Mozambique =The Internet

In my never ending quest to paint a picture of Mozambique for you, the reader, today I will explain to you Mozambique using terms you most likely are familiar with. How so? By comparing Mozambique to the internet! By the end of the post I’ll have shown you that anything you can find on the internet you can find in Mozambique.

With a few exceptions.

Lets start with something that most of you internet users are pretty familiar with:

YOUTUBE

Similarities: I don’t know what YouTube has turned into now, but when I left America I vaguely remember it being mainly a collection of videos of cats, stupid accidents where somebody gets hurts put people think its hilarious (like a monkey punching an elderly gentleman in the crotch), people that aren’t good singers imitating professional singers (that aren’t good either), and people doing Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” dance. Well, its not that much of a stretch to consider that as a slice of Mozambique: People doing the single ladies dance, people imitating professional singers, and monkeys punching people in the crotch. Combinations of any of the are also very acceptable.

If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.

Differences: The main difference would be instead of funny videos that your neighbor keeps emailing you of his cat chasing a laser pointer, your neighbor keeps emailing videos of his goat chasing a laser pointer. And instead of emailing you, he actually just comes over to tell you all about it.

The other difference is, and this is very important to keep in mind, is there’s no video here. When you get into the office Monday and all your coworkers tell you about that amazing catch you missed during the big game, instead of loading it on their computer, they’ll just reenact it in such incredible detail you’ll think you were actually there. They’ll even do the “Single Ladies” dance if you ask them.

The one advantage of having somebody act out the video for you is when you ask somebody to play “Goat sneezes on kid’s birthday cake, blows out candles, kid cries”, you actually get somebody acting out their goat sneezing on their two year-old kid’s birthday cake and blowing out all the candles instead of getting to watch this:

No comment needed.

BING / GOOGLE / SEARCH ENGINES

Similarities: You can use the internet to look up just about anything. If it exists then Google will find it, Bing will get you a map to the house of they guy who put it on the web, and e-How will tell you how to legally stalk them. Its kind of like that here, expect instead of computers doing the searching we use actual people. If I need to know what time something starts, directions to the party, or if my hay-fever is actually a more serious medical condition I just ask someone the question (kind of like before the internet).

That is mostly how it is here. Except instead of search engines we have search people. If I need to know when something starts I’ll ask somebody. If they don’t know then they take it as their solemn duty to find out no matter many other people they have to ask for me. If I need directions, I ask somebody to draw me a map (I’ll usually ask five people and then take the average of their directions because they’ll all be different). If I have the sniffles, I’ll talk to the village elders to see what they think it is before self-diagnosing it as a sprained ACL just like with WebMD.

Differences: The real internet will return tens of thousands of results for something absolutely random like “Colonel Sanders’ ninja academy” in under a second (I tried it). In Mozambique, a search for something much more common, like pliers, will return no hits (also tried it).

BREAKING NEWS / TWITTER

Similarities: While twitter is great for finding out what Shaq had for lunch yesterday (hint: whatever it is it’s not making him any skinnier), I’m going to assume that most self-respecting people don’t have any real use for twitter except for hearing about breaking news. And no, Kanye West talking about how cool he is does not count as breaking news. Here in Mozambique breaking news travels fast without the aid of technology, all by people just shouting when something happens until everybody hears it.

About two weeks ago our cook, Mama Laura, was leaving after making our lunch and was walking out to catch the bus to go home. Soon after she left I was told that she became exhausted and fell. I was asking folks where she was and hey just kind of pointed off in a general direction of where they heard the news coming from. When I asked them what happened they said the equivalent of “We have no further information. Details are slowly trickling in. Stay tuned for regular updates.” Well, she was about 200 yards away and by the time I got there it was so fast that she was only just beginning to get herself up. Nevermind that all of 4 minutes had elapsed by this point. She turned out fine.

Differences: Like real breaking news, news it so factually inaccurate that it is hardly ever right. Oh, wait. Maybe there aren't that many differences.

AMAZON / EBAY

Similarities: This one is so accurate it’s almost scary. The marketplace here is like one giant in-person Ebay auction. And when you get stuff home, it usually breaks too. You also have people that buy stuff and then turn right around and sell it, often for egregiously higher prices even when the vendor is sitting right there continuing to sell at the same low price. It makes you ask if people understand how the system is supposed to work. Hint: They don’t.

Differences: Instead of getting into complicated bidding wars to drive up the price, people often let the other person buy it so they can rob them of it later. And while I’ve never heard of people selling Joe Montona game-used jock straps or an empty gum wrapper that some celebrity threw on the ground, I have seen vendors walking around selling sunglasses that are, “just like the ones Obama wears.”

Still don't know what he's pointing at...

If we haven’t gotten to any part of the internet you recognize it may be for two reasons. 1) You need to ask your mom to turn off the internet filter, or 2) you are using part of your social security check to pay for internet access. That means you live with your parents, or are over the age of 62, or maybe both! If so, wait till next time when I’ll deliver part two of this post. The websites may get more familiar, but the obscure cultural references wont.