Reflections on Reporting

A week after the accident and my thoughts and emotions are still jumbled.  Writing a story about it helped me to calmly relay most of the details, the retelling a part of a healing process.  It also allowed me to offer a glimpse of life in Mozambique, told through the eyes of a foreigner.  To say it is difficult to understand life here, let alone explain it, is like saying it is difficult to split an atom.  And, I think that understanding different cultures and the significance of doing so is as important as splitting an atom.

It’s a tricky thing, inviting oneself to document and story-tell about a place and people.  My account is my own, filtered through my own prejudices, fears, beliefs, imagination and experiences.  Yet, I feel compelled to share this place and these experiences.  I do it as much for me, to define my own world, as I do to offer others the opportunity to visit these places with me.  And, if the reader so chooses, to consider themes that impact and shape our days, if not our lives.

So, in trying to put last week’s accident into story form, I committed a mistake.  I wrote the scene without providing the backdrop.  It was bound to happen.  As I become habituated to this place, ever so slowly and slightly, the unusual transforms to  the usual, the uncommon to the common.  The milieu seems a given and I assume the reader and I are beginning from the same place.  Well, we all know what they say about assumptions.

My story about the accident elicited some strong responses.  Truly, it was a horrific and tragic event.  And, while I am not defending the responses of the hit and run driver, or the vigilante crowd, it is important to understand the context.  And, I think it also important to accept that the culture here is simply different.  And, with a deep exhale, remove the judgement which leads to blame.  Better or worse?  Sure there are aspects of life here that could be improved.  And, certainly agencies, organizations, and people are trying.  Do I believe in and appreciate democracy and the benefits of our progressive society?  You betcha.  And I also respect that it took our country a couple of hundred years to get it established.  And, we still don’t have it quite right as seen with the recent events in St. Louis.  But it is a slippery slope to decide for others what is best.  And it is even trickier to do it for others.  Good intentions can result in terribly complex results.

The remnants of colonial and tribal life are easy to see and feel here.  A couple of hundred years of colonial oppression and conditioning doesn’t just melt away.  And, thousands of years of tribal life is in the very earth itself and part of the fabric of the people.  What is left is a strange mix, it seems to me.  It is like an unsolvable equation; the posit of the colonialists met with the solution of the tribe.  Or maybe it is the other way around.

The tribes here in Africa were self-contained units.  People shared territory, language and customs.  Members didn’t have identity issues; they knew who they were, where they belonged, what their roles were and how to act.  They also clearly knew the consequences of their actions.  The colonialists came in, and to oversimplify, applied their own rules.  The game changed and while the rules might not have always been clear for the native inhabitants, what was clear is that they were often at the brunt end of it all.  It wasn’t a system that worked in their favor.

Now, colonialism is formally gone and the country and people are redefining themselves, having been at war with each other for over twenty years.   The country often fumbles with confusion and unknowing as the nation learns to govern and grow itself.  Colonialist descendants still remain, clearly separated from the native Mozambicans.  And, for those living in the hinterlands, life has, in some regards, reverted, (and in some cases, remained), with the tribal system; the system they know best, with all its clarity and simplicity, for better or for worse.

Where there isn’t infrastructure and secure and trusted systems, such as courts of law and policing, the tribes take justice into their own hands.  And, while it may seem uncivilized, to do nothing, or to turn to the nothingness of law enforcement that does not exist, this is truly uncivilized. 

I wish there had been opportunity to provide care, or at least respect for the body, the man in the accident.  I wish that the driver had the opportunity for a fair review by his peers.  I wish that the people in the van saw themselves as vital participants in their society, and acted accordingly.  But in a place where so few have so much and so little is left for so many, life becomes a recipe for harsh living.  There isn’t the luxury of shades of gray.  Black and white seems the attire here.  At least for now.

Holding On For Lettuce Seeds and Hula Hoops

Note:  This story has graphic descriptions... not for the faint of heart.

Holding On For Lettuce Seeds and Hula Hoops

If asked, most Peace Corps Volunteers would probably admit they consider quitting on a fairly regular basis.  There are a number of reasons to be frustrated; dissatisfaction with work and projects, or lack thereof, language barriers, the never ending enigma of cultural differences and the general difficulty of living situations.  The lack of privacy, noise level and general state of uncleanliness often sends my mind back home.

My desire to flee this place was heightened after being in a road accident last week.  When I signed up for the Peace Corps, I was well aware of the dangers involved.  Developing countries are notorious for a high incident of road accidents due to the poorly maintained vehicles, untrained drivers, and inadequate roads. Knowing this and experiencing it, however, are two different levels of understanding.

The trip out of town, for a Peace Corps Thanksgiving celebration, was relatively delightful.  For the first three hours a ride in a private truck offered the opportunity to enjoy the lush green landscape.  I felt the freedom of the road, leaving my loud and dusty town for the countryside.  At the juncture to my friend’s village, I waited for a public van to fill with passengers which would then take me to my final destination, another two hours away.  The van surfed down the hard-packed  rutted dirt road as if on the waves of a giant-sized washboard. 

The scenery was tribal.  Mud houses with straw roofs were few and far between.  Banana and palm trees populated the land. Half naked children ran alongside the roads, herding animals and waving their wares at the few passing vehicles, hoping to make a last sale of the day.  Small cooking fires lit up the landscape as the daylight was traded for dusk, which would quickly be converted into nightfall, sudden and dark, as happens in this part of the world.  Even the goats felt the urgency of the ending day, scurrying across the road to the safety of their fenced pens. 

Sitting in the front passenger seat, I stiffened, thinking we were much too close, and moving far too quickly to avoid hitting an animal.  Just as the thought was completed, we hit the last goat, a beautiful and large animal, valiantly waiting for the younger animals to cross.  The sounds remain with me more so than the images; the slosh of body fluids upon impact, the crunching of bones under the tire, the bleating cries of the goat and most disturbing, the sounds of laughter from the children.

As I boarded a van on the return trip, the driver was tying a live goat to the roof.  While this is common practice here, the inhumane treatment is difficult to view.  Legs bound, the animal lying on its side helplessly, the cries sound very much like a child.  Once secured on the roof, the goat quieted, settling in for the trip.  But, returning on the same bumpy road, the ropes became loose.  The goat dangled on the side of the van, his face looking at me through my window, crying out.

In a twisted and surreal way, it was almost funny.  I thought of all those stupid television shows where people fall down or trip and stumble and the audience laughs, and the event is replayed, in slow motion, the crowds never getting enough.  I wondered if there was a connection, or even the same primal human reaction to our laughing at people falling down and children here laughing at animals being hit by vans.

The driver pulled over to once more secure the goat.  Having lost valuable time, he increased his speed toward our destination.  Within a half hour, the goat was crying out again, undoubtedly becoming untethered.  I turned away from the window, not wanting to meet his gaze, in the event that he would once again slide off the roof. 

Sometimes it seems an entire event can somehow be inserted in between two connecting minutes in an almost unnoticeable way.  A sudden disruption caused the van to bump and swerve out of control, careening down the other side of the road. It felt as if the entire vehicle shuddered as we came to a halt.  My mind tried to grasp for those few lost moments of time, essential for me to understand the moment now, but they were dust particles floating out of reach.

The passengers looked around and at one another, soundlessly.  And though the previous moment seemed strangely vacant and erased, time now felt like it was trapped in one of those carnival House of Mirrors, heavy minutes stretched in strange and grotesque form, not releasing us from its grip. 

The goat continued to cry out, awakening me to the fact that it wasn’t the cause of the accident.  Everyone in the van was still.  Grabbing my water bottle and a towel from my backpack I jumped out of the van to see if I might administer first aid to the person we had hit.  What happened next is all a jumble that I am still trying to understand.  While searching for a pulse in the neck, not finding a pulse on the wrist, the driver pulled me away from the mutilated man and pushed me back into the van, screaming that we had to leave.  We pulled back onto the highway, the windshield smashed and lying on the passengers in the front seat.  Bits of glass showered upon me, while the noise level from the wind deafened me.  The thought of leaving this man on the scorching highway sickened me.

The driver, most likely in shock, hurtled down the road, stopping over an hour later, in my town.  Confused and dazed, I grabbed my pack and headed for home.  I learned later that drivers are instructed to leave the scene of an accident to avoid being beaten by witnesses.  Law and justice is usually handled by friends and family, on their terms.  Yet, the driver is supposed to stop at the next nearest place to secure help and report the accident.  But out here, there is no “next nearest place”. 

As I was trying to ascertain the condition of this man, I had considered the next possible steps.  There were none.  There was no room in the vehicle and it was unlikely that any passengers would exit in this very rural location.  Local suspicions and taboos, and issues with blood and body fluids was a real concern.  Where would the nearest clinic or hospital be, and what level of care could they provide, if there were any available at all.  And surely no clinic or hospital would be staffed on a Sunday.

Life is tragic and hard and real here.  When I told my Mozambican friends and colleagues about the accident, there was only an almost imperceptible pause and then the conversation moved on.  The teenage girls in my compound laughed.  My boss was surprised that I would opt not to travel for the next few weeks, as I wanted to avoid public transportation.

My mind is replaying this event and trying to understand the many levels.  There is so much that I will never comprehend, being an interloper here.  But I have to wonder if what I interpret as non-compassion is actually an acceptance of death as a reality of life.  There is no sanitization of death here, as there is in the western world.  Our culture masks sickness and accidents and death.  We can easily distance ourselves from the veracity while here it is unavoidable and visceral. 

For the first few days after the accident, I thought of people and places that I haven’t considered in almost forty years.  I wanted to be as far away from here as possible in time and place.  And, then, I found myself purchasing lettuce and tomato seeds, and of all things, hula hoops.  In my mind, I’ve planned out my garden.  I’ll take the next few months to prepare the soil and start to compost.  And, in the meantime I’ll hula-hoop with the local kids to pass the time and realize sometimes there are no answers.