Paul and Eli Blog in Moz

Hello All,

This turned out longer than I thought it would, so if you don’t want to read it all, don’t worry – I will never know!

Well, I know I promised to write something about our trip a few days ago, but what with one thing and another – mostly another, called WORK! – I didn’t get around to it until today. Luckily for me, Paul and Eli (actually I think it was Paul J) managed to write something on their blog (http://peacecorpsmoz.blogspot.com/) before I wrote my bit, so I have just copied it below and now all I have to do is write my comments on the trip. That was fortuitous, was it not? J

So where to begin? When we used to travel as a family with the kids, we started a sort of tradition of saying at the end of each trip, what the best and worst of the trip was. So maybe I will just continue that tradition here.

Certainly, the best part of the trip for me was seeing Elisabeth and Paul and seeing that they were happy and well in their life together in Mozambique. They both seemed to enjoy what they were doing (perhaps Elisabeth more than Paul as far as the teaching was concerned, but then Paul seemed to compensate for his frustration in the teaching area with his projects of the mural and the science fair). As a teacher, I was very impressed with their ability to teach anything at all given the circumstances in which they were trying to do so (huge classes, no materials, teaching in a foreign language, etc). They had also had very little teacher training before being set down in front of 90 students and told to teach them something, and they are doing very well! They talked a lot about how their students cheat like crazy and how they are really only interested in passing the course rather than actually learning anything. I understand that this can be extremely frustrating, as I have had the same experience when teaching in Spanish schools. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I stopped teaching kids and decided to stick to adults, who have their own learning issues but who at least want to learn what you are trying to teach them. Paul seemed to think this was a US-Mozambique cultural difference, but I am not sure. It would be interesting to hear what the situation is in US high schools with a non-upper middle class student body.

Besides teaching well, they seem to have adapted well to the Nacala life style, with all the cultural differences that I am sure have caused them some degree of frustration. They seem to take bucket baths in their stride (Is this my daughter, who used to use her 15-minute morning hot shower the way I use coffee to wake up every morning?!) and can bargain with the best of the door-to-door fruit and shrimp vendors to get a good price. Every time we went out, people would call out “salaama” (sp?) to them (actually more to Paul – remember this is a male-dominated society, at least in public). The whole city seemed to know them – and by extension, us – and I got the impression that they were liked and respected. It was great to meet their friends in the market and we were made to feel very welcome.

In general, the people we met were very friendly to us. Their students were shy but very interested in speaking to us, and they asked us all sorts of questions about ourselves and our life in Europe. They all wanted to go to Europe or the US, where I suppose they think the streets are paved with gold. One of the questions they always asked us was how old we were, and when we said “58”, they always cheered and clapped. At first, I didn’t see what that was all about, but when you think that the life expectancy in Mozambique is 42, I guess reaching 58 is quite an achievement! (Or maybe they were just clapping because we answered the question – who knows?)

A few times, we visited the homes of students or friends, and they always treated us as if we were honored guests. For example, most of the people do not sit on chairs; they sit on mats (made of straw or rattan or something similar – I am not sure what the material is). But when we went to visit, they always brought out chairs for us to sit on. And once we went to visit a friend of theirs (Raimundo – he is in the photos), and he sent his daughter to the store to buy Cokes and Fantas for us (though I am sure he could ill afford it) and he put out French fries and pieces of bread (we figured that was all he had) for us to snack on. So you can see that although they may not have much, they shared what they had. We actually felt kind of bad about eating and drinking this when we knew that it was difficult for him to provide it, but there was clearly no way we could refuse.

Another interesting part about these visits was that it was always the man of the family who “entertained” us. At some point, he called over his wife and children to introduce them, but they never said anything – they just sat on the side without participating in the conversation unless they were invited to do so by the man.

Most of the people we met were native Mozambicans, but we also met a family (Abdul in the photos) who is from Mozambique but of Indian origin/ancestry, and it was interesting to see the difference in attitudes and life styles. This family is VERY nice and has helped Elisabeth and Paul in many ways, but they really do not like Mozambique. They are talking about moving to South Africa, or at least to the south of Mozambique, which is much more developed than the north. This family lives in an apartment with a huge American-style kitchen, a living room with a big TV, running hot and cold water in the bathroom, etc. Although they were from a different social class, they were equally friendly, welcoming and generous to us.

The scenery in Mozambique is stunning! The country has such a potential as a tourist destination – all they need is some organization and some infrastructure and they could make a fortune! Theoretically, they are trying to develop an environmentally sustainable tourism, and I hope they succeed. At the moment, though, the tourist industry is sort of non-existent. When Paul talked about Ilha (the original Portuguese capital of Mozambique) being “more touristy”, you have to remember that everything is relative. It is more touristy than Nacala, for example, but it is not what anyone from Europe or the US would consider a “tourist spot”. There weren’t even any fridge magnets!!! It is a beautiful place, and really very hard to describe – the buildings are sort of remnants of past colonial glory that have been left neglected and are now pretty well falling apart but they still give you an idea of the glory and splendor that was. As Paul said, the Mozambicans are slowly but surely fixing up the town, and I hope that they can do that without destroying the special ambience that pervades it now. Another thing I noticed about Ilha was that the light was very special; I don’t know if that was because it was raining off and on or for some other reason, but it was a very beautiful light.

If you have managed to stay with me this far, you may be wondering if there were no negative points. Don’t worry, there were. This is still a poor, third-world country trying hard – against many odds – to develop its economy and social structure. If you have never traveled in one of these countries before, it can be quite a shock to your system. Fortunately, I had had experience (albeit many years ago – somewhere around the time of the dinosaurs, as my kids would say) and I can say that I was not shocked by any of it and thoroughly enjoyed the entire trip! (In fact, I think I bored Paul and Elisabeth out of their brains at times with remembrances of my travels that were sparked by similar situations we experienced in Moz.) But for someone who has only traveled in Europe and other more developed tourist destinations, if you are planning to go to Moz, try to prepare yourself mentally first to keep an open mind (and resilient body J) to face some circumstances that will be difficult. “Time doesn’t matter”, as we were told on our first day there, for example, so don’t get uptight if people aren’t where they say they will be when they say they will be there. “Chapas” are crowded, unsafe (usually), uncomfortable (always), and driven at breakneck speeds on very dodgy roads; and there are not many alternatives (taxis are in short supply, expensive, and often the driver just doesn’t want to take you where you want to go). The water is not safe to drink. The water supply, even when we were there in the season without a water shortage, is unreliable, to say the least. Hygiene is pretty well a non-concept, and material goods are in short supply. (One of my friends asked if Paul and Eli did their shopping “in a supermarket” – a perfectly reasonable question unless you realize that there is no such thing as a supermarket where they live.)

Having said all this, I have to say that the whole experience is more than worth the inconveniences I have just mentioned. The people are wonderful, the scenery is fantastic, and I hope to go back next year.

Paul has pretty much said all there is to say about the safaris and South Africa, but I will just add that we saw wildebeests at night, not buffalo, though we did see a lot of buffalo during the day and once at a watering hole at sunset. What I liked most about the walking safari was that you really were in the bush, and the guide was extremely knowledgeable not only about animals, but also about plants and constellations and really everything to do with the bush. So it was more of a total experience, as opposed to the Kruger Park bit, where we saw a lot of animals (obviously the best part of that experience), but you had to stay in your car and it was more like being in a really big zoo than in the bush. I think the two experiences complemented each other, and I would recommend that combination to anyone who was thinking of going there. (And I would stay longer in Kruger. Since this was a last-minute change in plans on our part, we had a limited time in Kruger before we had to catch our plane home, and sometimes we felt a bit rushed.)

The other thing I noticed about South Africa was that there seemed to be a lot more racial hostility than in Mozambique, and certainly there was more danger. All the houses had barbed wire and big fences around them (and I mean barbed wire like at army camps and federal prisons!) and people said they never went out at night except by car. I could never live like that!

I hope you enjoyed this LONG commentary. I could probably write a lot more – this was really a wonderful trip, and I am so happy that Paul and Elisabeth were able to put up with us for so long.

Love,

Renée