Nampula Radio: All hits, all the time?

One of the highlights of listening to the radio, aside from the ones I’ve talked about before, is getting to hear the weekly hits chart. The weekly hits chart is described as being “the ten songs most popular coming from and by America”. It comes on every Friday morning starting at 8am. It’s the can’t miss half hour program of the week.

It starts with number ten. The DJ even tells you how many weeks its been on the chart, where it peaked, and where its heading. The song starts playing in the background as the DJ introduces all the information. He finally says the name and artist and then cranks the volume up. The problem is sometimes he gets sidetracked and will talk so long he needs to restart the song. He plays the song for as long as he wants, cuts the volume, and then puts on the next tune.

What’s more is that the DJ has the discretion to play as much or a little of the song he likes. About a month ago for some reason known only to teen girls Taylor Swift was fairly popular, notching 4 songs on the countdown one particular week (you’ll see why later). The DJ was not a fan of hers, apparently, because he played her song only long enough to get through saying its chart information and then when right on to something by some rapper (who’s probably from Senegal or West Afria) and played the song twice.

The most confusing thing is that often, the DJ will announce the song over the end of the previous song, and then never play it. He then puts on the next songs and announces it just the same. At first, this was not a problem I cared about because it usually meant skipping at least two Taylor Swift songs. But then one week they announced they skipped a song that was, “making its premier on the countdown at position 6. Let it Be, by the Beatles”.

After doing enough sleuthing to put the Hardy Boys to shame (about 2 minutes) I finally figured out what was happeing. I kept track of the tip ten chart for the next two weeks to compare notes, and sure enough I was right. The Nampula Radio Top Ten is actually the iTunes Music Store Top Ten. And it is each and every single week. It turns out that while I (and everybody else here) were thinking we had our hands on the pulse of America, what we really had our hands on was the pulses of the people in America that for some reason actually buy music instead of downloading or just listening to it on YouTube all day long. Several weekends ago, this theory was further confirmed by skipping two songs by hip brand new artist “Glee Christmas Episode Special”.

The one about Christmas

I have a “go-bag”. Like all spies, pregnant mothers, and boy scouts (I assume, I’ll have to ask my cousin) I keep a pack full of only essentials that I can take to leave at a moments notice. What does this have to do with Christmas? I’ll explain in a bit.

First, let me say that its not really a “bag”. Its more of a shoulder pack. A shoulder pack is halfway between a purse and a messenger bag, super manly in every respect, because otherwise there’s no way I’d ever be caught dead with it. The contents of the bag are as follows: Wallet, spare change, green-card, international drivers license, a pocket bible, and a 50 ounce water bottle. The first few items are pretty explanatory, the second are when it gets really boring and I’m stuck out in the heat for a long time.

Just why do I need this bag. Part of my responsibility is to be on-call 24/7. On call means something like this. Victor says, “TJ, you need to go the [place] to [do something / buy something / pick somebody up]. Hurry because you only have [very short amount of time] to get there before [something very bad happens].”

Recent examples just in the last week include:

• Picking up a friend after he got off work to he could give me the proper documents for applying for government grants.
• Taking him back home after we photocopied the documents.
• Driving out to a chicken farm to get chickens.
• Taking one of our staff to the hospital because he collapsed on Sunday after church (he recovered).
• Leaving to pick up people from the airport 10 minutes after their plane landed. The airport is 30 minutes away.
• Going out on Christmas eve to do last minute shopping for our Christmas feast.

A daily occurrence of me using my go-bag is getting bread. We eat tiny loaves everyday for breakfast, and it doesn’t keep more than a day, so I have to buy it daily. This involves waiting for the orphanage’s truck to gather a list of errands to run and going with it into town to get to the bakery. Once at the bakery, it means standing in the bread line for about 20-30 minutes. And yes, for people that aren’t old enough to remember the Depression, bread lines do exist. Except they’re not free here, you have to pay the same, but the supply is limited, which is why there’s only a few bakeries and everybody need to use the same three. Then, after waiting in line for thirty minutes, when I tell the bread lady that I need 54 loaves I have to hear everybody yell at me that, “You’re stealing the bread from us poor people.” and the ever popular, “Why don’t you take all your money and go buy a chicken.” and usually accompanied by, “Don’t sell it to him, he can’t eat 54 loaves.”

Sometimes, especially when it rains and not everybody can cook outside with fire (which is how everybody cooks here) the bread line is 45 minutes. Today, Christmas Eve, it was 90 minutes. Yep.

So what does this have to do with Christmas? Well, this post is all about my go-bag, which I said is also used by spies, pregnant mothers, and (I assume) boy scouts. All people who like to have everything set and packed read to leave at a moments notice when a foreign government topples, your water breaks, or wolves attack. Well, spies use go-bags, and one of my favorite Christmas movies is “The Battle of The Bulge”, a tale of war and espionage that takes place Christmas 1944. Pregnant mothers also have a go-bag, and you can’t get more Christmassy than a mother waiting to deliver (Mary birthing Jesus, for those of you who are a little slow). And lastly, what do you do in America after Christmas and you need to get rid of your tree? You give it to the Boy Scouts to shred up. Unless you have an awesome sparkly aluminum Christmas tree like in “Charlie Brown”.

Merry Christmas. And remember, Christmas is about Jesus.

Rainy Days and Support Update

So what's been happening around here lately? A whole lot of nothing.

Its been raining on and off (mostly on) for the last three days, and life has moved from slow to dead slow. Luckily, there are some things we can look forward to here.

You can relax on the spacious veranda of the boy's dormitory.

You can talk about life and work and cooties with Isaty, Martinho, Maparato, Dionisio, and Ganito.

Instead of showering, you can just stand outside for a while. But people will give you never ending grief for it.

And when it clears up and the moon comes out you can wait for that lunar eclipse everyone was talking about only to remember that it doesn't even occur in our hemisphere.

The moon eventually became eclipsed by our palm tree.

Moving on to support: Jesus has been very faithful, through you guys, to have had me almost at budget every month. I'm gonna be honest, I haven't quite hit my target of $300 a month, but support has been far from zero, and I'm super grateful. However, that doesn't mean that every month is going to be fine. Much of the giving is of the one-time-donation type. So especially at this time of year, if you look in your wallet or at you bank statement and think, "Golly! Where did all this extra money come from? I should use it before the expiration date at the end of the year or it will go bad. I wish there's somebody I could really bless with it, like the Salvation Army, or that kid working with the orphans in Africa. That's seems like a far better use of my money then getting this or this, or even this for that special someone in my life." then I know one guy and about 50 kids that guy is serving that would be really grateful for you gift. If that what Jesus want's you to do, then you can send a check out to

TJ Werle

16428 10th AVE SW

Burien, WA (USA)

Please, checks are much easier than sending "Christmas Story" replica leg lamps. $10, 20, 50 or whatever you can do makes much more a difference than you think.

And after the end of the year, I'll get out more precise numbers on how support has been so you guys know how to help and, more importantly, how you can be praying with me for those things.

Merry Christmas, Bom Natal, and Happy New Year

A day at the beach

A few days ago, thanks to the Department of Social Services, the kids all got to take a road trip. There's been lots of activities that Social Services has been putting on lately as a run-up to Christmas. This week, it involved going out to the coast for the day to visit Ilha de Moçambique (Island of ... wait for it... Mozambique). School is mostly out, so the kids were free for the day and we headed out, arriving after the 2.5hr trip late in the morning.

Mozambique Island is the very first placed the Portuguese settled when Mozambique was colonized. The island is about 3m long and 1m wide. It sits about 2m off the coast in shallow water and is connected by a one lane bridge to the continent. And when people are there they refer to heading back to the continent (as if they'd left Africa). As a result of it being so old and a tiny island (and the Portuguese having left) the island sits mainly vacant. That worked to our advantage that day, as there were plenty of empty buildings to squat in while we were waiting for lunch. Its may become hard to tell the kids apart due to the fact that we all got free orange/yellow t-shirts that day.

Empty buildings, like this one, are full of timeless

history and a portal to the past boredom.

After several hours, the kids got lunch and were able to walk around the rest of the compound we had taken over. We sat out on a really old little square that was right above a mangrove patch on the edge of the ocean. Then our band did a concert for the other kids (there were two other orphanages there also).

Mini plaza just temping the kids with the sights and sounds of the ocean. So close, yet so far away.

Moz101 Hiatus

Hey guys, just letting you know that I'm going to be taking a little break from adding content for the "Mozambique 101" series. Basically, I am trying to put more effort into them than I have the time to devote to doing so while pumping them out on a weekly basis. While much of the information is wikipedia or awesome rumors that I hear, I'm also researching it a lot. Because I really want to do a good job at producing this particular series I'm going to hold off on posting until I have the rest of them written. This way they will continue to remain coherent and not repeat the same information all the time. If you want to read the old ones us the link at the top or click the Moz101 tag on the topic-sphere, knowledge-node, blog-blob, or as my mom would say, the spinny thingy over on the right.

Until then, I'll just be putting up anything I want to on Wednesdays. I can do this because its my site. Pretty convenient if you ask me. To keep the alliteration I'll just call it "Whatever Wednesdays" which will slowly slide into "Why I am still doing this on Wednesdays" will will eventually become "What?" when my rants become too blurred and incoherent to make sense.

So just why is R. Kelly popular?

The easy answer is: I have absolutely no idea. R Kelly is an American RnB singer who nobody here had ever heard of until one tiny little performance in the world cup in South Africa.

Now, he is the second-most famous person in Africa that nobody had ever heard of until one year ago. Second most only to Michael Jackson. In fact, I think all musicians who are having trouble with their careers or public image should take a hint from R Kelly and do a show in Africa. In a sense, it’s like the slate has been wiped clean and all the wrong that you’ve committed will be ignored (or in this case, applauded). I don’t know what’s changed since I left America, but maybe that being the case Kanye West should consider doing a concert in Cape Town. There is a long line of people who lose favor with the American public over scandals and then become heroes in Africa. OK, I lied. That list is only two people: Michael Jackson and R Kelly.

When I tell the kids that I don’t like RnB music they say I must be crazy because R Kelly sings RnB and as popular as he is surely there isn’t anybody alive who doesn’t like RnB. So then I tell them that I don’t like him based on moral grounds.

For those of you who aren’t sure why R Kelly is somewhat blacklisted in America, let me explain it for you. First, there’s the matter of him marrying a 15 year-old girl. This may not be a huge problem had he not been at the ripe old age of 28. This is the thing that occasionally will garner him respect over here, not admonishment. They say that its not such a bad thing. People here marry at 15 all the time, and girls marry older (and much older) guys often, so I need to be more accepting of their culture. Also, for those of you not familiar with R Kelly, there’s also the matter or him having made some very disturbing child pornography videos (as if child pornography wasn’t bad enough). There’s really no way for me to explain this concept to the kids. In fact, there’s really no way for anybody to explain what he did at all.

Although goodness knows people will try.

As for Michael Jackson, I just have to tell the kids that in fact I am the only person they have ever met that does not adore the gloved one. Them thinking I’m crazy is a small price to pay for being sane.

The One where the kids get the camera

So, Joe had a great idea. Instead of trying to take pictures of ourselves, why not just let the kids have a camera and go crazy. Well, that just what they did, and 412 pictures later, about 50 of them were not blurry or pictures of the ground!

The day started with a soccer game and moved to hilarity after dinner. Click on the pictures to make the image slightly bigger. This post is split up into two parts, with the second one just below this. Click more to expand the post. Captions are below the photo.

The afternoon kicked off with a game of soccer on the big field a couple minutes outside the orphanage. There were still a couple of puddles from rain the day before, but nobody seemed to mind.

Zaqeu and Salmon get out of the way

Everybody from the orphanage came to watch the monumental smackdown on the field, including Claudia and Dorcas.

Jordao (far left) with Dorcas, Leonora, and Atija

The one where the kids get the camera again

The kids kept the camera and just kept on rolling. Below this post is the first edition of when the kids got the camera. Double post today to make up for being sporadic the last week. Sorry if the text and formatting look weird. All captions are below the pictures today.

Here we got a bunch of kids lined up in front of the girls house.

Samito and Francisco acting like they like eachother (just joking, they really do)

Mena, Nolita, Graça, and Manuel

Another large group

A larger group

Here is that weird pose again. Its a combination of swooning and a military salute.

I'm On Vacation

There will be no music related post this Monday. Sorry if anybody was actually looking forward to reading about R. Kelly. You'll have to wait till next week.

In the meantime, I've been relaxing out at Pemba with my great friend Estefano. Pemba is out on the coast, meaning that as of now, all I need to do is go swim in the Arctic Ocean to have gone to all 4 oceans in the world. I'm not looking forward to that.

What's In A Name

There are several groups of kids here with the same name. This can make it just as confusing as when you when to school with four Mikes, three Sarahs, and two Saras. We’ll start with the easiest of the pairs first.

This is Felex and Felex. I only wrote it that way because I don’t know how to write the plural (Feli?) They just finished 11^th and 10^th grade. We can’t say Felex S. because both of their full names start with S, so the one on the left Felex Sepova, and the one of the right is Felex Seleve. Now pay attention, because the pairs will get progressively more confusing.

These are the Isaques. On the left is Isaque Piqueno (pronounced “Isaacy), and on the right is Isaque Grande. Yes, you are correct. Piqueno and grande are not their birth names, we just use those to make it easier. This is where the plot starts to thicken. Isaque Grande has always insisted that his name is actually Isaty and writes that on all his school papers and his clothes (so people know they’re his). Peope made fun of him thinking he doesn’t know how to read or write. This was also absurd because Isaty is not a normal name and the alphabet here doesn’t use the letter ‘y’. Well, a little less then a year ago, Isaque Grande’s family showed up with original birth documents that show his name is indeed Isaty. So now we call them Isaty (with a heavy empasis on the ‘t’ sound) and Isaque Pequeno.

This get weirder as we move on to the Canitos. On the left is Canito Grande (wearing my favorite shirt of all time at the orfonato) and on the left is Canito Pequeno. Well, low and behold, the same time we found out that Isaque was actually Isaty, we found out that these dudes don’t have the same name either. In fact, neither of them are names Canito. The one the left is actually named Ganito. We attribute this to the fact that illiteracy is around 85% for women and his mother just took a guess at how to write his name when he was born. The one on the right is called Maparato. I have no idea what it means in Makuhwa (local language) but is sounds suspiciously like “The Plate” in Portuguese. This is ironic, because he is a ferocious eater, and we’ve taken to calling him “The plate” in English as our nickname for him.

This pair is easiest to tell apart. This is Jose and Joe. Joe is traveling around the world and is stopping here on his way through Nampula for about 3 weeks. To be politically correct, Jose is a kid with special needs. Very special needs. We love him a lot, but he was so distraught when this new person showed up and everybody was also calling his Jose. After about two days he warmed up to it and now has a new best friend. If you still have a hard time noticing the difference between the two, let me illustrate. Jose grande has a giant beard and is an honors student and University of Washington. Jose pequeno refuses to wear anything other than long sleeve shirts (even though is been 100+ F for the last three weeks) and last night during the middle of bible study tried to smack a very agile spider with a very small stick. It took him three minutes of trying, much to everyone’s amusement, but he finally got it.

The one about North Korea

I’m a little of track with the topics this week. The power outage last weekend ate into my time to write and kind of threw off my mojo. Until then, he’s this little tidbit.

Most of the news/entertainment/culture that is here is imported from Portugal and Brazil. This is because in terms of TV, recorded music, sports, and film, Mozambique has got almost nothing. Because of this, all the kids know all the players on each of the Portugal and Brazil national soccer teams and think they are the most famous players in the world because they’re the only ones they ever hear about.

They also followed them in the World Cup this last June. Even now, Portugal’s 7-2 Victory of North Korea is somewhat legendary and will be talked about forever. Details of the game have also blurred with time to where Cristiano Ronaldo scored four of the goals that game (he had one, and it was an accident).

So, whenever we play soccer here in the yard, every now and then the game will turn into a blowout, and somebody will take it upon themselves to hurl the worst insult they can think of…

…”You guys are playing worse than North Korea!”

This is the equivalent of the baseball team telling the other pitcher he throws like a girl, or saying your momma’s so ugly they mistook her for Kim Jong Il.

Today was one of those blowouts. I was on the Portugal side of things, but Joe (visitor, if you've read of Christina's blog) was on the North Korea end of it. Before the game we were joking and the kids suggested double-or-nothing on dinner, with the winner getting the loser's food (we were only joking, so don't worry).

Things got really funny when Joe headed the ball into his own goal (I think that made it 8-2). At that point, our team got together and decided that Joe could eat tonight because he helped us win. He was not happy when I translated the message fore him.

Thanksgiving

I wanted to get this out sooner, but we lost power and internet like crazy. The internet just came back. Thanks to everybody who sent me birthday/Thanksgiving wishes (yes, they were the same day this year).

God has given me a lot of reason to be thankful this year. For example, here is everything that happened to me yesterday and the reasons I’m thankful.

• I’m thankful for waking up at 4:30 and driving to the market to buy more beans so we could eat lunch. The thirty minutes I sat in the car while Helder was inside buying beans were amazing as I got to watch the sun rise over Nampula.
• I’m thankful for returning home and taking an ice-cold shower with running water and a roof over my head. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for running water. Or the roof.
• I’m thankful for having a special birthday breakfast with Victor and Christina. Christina makes the best french toast this side of the Zambezi. Yes, my birthday was on thanksgiving this year.
• I’m thankful for having enjoyed the morning chatting with by new friends, Joe, Courtney, and Patricia, who all happen to be staying here while traveling through Mozambique.
• I’m thankful for exploring parts unknown with Joe (visitor) and Jeremias (kid at the orfonato) as we’re looking for my friend who has a barber shop “somewhere over there” according to everybody we asked.
• I’m thankful for sitting patiently for 2 hours as the barber tried to cut my massive head of thick hair (which is still falling out and receding, I swear) while 20 little kids looked on in amazement because not only was it the first time a white man has come to their neighborhood its also the first time they seen one getting his hair cut.
• I’m thankful for spending the last hour of the haircut telling the barber about the Gospel after he asked what the heck I’m doing in Nampula and why can’t I afford a car like all the others.
• I’m thankful for running into Gabriel (another kid at the orfonato) on the way home on the last chapa (bus) of the day and watching a fight ensue and the driver pull over halfway home and telling everybody to get off. Quality entertainment.
• I’m not quite as thankful for the 45-minute walk home after the bus left us in the middle of nowhere.
• I’m thankful for the visitors provided the money to give the kids and I an awesome Thanksgiving dinner that included for everybody: a huge plate of rice, a giant pile of french fries, ¼ of a chicken, a pop, ice cream, and home-made chocolate chip cookies.
• I’m thankful that everybody got to slap me on the back (a Mozambican birthday tradition, or so I’m told…)
• I’m thankful for all the laughing and joking going at dinner and everybody lying around with their belt unbuckled (just like home).
• I’m thankful for experiencing the Holy Spirit during the spontaneous time of worship and prayer after dessert that lasted for almost 2 hours.
• I’m thankful that our singing drowned out the noise of the witchcraft ceremony happening next door.
• I’m thankful that, even though I dearly miss my family and friends, Jesus has provided me with a fun and amazing group of family and friends here in Nampula to celebrate with.

Mozambique 101 - Economics Part 1

This is the next post in a series titled “Mozambique 101”. This one is all about the economy of Mozambique. Imagine this as a sort of brief and impersonal overview of just the facts. Its kind of like trying to read the license plate of a parked car when you’re going 60mph on the highway. This series is my attempt to answer many of the questions that I’ve been asked about Mozambique, other than the always popular “where’s THAT?” These articles should help you understand what things are like in Mozambique and just how they came to be that way.

Mozambique is one of the least developed countries on earth. There is really now way to soften that fact. Its about as third world as it gets, and Nampula is one of the most undeveloped parts of the country. In order to appreciate the gravity of just what it is like to be in one of the most undeveloped places in the world, you must first realize that much of the inability to develop is directly tied to the economic potential of the region. This frist post on economy is designed to tell you just what it looks like for most people in Nampula: where they live, what access they have, what they do for a living, what opportunites they have to spend their very hard earned dollars on, and just what the difficulties are from a purely economic standpoint.

To begin, I’m going to throw some slightly disjointed statistics at you. You may notice that this is the first time I’m directly stealing facts from Wikipedia (and even if I cited that Nampula is the Tatooine of the Empire it wouldn’t make a difference). The truth is for most of this I have a secret source. It is the “Strategic Plan for the development of the Province of of Mozambique”. Its an intra-governmental (emphasis on mental) memo that was circulated by the Provincial government here and was signed by the Governor himself. The only reason I have it is because I think one of the kids stole it from somewhere and gave it to me so they wouldn’t be caught with it. Consider that:

• Nampula is listed at 9th out of 11 provinces for Development. The two worse than us don’t have a city over 15,000 people.
• In our Province, 92% of people don’t have electricity, 78% don’t have a radio, 84% don’t have access to clean water.
• Six of the 18 districts of Nampula don’t have electricity at all.
• 85% of the Province practices agriculture for a living. Of these people, 2% are mechanized (tractors, combines, etc). The remaining 98% farm by hand without even the aid of animals.
• The Province declares that, “82% of roads and 88% of bridges are currently passable.”
• Half of cities don’t have a bank branch anywhere near them.
• There is one doctor for every 35,000.
• While unemployment it impossible to estimate, the Province does estimate than within Nampula City (pop. 1/2million) that 69% of people live in absolute poverty (less than $1 per day).
• The GDP (per capita) in our province is about $450USD per year. That number is an average weighted by the fact that there are a small amount of people that earn a ton of money. Still, it means that on average people earn about $1.25 per day.
• For the last 6 years, population growth has outpaced economic growth, and after accounting for inflation and population the economy of Nampula has been decreasing by about 2% per year.

Also, while the causality of the relationships between education and economics is very challenging to figure out, the problem is caused/exacerbated by the fact that the literacy rate is only 30% (85% and 55% of men don’t know how to read). To make matters worse, the university in our city is currently producing more lawyers than teachers.

Most people here are lucky if they can find a trade to practice or anyone to train them. People are reluctant to teach trades because once that person learns a skill (welding, mechanics, construction) they become a threat to take jobs from the person teaching them. Nobody has money to open a store and its impossible to get a loan for anything. Many people sell goods on the street (bread, fruit, coca-cola, counterfeit Chinese DVDs). The profit margin is so slim that a man selling ice cold coca-cola will earn only about $1.60 at the end of the day.

Many places (including the gov’t) pay people through direct deposit in order to eliminate corruption in the payment process. This results in every day lines being over 1hr long of people standing at the ATM to take out every last cent they have. It also results in most the ATMs in town running out of money frequently through the day.

I want people to appreciate that life here is tough, but there are regions exactly like Nampula all over the world. You can go to hundreds of towns in China, India, South Africa, middle-of-nowhere Mongolia and see that people live in the same or worse poverty that people in Nampula do. While places like the slums of India and a million people living in a garbage dump in Cairo and stone-age Aborigines in Australia get lots of attention, places like Mozambique are, on a regional scale (remember, twice the size of California), slightly unprecedented.

Next week we’ll look at how the government helps maintain the economy and put in places policies to promote growth and stability. And if you couldn’t tell, that last sentence was very sarcastic.

The Rainy Season Has Started

I've been waiting a long time to put this one up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NuA7AripfU

And I need another easy, short post because I've been busy.

Enjoy.

The one where I get right to the point

Talk about one step forward, two steps back. I don't have a roof right now on my house because its being replaced for a tin roof, but in the meantime, there is progress. Just this week I got running water to my house. On Tuesday, I got everything hooked up to the water tower and took my first non-bucket shower. It was glorious. Right after I finished, I stepped out of the shower and a huge gust of wind came and dumped a truckload of dust and dirt right on top of me while I was still soaking wet.

And that's when I got to take my second non-bucket shower. It too, was glorious.

Then the next day the water tank went dry and I've been back to taking bucket showers.

Shiny, Microwaved, DVD extras

I’m a little busy here and thus a little behind on writing the Moz 101 series. This week should have been about the economy, but it’s a little research intensive and it takes time I don’t have. So tune back next week to find out how exactly most people here make money (surprise! They don’t).

Until then, I’m just posting some stuff I edited out from the Government posts several weeks ago. Consider this the DVD extras of deleted scenes, or like your microwaved leftover meatloaf, or the good-looking produce on the top of the grocery aisle so you can’t see that the rest of the produce underneath is not super shiny and tasty, but just mediocre.

…But people don’t like the government just because it’s largely stupid. They don’t like it because Mozambique is the land of a billion rumors. I’ve heard that people don’t like president for these reasons: the president eats turkey every night for dinner, he sold Mozambique Island and kept all the money, he is outlawing cassava, he has a house in America and travels there once per week (presumably with the money he got from selling Mozambique Island), he’s secretly a muslim (he and Obama go to the same mosque) and he has two limousines which is crazy because he can only drive one at a time.

At the same time that they express their distaste for the government, they also revere their first president, Samora Machel, and place him slightly below God on the list of people they worship. I imagine it’s a little like all the hubbub surrounding George Washington back when America was starting up. Remember, that Mozambique has been independent for over 40 years and peaceful for about 20, so it’s a relatively new country. But while all the remains of George Washington today was he chopped down a cherry tree, said “I pity the fool that lie!” and carved wooden teeth out of the aforementioned cherry tree. I don’t have proof, but I think early Americans probably had stories about GW like he stood as tall as two men, he ripped a guys heart out with his teeth during the French Indian War, and spat in the face of Gen. Cornwallis.

But still, I find the level of rumors about the first president of Mozambique to be a little nauseating. Granted, the truth is a little blurred he by nature that rumors are much more interesting than fact. Which is fine, but people then MAKE the rumors fact. I’ve had three different people point out 4 different houses that the current President of Mozambique was raised in.

The two stories I hear all the time about President Machel both have to do with America (go figure). The first story is about how, despite not having more than a 5^th grade education, he was the smartest man in the world. He proved this by going to the United Nations after making himself the President of Mozambique. The kids tell me (and not 8 year old kids for bed time stories, but kids in high school) that when he was at the United Nations he was the only person able to communicate with all 450 countries there because he knew 450 different languages, whereas most the other Presidents can only talk with about 30-40. I don’t have the heart to tell them that the United Nations uses translators. I also don’t have the heart to tell them that there aren’t anywhere near 450 countries in the world.

The second story is about how the day after Samora Machel was made president he flew to America. The kids say he was going there to meet the first president of America (boy, was he out of luck). When he was there he was refused entry because he refused to surrender his sidearm. After he convinced the guards that he was an honorable gentleman (historically debatable) he came inside to meet the president of America. The American president was both extremely racist and scared of getting AIDS that he wore a glove to shake Samora Machel’s hand. Machel was so offended that he ripped the glove and, in President Machel’s own words, “Greeted him hand to hand, man to man.” And that’s the story of how in June 1975 the President of Mozambique became the first black man to enter the White House.

Rules of the Radio

I have observed that there is a very specific set of requirements for songs to get on the radio. I’ve attempted to compile these and create a sort of rulebook to determine if a particular song can be heard on the radio. Keep in mind that there are only about 6 stations here that actually play music, so it didn’t take years to compile, only weeks. Warning: this may not make sense unless you’ve spent any amount of time in Africa, in which case it will be painfully obvious to you

Rule 1. To be on the radio, the music must be from Africa.

1.a Music from Africa is strictly defined as all music originating in Mozambique or only reggae from South Africa.

1.b If not African, it must be Portuguese.

1.b All following rules are exception to Rule 1.

Rule 2. If not from Africa, the people must think they are from Africa. Common examples are Bob Marley, R. Kelly, and Usher, who everybody swears are all from “probably from Western Africa, because its easier to get to America from there”.

Rule 3. If people do not think they’re from Africa, they must at least be black. Common example are Akon and Michael Jackson (kind of) and especially that fake duet with Akon and Michael Jackson (see Rule 4).

Rule 4. If the people are not black, they must sound like a girl. Common examples are Justin Beiber and that fake duet with Akon and Michael Jackson.

Rule 5. If not a girl, they must be Canadian. This exception includes Bryan Adams and Justin Beiber (for people who insist he does not satisfy Rule 4).

Rule 6. Celine Dion is acceptable at all times. This rule is somewhat moot as Celine Dion already satifies Rules 4 and 5.

Rule 7. Techno music by default does not satisfy any of the rules, but it does not NOT satisfy any of the rules, and is therefore allowed.

A few comments: Music from Brazil is not awesome samba inspired music, it is sappy romantic covers of Celine Dion. I have no idea why techno is so popular here, but it drives me crazy. Rock is never allowed unless it is the one song by Bryan Adams that is on the radio (“Baby you’re all that I want”).

Michael Jackson was not popular here until he died last year and people were told he was richest most famous person in the world, and now everybody knows about him. R&B is fairly popular, but people think that there are only two singers. They are Usher and R. Kelly. EVERYBODY that sings R&B is either Usher or R. Kelly.

Nothing is censored here. People don’t speak English, so why bother. Hip-hop can be played freely without editing anything down. That being said, hip-hop is only popular if features a woman singing the hook. That woman is usually Rihana. This is for two reasons. First, nobody in America or here likes anything Rihana actually does other than sing the chorus for hip-hopsters/rappers. The second reason is because “we think she’s probably from Senegal or somewhere in Western Africa.

Mozambique 101 - Geography

This is the next post in a series titled “Mozambique 101”. This one is all about the geography of Mozambique. Find out how many people are, where they are, and what they don’t have. This series is my attempt to answer many of the questions that I’ve been asked about Mozambique, other than the always popular “where’s THAT?” These articles should help you understand what things are like in Mozambique and just how they came to be that way.

As a premise, geography usually includes a broader look at thinks more than just population, mountains and rivers. Geopgraphy is also a look at how environment affects all aspects of life, such as jobs, education, and health (hint: its not pretty). Much of that information, I think, is more relevant when expanded on, such as talking about agriculture, or family life. For this segment, we’re only going to look at the big picture aspect. And that picture starts with, well, a picture.

Click to see it bigger

Population

Mozambique is about 310 thousand sq miles (800 thousand sq km) making it about twice the size of California. A better analogy is to imagine for a moment that Mozambique is about the same size and layout of California, Oregon, and Washington put together. Now, aside from it being very big, it is home to about 28 million people. The capital city of Maputo (or San Diego, in our analogy) is home to over 3 million people. It is the largest city and the seat of power for the rest of the country. It is also the southernmost point of the country. This often creates regional tensions for people that live up north where we do. The next biggest city is Beira (like Sacramento, but on the coast). Beira is home to about 1.5m people and is the country’s largest trade port (like Mos Isley, if you’re still stuck on the Star Wars analogy from a couple weeks back). While the port in Maputo handles goods for just the city, Beira handles goods that are then sent inland to the other countries in Southern Africa.

North of Beira is the Zambezi river. This is the same Zambezi that Dr. Livingstone used when he ventured into Africa, so it has got some history. Unfortunately, all of that history occurs in Malawi and than further inland in Zimbabwe and Lake Victoria, so Mozambique generates zero tourism revenue from this. Also, the river cuts the country almost in half (imagine it’s a little north of Sacremento) and until about 8 months ago there was not even a bridge that went across it. The next major city we get to is the one where I live, Nampula (about where Eugene, OR would be). It’s the third largest city in the country ringing in at just over 0.5m people.

Maputo is the capitol, and Beira is the port. So what then is Nampula, you ask?

Nampula City

While I have not yet met anyone that officially classifies it as such, the city of Nampula is in many ways a refugee center. The economy here has zero manufacturing, near zero industry, and the service sector is so severely underdeveloped because of the fact that people don’t have money to spend. About ten years ago, the population of Nampula was about half of what it is today. In the years since, the regions experienced the worst flooding in a lifetime which was followed by several years of drought (there’s no middle ground here). The drought brought the hungry (even though everybody already here was hungry to begin with) and the floods brought the displaced (who were also very hungry).

Nampula Province

If you can add, you’ll notice that Maputo, Beira, and Nampula make up only about 5 of the estimated 28 million people in Mozambiqe. Well, that number is an estimate because the people in charge of this country figure that almost 60% of people live out in the country. I’m not talking in the country like the spend most of their time riding tractors, judging 4H fairs, and attending high school football games on Friday nights. When I say out in the country, I mean out in the country as in people that literally have nothing. Except for the clothes they are wearing and on rare occasions a motorbike, people live with nothing they can’t get themselves. Mud and bamboo huts, wooden handled tools, and homemade beer. No electricity, no water faucets, no tin roofing, not even mechanized farming. 98% of the farmers in our province perform all their work with hand tools, not even using animals.

In my province, an estimated 85% of people live out in the country, concentrated near villages of anywhere from 5 families, to 50 families. They live several days of walking from clinics or hospitals, often times even farther from schools or churches. Of the 18 districts our province, 6 don’t have electricity. 16% of the province has access to clean water.

Water

The government claims that it has ample supply, but no infrastructure to deliver clean water to everybody that needs it. I will vouch that indeed they do not have the infrastructure to do so because they can’t even do it here in the city. The government estimates that here in the city anywhere between 24-35% of people don’t have water. The estimate is such a broad range because the city knows how many people have water because they’re charging them, they just don’t know how many people are in the city. Here, people borrow water from their neighbors, or walk to community boreholes (deep drilled, hand pumped wells), or as a last case scenario go down to the river (its nasty, trust me).

As to the claim that the government has ample supply, that is blatantly false. For the last three months our city water has been shut off completely. It only returned about two weeks ago and won’t flow for more than 2 hours a day. It is only the grace of God that we have a well here instead of walking several km to get water.

Climate

Its pretty darn hot. Enough said. It has been over 95F since I arrived in September. It continues to get hotter (over 100F) will only cool down when it starts raining in December. Then it cools until April when everybody will be in sweaters when it’s a frigid 80F.

There is much more to cover for Geography, but it will get rolled into upcoming posts dealing with Health, Transportation, and how many species of fire ants are here (my count is at 6).

High School Musical

A little over a week ago the high school in our neighborhood held a dance to celebrate the end of the year school year (yes, it’s the end of the school year here). I have no way of knowing what exactly happens at the dance because I didn’t attend and it was only for 12th graders. I also have nobody to ask because we have three kids in 12th grade here and none of them went. I also can’t ask any neighborhood kids that went because they don’t even remember going to the dance because they were already blacked out from drinking .

I first figured something was different that day when driving home that night there was an unmistakable thump-thump-thump of the dance floor. When I arrived at the orphanage the music was just as loud. There must have been a lot of speakers because the school is about a kilometer away from us. I asked the kids what was happening and they told me it the end of the year dance. I asked them the theme and they didn’t know so I’m going to assume it was the enchantment under the sea dance.

After several hours of the constant thumping of very non-African techno music, the tone suddenly changed at about 8pm. All of a sudden, the smooth, dulcet tones of Celine Dion came soaring over the neighborhood. The ears of everybody in the orphanage perked up as for the next three hours we were treated to wave after wave of romantic soundscapes from Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, and about 5 other singers whose names I don’t know. What I can tell you is that if it was a power ballad from the 80’s, then they played it.

What was perhaps most perplexing about the whole thing was what the kids said when the music changed. I don’t know if there’s a way to fully describe the oddity and humor of the situation unless you experienced it, but then again I wouldn’t be doing my job if I weren’t trying. As soon as the music changed to the sappy romantic songs, all the kids said, “Ahhh, the dance is starting” I was thinking that it meant like when you’re at the awkward high school dance and nobody is on the floor until Aerosmith booms over the gym (Cause I don’t want to miss a thing). I asked them if they meant that people don’t dance to the other three hours of music we’d just been listening to. They said that it literally meant that they don’t open the doors until the romantic music starts playing and all the other stuff was just a prelude to let people know there was a dance going to take place.

I think that there is really no way to describe just how funny this was to me. Especially since the whole mood of the orphanage changed when the music changed. They had more or less ignored the first three hours of the thumping techno. But as soon as the romantic, power ballad-esque genre started up all ears were instantly glued to the tunes flowing over the night sky.

The one about Vampires

The vampire craze has officially hit Mozambique. Nobody here is quite sure why vampires are all of a sudden popular, but then again I’m not quite sure why they are popular in America either. The other day I witnessed several kids using cut out paper in their mouths to represent Vampire teeth. To understand why the kids are suddenly into vampires, we need to backtrack a little bit.

The kids used to have a TV in the cafeteria. I think it is because somebody took it from Victors house when he was away in America, but nevertheless it was there. The TV serves three main purposes that I’ve order them from least important to most important.

-Least Important: News. Many Mozambicans (and Africans in general) live in a bubble. Seventy percent of the population here can’t read, and my top-secret internal governmental statistics say that 75% of the people in our Province don’t even have a radio. When people hear of things it is because of word of mouth. Unfortunately most of the news people here is completely trivial. I consider major news to be scientists discovering that the species of mosquito responsible for carrying malaria is now genetically classified as two distinct species, creating a whole new set of difficulties for treatment and eradication. People in Nampula consider major news to be that, due to weird marriage laws in France or Asia or somewhere, some lonely single girl married a pillow while another gal married a photo of a celebrity. Anyways, we feel its important for the kids to know about what is really going in their country, the rest of Africa, and the world.

-Semi-Important: Tom & Jerry. Every day at 7:50am (why an odd time, I don’t know) until 8:40am is a full 50 minutes of commercial-free Tom & Jerry cartoons. Everything the kids are doing stops so they can sit around and watch cartoons. I too and glued to the TV for this part of the day. Why is it so great? Its great because Tom and Jerry can’t talk so the kids understand it and its always slapstick humor that the kids really enjoy.

-Most Important: Soccer. At least two to three times a week there’s a soccer game on TV. Sometimes it’s a Mozambique league, but often there’s a bootleg broadcast of Portugal, Champions League, or even a UEFA game if we’re lucky. This is the highlight of the day, but nobody can every predict when they’re going to be on.

With the TV came one rule. That rule was no watching soap operas (tela novellas). These are kids, and as many of the programs come from Brazil they are way to over-sexualized for kids (or even adults in the super-conservative culture we have here). Well, after repeated warnings Victor caught all the kids sitting around watching a program called “Os Mutantes” and took the TV away. It’s hard to figure out, because the plot was a little thin in places, but I think “Os Mutantes” a show about Vampires that work in a hospital. I'm not sure exactly, because I may be confusing it with the other two vampire related programs I've seen so far here.

Mutants: Ways of the Heart

Well, as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, it wasn’t long after discovering the program that some of the younger kids started making fake vampire teeth and running around pretending to bite each other, or in the case of Jose they were actually biting each other. Rumor is we can get the TV back sometime around the New Years (yes, in January). I’m going to look into if there are any big soccer games coming up as an excuse to to see if we can get it back earlier. Its not because I miss soccer, but because I miss Tom & Jerry.

On a related note, I asked the kids if they were on team Jacob or team Edward and they said that both Edward and Jacob were stupid.

Pictured: How Twilight should have ended.

Mozambique 101 - Government Part Two

This is the next post in a series titled “Mozambique 101”. This post explains what happens when the government makes a decision nobody likes. This series is my attempt to answer many of the questions that I’ve been asked about Mozambique, other than the ever-popular “where’s THAT?” These articles should help you understand what things are like in Mozambique and just how they came to be that way.

Previously in this series we covered that Mozambique used to communist until about the time that the Berlin Wall fell and Soviet Union collapsed. Around that time, the President of Mozambique announced that he was making an enlightened decision and moving the country in the direction of capitalism and economic freedom. People would have appreciated this, if it had actually offered any change for the masses.

Because the country has such tight restrictions on foreign investment it means that foreigners don’t invest (they kind of do, but if you look at your syllabus you’ll see we don’t cover that until Economics Part 2). What foreign investment there is goes straight to the salaries for the government. About six months ago, France announced that it would be cutting portions of its foreign aid and was eliminating about $150million in aid to Mozambique. The response of Mozambique was to cry foul to the European Union and complain that if France pulled their support it would mean a 10% cut to their federal budget. That’s basically because there’s nothing in Mozambique that generates money except for European aid.

The threatened reduction of foreign aid can often lead to confusing policies. If you follow world commodities you’ll know that grain prices surged in August because Russia accidentally lit all their wheat fields on fire or something. As a result, world grain prices surged and suddenly bread costs more. Well, here in our nice, peaceful (read: walking on eggshells) corner of the world the government sets bread prices because it subsidizes the grain coming into the country. So when they announced there would be a 30% increase in the price of a loaf of bread the people responded with 4 days of riots.

Now, since news out of the country was mostly silent, I’ve managed to piece together that the bread riots were made up of one part European Football Game Riot (people lighting flares, turning over cars, setting garbage on fire) and two parts L.A. Race Riot (looting, tire fires, people hurling rocks at police, and the police firing rubber bullets into the crowd to disperse it). Its was nothing like the Seattle World Trade Organization Riots in 2000 because those weren’t people from Seattle, they were all hippies from Colorado and Canadians.

Back to the story. So, day three into the riots, the (formerly) communist government finds out that people have been organizing the riots using their cell phones. To find out why everybody in one of the ten poorest countries in the world has a cell phone you’ll need wait for the week on Urbanization. So the Government decides to shut down the phone networks in the entire country. They then later demanded that the cell companies (both of them) turn over all text messages in the last week. They then correlated numbers they knew with people who happen to be known members of the opposition party and threw them all in jail.

The problem is now that most cell phone users are anonymous. People buy a phone, a SIM card, and buy credit that you can find on pretty much any street corner. So the government is now demanding that these millions of anonymous users register their SIM card with the government. And this is how you have to register. Everybody in my city of 500k people is going to the only two stores in town that sells phones, paying for a piece of paper that they fill in their name, phone number, and national ID number. They then take that to a photocopy shot and have it photocopied with their national ID card and turn that in to the government. In an odd coincidence the price of a photocopy has tripled since two weeks ago when this started. But I’m sure that can be explained by the government reducing the subsidy for toner and size A4 paper. I think Christina said it best when she said, “For a country that can’t do a single thing right they’re putting bureaucracy in the one place they don’t need it.”

Back to those riots, the government was threatening to raise the price of bread by 30%. In the four days of riots (which took place in only two cities) a confirmed ten people died. This is because, supposedly, the police were using live ammunition to quell the rioters. I’m not saying that in the sense that countless people dies, but they found 10 people dead. And I bet only three of you reading this knew that any of this even happened. Meanwhile, France was in the top of the headlines because people are on strike because they are raising the retirement age by two years. In a country where people can’t afford bread and work till they die at the ripe old age of 45, France’s protest look pretty petty from where I'm sitting.

Next time on Mozambique 101 we’ll be discussing Geography. And for those of you that don’t like Geopgraphy, you probably still won’t so I’ll try to keep it short.