change colors, but it seemed to think that if it just froze in place we wouldn't see it, so no color change was necessary. Since being first greeted to Alto Molocue by a chameleon  I have come to see it as a role model for a PCV: adjust to local conditions, move slowly but deliberately, and keep your eyes on a swivel for any opportunities of threats.

Back to Class, Kinda

So I’d like to think that now that I’m a seasoned second year PCV, I know a thing or two about Mozambique. Don’t buy the bread on the top of the pile at the market. Don’t use your left hand to wave hi to people. Don’t accuse vendors of being racist when they try to make you pay more. Don’t convince yourself that you’re a surgeon and the PC doctor shouldn’t see you finger. And don’t stress out about how long it takes for full classes to actually start.

Now for all you new or aspiring PCV’s out there, this is not a recommendation to skip the first days of class. When I first got to Alto Molocue last year and found out that classes were starting, I was super excited to get into the meat of my service. Of course, I was incredibly disappointed by the lack of attendance and kept kicking myself for being the sucker who actually showed up. Between students who didn’t know that classes had actually started and a majority of my colleagues who weren’t back from vacation yet, teaching an actual lesson was impossible. Though this made me incredibly frustrated and antsy to get to work, I learned a lot about how the school operated and was eased into teaching gently. Eventually classes did start, and by that point I was already well on my way to becoming the jaded and skeptical professor I am today.

Louisa, Allison, and our local guides after we reached the top

Well this year I was determined to learn from history (and not be doomed to repeat it). When I was informed that classes would be started on the upcoming Monday (January 21^st), I was automatically suspicious. “Aulas para verdade vao commencar?” (Classes are going to start for real?) “Sim, Sim, segunda feira vamos estudar bem forte” (Monday we will be studying very hard) my director responded. But how could that be possible? I knew that more than half the students had yet to be assigned to a class. I also knew from an informal survey of the teachers that very few were in town. Juvencio, no. Analucia, no. Gafar, no. Mabunda, no. Silvia, no. Though ‘classes’ would start on Monday, only a few students would show up, much fewer teachers would come to school to sign the attendance books, and then everyone would go home early blaming the others for the lack of class. Having already been through that pointless exercise once before, I decided to demonstrate my cultural integration by skipping. Instead of going to class, I would do what I love most and go hike a nearby mountain with fellow PCVs Louisa and Allison.

Myself, Eunice, Euclides, and Argentina at the meeting

Well I didn’t miss much. Eric Wilburn, my new sitemate, attended all of his classes and told me that there were 0 students on the 1st day, 5 on the 2^nd, and 12 on the 3^rd. No exactly a critical mass for 80 person classes. Sure, the honorable volunteer would have tried to lead by example and gone to class even though nobody else was. But as far as I’m concerned, if no one is there to see your good example, those who most need to be led aren’t ready to go anywhere. After coming back from the hike on Wednesday, I went to school on Thursday to present myself to the students. Over 3 hours, I stopped in each of the 9 turmas of 10^th grade that I will be teaching French to this year and introduced myself, went through a brief review of the previous year, and informed them that French classes would start in 2 weeks because I would be away for midserice conference. Content to have met the probably 15 best students in each class, some of which I already knew from Science Fair, English Theater, JEAM, and Escuteiros, I went home and satisfied my dragon addiction with the end of Game of Thrones Book 5.

Saturday was an equally relaxed

Eric, Dylan, and I with the mosquito netting team

 but productive day. We held the first scout meeting of the year, which was attended by about half of our troop, a satisfying turnout considering school attendance. Beyond discussing what we each did over break and what are plans for this year would be, I also announced that our camping equipment would be arriving shortly, which everyone was very excited about.  Afterwards, I went with several of the scouts to the secondary school where Dylan was working on the long planned replacement of the mosquito netting of the schools classrooms. While Eric and I helped out, students replaced old and torn netting and planted lemon grass which is a natural mosquito deterrent. Though not fully done with the work, we broke for lunch and then took the afternoon off for Dylan's 26th birthday. After welcoming frequent visitor Steph Newton to Alto, we celebrated with beers and a dinner of super subs (cheddar cheese, BBQ sauce, pineapple salsa, pulled chicken, salami, and pickles) bringing the week to a delicious close.

Though it was not the incredibly productive first week of school I had hoped for, I was happy to have used my time effectively and avoid the disappointments of last year. Here’s to a wise and wasteless 2013!

Goodbye

Today I said goodbye to a very dear friend. For the past year she has been a huge part of my life  and her absence will be deeply felt. Alto Molocue will not be the same without you.

All she asks from me is the food to give her strength 

All she ever needs is love and that she knows she'll get 

-Cat Stevens