Y'all had some great questions that just didn't really fit into any category so I chose a couple of my favorites and have answered them here!
Q: How does African culture blend with the Portuguese culture? A: This is one of the hardest concepts to encapsulate in words, but at the same time is so fascinating to see in person. The Portuguese language unites the country in all official matters, but walking down the street, I hear most people conversing in local African languages. This depends a lot on how urban/rural your community is. Many volunteers move to site and find that barely any people speak Portuguese so they must do all their work (including teaching!) in the local Bantu language. Meanwhile, my site is pretty urban but even though everyone can speak Portuguese (making my life much easier), they often still speak the local language with other Mozambicans. There are also some local language sounds/phonemes that have found their way into daily Portuguese conversation. For example, a txopela (pronounced cho-pela) is like a tuk-tuk taxi, but the /tx/ spelling and sound is found in the local language, not Portuguese. On Sundays, people go to churches that often have service in both Portuguese and local language. But many services include A LOT of group singing, as in upwards of three hours of just singing, something that I believe stems from the African culture more than Portuguese. Additionally, there are many initiation/coming-of-age rites and rituals that are entirely indigenous. Another example: Mozambique has plenty of developed hospitals, which offer things like free HIV testing and affordable treatment for malaria, but many people also visit their local corondeiro, which is like a traditional healer. There are some ways these differences blend, but I would say they most often peacefully coexist; walking down the street, it’s easy enough to identify specific instances as Portuguese or African, but the blend is what makes Mozambique as a whole. Q: What are some of the disadvantages the girls have being there? Do they have the same kind of freedom as the boys or no? A: The short answer to this is no, girls do not have the same freedom as boys. Like many other countries in the world, sometimes the U.S. included, girls disproportionately drop out of school for reasons like teenage pregnancy, premature marriage, need to care for siblings, lack of healthcare or access to hygiene products, etc. Some people must walk over 5 kilometers (approximately 3 miles) each way to get water for their family to drink, bathe, and clean, and it’s the girls who are usually put to this task. We play a game with our youth groups where you line up 10 kids to be the “boy team” and 10 kids as the “girl team.” The game is a relay race where each person must complete one lap around the room to illustrate them going to school for the day. The catch is that the boy team is given a notebook that they must pass off between players, but the girls team must carry a notebook, a broom, a bucket on their head, and a baby slung to their back. While the boys team is quickly running around the room and handing off the notebook with no issues, the girls team must walk slowly to balance everything and also take extra time to pass everything off to the next person. This shows how girls are often stuck with more of the housework due to traditional gender roles and how this can negatively affect their school performance. Q: What happened during the civil war and is the government strictly democratic or does it have some other characteristics? How does the system for electing a president work? A: Politics are complicated in Mozambique and we as Peace Corps Volunteers are basically prohibited from talking about them with local people so as to not get into unexpected trouble. I’ll give a general overview of what I know. Mozambique is a democracy. The civil war ended in 1992 and was fought between the current ruling party, FRELIMO, and the main opposition party, RENAMO. The Civil War lasted about 15 years and destroyed a lot of the country’s infrastructure. Since the Civil War, there has been a bit of resurgence in fighting since 2013, so much so that Peace Corps actually had to evacuate all of the volunteers from the province where RENAMO had the strongest hold, but now volunteers have been placed in those areas again. During the war, both sides committed several war crimes and crimes against humanity that I can’t even begin to imagine, let alone describe. In terms of elections, the voting age in Mozambique is 18; however, elections are often inaccessible for many people, due to lack of transportation to the voting sites or inability to take time away from work or family. The current president, Filipe Nyusi, of the FRELIMO party has been in office since 2015, and will be up for re-election in 2020. While peace is the daily norm, there have been many accusations and occurrences of violence. RENAMO consistently accuses FRELIMO of unfair election practices and fraud. FRELIMO claims RENAMO are rebel forces who have destroyed cities during their riots. However, peace talks were and are in the making, with the leaders of both parties meeting in 2016 for the first time in a while. However, about two weeks ago, the leader of RENAMO passed away, so we will see how this affects all upcoming elections and future peace talks. Q: What do you do for recreation/when you’re bored? A: I have so much free time that I really had to get used to doing nothing. I have picked up a couple hobbies with all my spare time, including water-color painting, but I’ve also been able to spend more time doing the things I love but never felt like I had time for in the U.S., like reading for pleasure. I’ll also spend many afternoons just walking around the town, greeting people or visiting my friends and colleagues. Mozambique is a very social country where people spend all day outside of their house and with other people. Alone time is not a thing here, which was hard to adjust to for me and a lot of other PCVs. When I first got here, I would feel awkward just sitting with an acquaintance when 3 minutes would pass by and no one would say anything. Dinners with my host family were spent entirely in silence. Not because they were otherwise occupied or unsure how to communicate with me; we would just be staring into space. But life is taken at a slower pace here and sitting and spending quality time with people, even if it’s in silence, is greatly appreciated. If I’m inside my house for most of the day because I just need some alone time, I’ll get concerned visitors wondering if I’m sick or mad at them. A lot of you asked about why I joined the Peace Corps or what it was like during the application process. Honestly, I hadn’t ever considered doing Peace Corps until the spring of my junior year of college (2016), when a co-worker announced that he would be departing for Peace Corps China that summer. Some people have dreams of Peace Corps since childhood, but I just never had exposure to the Peace Corps until I reached college. However, I’ve always been a traveler. Since all of my extended family lives in India, we would travel a lot as a family during my childhood, and by the time I had entered college, I had already been to places like France, Morocco, Kenya, India, and the UAE. Once in college, I took advantage of four different study abroad opportunities, to Italy, Turkey, Peru, and Brazil. Basically, I’m very used to and comfortable with being in new places and cultures. Traveling has always been a passion of mine, so as I started to think more about what to do after graduation, I decided I wanted to live and work abroad for some time. I was pretty burnt-out from school and knew I wanted to take a break to decide if my plan of going to medical school was really the right choice for me. In the mean time, I wanted to do something 1) meaningful, 2) exciting, 3) different, and 4) abroad. A lot of people go abroad to change the world and help people and give back, and trust me, all those clichés applied and still apply to me too. But I also just wanted to get out of the U.S. and offer my (limited) areas of knowledge while focusing on learning more about myself. While I have and had lofty goals for my service, I also knew that immersing myself in a new culture would bring me so much joy even if I never changed a thing, because that’s exactly what I did when I studied abroad, and I loved it!
So I looked into a few different teaching/volunteering abroad options but mainly focused on the Peace Corps. The requirements are pretty simple for Peace Corps: a Bachelor’s degree and maybe some language experience depending on what country you’d like to go to. The application includes basic personal and academic information, a motivation statement/essay, country preference form, and a preliminary health history form. While PC takes three country preferences into account, they also place people where they have the most need, so you could preference Panama and then be placed in the Philippines. A major facet of Peace Corps service is flexibility and adaptability, and they like to test that out right away based on if you’re willing to accept an invitation to a country you weren’t expecting. While I placed Morocco and S. Africa in my preferences for various reasons, I also gave preference to Moz because I already had experience with Portuguese through my study abroad semester in Brazil. After submitting my application, I was placed under consideration for Mozambique, had my interview, and received my invitation to serve, all within about two months. Then started the extensive medical and legal clearance process, before I finally departed in August 2017. The clearance process was daunting and exhausting, but I never really felt like quitting; every time I thought about living in Mozambique I got tingly and excited in a way I can’t describe, but it felt right and like it was what I was meant to do. So I chugged through the process as I finished up senior year of college, two stressful situations at once. For a more comprehensive timeline of my application to departure journey, check out my blog here. Finally, came the month of departure. The last two weeks of August were full of tears as I said my final goodbyes, nerves as I thought about having to teach Chemistry in Portuguese (my fourth language at this point), and second thoughts as I prepared to live without running water and electricity for two years (the latter of which, thankfully, did not come to pass), but I still felt that gut instinct that told me I was making the right choice for me. And now that I’m here in Moz, I can’t believe how worried I was. Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been easy or simple. There are days when I come home from work and just cry because my body and mind have been through so much. But adjusting isn’t as much work as I thought; the human capacity for adapting is really incredible. Looking to the future, I hope to continue speaking Portuguese in some shape or form after I leave Mozambique. By the time I finish my service, I will have invested over four years into this language, three of which were spent immersed in a Portuguese-speaking country, so I would love to continue to use it. Living my daily life in Portuguese allows me to see how the people really use the language, and the nuances in the way they use certain words. It’s also been fascinating to see how Portuguese differs from Brazil to Mozambique, both in basic grammar and in connotations of certain slang words. I don’t know how I will continue to speak Portuguese, maybe formally through a job that involves translation or maybe just by speaking to the friends I’ve made in Mozambique. At the very least, I’m comforted by the fact that my knowledge of Portuguese is now deep enough that even if I don’t speak it for a few years, it will come back to me easily enough when I start back up. Aside from the deeper understanding of language, Mozambique has taught me patience and flexibility, even more than I had before. Things just run on a different timeline here. My school director may come to my house with no warning, telling me about a very important meeting that is starting in 10 minutes, while at the same time, important paperwork will be delayed for weeks just to obtain two more stamps to make it “official.” Through it all, I just have to take a deep breath and remember that everything will be figured out. As for the impact I want to have, I am trying to be hopeful, but realistic. I know I can’t change this country, or even my town. But I hope that at least one of my students will change the way they conduct their class as a primary school teacher, focusing on activities that will cement concepts into the minds of little kids. I hope that at least one kid will become passionate about studying hard and learning English, maybe even going on to be granted a scholarship to study in the U.S. I hope that one girl feels like she has somebody rooting for her to make her own decisions, in regards to academics, her career, her sexuality and family planning, her finances, and all other aspects of her life. There’s a saying in Peace Corps that we plant seeds for trees whose shade we will never enjoy. I don’t want to plant a forest, but I want to plant a few seeds. From what I’ve seen, Mozambique needs some help investing in their own people. Instead of bringing in Chinese or Indian companies to build their roads, they should invest in the education of their own people, give them the jobs to pour money into their own economy. The knowledge and resources are all here, but the government often resorts to the cheaper option. I can’t pretend to be an expert, and my perception of this country is constantly changing. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that development work is difficult. It’s difficult to conceptualize and set concrete steps to create real change. Talk is easy, but action is difficult. So for right now, I’m just focusing on helping my students be honest, hard-working, compassionate people. You all had so many great questions! I'm going to try my best to answer as many as I can throughout the next few days in different blog posts by topic. This post will cover food, clothing, transportation, and housing! Food Every Mozambican meal starts with a base of either rice or xima, pronounced shee-mah. Xima is a sort of thick porridge made out of corn flour and water. The rice or xima can be served with beans, a curry made out of the various types of leafy greens (sweet potato leaves, cassava leaves, pumpkin leaves, kale, etc.), and/or salted fish. The leafy greens are usually cooked in peanut and coconut milk, a dish generally called matapa. For special occasions and parties, people will go all out and make chicken, pork, or goat meat, a process that starts with killing the animal themselves. Between grinding the corn for xima, shredding coconut, crushing peanuts, and cleaning the carcasses, a lot of work goes into making meals here. Not to mention, most people cook on wood or charcoal fires every day, instead of electric or gas stoves. Speaking from personal experience, charcoal fires are a hassle to get started and often involve burning plastic bags (I won’t even get started on the environmental impacts). Now that I make my own meals, I bought myself an electric stove/oven combo and I usually cook the same things I would cook in the States. We've made pasta, sandwiches, homemade pizza, Indian food, tacos, pad thai, sweet and sour veggies, baked ziti, etc. but I still love some simple rice and beans. The main difference for me in cooking here is that I have to make everything by hand but it's honestly not as hard as I used to think; I make tortillas, pizza dough, and biscuits at least once a week each. What I love is how much fresh fruits and vegetables are available at any given time in the market, and for so cheap! Everything depends on what’s in season, but right now, I can get about 5 medium-sized avocadoes for the equivalent of only $1 so I’ve been making a lot of guacamole! My roommate and I also love to bake so we've also made tons of cookies, banana bread, scones, brownies, apple crumble, cakes, muffins, and more! Both of us love to cook and bake so our house is full of good food! Clothing Clothing is relatively more conservative here than the U.S. In formal settings, like schools and work, everyone is expected to cover their shoulders and knees. Walking through town in public, men will often wear shorts, but women are usually still expected to cover their knees and shoulders. Generally, I can wear tank tops, just not to work or formal occasions. Mozambicans take a lot of pride in their appearance; they would rather be late with a freshly-ironed shirt than show up in wrinkled clothes. The focus of Mozambican dress is capulana. Capulana fabric is sold in 2 meter x 1 meter pieces and can be found in every color and print imaginable. Most women wrap these capulana pieces around their waist as a full-length skirt for their everyday wear, with a hair wrap of matching fabric. For special occasions or formal work-wear, women will take their capulana fabric to their neighborhood tailor and have them stitch elaborate dresses, tunics, or shirt/skirt combos. My personal favorite item of clothing I’ve had stitiched is my capulana jumpsuit! Men will also wear capulana in the form of button-up shirts, shorts, or pants. Aside from clothing, capulana can be used for curtains, baby-carrying slings, towels, etc. Living on a PCV budget, I even use smaller capulana pieces to hang my mosquito net, as hot pads while cooking, or small rags to wipe up spills. Wearing capulana is seen as the mark of a Mozambican, or even African, woman—I’ve been told on multiple occasions while wearing capulana, “Look at how nice you look! Now you’re a true Mozambican woman.” As a foreign woman, I definitely get a lot of unwanted attention, so I tend to dress pretty conservatively. Most days, I’ll wear a tank top or t-shirt and jeans or loose flowy pants with Chacos or sandals when walking around town or going to the market. When going to work, I have to dress a little nicer so I’ll wear stitched capulana clothes, or dress pants with ballet flats. Transportation Transportation is one of the biggest challenge here in Mozambique. There is one main national highway that crosses the country that is kept up very well, fully paved with the appropriate signs. There are some off-shoots of this highway that look similar, but often once you turn off this major highway, you’re encountering those pothole-filled, dirt roads I mentioned before. Furthermore, many of these roads are very indirect, to avoid having to pay to build bridges or cross mountains, increasing travel time. The most common form of public transportation is chapas, large vans with 4 rows of seats. Though each row of seats is built to accommodate 3 people, chapas will not start the journey until 4 people are in each row, including a makeshift fifth row they make facing backwards behind the driver. This means that most of these vans carry 22 passengers (four in each of the five rows and two in the front seat), plus the driver and cobrador, who is in charge of arranging passengers and collecting money. On many of the smaller roads, the only car offered will be large trucks with an open bed on the back where tens of people cram in, standing for the entirety of the journey. Due to the weight of these full cars and the number of stops they make to drop off or pick up passengers, travel via public transportation can take a very long time. Within my town, the only type of taxi available is a motorcycle taxi, which is prohibited by Peace Corps Moz. My primary way of traveling long distances is actually hitchhiking, which has a huge negative connotation in the States, but is relatively common here. There’s a lot of privilege that goes in to hitchhiking (as a foreigner, I’m just more likely to have cars stop for me), but it’s easier, faster, and more comfortable. Don’t worry, it’s also totally safe, no kidnappings happening here. Many of you asked how I walk so far or why my school couldn’t help me out. My school does have an official car but they have not had the money to pay for gas since December. I also use the walk to get out of the house and show my face in the community, greeting everyone I pass and stopping by houses of friends or colleagues. Being known around town as more than just “that white girl” really helps give validity to my work and provides me with many opportunities to find community members to work with for various projects. Plus, I feel bad complaining about walking when I’ve seen 8 year old girls walk 10 km each way to school or mothers with babies on their back who walk 8 km to and from their farm just to sell their crops in the market! Walking long distances is just a reality of life here. Housing
I live in a super nice house if we’re being honest—the IFP provides exceptional housing compared to many of the secondary schools, simply because it is a post-secondary institution with higher status. Many of my fellow volunteers live in tiny reed huts or cinder-block houses with tin roofs but I live in a large concrete house. Up until very recently, I did not have the luxury of running water, despite having all the necessary plumbing. I hired two boys to get water from the pump for me about every other day, and this water was used to manually flush the toilet, take bucket baths, do my dishes, and boil and filter for drinking water. Carrying water is hard and heavy, and I am in awe of how people do it every day! However, just about two weeks ago, the IFP somehow fixed the system so we now have running water! It usually only runs for a short time in the morning and some time in the evening so I still fill up my buckets to have reserve water in the afternoon. Like I said though, running water is an extreme luxury and I would say about 90% of houses outside of the big cities aren’t even built with the pipes and plumbing to accommodate it. Most volunteers have outdoor latrines and shower areas to take bucket baths, which is why sanitation can be a huge issue here in Mozambique; for example, there was a big cholera outbreak a few months ago in the province of Nampula, just north of me. No matter what, I always boil and filter my drinking water, but I'm honestly pretty lax for everything else and have definitely used untreated water to brush my teeth, wash raw vegetables, etc. I can’t stress enough how lucky I am and unusual it is in Moz to live in a house that not only has actual sinks, toilets, and drains, but also has running water at the turn of a faucet. We relish Peace Corps conferences because it means free stays in nice hotels with hot showers and free wifi!! |
Priya TekriwalI'm an Education Volunteer in Zambezia province in Mozambique. ArchivesCategories |