Pass the Piri Piri, Please!: JUNTOS

I apologize for the gap in posts, but I write to you now from the last leg of a secondary project marathon. June is a CRAZY month.

Two weekends ago, Mireya and I started the marathon by hosting a workshop for JUNTOS (Jovens Unidos no Trobalho Oportunidades e Successos or Youth United in Work, Opportunities, and Suncesses). Of course as a pre-race warm-up, we had to navigate an obstacle course of headaches common to planning any such event in Mozambique.

The workshop was to include three groups of kids: Home team Montepuez and visitors from Mocimboa da Praia and Mariri. The first challenge was finding a safe and affordable place to house the visiting groups. Ideally, visiting groups stay at the host groups’ school dormatories because we can usually negotiate for them to stay for free. Unfortunately, there was no space at ours so we began to look elsewhere. Thanks to the ruby mining just outside of town, Inns in Montepuez are a tricky business for two reasons: 1) People who stay in inns in Montepuez usually have a lot of money, therefore, the inns often charge an arm and a leg 2) Where there’s money, there’s crime (Don’t worry, life in Montepuez is not a scene out of Blood Diamond), and so inns that don’t charge an arm and a leg are often sketchy at best… no place to put our underage charges. Luckily Mireya found the perfect place: A bright pink inn with reasonably priced rooms, a restaurant area that they were willing to rent out to us a conference room, and PUPPIES!!!

Second obstacle: food. Due to budget cutbacks, we couldn’t hire just anyone to “cater” our workshop and pay for each meal by the plate. Our budget demanded that we buy all of the food in bulk ahead of time and negotiate for someone to prepare it. The obvious person to prepare it would have been the cook for the inn’s restaurant. But being Mozambique, just because an inn has a “restaurant” it doesn’t mean it’s functional. There was no cook. Someone staying at the inn just happened to know of a woman who used to hire herself out to cook for large groups and was currently looking for work. The owner of the inn gave her a call and just like that, the inn had a functional restaurant and we had a cook.

Then we actually had to get the food. Have you ever tried to extrapolate recipes for more than 20 people? I don’t know about you but I generally don’t think in quantities of kilos and litres when I’m cooking (I don’t just mean the thinking in metric part). More importantly, have you ever tried to buy food for that many people without a grocery store or a car to transport it? After 16 chickens and a 50lb bag of rice we had over 200lbs of stuff to get across town. As we were debating how to get our rice home (I can carry feed bags, sure, but the last time I checked it wasn’t a mile between the barn and the car), we ran into Alan, one of Montepuez’s lovely missionaries, running errands in his truck and he graciously agreed to give us and our stuff a lift.

The first group to arrive Saturday morning was Mariri. About this time, I had learned that the inn had completely sold out of sodas so we would have to bring them in from elsewhere. This is not a simple task because sodas here are sold in glass bottles that have to be returned to the vendor so unless you have empty bottles to trade, they are hardpressed to let their bottles go. This meant I would have to go to the wholesaler (of course on the other side of town) to try to negotiate a deposit on some crates of bottles. Since Alan wasn’t around to save the day, I put the Mariri group to work. I took them into town, bought them breakfast, then we carried the two cases of soda from the wholesaler back across town to the inn. Being typical respectful Mozambican students, at first they refused to help carry one of the cases for a stretch. Finally they tired and I took my turn and we spent the rest of the walk talking about Arnold Schwartzenager (as Mozambicans are always surprised when we Americans show ANY willingness to do physical labor).

Mocimboa da Praia arrived a few hours later (9 hours of travel that started at 3am!!!) and the workshop was finally underway. JUNTOS is funded by PEPFAR so all of our sessions are about leadership, sexual health, and HIV/AIDS. These kids have this information beat into their heads time and time again so finding new and fun ways to present these topics takes some creativity. One of the topics Mireya and I were responsible for presenting was puberty. All of our kids have already hit puberty so we decided that we could probably get away with a game to review what happens. Thanks to a donation of extra hair weave from my neighbors among other local materials, we were able to design relay races with activities that related to feminine and masculine puberty. Some of the activities might seem crude, but part of the purpose of these PEPFAR youth clubs is to make the kids comfortable with the changes they are going through and you can’t achieve that by beating around the bush, so, with that disclaimer:

Feminine Relay Race:

1) Body hair begins to grow – put clumps of weave in armpits

2) Breasts come in – stuff shirt with two balls made of plastic bags

3) Hips widen – run back with a ball/pot between legs

4) Menstruation begins – Open a sanitary napkin and smash a tomato on it

5) Face become oily – wash face

Masculine Relay Race

1) Facial and body hair begins to grow – put on a beard made of weave

2) Muscles grow – Stuff sleeves with plastic bag balls

3) Voice deepens – Read a sentence starting with a high pitched voice and end with low pitched

4) Wet dreams begin – “Fall asleep” in a chair covered in a capulana, wake up surprised, “wash” the capulana and replace it on the chair

5) Face becomes oily – wash face

Those 5 minutes were easily the most entertaining I’ve had in months.

As far as the kids knew, the workshop continued to run smoothly. Things in the kitchen, however, were getting heated. For the first lunch, we had planned matapa served over rice. We had intended for the 50lb sack of rice to last for all four meals we were serving that weekend but when we went back to check on the matapa, the cook had prepared 25lbs of dry rice JUST FOR THAT LUNCH!!!! I mean, they love their carbs here, but even our hungriest teenage boy wasn’t going to eat an entire pound of rice. (A pound of potatoes for every person, right, Mom?) The woman was indignant when we confronted her about this and maintained this attitude for the rest of the weekend when we started keeping a closer eye on the portion control. We told her she could use only 5 chickens that night for the curry because the rest were for serving grilled half-chickens the next night and had bought just enough. Of course she used 6 when we weren’t looking which left us with the awkward decision of who wasn’t going to get to eat dinner the next night.

On top of that, she had called for her kids to come armed with large tupperwares to take home food…probably the real reason for making too much food. We quickly put a stop to this practice but compromised by letting the cook and the rest of the workers eating the extra food after all of our kids were served. Then they tried tell us that they weren’t going to see any of the money we had agreed to pay the owner of the inn for the preparation of food so we needed to pay them extra. We cleared up that misunderstanding with the owner right away. Mozambicans can be the nicest people in the world but boy do they try to milk you for every last dime sometimes.

Speaking of milk, the cook made an odd request before she agreed to cook for our group. She asked us to buy her fresh milk to drink while she cooked to protect her throat from the charcoal smoke. We agreed that this was an easy thing to do and if it would she would cook better and faster with milk, then get the lady milk. Then we saw her on her smoke break with a fat cigarette… I really wonder what goes through people’s heads sometimes.

Then there was the matter of plates, cups, and utensils. Everytime I visited the kitchen while planning the workshop I never saw enough stuff to serve 20+ people and everytime I brought it up with the owner and the cook, I was assured that there would be. Either way, you’d assume that would have been an obvious detail when it comes to running a restaurant. When we were getting ready to serve lunch the first day, I asked where the plates were.

Me: Where are the plates? Cook: You didn’t bring your own plates? Me: No, you said you had them. Cook: Oh, I guess we can find some…

*Time elapses*

Me: We need utensils. Cook: What? You didn’t bring utensils? Me: NO! Give us some freakin spoons!

*Time elapses*

Me: We need 20 cups. Find them.

And we still ended up bringing utensils and cups from home.

Despite all of the firey hoops Mireya and I had to jump through to keep these kids housed and fed, they seemed to have a great time and many went home with the names and numbers of new friends.