ESTOU PEDIR

“ I am asking for”…. An all too common phrase here in Mozambique.   And, like other African countries I have visited, an integral aspect of the culture.  Family, friends and neighbors ask to borrow with the expectation of the request to be granted.  It appears as a trait of community strength, stories worthy of global internet circulation, extoling the virtues of kinship.   In reality, it is a system that impedes progress, denying the person with any level of possession from getting ahead.  There are always people in need, there is a never ending stream of want.  

My morning ritual begins with opening my door, allowing the morning light to spread through my home.  I sit in the wooden chair at my desk, waiting for the tea- kettle to boil. Acknowledging and claiming this day, and all the possibility within, I stretch the sleep out of my leg and arm muscles.  I seek internal quiet, hedged in by the busy sounds of the compound. 

Someone with a straw broom is scratching the sand, back and forth, back and forth, sweeping the ground free of trash and debris left from the night before.  Women and children are at the well, water sloshing from bucket to bucket, bits of conversation exchanged.  Men working in the carpenteria next store, under the shade of an open- air rooftop, have been hammering, sawing and banging chisels for hours already.  And, the music.  There is always music.  Very  loud music for the entire compound to enjoy, set as the backdrop throughout the day and night.  Most of it sounds like a mixture of carnival and techno music, something like a calliope and computerized sounds, repeated over and over.   It is maddening.

I have often wished I had been sent to rural China or somewhere in the mountains of South America.  I romanticize about the quiet there, imagining me serene and peaceful. Yet, I wonder if I would seek to equalize the outside stillness with a busy mind.  Maybe it is here, amidst all of the noise and turmoil that I am to learn to still my mind, learn the art of just being.  Each morning I think about this.  And, then, a small voice at my door.  Repeated two or three times, “ Licença”, a request to enter, or be received. 

My young neighbor stands on the porch and immediately starts in with “Estou pedir…”.  She has requested band-aids, sugar, a sewing needle, use of plastic food containers and like teen-agers everywhere, an urgent request to purchase shoes for her upcoming school dance.  Most of these requests are made at 6 AM, the very first moments of my day, within minutes of opening my door.   Another neighbor, reminding me that she is pregnant, asked for money to buy food for her hungry children.  It is an uncomfortable proposition.

It is easy for me to lend sugar, or a sewing needle, though, as expected, the needle was never returned.  I do not want to be seen as the dispensary for the neighborhood.  Repeatedly I explain my role as a volunteer,  that I am living on the level of the local salary.  Ridiculous, really, as my home contains more personal items than most of them will ever own.  After all, I am an American, a “Mulungu”, a rich person of means and opportunity.  I am sure they disregard or mock my response.

To my pregnant neighbor, I point out that there is great need in this neighborhood, that I am without resources to assist everyone and that I cannot choose favorites.  I inquire as to how she has cared for her family prior to my arrival.  My strategy is sound, I know, yet supporting empowerment and problem solving seems a weak response to counter her hunger.  I feel awkward and annoyed, incapable and resentful for all of the imbalance in the world. But mostly, at this moment,  I attempt to reconcile the inequity of the chance of birth,  the game of Roulette that offers some of us  privilege and others poverty.

I retreat back inside. I look up the word stingy, “pãoduro”.

Will I hear my neighbors use this word as I walk by?  The volunteer that lived in this house before me painted a mural on the kitchen wall.  In the corner are the words, “Estou Pedir” with a stick person grimmacing.  I go back to my desk and try to rewind to my first morning moments.  I claim the day, this experience a part of it.