Cultural Quirks

Okay, well I’ll be moving to Cuamba at the end of the week here – the day after Thanksgiving, actually. This is the small town where I’ll be living for the remainder of my time here in Mozambique. It’s been great to have these past several months to focus on the language, but I’m definitely excited and ready to get out there and be about the work that I came here to do. Please keep me in your prayers as I’m adjusting once again (I feel like a nomad sometimes…) and making new friendships and partnerships with the people I’ll be living and working around for the next 18 months.

One downside about being over there is that it’s much more remote and I really have no idea how often I’ll be able to update my blog from here on out. As of today, my house doesn’t even have a phone line (hopefully I’ll have one before long); and the nearest internet café will be four hours away in Malawi… When I can get online, I’m sure I’ll be mostly focused on emailing, but I will try my best to post updates here as often as I’m able. So please do continue to check in from time to time…

And to keep your interest for the time being, I’m posting twelve small stories and cultural quirks that I’ve noticed since I’ve been here. You may want to pace yourself, and just read a couple each week so you can feel like I’m still posting new information… And of course, comments are always welcome-

Mata bicu
If you know me very well, you know that breakfast is, hands down, my favorite meal of the day. A friend in Houston once made the statement that I’m not only a big fan of breakfast, but I’m a big fan of a big breakfast. One thing I thought was really cool about Portuguese (or at least Mozambiquan Portuguese) is that the word for breakfast is “matabicu”. It literally means “kill the bug”. As in, "I’ve got to get up and kill the bug that’s inside me and making me hungry". It fits into my ideology very well, so I thought I’d share it.

Flowers
I don’t think this is the case for all African countries, but it definitely is for Mozambique. There aren’t many flowers around here. Not much water, and I don’t think I’ve seen a wild flower the whole time I’ve been here… My language tutor and I were talking about cultural things one day and he mentioned that people don’t really like flowers. I asked why, and explained that it’s a nice complement to receive them in the States. He said, “No, no, no. You must never give someone flowers unless you wish to insult them. If you want to complement someone, give them some potatoes or some corn meal.”

He explained to me that flowers have no practical purpose. You can’t eat them, you can’t plant them to grow more and sell them (though nobody would buy them anyway), they’re purely decorational (kind of like throw pillows…?). They view it as an insult because you’re giving them something they can’t use. This is the viewpoint of a Mozambiquan – pretty though it may be, we have no use for it unless it will help us get through the day.

Good Smells, Bad Smells
You know how you can always smell the stinky guy on the bus? Well I’ve come to realize that I’ve always been able to smell the stinky guy because I was used to everyone smelling pretty good in general.

Well over here it’s the opposite. I’ve grown so accustomed to smelling BO and other not-so-pleasant things that I’ve really started noticing whenever someone or something smells nice. Men’s cologne, women’s perfume, air fresheners, candles - anything with a scent. When I meet someone who smells good, I just want to keep hanging out with them. I found myself not wanting to leave a bathroom the other day because it smelled so good…

Feel Like a Bike Ride?
Obviously most Mozambiquans don’t own cars, but there are still some pretty massive distances that they need to travel to get from their farms to the markets or to visit family and friends. The transportation of choice for mid-distance travel is the bicycle. You can buy a new bike for around $40-50, which is about a month’s salary for people with a good job. The most usual sight is one guy on a bike (women almost never ride them) with a big load of charcoal, hay, or something else to sell on the back. I’ve seen loads up to probably around 250 pounds on the back of a bike.

The second most common sight is nicely demonstrated in the photo here. If you can’t tell, I’m sitting on the bar that connects the seat to the steering wheel. It’s not the most comfortable ride for the passenger, especially when you’re twice the size of the guy pedaling (that’s Luis, my language tutor, driving – and he’s all of ~4’10”). , but it will get you where you’re going. We were going to visit a friend, and he got all excited to take me there on his bike. We actually fell down in the middle of the street before we got going, because I didn’t know how to sit on it properly – I’d never ridden side-saddle on a bicycle before…

I’ve actually seen up to four people riding on the same bike. One person behind the driver, one on the bar in front, where I was, and sometimes another on the handlebars. I don’t know how they can actually get going, and I always feel sorry for the poor bum doing all the pedaling…

Africa Clean
I know that at least some of you know what “camping clean” means. Basically, there are different levels of cleanliness, and the rules that apply when you’re at home don’t hold when you’re out camping somewhere. For instance, when you’re done eating your dinner at home you might wash the dish out in the sink and let it dry. When you’re camping you might not have any soap, and the only water is from the river, and you can’t let it set there wet, so you dry it with the shirt you’ve been wearing all day. It’s not perfect, but it’s “camping clean”.

Well, here we have a little something called “Africa clean.” It’s the next step beyond “camping clean” and there are two main ways that I see it being different. First, one has to accept that everything at every time will be dirty. As soon as something is cleaned, it becomes dirty merely by being here. There is dust in the air constantly and the smart ones of us (I think) have accepted the inevitable and just stopped cleaning :-)

The second difference is that you need to become one with your surroundings. This doesn’t mean some funky meditation; it means that you accept the fact that your house isn’t just your house. God, in His wisdom, placed all sorts of creeping and crawling things on the planet with us and “Africa clean” means that they’re welcome any time they choose to drop by, without risk of being smashed. Note here that this does NOT apply to cockroaches - that’s a different level of clean that I haven’t reached yet. But small lizards and most insects are accepted as the norm. There are some battles that aren’t worth fighting, and keeping bugs out of an African house is one of them I think…

The Rhythm is in the Blood
Yeah, so most people know that white people in general don’t have an ounce of rhythm (my uncle Bill is a good example of this :-), and everyone always says that black people do. Well, I think I agree on both counts. I’ve seen some pretty spectacular dance moves coming from some pretty young Mozambiquans and I don’t think it can be anything but natural skill.

They sing songs and just each do their own thing – but it all sounds good. They start playing drums and tambourines, and it all flows. This little guy in the photo just walked up to this drum and started playing. And even though he couldn’t see the top of it, he beat a pretty good rhythm. Maybe it’s something in the water. Of course, I’ll get sick if I drink the water without a filter, so I’m at a crossroads… To be healthy, but painfully white… or to be sick, but with African rhythm? I’m still pondering this one…

Patron
One thing that has really struck me about the culture here is the absolute dependency that everyone has on everyone else. Coming from our independent American culture, it’s weird to see the “community living” that they practice here, where everyone lives interdependently. It’s neat sometimes because when a crisis arises, a person’s neighbors and family often pool their resources to help out the unfortunate one.

But I think it’s taken to an extreme in a lot of cases. The goal of many people seems to be to attach themselves to someone who makes a decent living and just be dependant on them for the rest of their lives. They call this person who provides for them their “patron.” Everyone calls us white people patron when they want something. There’s a guy in my neighborhood who asked me if I would be his “patron, mother, father and brother.” He was absolutely serious; he wanted to come with me to Cuamba. I mean come on, I went to college, and I know what it’s like to mooch off of other people, but this guy is older than I am. And he really wanted me to provide for him in every way - it makes me sad.

White People Don’t Work
I got the explanation the other day about why nobody will let me do anything to help them. I was talking to this guy about how I go to help people move stuff here, but they’ll only let me drive and I’m not allowed to actually move anything.

He told me it’s because the Mozambiquans don’t think that we can do any manual labor. He said, “All we ever see you doing is driving, writing, or talking. So I’m afraid that if I let you pick something up at my house, you’ll hurt yourself because you don’t know how to pick it up properly. And then I’ll get in trouble because I hurt the white guy.”

There you go; they don’t think I’m sickly because of my skin color. They can only go by what they’ve seen, and in all fairness I have to agree with the guy that I’ve never seen a white guy working in this country either. Should I try to break the stereotype, or just allow the kids (KIDS even think they need to help me!) at the market to carry my two-pound bag of rice so that I don’t strain myself in my ignorance? I’m torn between the options… so many things here just crack me up.

Third-World Driving Skills
Have you ever played a car-driving game at an arcade? If so, you have some experience driving in a third-world country. Seriously. Driving here is absolutely without rules: lines on the road don’t hold any meaning; they can’t check car speeds, so there are effectively no speed limits; and I haven’t seen a single stop sign, only yields.

It involves dodging other cars (and taxi busses, which are harder to avoid because they’re always swerving and stopping), motorcycles, bicycles, adults and children, goats, chickens and the occasional person sleeping in the road.

You can stop at any time, you can pass at any time, and you need to swerve at every time in order to avoid potholes. I really feel like I’m in a video game every time I get behind the wheel. My brother would love it, and he’d fit right in.

Need to go to the Hospital?
I took my supervisor to the hospital today – she’s fine, just had an ear problem – and I got the inside view of how things work here. The sanitation of the hospital was something to behold, let me tell you.

So my supervisor had to get a packing put in her ear to combat an infection or something, I don’t really know what it was all about. The doctor was going to use a pair of tweezers to insert the packing, and he made sure to soak them in a solution that I’m assuming was to disinfect them (though it may have just been water). He then proceeded to rip off a piece of cotton and place it in the bare hand of his assistant along with some ointment. And THEN he asked his assistant to squish the ointment into the cotton by wadding it up in his hand. Naturally, the next step was to pick up the cotton with the sterilized tweezers and put it into my supervisor’s ear. I was hard pressed to keep from cracking up, but I knew my boss wouldn’t appreciate it.

So yeah, if anything happens to me here, don’t worry – I’ll be well taken care of :-)

Hiking Anyone?
So I went hiking the other day, and when I got home I started talking to a guy who works in the area. We were talking about how we’d each spent the day, and I realized that I couldn’t think of the word for hiking. So I tried explaining it to him as, “Just going out to the countryside to walk and look around, or climbing up a mountain just to see the scenery.”

He didn’t get it, his response was, “Oh, you mean passing through the countryside on your way to somewhere. Or going out there to do some work, maybe you need some wood?”

I said, “No, I just went out there to look around. Not to work or to visit people, just to spend time enjoying what God has given us.”

He still didn’t get it. Then I realized that of course he wouldn’t get it. To go out to the countryside for them is an all-day journey in itself. They don’t have cars, and they wouldn’t go out there unless they needed something specific. He has no concept of hiking because he’s never been; and he likely never will be just “walking through the wilderness to look around.” What purpose would it serve?

Lights Off, Lights On
We have pretty frequent power loss here, almost daily in my neighborhood. One thing I love about it is that every time the power goes off and it’s dark outside, every single kid in the neighborhood yells at the same time. And they do the same when it comes back on. It cracks me up every time I hear it. Lights off: “Aaaaiiiiiiieeeeeeee!” Two hours later, lights on: “Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiieeeeeee!”

Lunchtime

Since I’ve been here I’ve started making all kinds of food from scratch (because there’s no other way) and I’ve found myself to be a pretty rockin’ cook. I’ve got skills I didn’t even know about… Well, lately I’ve decided that I need to learn how to cook more things using the local ingredients and the local methods, and today I happened to bring my camera along while doing so.

I went with a friend to another person’s house, where we proceeded to make lunch for about 15 people (six adults, nine kids). First, my friend and I went to the market and got everything we’d need. I generously offered to pay, as it was my idea, and do you know what the grand total was? Roughly $1.20. To feed FIFTEEN people. And we had plenty of food. Not the most vitamin-enriched, but high in protein…

So anyway, when we arrived, this little guy on the left was the first one to greet me. He walked up to me, buck naked, and took my hand to lead me around outside the house. His name is Vito, and he’s one of the cutest kids I’ve ever seen. He kept coming up to me and just holding onto my leg, or climbing into my lap. Most kids are afraid of us whiteys and cry when we get too close, but this one had no fear whatsoever. His mom finally put some clothes on him… And I can’t remember this guy’s name on the right, but his mom was our cooking assistant, and I just thought this was a nice photo.


And as soon as the kids figure out that you’ve got a camera, they crowd around so you’ll take their photo and then show it to them. They’re even more amazed if you turn on the LCD screen and show them something as it’s being recorded. They were amazed that they could see their own toes wiggling on the LCD. I asked them all to vogue for this next one, and they gave me the kung-fu stances. We didn’t feed all these kids, some of them were neighbors.


This is Paula, the woman who helped us cook. African style is an interesting thing. Most of the time, style here is just wearing whatever you can get your hands on. I’ve seen men wearing skirts or blouses, as well as women’s shoes with the heels cut off. But the women’s clothing is usually really bright and vibrant. I’ve wondered why that is, and the only thing I can come up with is that it’s a stark contrast with the earthy tones of life around them. When the roads are dirt, the houses are mud-brick and straw, and nothing has been painted in the last several decades, I guess you need to get your kicks where you can. And they pull it off very well.


I took one more photo with me in it, and then I had to put the camera away because the kids all started asking for individual photos. But these guys were a few of the ones who ate with us. And, of course, I again got the biggest portion. At least I bought the food this time, so it was understandable, but I still had to feign being full so they would be willing to give the rest to the kids. And do you know what everyone did after lunch? Had a dance party, of course. Let me just tell you that if you’ve never seen a bunch of African kids (from ~2yrs to probably 12) freestyle dancing, well, then you’re just missing out. They were throwing in moves from Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, A Night at the Roxbury, and everything in between. I took out the camera for one last shot… You can’t really tell, but the little guys were dancing as well. They were just kind of bumping their butts, it was really funny.

African Punctuality

So I preached today for the second time in Portuguese. It was much easier than the last time – I only needed about 1/4 of the preparation time. And I feel like it went even better. I sat down with some of the church leaders afterwards and asked them what they thought and they told me I had communicated pretty well. I asked them what they got out of it, and they started discussing some of the things I was actually hoping/praying that they would be able to apply in their lives.

It’s a funny thing really – I don’t normally like speaking in front of large groups of people. I can do it, but I get nervous and my voice usually gets all shaky and stuff. But it’s different in Portuguese. I think that I’m forced to concentrate so hard on what I’m saying that my mind doesn’t have a chance to be preoccupied with anything else. And maybe there’s a little help from above… ;-)

Oh, and get this: my pasty white skin apparently passes as a seminary degree. They were all calling me “Pastor Natan” (they can’t pronounce the “th” sound). Who needs to go to college for six years when you can just go to a third-world country and have a degree bestowed upon you? That’s what I’m talking about…

And of course, after church they brought out the food. It breaks my heart to see what they do for us around here. They look upon it as such an honor to have us there that they’ll prepare more food than the average family eats in a week. And that’s just in quantity. The things they prepare, most families probably don’t even eat once a month. Chicken, goat and eggs are definitely luxury items in Mozambique, yet they’ll do everything possible to prepare all three and more if they have any means possible. And then they’ll be insulted if I don’t eat more than everyone else. I feel terrible every time I have to deal with it, but I’ve come to realize that I’ll make them much happier by eating what they’ve made me than they would be by eating it themselves… It’s pretty different from our selfish American culture, huh? They just want to watch me enjoy it…

I noticed something else today that really gave me a glimpse into the Mozambiquan mindset. I’ve been learning Portuguese because it’s the trade language of the country, but most people don’t speak it, or at least not well. It was imposed on them when the Portuguese colonized the country, and everyone prefers to speak Makhuwa, the local language.

So while I was preaching, there was a guy translating from Portuguese into Makhuwa so everyone could understand well. What I noticed is that there are certain words that they don’t have in the Makhuwa language, and so they use the Portuguese ones. Kind of like the word email. Pretty much every language just calls it email (except, of course, the French) because it’s a new word that no other language had a concept of before email came to be.

What I thought was interesting is that the words for hour, week, month, etc don’t exist in the Makhuwa language. Which shows that the concept of time, other than the passing of a day, is foreign to the African frame of thought. It is a concept that obviously didn’t exist before the Europeans came and imposed it on them. Africans are late to EVERYTHING, and nothing starts or ends on time. It’s frustrating to a lot of people (I get a kick out of it) but I finally understand why.

I’m including some photos here from a hike that I went on yesterday. This place is about a half-hour drive from the city of Nampula (where I’m living for now) and is a good example of the rocky landscape around here.

Most of the land is flat, with these groupings of rocky areas.

This is a rare Mozambiquan scene with water in it. There’s actually a small damn up ahead, otherwise this water probably wouldn’t be there.

Another rare photo - for Mozambique anyway. Not many cows around here. It was funny, even the cows were staring at us because we’re white. A game of “Hey Cow” would be pretty easy around here…

Doesn’t this look kind of like Pride Rock? I really think the Lion King was based on the Mozambiquan landscape. I love this photo and I thought it would be a good one to end on. Until next time-

The Trouble Never Ends...

Yeah, so it's funny how technical troubles abound in third-world countries, huh? I was having problems sending email from my yahoo account, so for the past few weeks I've been sending them from my Mozambiquan account. But it looks like I can't receive anything on my Moz account... So I can't send from one, and I can't recieve from the other... funny situation.

I've sent out a lot of emails in the past few weeks, and I haven't gotten a single one back from my Mozambiquan account. I know that at least a few people have told me they sent them, but I haven't gotten a thing. I've fixed (again) my yahoo account for now, so if you've sent anything to my Moz account, please resend it to my yahoo.

I was starting to think that maybe nobody wants to talk to me, but I know that can't be true... :)