Forgotten Places of the Heart and Soul

Years ago, I picked up a small painting at an estate or yard sale.  I am not even sure where I found it, or how long ago.   I just know that for many years I found the image of this age-old church soothing.  Rich water colors brought the ruin to life.  I could imagine myself walking down the quiet dirt road under that luxurious lazy blue sky and discovering this place as if it were simply there awaiting my arrival.

Yesterday, I found that church.   The mud walls were crumbling.  The roof was long gone and shafts of sunlight bounced off the ceramic tiled floors and empty walls.   Barely a shell, this church magnificently held its beauty, its understated simplicity.   The interior was mostly open, with pieces of walls marking the location of the former nave, alter, and chapels.  Empty pedestals stood in each corner, ready and waiting to humbly serve again, to bear the weight and honor of cherished religious idols.  Crypts remained in tact, Portuguese and Latin script barely decipherable, causing me to wonder whom it was that was laid to rest in this distinguished location.

I spent a few morning hours inside this church, climbing the worn stone stairs to look out at the ocean.  Three women lay sleeping in the churchyard, where efforts were being made to revive what once was a beautiful garden.   Were these women simply looking for a shady and quiet place to rest or had they designated themselves as protectors or servants to this church?  The lives and stories connected to this place, throughout hundreds of years, intrigued me as much as the church itself.

And my life is one of those connections, small as it may be.  Had I selected this painting, so many years ago, preparing for today’s encounter?  Was I somehow aware that one day I would stumble upon the actual place?  The church in my painting was not as far along in its disrepair as this one, but instantly recognizable.   Quite probable is that this particular style of church was a common design of southern Europe, of a certain historical period, and inspired many a painting.  But having spent years as a patron of this church, through viewing the painting hung on my walls, an intimate relationship had been formed, and now consummated upon my visit.

I feel joy and solace walking about this place, sitting in the courtyard, the same feelings that the painting offered me over the years. Later that afternoon I took a local transport ferry with no particular destination in mind.  Along with bags of cement, rice, a few bicycles and crates of chickens, I wanted only to see the shoreline and enjoy the afternoon breezes.  The church was the only thing of beauty, an anachronism, encroached by warehouses and other nondescript apartment buildings.  There the relic stood, solitary and sure of itself, as it has for hundreds of years.

I am not sure what has become of that painting.  When I was preparing for my life in the Peace Corps, I sold my home and most of my belongings.  An exercise in detachment, I parted with many beloved items.  But, packed away in a shed, hidden somewhere in the hills of New Hampshire, are the remainders of my most cherished items.  Hopefully that painting is there amongst souvenirs, photos and keepsakes.  Either way, I have the actual place to return to over the next two years, providing me with comfort and the reminder of the wonder that is life.

OH RATS!

It’s hard not to feel paranoid when living alone in a foreign setting.  Almost everything is unknown, a puzzle waiting to be solved.  And in the process of deciphering daily survival, it can seem as though one is in a fish bowl, being observed at all times.   Peace Corps advised us that this would occur.  My neighbors banter in the local language at the well, across the compound and in their yards.  It is more than a sense that the comments are often about me.  Unless there is a word that sounds like my name, I am sure that that more likely than not, I am the main course of conversation.

All eyes are upon me, all the time.  Neighbors report back to me and undoubtedly to one another, my every move.  They notice, and comment, if I visit the latrine more times than usual in any given day.  One neighbor peers into my marketing bag, critiques my purchases and tells me the prices I should have paid.  A seasoned shopper, she is all of nine years old.  And, when I bluster and falter, confused about what I should do, or how I should do it, the disapproving looks and tittering laughter is palpable.   Lost and inept, I am reduced to collateral damage, and only a few months into my Peace Corps service.

A gang of children gathers on my porch each evening just as I am sitting down to dinner.  They endlessly call variations of my name, and make demands for chalk, cookies, a backpack, or to have dinner with me. At first I thought they were asking to watch TV with me.  No, it seems they were asking could they watch me.  Seems I had my door partially closed blocking their view.  I huddle inside, furiously trying to maintain a sense of tranquility and privacy.

Their calls turn to jeers.  The group mentality transforms them into a frenzied pack.  The children hang off the grates of my bedroom window, clank the metal screen door open and shut and running to my living room window, they scale a hill of sand that allows them to reach my window.  They push their tiny faces into the screen, looking like would be burglars with nylon stocking masks.

In a sing-song voice, they hurl made up Chinese words through my windows and doors.  They insist that I am from China and when I am not under their attack, they try to coerce me to confess that it is my picture on the soap and lotion packages, a photo of a delicate but non-descript Asian woman.  I repeatedly deny their claims but they are relentless.  A peaceful evening is no longer a reality.

I have tried everything.  I’ve engaged them in games, songs and conversation.  I’ve ignored them.  I’ve gone outside to talk sternly to them.  Heaven knows what I actually tell them, but to me, it sounded like good old- fashioned reprimand.  Nothing works.  They have far more energy than I do and their interest does not seem to dissipate as the evening wears on while I am left exhausted.

Desperate, I asked a colleague if it would be appropriate for him to speak to my landlord.   A strategic and diplomatic conversation, one that my language skills would render impossible, was necessary to present my request for privacy while not offending my neighbors.  All of this heightened by the fact that one of the main perpetrators was the landlord’s granddaughter.

They sat and talked for some time while I waited in the house, fearing for my fate.  Later, in customary Mozambican fashion, my landlord sat with his wife in the yard, sharing the subject of this meeting.  Perched on their small wooden benches, directly facing me, their conversation peaked and waned, peppered with squeals and their heads wagging from side to side accompanied by audible clicking and tisking of their tongues.  I was on the porch reading, or pretending to read and working my hardest to appear very non-chalant, not knowing if my emissary's message was well received or not.  Following the advice of my colleague, I did not continue the conversation with them.

Later in the evening, my landlord’s wife began to burn the garbage pile in the yard.  Now this is not an altogether strange event, but previously, I’ve only seen her do so in the early mornings.  And, a small wind was just starting to pick up.  Maybe not the best time for a fire?  Slowly she made her way around the yard and proceeded to burn more piles, including one directly in back of my house and another on the side.  I may be exaggerating here, but her hair was affright and I am almost certain I saw her gnash her teeth at me.  Was she smoking me out?  And if so, where would I run?  Right into the group of intemperate children?  Then I realized what she was doing.  She was smoking out the rats from the garbage piles who would then take cover in my house!

Only yesterday I had told her that I spotted a small rat in my house.  (Well, a large mouse or small rat, is there really a difference?)  All I remember is that blur, caught by the corner of my eye, scurrying along the wall from the kitchen to the back room.  With each rewind played in my mind’s eye, the rat grows in size and stature.  I now envision a rat the size of a pony, lurking somewhere in the corners of my home.  I am unsure which fate is worse, staying in the house to face my fears of giant rodents, or being thrown to the gang of five year olds.

An Untended Garden

I’m finding it difficult to focus today, or even to interact with my colleagues.   An incident I witnessed yesterday in the hospital continues to play through my head, like a movie reel that loops around and around.  The scenario plays out, no real beginning and no ending.  Only an insert, a short vignette that violently and immediately brings me choice-less into the scene without introduction or understanding. 

A small boy leans against the hospital wall, his belly severely distended, suffering from kwashiorkor, and extreme protein deficiency.  His eyes meet mine, expressionless.  A second child, an emaciated girl, is propped up against her mother, who is absent-mindedly administering sips of water as she chats with another woman.  The child’s bony arms are too weak to reach out for the cup.   Her head, seemingly too large for her skeletal frame, drops to one side, resting on her mother's lap.

The women, healthy looking and well dressed in western clothes visit with one another gaily.  An older woman in the group sits and eats a bowl of porridge.  The incongruence of this scene confuses and arrests me.   I’ve seen seriously malnourished children before, but not here.  And, I didn’t expect to see it here.  This region is rich in foods, mile upon mile of the land farmed to produce rice, vegetables, fruits and grains.  Every family subsides on their efforts and various fruits are free for the taking, growing alongside the roads.  The misery of these children is absolutely needless.

I make an inquiry to the medical doctor who is working with the long lines of mothers lined up with their babies at the Well Baby Clinic.  Here the children are weighed and measured and receive vaccinations.  He told me that the woman said the fathers had abandoned the families and that they had no money for food.  The woman said they did not work their gardens as they were out looking for the husbands. 

Incomprehensible. 

Many of the children in Mozambique do not have fathers active in their lives due to being left orphans, fathers that work away from the home or cultural norms that   render women almost solely responsible for child rearing.  And for a family to not garden?

Inconceivable.

I try to make sense of it all.   This level of malnutrition is the result of long-term depravation. At this point, the children are unable to ingest foods, even nutritional supplements.  Intravenous care and medicine is first needed to counter the worms in the belly of the small boy, the worms that absorb any nutrients the boy receives.  And, the digestive system of the little girl has shut down.  After a series of medications, she will need therapeutic foods.  It will be some time before she can take in foods.  Our hospital does not have a feeding program nor are the medicines free. The children were not admitted.

An unpredicted and twisted side effect of years of international aid is a sentiment of entitlement.  There are those, a limited percentage of people to be sure, who manipulate the good conscious of aid programs.  Travelling from clinic to clinic, they prey on the offered resources, now seen as an expectation.  I am not sure if this was the case with these women, but surely they were expecting someone else to solve their problem.  The doctor said it was simply due to their “poor mentality”.

Abuse and neglect is everywhere and certainly no more prevalent in Mozambique.  But in a world that hurls a series of unrelenting challenges upon an impoverished land to masses of weary people; epidemics, war, natural disasters and economic strife, intentional inflicted pain on children screams out degradation so low, so base, there is no human response but to collapse inwardly, disconsolate and crestfallen. 

I struggle to feel compassion and forgiveness to the adults who caused this to happen and to those who were silent and immobile witnesses.   Like the children they too are starving.  It is not their bodies that exhibit the signs but their souls.

Crazy As The Moon

I stand on my porch looking at the full moon, lua cheia.  There is a ring around the moon, a Moon Dog, signifying that rain will arrive within the next three days.  My daughter’s young friend, Lorenzo, told us this.   He preferred to be called Lawrence, attempting to change his identity at an early age, something I thought would be an on-going and long quest for this little guy.  A very bright and somewhat unusual kid, not popular with his peers, and, if I was correct about the vibes in his house, not with his family either.  But I liked him.  I thought he was a neat.

I stared at the moon, from my porch in Mozambique, remembering this little kid, now a man somewhere out in the world. Was Lawrence looking at this same moon, planning for rain?  Did a ring around the moon even mean the same thing in the southern hemisphere as it did in New Mexico? Lawrence would know, I bet.

Do Mozambicans look at the moon and wonder about life up there?  Do they know people back home think that life here is just about as strange as the life they imagine way up there?  I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions but continued to keep my focus skyward.  I moved my plastic chair outside from the living room and settled in.  I had no idea what, if any, answers might come, and probably more questions would pile up.  But there wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be at the moment.

Coffee and a Sunday Morning Smoke

Serving with the Peace Corps in Mozambique doesn’t allow for the indulgent Sundays that I had become accustomed to while living in the United States.  After finishing my first week of training; intensive Portuguese classes and endless sessions on Peace Corps protocol, I was looking forward to a slow and relaxing Sunday morning.

The struggles of living with a local family had completely extinguished my reserves.  The lack of language was the least of the challenges.  Learning to use the squat toilet, bucket baths in the cold evening air and trying to satisfy my hunger at the end of the day by sucking off tidbits of meat from chicken feet had taken all my stamina and courage.  All I wanted was to sleep until 7or 8 AM, have a cup of coffee and do desperately needed stretching and yoga exercises. 

The early morning started off quietly.  Maybe my host family also enjoyed Sunday mornings as a day of reprieve, I hoped to myself.  The lack of indoor plumbing dictated back breaking work for the women (and girls) of the house. Cooking and cleaning involved lugging pails of water, a chore one would think had disappeared in a past century.

Iconic dirty yellow plastic buckets, seen throughout Africa, move steadily each morning from the pump to the kitchen and back again.  A few buckets strategically placed around the yard to later be employed for washing dishes and clothes.

My dreams of a quiet morning are replaced with ear splitting music.  The volume turned up loud enough to literally shake this mud house served as my social cue to get out of bed and join the family.   Individualism and alone time isn’t really understood by Mozambicans. 

I make my way to the table for the thermos that holds hot water all day long.  My French coffee press is a relic of the past.  I mix up a mug of instant chicory- flavored beverage.  I pretend that this new routine equals the coffee making process I so enjoyed in my own home, theatrically lengthening each step, as if pouring hot water over dried crystals would result in a culinary delight.  My host mom tells me today will be a great day.

In my new life, a great day means that I will learn how to wash clothes by hand and cook lunch on a charcoal fire. Not exactly the plan I had in mind.  And, as I look about, I can see that the family has already eaten and done some laundry, now hanging on the line. The floors have been mopped and the house is in order

A heavy and acrid smoke wafts in the house.  I peer out the window to see a large fire burning on the rocks directly in front of the house.  Coiled wire, plastic and discarded bits of metal are the source of the acrid fumes that not only choke us, but shroud the hanging laundry.  The wisps of smoke curl their way into the house and settle on the walls and furniture.  I am told that the fire will burn away the rock and smooth out the land. 

Doubtful, I think.   Gulping for the few particles of remaining air, I realize that the next two years will be an onslaught of similar thinking.  Some of the ideas, perspectives and customs will seem dubious.  My task will be to sift through it all; knowing when to counter or compliment and when to simply continue to make a cup of instant coffee and carry on on with my morning.


Note:  The fire did in fact break up the rock.  The rock is shale and the heat made it easier to chip at it and remove it bit by bit.  A neighbor agreed to do all the work in  exchange for keeping the rock which he used to build a wall.  Just goes to show you....