In Which The Orphanage Hoops It Up Part II

Our tournament was starting. Saturday was game day, and we were ready to go. All the kids were up early and dressed in their uniforms ready to go. The other kids not on the team were begging to go along and watch our epic victory that was by now all but guaranteed. But before we had a chance to trip out of the gate, we first had to get to the gate.

Our game was supposed to start at 8:30. We figured on getting there an hour early to watch the other games so the kids can get an idea of just what they got themselves in to. As the time arrived to leave we had a minor problem arise: We had no vehicle to take us. This would be not be a problem normally, we would just wait for our truck to come back from whatever work it was doing and then take us. I had called the driver, and he assured me things were fine and they’d be back shortly.

The problem is that culturally here, no matter how bad things are, it would be shameful to tell somebody how bad things actually are. I’ve visited people in the hospital that have been largely unresponsive and when I ask them how the pain is they say it is so small they don’t even know its there. So when the driver said he’d return in a few minutes with the truck, what he should have said was that he was broken down an hour outside of town and you should send help.

So as we patiently waited I soon realized that I would be faced with the problem of finding a minibus on a Saturday morning (not easy in our edge of town) and then fitting 24 kids onto it. The second part was not as worrisome to me because I’ve been on minibuses with 24 adults when they’re meant for only 15. So after chasing down a minibus we finally get everybody on board and try to pursuade the driver to drive fast but don’t take up all 3 lanes weaving in and out of cars/bikes/goats.

We arrived late, and by late I mean they were calling our team and saying it was last chance before a forfeit. As the team was taking the court for the tip-off I was going over in my mind all things sports movies were telling us we needed for a victory. Rag-tag underdogs? You bet it. Getting to the big game amidst sabotage/insurmountable odds? That’d be us! A rousing pregame speech about character and integrity and playing with the heart of a champion? Signed, sealed, and deli---

NO! Not delivered! I forgot the speech! I didn’t have any time for the last minute pointers and story about climbing the mountaintop and seeing the promised land! This was a bad sign. A very bad sign! The girls took the court for the 10-minute first half and by the time the whistle blew we were losing 18-0. I thought to myself that this is playing right into our hands. No worries, now we have another ingredient that all great sports movies need: We’re losing by a really big number at halftime. All that’s needed is change our uniforms, bring in the dog to play, and give a heart-stirring halftime speech about when I was a kid and how my dog died or I survived leukemia or I avenged the death of my mentor by killing the evil Darth Maul--- WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S NO HALFTIME?!? You just keep switch sides and keep on going?

Just as quickly as I was beginning to think that we were actually the other team is somebody else’s sports movie the game ended with the girls dropping the first round 34-0. That’s a big old goose egg. And while the boys didn’t end much better, at least they made it a fight and held the other team 12-4.

If you think that’s the end of the story, have hope. We had 6 more games to go. Even though the shirts and hats we all got as uniforms said “tournament” it really should have been called a league. There were 8 boys teams and 8 girls, each with 12 kids. The games were 20 minutes and were on shortened courts with 8 foot high hoops. This made the girls games a little more doable and the guys really exciting to watch. We got 7 games in all, one against each other team. And while the boys side was a fairly good mixture in the standings, the girls side looked a little different. There was about as much parity as there is in the NFL. The best team finished a triumphant 7-0 and didn’t allow a single point scored against them. And our girls, where did they finish? Unfortunately they were the Detroit Lions / Cleveland Cavaliers / Pittsburg Pirates Seattle Mariners of the tournament and finished 0-7.

The highlight of the girls time though was always rooting for the boys, who we always arranged to play right afterwards. What my team lacked in experience—EVERY other team I talked to practices year round and has several levels in their program, more like a basketball club—my boys more than made up for in pure athleticism. They were able to out-run and out-hustle almost every other team to their advantage, and it made fun games and the girls cheered enthusiastically the whole 20 minutes. They finished a modest 2-5, tied for 6^th place. And they definitely improved along the way. What was hard is that while we won two games we lost another 2 more by only ONE point. We just as easily could have been the breakout sensation that captured the attention and affection of all the fans at the games (an important ingredient for our sports movie).

We arrived at the final week of games and I started counting all the pieces that needed to be in place for our sports movie. We had the team of players nobody else wanted (literally), we had the lowly humble beginnings with zero talent, we had the bad start followed by continued improvement, our musical montage played in my head (“I Just Want To Celebrate” – by Rare Earth) as I pictured each of our games, the team playing better each time as the crowd slowly pulls to our side. We even had a non-intimidating name. The girls were the Margaridas, which is, I think, a flower. All I know is every time somebody said it I was craving salt and lime. They boys were named the Bears, which could have been intimidated, except we were up against the likes of the Dragons, the Jackals, and the Tiger Sharks. The only thing we were lacking we soon found when we got to the courts: an arch-rival!

The girls played first and as they got on the court, they we met with sneers and jeers from the other team. All season long we were facing several disadvantages outside of what I have already laid out. We were often walking several miles in the heat to get to the games, often we left early in the morning before eating breakfast, and we were easily identified as the team without shoes. Because so few of the kids had good shoes other than flip flops they were often playing barefoot or swapping shoes during substitutions.

As if this wasn’t enough, the other team was starting with comments about how the girls were ugly because the don’t have expensive hair extensions or jeering them about their lack of shoes or dusty skin from walking to the games. I’m not even kidding. I had more than a few words for the other coach after the game. And while I expected the girls to more or less give up after a few quick points from the other team, we managed to score our real first points of the season (the others that had gone it were seriously intended to be passes). Eight points we scored, in fact. And just when we were coming back, the whistle blew and we lost 8-11.

But, just like a good sports movie, this one had a feel good ending. The girls were so thrilled to have scored so many points for the first time and made the game so close that when the ref signaled the end the of the game they stormed the court and celebrated and then they all mobbed me in a group hug and we danced and celebrated. I secretly think they were also celebrating that they didn’t have to come play basketball anymore, but I’d have taken anything at that point.

Once the girls finished celebrating and cleared the court, it was time for the boys to get their turn. And as their story too would be incomplete without a villain, they to took to the court to discover this last game would be against a team we had lost to by 1 point just a few games ago. They knew we had gotten better and were ready for a battle. The other team made attempts to step on their toes and ask during the breaks in the game why our kids’ parents weren’t in the stands. On top of that, I noticed the other team using two kids that had followed us once during a practice asking if they could help because they were 14 and too old to play in the tournament anymore.

Come halftime we were losing 2-7. We needed some magic and quick thinking. After an Oscar-worthy halftime speech by yours truly and some crafty lineup changes we pulled back into it and managed to go ahead by one score to make 12-11. After a timeout I decided we would just hold the ball to burn out the clock. That strategy worked, and when the whistle sounded the boys and the girls took storming to the court celebrating our narrow victory.

And so the boys, like any good sports movie, got the victory in the end. But as you know, every truly great sports movie has an even greater victory that they are almost more proud of than the real thing. One of the orphanages decided to have a kid with AIDS be on the team as it would be a good diversion for him. Well, we had our own “Rudy” moment the final week when he got some playing time and scored one of our baskets. We had our own “Remember the Titans” moment as the other kids, who had disparaged us and seen us as impossible and outcast, watched us win that final game and celebrate as friends and leave with our heads held high.

The kids too, having known this all along, knew that winning was never the most important thing. They each and every week played will energy and excitement and loved this opportunity that none of them had every had before. And none of them ever get downtrodden because of their circumstances or lack of shoes or walking in the sun or the fact that they’ll never have their own “Field of Dreams” moment. But, most importantly for me, my kids, after we got home the last week, asked if they could pray and thank Jesus for the tournament and our safety and the fun time they had during all of it. And I don’t know if they made a movie for that moment yet. That one gets to be part of our story.

A snapshot of our boys team. My picture of the girls team didn't turn out.

The boys and girls that played from our orphanage. Top row (L to R): Isaque Pequeno, Estela, Ronilda, TJ. Bottom: Ofeita, Canito, Belson, Atija.

In Which The Orphanage Hoops It Up

I wanted to take some time these next couple of days and let all of you know what became of our basketball team. Many people have asked me how it is going and have wanted to hear how our team did. I will tell you, but I want to portray it like a sports movie. And since I don’t have enough time to make a movie (thought about it though) I ‘ll just tell you.

The problem with doing this though is that sports movies are super unrealistic. Like, really super-duper unrealistic. Lets look at a few examples, shall we?

The first example of a sports movie comes from the 80’s classic “Karate Kid”. In this movie, Ralph Macchio gets beats up by the Aryan kid from the Kobra Kai dojo. Suddenly, we have our underdog hero. He runs into Arnold from “Happy Days”, washes his car and paints his fence during a musical montage, and is suddenly a 19^th degree black-belt or something. Ralph Macchio then beats up the Aryan kid who, mind you, had literally been practicing karate since he was in utero.

In at least the first 5 “Rocky” movies the title character (that would be Rocky) is a poor lower class worker that is too [fill in whatever underdog adjective you’d like] to get a job. He ends up earning himself a match against Carl Weathers and then starts training during a musical montage that shows him chopping wood, punching frozen meet, and running up stairs. He then survives against Carl Weathers. in a victory so pyrrhic that they considered renaming the expression ‘pyrrhic victory’ to ‘pulling a Rocky’. Pyrrhic because the real life inspiration for the movie refused to go down in the fight and suffered something like 50+ stitches to the face.

In the football must-see movie “Remember the Titans” we find ourselves cheering for a high school that has just been racially integrated. We root for the team as they overcome incredible odds to not only become friends but go on to win a lot of football games all set to a montage of awesome ‘60s music. Somehow, after being so thrilled that they happened to win a state title we seem to forget that, other than the whole 1960’s race thing, a big source of tension in the beginning of the movie was concern that the current team and coach had already won so many state titles that the new kids and coach were going to upset their system..

“Rookie of the Year” is a lovable baseball movie where this kid has a freak medical accident and, in a shocking turn of events, doesn’t sue the hospital but decides to become a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. The kid, Henry RosenBagger GardenHoser Rudabager Roengardner eventually loses his 98mph fastball but not before he goes through a series of fun musical montages and learns all about life and love and friendship and, since he plays for the Cubs, losing.

“Little Big League” is a movie where the Minnesota Twins decide to let a 6^th grader manage their baseball team because, hey, why not?! We got nothing better to do in Minnesota until hockey season rolls around and we’re inbetween filming “The Mighty Ducks” sequels. This movie is full of musical montages where the team somehow gets good and wins a whole bunch of games. But the movie is ultimately stupid become for some unconceivable reason Ken Griffey Jr. is the villain. Seriously? Yes, seriously. This movie just lost all credibility.

In “Air Bud” this kid who has no idea what a basketball is teaches his dog to play the game. Their team ends up winning because the other team is scared of the dog, the kid gets sagely advice from an old janitor (who for the longest time I though was Bill Russell until I learned what Bill Russell actually looks like) and most importantly, repeat after me, it has a musical montage. Its good to note that I’m only talking about the first Air Bud film because the other 14 are just too far-fetched to even consider.

Our story plays out a little more like “Bad News Bears” where the team is full of all the rag-tag misfits and I have the starring role where I get to play a (slightly) less hung-over version of Walter Mathau’s character. That’s about where the similarities stop.

Anyways, our story had all the beginnings of a great sports movie. We combined with two other orphanages into a basketball tournament, we had two teams of 10-12 year old boys and girls that had never seen basketball played before, and we had only 6 weeks to prepare. Instant box-office gold in the making.

Then practice started… Since I’ve coached baseball before I was counting on that experience to get me through. The first practice went great. We arrived early one Saturday at one of the two basketball courts in the city (a city of 500k people) that has backboards and rims and taught the kids to dribble and pass the ball and to not run away when they are being guarded. It was a great success.

Then the next week, nay, the next three weeks, were nothing but disasters. One week we showed up to the court and there was a roller hockey tournament (apparently they found the only roller skates in town and each team just took turns using them). The next week our truck was stuck out of gas and we didn’t want to walk 10km to the court. The third week practice got cancelled because it was raining cats and dogs. It wasn’t really raining cats and dogs, that’s just an expression. I know you know it’s only an expression, I just don’t want people to think that raining cats and dogs is an actual thing here.

We were sitting now with only two weeks to practice before the tournament and only one practice under our belts for a group of kids who have never ever played the game before. If we weren’t underdogs before, we sure as heck were now.

Then, with two weeks to go we turned in the official rosters for the tourney. We were met with more than a couple problems as all the boys (that came from one of the other orphanages) were too old to play in a tournament. Remember from my first basketball post a long time ago where I had a picture with my super-tall secret weapons affectionately dubbed Hakim and Akeem Olajuwon?

They were definitely both 15 years old. Their new nicknames are Danny Almonte and Miguel Tejada.

With two weeks to go we managed to get in two practices, albeit with a squad of 8 new boys and 4 new girls. The last session was a blur of rules and tactics and strategies for how to defend without punching and how kicking the ball to control it and pass it up the court is not legal (that one took a lot of repeating).

The day before the tournament started we received our uniforms and the kids spent the whole night trying them on and talking about how they were going to wipe the floor with the other teams tomorrow and then they would win a trip to Maputo (the capital). I’m still not sure why they though they were going to win a trip to Maputo. People assume that everything here with a prize is a trip to Maputo. For example, I have a contest right now to take kids that memorize their multiplication tables out to lunch. People were kind of ho-hum about it until somebody wondered out loud if it was lunch in Maputo and then they all started jumping and screaming with anticipation.

Part 2 is coming tomorrow, and we’ll find out how much floor got wiped and who did the wiping. This shouldn’t be that hard to figure out, especially if you understand my love of sports movies.

In Which We All Get A Touch Sick

Some weeks are better than others. This last week has not been one of those weeks.

On Saturday, the orphanage hosted a wedding reception for a couple from our church. This involved about 250 or 300 people all coming by for lunch after the ceremony. It was basically an open invite to all the kids, teens, and young adults from our church (maybe the adults had somewhere more important to be) along with the family of the couple. This presented a unique challenge. Namely, it was how to convince people they were going to eat.

Wedding receptions here are notorious for one thing: running out of food. It’s not uncommon to have 200 show up for a wedding and to have food for maybe only 100 of them. What’s worse is when there is a conscious decision by the couple to only buy food for 100 people, knowing people are going to be left out. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as you’ll see) this was not the case and there was more than enough food to go around.

However, this does not mean that the attendees have any piece of mind over the food situation. Telling people that there is enough food to go around usually just makes them suspicious. And when everybody attending the reception is coming from a place where drought, famine, food shortages, and hunger are very real things it is not uncommon for fights to break out over the last plate of food.

Nevertheless, telling everybody there would be enough food to go around did not mean that there was any sort of order or calm in the line to receive food. This is where my job comes in. Most of us here at the orphanage all had some sort of responsibility Saturday: organize parking, make sure there’s enough water for drinking, help out in the kitchen. My responsibility was to to keep people orderly so a riot didn’t break out in the food line. It was a job that turned out to be stressful but thankfully uneventful when all was said and done.

“Well that doesn’t sound so bad,” you say. I would mind you to remember that this was only Saturday, and the weekend was far from over.

On Sunday morning I got up and went about my day getting ready for church. I had not so much as gotten dressed when my stomach started grumbling something fierce. Sparing you from any details, I spent most of the morning in the bathroom with a case of diarrhea. Before continuing, I will apologize for those of you that think this is gross, because it is gross. Still, at the same time I ask you to keep an open mind that here in Mozambique this is something which effects people at least once a month here and it’s a really common part of our life.

And the funny thing is, because it is so common here, it is talked about all the time. When greeting people in America with a simple “How are you”, if the person is sick you might hear, “Eh, I got a case of the sniffles” or, “I’m feeling a little under the weather.” If somebody ever says, “I’ve got a case of diarrhea” you tell them to shut up and keep it to themselves. At the most, they might say they have a stomach ache. Here because it is so common an occurance you can be buying something from a street vendor you don’t even know, ask him how he is, and he’ll tell you if he has diarrhea or not. I’m not even kidding. Folks are not put off by talking about diarrhea.

Here at the orphanage, the first thing that people are supposed to do when they sick is tell somebody else about it. This is so we can keep track of how long somebody has been sick and how they’re progressing. It is also so we all know and can be on guard if it’s a bigger problem. So back to Sunday morning: After a little while I pull myself together and head out of the house to let some folks know that I’m sick with diarrhea. At first, I didn’t find anybody, and thought they all might have left for church already. Then, when I made it around the corner to where the bathrooms are, I discovered them. Everybody in the orphanage had taken a chair and just set themselves down by the bathroom. THE WHOLE ORPHANAGE had come down with a case of the runs!!!

There is really no way to express the scene that I witnessed. I think because people so often get sick with one thing or another there’s a certain amount of “gallows humor” about everything here. As each person would leave the bathroom they would raise a fist and shout “Viva Diarrhea”, which was responded to by the rest of those in line with shouts of “Oye” which is kind of like our version of saying “yee-haw”. Weirdly disturbing? Yes. Funnny? Definitely! When everybody is sitting around in discomfort it’s the little things that will lift your spirits.

As we set about to start the task of figuring out just which meal we all ate gave us diarrhea the answer quickly presented itself. Soon, we started fielding phone calls from the pastors at church asking what happened at the wedding yesterday and why everybody that attended was at home with diarrhea. It doesn’t take Nancy Drew to figure out that something we ate at the reception got EVERYBODY sick. However, there were two kids who didn’t get sick, which made it slightly puzzling. After a little more sleuthing, we figured out the cause of the diarrhea was from some bad beans, as the people who were sick didn’t have any beans.

Now, just because folks were making a joke in light of a bad situation, don’t think that Sunday was all fun and games. It wasn’t. It sucked. And it sucked a lot. Many people, including myself, were feeling better come Sunday night, but still about half of the kids weren’t willing to venture more than a few steps from the bathroom.

Come Monday, much of our gang was feeling better, but still about ten people were suffering from what was being dubbed “The Replay”. By the end of the day Monday those numbers were down quite a bit to only five or so kids, but at this point the diarrhea had morphed into just a general stomach illness.

And then in the middle of the night on Monday/Tuesday I was struck with a case of “The Replay”. But because on day two the diarrhea had morphed into some different, equally unholy form of ailment I spent the whole night vomiting out the entire contents of my stomach . Thankfully, in the big picture there were only about 4 or 5 of us that were still sick at this point so the whole orphange wasn’t joining us. Unthankfully, we were each throwing up stuff we ate so long ago that we don’t even remember eating it.

We’re mostly on the road to recovery, and I’ll keep you posted if this happens to become “The Replay - Part Two : Revenge of the Replay”. But in light of everything that has gone one, I just want to explain why I’m telling you about any of this in the first place. I contemplated not telling any of this but I decide to go ahead and do it for several reasons.

The first reason is that it was a major event here. Most major events get put here for you guys to know how our lives are going, and everybody getting sick for 2-3 days is a pretty major event. Its already being referred to as “marriage of diarrhea”.

A second reason it my continued mission to help you get a grasp for what life is like here in Nampula and the orphanage, and a part of that life is diarrhea. On average, a kid will pick up a minor case every month or so, that’s just the way life is. If infants get diarrhea in the jungle they can die from it. It is unpleasant, but it is not uncommon. And while diarrhea is not contagious, it usually seems to hit at least 5 or 6 kids at a time when it does come.

The third reason I’m letting you know is because I want you know that every single day we really need/appreciate your prayers and support. While God is always good to us here, its only because we’re continually seeking his favor and asking for his help. And as many bad things that could have happened from eating tainted food, that fact that we came away with only diarrhea and upset stomachs is a sign of Gods grace.

So until next time, here’s hoping that that your food is a little bit healthier than ours.

In Which TJ discusses marriage. Wait... WHAT?!

No, this is not the marriage talk (although I am continually breaking hearts here of girls looking for a green card husband). This is more of a quick update to my book report from last week. Partly because I find the data fascinating, but mostly because there is some ceremony going on next door and I can't get to sleep with all the chanting and yelling and ritualing.

Some other facts have fallen out of the UNICEF report I mentioned last week. These facts, combined with the tidbits from last week, show two things. First, that the culture here is different, and while there are many things that are good about it (nobody is addicted to facebook) there are some things that are bad also, such as the conditions which girls are forced into by their families. The second things these facts show is why we try to be so protective of our girls here in the orphanage.

And now for the facts. They're not going to be happy at all, but that's kind of the situation in this country: there isn't always a lot of happy news.

• Almost 17% of girls will marry before they are 15 years old.
• Over 41% of girls ages 14-18 are pregnant.
• There are approximately 700,000 girls ages 12-14 that are married. A majority are forced.
• 70% of girls surveyed responded that they have had teachers proposition trading sex for a passing grade.

First, each of these stats must be explained, so let me go through one by one to explain some of the finer details. As for 17% of girls will marry before they are 15 years old, that pretty much stands on its own.

The fact that over 41% of girls ages 14-18 are pregnant is true and very likely. I would also like to to add that this stat is very specific. It does not refer to girls that have been pregnant or have given birth. It means that at the time they were surveyed they were eating for two.

The UNICEF report also states that 700,000 girls ages 12-14 that are married. After reading the report, this number is clearly handpicked and exaggerated. The real number is realistically closer to 300,000. Thats out of a total country-wide population of about 23 million. If the number still seems off, keep in mind that people only live till about the age of 45, and that half the population is age 15 and under.

The number of 700,000 is bad because what they did was to take the marriage rates from where I am in the rural north of the country and extrapolate it to match the rest of the nation. The rate is a lot higher here where that type of marriage is often required in the culture. They also had survey difficulties. In the north, they got good reliable data because everybody answered the questions. In the south and more populous end of the country, when they tried asking 12 years olds if they were married, their husbands shamefully intervened to take the girls away and they couldn't get honest answers.

Also, if you remember last week, we're defining marriage as between a man and a woman (and sometimes two or three more women on top of that). Polygamy is normal and widely accepted and you even have (non-mormon) churches here that permit it. And marriage itself is culturally defined as pregnant with his baby, living with him (cohabiting is the technical term), or recognized by the tribe/family/village/chief as being married. The younger the marriage is, the more likely it is that the family is arranging the marriage than it is a 12 year-old falling in love with a 40 year-old and becoming his 4th wife (and then probably getting HIV).

Lastly, the survey question that I believe was the most UNDERstated was that 70% of girls had teachers proposition sex. I want to say I was not shocked by this for two reasons (in fact, I think its higher). The first reason is because I was going through elementary school at the same time that two schools away the whole Mary Kay Letourneau debacle was unraveling, and so I just assumed that sort of thing was as common as rainy-day recess in Seattle. The second reason this does not surprise me is because we frequently check in with our girls to see if they are getting pressured from their teachers. Want to know what percentage of them have been pressured?

Survey says: All of them. 100% percent. And if its not the teachers, its their friends telling them to just sleep with the teachers in exchange for a good grade. Its shocking, its sad, and its the reality here.

Pretty soon here I'll give a post with some good news, and maybe some pictures. Who knows.

TJ's Book Report

Happy birthday, America! Hopefully all of you are recovering from your hangover, patching the craters in you front lawn, or reading a reply from that strongly worded letter you sent to your town councilman in which you described your city’s ban on fireworks as some combination of lame, misguided, fascist, communist, totalitarian, King George-esque, and un-American.

These last couple of days I’ve been fighting on oncoming cold and trying to rest up. This has involved lots of reading, a pastime of mine. So you can think of this as my book report to all of you. Or Cliffs Notes. How about we go with Cliffs Notes. You know, like how Snowball is Trotsky, the Old Major is Karl Marx, the cows are the subjected working class, “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others”… Sorry, that was from by book report on Animal Farm.

= = > UNICEF (something about the United Nation and Children) released a report of Mozambique this week. The “highlights” of the report include:
• 44% of children suffer from chronic malnutrition. This number can be as high as 59% in northern provinces where we are.
• 48% percent go through at least two life-threatening food disparities sometime during childhood.
• Over a third of deaths before the age 5 are caused by malaria.
• 11% of girls ages 11 to 15 years are infected with HIV
• 52% girls under the age of 18 are “married”. Being married is defined as being legitimately married, living with a guy, or being pregnant/having a child.

The official response by a government spokesman decried the UN as “apostles of doom”. As to the statistics, the spokesman said, “I don’t know the Mozambique they know. My Mozambique is strong and winning the fight against poverty.”

= = > Another report from here in our city lists that over 25,000 grade school students study outside, a majority of them under trees while sitting on the ground. Our city has a total of about 0.5m people, meaning that 5% of the total population are grade-schoolers studying outside because there’s not enough space in schools. The average class size across the whole country is over 68 children per class. That’s across all grades. Actual sizes can vary from 50 to 120. All our kids study with at least 70-80 other students.

= = > While I’m not sure how I come into possession of many things here (like my shower mat, which is really a rubber car floor mat that literally just showed up in my house one day) I recently got a Mozambican teachers handbook. The section on health awareness was particularly interesting.

The gov’t cites a 2009 survey of HIV/AIDS rates among pregnant females ages 18-49. In Niassa Province (the backwoods of Mozambique) the rate is about 8%. In our province it is reported as 11-14% depending on how rural or urban you are. In Maputo City, home to several million people, the rate of infection is 28-30%. Let that sink in. In the largest city in Mozambique, 30% of pregnant women are infected with HIV.

One thing the study does is show that much of the thinking done by the gov’t on combating HIV was wrong. For years the fear was that the rural areas would have huge rates because of lack of information/education whereas in the city, where everybody is well informed, rates would be low because people are always hearing the message to be safe, use protection, etc. What the data really shows is that in the sticks people just don’t get around that much while in the city people are apparently shacking up with everyone in sight.

= = > The municipal water company here announced that they have stopped expansion/development of the water grid. From now on they will only replace, rehabilitate, and repair the existing infrastructure. The reasons cited are that the city does not have enough water to expand the grid. As it is now, neighborhoods don’t all receive water at the same time, sometimes going days without. The utility company says further expansion will only worsen the problem.

= = > The city council in Tete has released a guidebook to police officers suggesting appropriate amounts of bribes to be collected from prostitutes in exchange for not fining them on prostitution.

= = > The Mozambique District Development Fund is a zero-interest loan program aimed at providing capital for rural economic development. Last week they lost $40,000 (yes, US dollars). In one district, the Fund gave monies to a group of farmers who apparently just drank away the money. When the Fund managers returned at the end of harvest, they discovered the farmers had not planted a single crop and were taking the year off living on all their free money.

The Fund possessed their land, I’m assuming, because that’s the penalty for defaulting (that, and the article referred to them as ex-farmers). Before you start thinking that these guys got taken advantage of, the story says they procured the loan to build a grain mill for their district. One of the (ex)farmers was quoted as saying, “After we received the money we were so happy, so we celebrated without stopping.” Apparently they did.

= = > The mayor of the second largest city in Mozambique, Beira, accused the president of rigging several recent foreign business investments by having them go to the capital city of Maputo. He claims the companies had had desired to go to Beira and the gov’t had forced them to go to Maputo or take nothing at all. The president responded in a press conference by saying he wished to remind the mayor that it’s a crime to defame the president.