Xara

“So Anna and Anna, you’ll coordinate the northern regional meeting?”

“Yeah, but Anna, what’s the budget for each region?  Our transportation is gonna eat up a lot.”

            That’s what our REDES board meetings would sound like if we hadn’t eliminated the confusion and started going by our last names.  There are currently four Annas in Peace Corps Mozambique and three of us are on the REDES executive board.  That doesn’t even include some of the Hannahs who have found it simpler to go by Ana at their sites rather than try to get the locals to pronounce the H. 

            Never in my life have I been around so many “namesakes.”  Namesake is such a strange word.  We never use it, and according to Merriam Webster, it applies more to people that are named after someone else than to people who just cooincidentally share the same name.  I am a namesake in the sense that I am the fourth Anna on my mother’s side (specifically named for my great-great grandmother, Anna Isabel Fisher Franke) but I would feel strange calling my fellow volunteer Annas my “namesakes.”

            However, in Mozambique, where it is perfectly acceptable to address someone by their relationship to you, Amigo/a, Vezinho/a (neighbor), Cunhado/a (catch-all familial relation, official or unofficial), there are half a dozen people who greet me as Xará (shah-RAH), the Portuguese word for namesake. Among these are my neighbor, Ana Paula and even Isabel, a secretary at my school who has seen my middle name on some paperwork.  Having almost 400 students, I was bound to have some xarás in the classroom, as well. One of which I noticed even took to spelling her name with two n’s as I do. 

            So here’s a shout out to my Xarás, American and Mozambican!

One Year Later

            In my first post to this blog, I wrote of how much I missed my Mozambican host family.  Finally, after a year at my site in Montepuez, I made it back to where I started this crazy adventure: Namaacha.

            I had been looking forward to this reunion from the moment I hugged my host-mãe good-ye the morning I swore in as an official Peace Corps volunteer. So, the first thing I did after settling in at the hostel in Maputo city was call my host-mãe.

“Hi, mom! I’m here!  I’m in Maputo!  Can I still come to visit you in Namaacha tomorrow?”

“Of course, Anna.  Your Portuguese is so much better.  I’m also in Maputo tonight.  Come to the station tomorrow at 8 and we’ll travel back together.”

            Only then did I realize that I had changed my phone number and not introduced myself when I called her.  Of course, she knew who was on the other end of the unknown number anyways.  Who else would call her sounding that excited and ridiculous?

            The next morning, I found myself with my backpack waiting for my host-mãe to come claim me, much like I did over a year ago.  This time, however, I wasn’t a bundle of nerves wondering what on Earth I’ve gotten myself into. When my host-mãe finally arrived to take me back to Namaacha, we exchanged a kiss on the cheek and true to the no-nonsense woman she is, she reverted right back to host-mãe mode and herded me into the nearest chapa to Namaacha.

            On the chapa ride, we caught up on school and my host-siblings before we both succumbed to traveler’s fatigue and took a nap.  When I woke up, I could see the spot where I knew Namaacha was nestled up in the green mountains.  Once in Namaacha, it was like I had never left.  I walked up the road to my family’s house and into the yard.  At first I didn’t see anyone, but I knew better.  A few seconds later, my host-pãe’s face popped up out of his garden, pretty much right where I left him a year ago.

            Half of free time in training was spent in one of two places:  On a tattered red pleather couch talking with my host-pãe, or in a plastic chair cooking over charcoal with my host-mãe.  While my host-mãe cleaned up from her trip, I plopped down on the couch across from my host-pãe.  Finally, I understood what he was saying and he understood what I was saying.  Amazing how much easier conversations are when you actually speak the same language.  As my host-mãe walked back in the room it only just occurred to me what a funny couple they were.  My host-pãe was all smiles and small talk while my host-mãe, though warm, was so stern in comparison.

            I excused myself from the living room and followed my host-mãe to my other perch next to the charcoal in the outdoor kitchen.  Quickly, we fried up some eggs and heat water for tea.  Meal number1.  Then, tirelessly, my host-mãe immediately started preparing lunch.  Like the first time your parents let you go to the playground by yourself, I knew I’d graduated when my host-mãe handed me some money and asked me to go down to a little store to buy the fish.  Of course, my ability to clean and gut those fish clearly hadn’t reached the level she thought it should have by then.  I didn’t admit to her how often I ate (more like didn’t eat…) fish at site.  The real reminder that I was back with my host family came just as we were finishing up the cooking.  My host-mãe told me to go take a bath before we ate.

            After lunch and what was definitely much too short a visit, I hugged my host parents good-bye and was back on my way to Maputo full and freshly bathed.

Supernatural

           This morning I was working on my laptop while Mireya was lesson planning with a student teacher when our neighbor Paula rushed over to our house in a panic.  She was sobbing and making no sense at all.  Mireya asked if it was the baby (Paula just had a baby a few weeks ago) and she said yes so Mireya hurried back to the house with Paula and I ran to the school to find her husband Selemane.  I felt awful as I snatched him out of a meeting with the school director with no information other than “Hurry, your baby is sick.  We have to go home and take her to the hospital right now!”  I didn't know anything else because I’d just sprinted out of the house before we really knew what was wrong.  I had to walk Selemane back on the verge of a heart attack and assuming the worst.

            Luckily, the baby was fine.

            Rita, however, wasn’t.  In her panic, Paula had said it was the baby when Mireya asked because Rita had been holding the baby when the episode began.  When Paula found her, Rita had one hand around her own throat as if to try to choke herself and the other hand trying to pull the choking hand away.  That was when Paula snatched the baby away and sent her away from the house with another neighbor.  By the time Mireya entered the house, Rita was curled up against in the corner, vomit all over the room.  When Mireya tried to touch Rita’s shoulder, she flailed and tried to hit Mireya.

            When she finally calmed down, we returned back to our house.  The student teacher explained that the episode was called “Magine” and that Rita was very lucky.  He said that during these sudden violent episodes, people have grabbed knives or machetes, started cutting themselves and drinking their own blood.  He described it as a type of demon that possesses a person and attacks every few months.  Paula was petrified by Rita holding the baby when the attack began because apparently the demon can jump into other bodies.  Rita will have to go to the traditional witch doctor to have it expelled. 

            We may not get the chance to see Rita get better.  This past weekend she informed Mireya that Selemane is taking her back to Nampula to stay indefinitely with her other family.  When we asked when she was coming back she didn’t know and said it would depend on if Selemane wanted to bring her back to Montepuez.  After this episode and Paula’s fear that the demon will transfer to her baby, I don’t know if that is likely.

The other neighbors

            I live in a quasi-compound with three other teachers and their families.  Their kids play in our yard, we walk through theirs’ every day on the way to school, we use each other’s clotheslines, cook for each other occasionally, all of that good stuff.  However these families are not my only neighbors.

            To our right, we have the secondary school.  We look out our window every morning to see the students in their black and white uniforms walking to school.  Every 45 minutes, we can hear the school bell ringing to start and end the classes.  We can also hear when the students are being particularly rowdy between classes or at weekend events. 

            To our left, we have the military base.  I’ve started crossing paths with the recruits on their morning runs and at 6am on the dot every day, someone plays the wake up call on a trumpet.  You’d think after playing it every day, they’d have it down.  They don’t.  They still sound terrible and out of tune.  On the weekends, or on weeknights it doesn’t seem to matter, we can hear music blasting from the barracks.  It sounds like they’re having way too much fun to be in training, but Mozambicans all love their music at 4am.  I think I may have also mentioned in one of my first posts a particularly intimate experience where a storm knocked down my fence as well as the fence surrounding the base and I spent a few days with a clear view of one of their latrines and all who used it…

            A bit to our front, we have the hospital.  We are at the entrance of a large neighborhood and are the first house many encounter on their way back from the hospital.  We frequently have people come up to our door to ask for a glass of water so they can take the medicine they were just prescribed.  Unfortunately we are also among the first houses to know when someone has died at the hospital.  It is customary in Cabo Delgado (I don’t know if this applies to the rest of the north) for the women close to the deceased to wander through the neighborhoods wailing immediately afterwards to mourn.  This first day and the actual funeral only times when public mourning is acceptable.  The waves of mourning women has gone down since the winter started but they are bound to increase again as rainy season returns in a month or two, bringing with it more mosquitos and more malaria.

            Usually, the wailing women are coming from the hospital.  A few Sundays ago, I was sitting in our alpendre sewing with our REDES girls when we heard frantic crying and we watched woman jog by clutching her baby.  I had expected the crying to get quieter as she got further but it didn’t.  A few seconds later, the crying suddenly became louder and it wasn’t getting farther away anymore.  The woman hadn’t made it very far past our house when she turned around to walk home, wailing.

           

Third world travel

            From any one of my posts on travelling, you can gather just how difficult it can be to travel in Mozambique.  Even so, it is usually bearable.  Our return trip Lichinga to Cuamba during the last two week break was above and beyond Mozambique’s normal standard.

            Normally, you start your travel day as early as possible but for reasons that are unimportant, Mireya and I were not able to go to the Lichinga chapa station until around 8am.  By that time, the only closed mini-bus had already left and the only vehicle available was a small flatbed truck.  It, too, already appeared full but as per Mozambican custom, we wedged ourselves in anyways. 

            I knew I was going to have an interesting day when almost immediately, one of the new mothers facing me went to breastfeed her baby and, well, missed.  I received a generous squirt right in the face.  Normally, when exposed to bodily fluids that can carry HIV, we are supposed to call our medical staff and start on prophylaxis.  Luckily, though the shot was fairly direct, it still wasn’t much and it’s not absorbed through the skin so I didn’t need to do that but I could imagine how that conversation would go… Excuse me, Doctor Isadora, um, I was sprayed in the face with breastmilk… I need  PEP…

            That was where the humor ended.  We continued to just sit in the Lichinga station until 10am filling up like a clown car with people, sacks, and boxes (some people had been waiting for the chapa to leave since 6am!).  I tried to count our passengers at one point but it became too difficult after getting to 25 adults in just the front half of the truck bed (that’s just adults.  I didn’t include children under the age of 12ish, babies, or cargo… and that was just HALF of the truck.)  I would estimate that we left Lichinga with a minimum of 60 people in the back of that truck. 

            I was wedged down in the bed of the truck between a sack of clothes, a few large boxes of batteries, with my elbow in a newborn’s face.  There were two men sitting basically on me and one was determined to have a full conversation.  I did my best but it was difficult to hear him and I was constantly distracted by the batteries digging into my leg (justified after I found a bruise there the next day).  Eventually, as I lost feeling in my butt and in my legs, I lost my patience for small talk in my second language. 

            With every bump and hole in the road (of which there were many), the cargo shifted and I sank deeper and deeper under the people and boxes.  I honestly thought I would be crushed with my knees to my chest, my feet under the people sitting on me, a box in my ribs, and still struggling to hold myself upright so I didn’t elbow the newborn behind me.  If we hadn’t stopped for a bathroom break, I would have had to demand that the chapa stop because I could barely breathe.

            All this while, you have to remember, that the sun is climbing in the sky over our uncovered truck.  I could barely reach my hand to my face let alone find my water which was in my burried backpack somewhere over by Mireya.  To be completely honest, I had never given any thought to giving up and coming home until that chapa ride.  What was worse, is that if I did want to throw in the towel, I would still have to ride that chapa all the way unless I wanted to be stuck in the African bush.

            This ride continued 5 hours until we finally reached the next city, making for 7 hours in that horrendous chapa.  When we arrived in that town, the chapa driver decided he simply did not want to continue on to cuamba.  Mireya and I luckily quickly jumped into the last mini-bus before it filled up but I’m certain many of the people on the first chapa were left without any way to continue on to Cuamba.  An overcrowded mini-bus, children puking and all, has never been so welcome.

            Peace Corps volunteers get asked all of the time about the differences between life in Mozambique and the States but usually, they just ask about money and celebrities.  Sometimes we wonder if they think about how there aren’t usually 80 people in a single high school classroom or 23 people in a 15 person van because these things are just so normal in this country.  They do.  An older man sitting near Mireya on the first chapa, talking to no one in particular, muttered, “This is the third world.”   That chapa was a dehumanizing experience for all of us.