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....

Take Out The Trash

The neighborhood kids are playing in the trash pile as their mothers sit and talk nearby.  This doesn’t seem to be a problem for anyone except me.  The kids, all of them barefoot, start to amass a small pile of items, giggling and shrieking at their treasures.  A crushed plastic soda bottle is tied to a discarded piece of string and dragged around the yard by one boy.  Two little girls turn single serving yogurt containers into baking pans for dirt pies and top them with bits of torn leaves.  Another small girl makes a pile consisting of two pieces of broken glass, torn cardboard, a twisted piece of metal and the application brush from a bottle of fingernail polish.  She squats in front of her treasures and looks contentedly at her collection.

I’m not sure what to say or think about the garbage here.   The streets are littered with refuse.  Sometimes the garbage is shoveled onto a truck, taken away and dumped elsewhere.  But the streets are never cleared completely or cleaned.  Rats dart in and out of the piles of trash.  There aren’t many options, this I know.  There is no money for garbage cans, or people to empty them.  And, maybe there is no place to dump all of this refuse.  I am not sure. 

But I puzzle as to why people wouldn’t see the need, or have the desire, to keep their immediate surroundings free of garbage.  I wonder how it is that they don’t see the link between sickness and germs, or at the very least, getting cuts and scrapes from castoff glass, tin cans and wire.  So many diseases stem from contaminated water and refuse.  And, for people who literally live of the land, how is it that they continue to pollute their terrain?  It seems difficult to believe it was always like this.  When and how did it change? Are there really no solutions?

I was lamenting to a friend about some of my challenges living here.  Lack of privacy being top of the list.  The ultimate form of this is that the kids go through the trash from my pit latrine.  Used toilet paper litters the yard like snowflakes after they have searched through the bag hoping to find something of interest.  My friend asked why I simply didn’t leave the bag inside the locked pit latrine until my landlord burned the garbage pile. 

It sounds so simple, and should be, but it isn’t.  The trash is never burned at a particular time so at some point, I must empty the garbage.   I can tell the children why they shouldn’t play with garbage, particularly from the bathroom.  But for kids whose entire day is making their own fun from whatever resources they can, educational lectures can’t compete.  And, I think it is like this with most situations.  Straightforward and simple often doesn’t seem able to work here.  Culture, daily routines, lack of money and resources and a myriad of other complex and layered issues block any seemingly straightforward solutions.

There are so many non-governmental organizations in Africa working on the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis malnutrition and general health.  Other agencies direct their focus and energies on much needed water resources.  And, still other groups teach English and general education.  So, when all of these agencies reach their goals and we have healthier and literate people, with accessible water, where will these people live?  In the landfills that have now become their homelands?

The little kids continue to play.  Amadou usually races around the yard with a bicycle tire, keeping it rolling with a stick or with a skilled flick of his wrist.  Today, though, they have found a tire from a car, tossed on the side of the road.  Balloons, actually condoms, tied to a string, are the biggest excitement for today.  The discarded packets are strewn about the yard. The kids are covered in dust and dirt, their black skin now ashen grey, they look like small ghouls running about.  I can’t help but to see this as foreshadowing of the disease and early death they will undoubtedly face.

The Heat Is On

There was an awful lot of activity at the well this morning.  Learning to act upon this type of observation, and mostly mimicking the behavior of my neighbors, I carried my bucket outside to stand in line.  There was a slight breeze and the skies were light gray and partly cloudy, intermittently revealing the red-hot sun in the sky, the same way it appeared last night before nightfall.

 I figured everyone was collecting water on the chances it would rain later in the day.  I was greeted with comments about the drastically changing weather.  I noticed most had on sweaters and were wrapped in additional layers of capulanas.  Sweating at 6:30 in the morning, I stood there, trying as hard as I could to join them in their appreciation of “cooler temperatures".  Hesitantly, I smiled, my lips elastic and unsure.

It is all relative, I suppose.  In fact, this morning was cooler than the night before, and certainly not with the excruciating heat of yesterday.  The waves of heat, all anger and fury, hurled east across the continent from the Kalahari, had released its grip, at least for the morning.   The heat, like a captor, was allowing a brief reprieve before unleashing its exacerbating oppression, again, to its victims.

It is the strangest thing, and I have no scientific explanation, but in the very early morning, after a few hours of almost comfortable sleep, it seems as if the temperature actually increases, before the sun is up. It is the faintest beginning of daybreak and the heat is suddenly turned up. Then, when daybreak has settled solidly into the first few hours of the morning, the heat dissipates, just a bit.  Mother Nature extolls us, in our half-asleep state, pronouncing us as her subjects, demanding respect and servitude.

The air can be so heavy, making breathing as difficult, similar to breathing in high altitudes.  Any breeze is like a reprimand, covering my already over-heated body with a blanket of warm air.  I move slowly throughout the day.  Following all precautions, I have protected my skin with layers of sunscreen.  I wear a hat and sunglasses.  And, as crazy as it sounds, I cover myself in a thin shawl when walking to work as I often feel like my skin is burning.  I used to love the heat and sun and did all I could to bronze my skin.  Now, I hide from it.  Or try to.

I’ve been told that this heat will continue for the next two months.  Rains will follow this, monsoon flooding rains.  I am sure that as soon as I have learned to live with the heat, I will need to learn to live with the rains. 

HAUTE COUTURE

Haute Couture

A man walked by me on the way to work this morning wearing white quilted knee-high snow boots.  I had a navy blue pair in the 1970s, one of my teen favorites.  Moon boots, they were called, and the guy looked every bit the part, wearing them in the searing heat, on a highway somewhere east of the Kalahari.

Only a few minutes later, a bicycle taxi zipped past.  The driver had on a ski hat, a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a pair of oversized dark sunglasses, the ones with crazy eyes printed on the front of the lenses.

Anything goes when it comes to fashion.   Little girls parade in second-hand Cinderella or Belle dresses, torn and tattered but undoubtedly their favorite frock.  Originally made as costumes, there is no zipper or buttons in the back.  The dresses hang on their tiny frames, wide open, exposing torn underwear or bare behinds.  Some of the patients at the hospital appear in clothes two to three sizes too large.  Already very thin from suffering with HIV, they seem to float down the hallways, like waltzing scarecrows.  Big men on small motorcycles darn oversized jackets that balloon out as they drive, looking like a darker version of Flat Stanley.

The t-shirts that arrive from all over the world and worn here are probably my best source of entertainment.  Some of the slogans and designs are dubious of their own accord.  Here, on Mozambicans, they are down right hysterical.  “Zombies Unite” and “Future Mad Scientist” were this week’s top hits, displayed by two older and unsuspecting women.   Another woman had a t-shirt with the breasts and navel drawn on the front.  Odd, as the real thing is normally exposed here.  And, in a setting that couldn’t be stranger, seated only a few seats from her was a very old woman wearing a completely sheer blouse, with absolutely nothing underneath. 

There are shoes of every ilk, as well, though most people wear flip- flops.  Often you will see someone wearing two different flip flops.  The broken one is discarded  somewhere along the side of the road.  The survivor of the pair is kept in use, paired up with another, regardless of color, or sometimes, size.  Others walk great distances barefoot.   This is all the more amazing when one considers the broken glass, trash, and litter on the street.

Of course, there is the traditional dress.  Colorfully printed yards of fabric are wrapped around women as skirts or dresses.  A matching piece of fabric tightly secures their babies on their back.  Another print, matching or not, is used as a head wrap, tied in a variety of styles.  Western dress is also common and men and women are pressed, ironed and creased.  Houses may not have running water but people here pride themselves on being clean and well presented.  For those without electricity, the irons with the hot coals are commonly used.

Walking in a village last week, three people passed me on a trail, walking single file.  They had just finished working in their machambas, or gardens.  The man, leading the way, had on a shabby suit jacket and a fedora.  The two women, following, had hoes, balanced lengthwise on their heads.   All of them were barefoot.  It didn’t occur to me until much later, sitting on my porch that evening, that I simply stepped aside and greeted them as they went on their way. 

How can it be that one can become accustomed to such things so quickly? My task is to integrate, settle and have a routine.  Yet, I do not want to lose an appreciation of the surreal sites I encounter.  I muse over these thoughts as I sit on my porch, seated in one of approximately a million plastic chairs on this continent, enjoying the cool evening air.  And just when I worry that this life will become normal, that the adventure will cease, a pig scurries across the dirt road beyond my house, exiting stage left.