In Which Everybody Knows TJ

It turns out that not everybody is famous in a small town. I, however,am probably the exception. It is sometimes scary how popular I am. I mean, no complaints, but everybody here knows me. And when I say everybody I mean EVERYBODY. I made a list of all the some reasons why and examples of how I'm so well known.

• I'm white. Lets just face it, I'm not hard to miss in a sea of black people. And albinos. They're not hard to miss either.

• I'm tall. Even by U.S. standards I'm tall. And everybody here is much, much shorter on account of just being that way and receiving much, much worse nutrition during those first, oh, 18 years or so when nutrition is important to growing. I'm at least a head taller than everyone in our neighborhood. Combine that with the whole being white thing and it's pretty hard to miss me.

• I take the bus. Seems innocuous enough, but the only other missionaries I bump into on the bus are nuns. The others all have cars. There's about 6 termini (end-of-lines) on the loosely organized bus routs here in Nampula, and I'm about a ten minute walk away from the end of one of those lines. And often, the buses won't go all the way to the end, they'll stop short and turn around depending on how well comported the driver is. It has gotten so that---I stopped wondering a long time ago---that all the bus drivers know where I live and won't slow down to pick me up. They'll just yell out the window and shout, “We don't stop [in my neighborhood].” It's not like I live in Compton or Detroit or Mexico, some place that everybody is afraid to go. They're just being courteous of telling me to wait for a bus that will take me all the way to where I want to go.

• I'm fairly routine. I'm not nerdy or OCD, I just get habits that work. I do my grocery shopping on Fridays and stock up for the week. How consistent am I? So consistent that one week when I didn't go somebody from the small street market about a 5 minute walk from the orphanage sent somebody to see if I was alright!

• Everybody in our neighborhood knows my name. Again, I'm not sure how and I stopped wondering a long time ago. But they also think I'm Christina's brother, so they're not all-knowing or anything. I try not to say much other than greeting and niceties to most the vendors because they all want to know way too much personal information. I noticed someone building a new market stand last week and so I stopped by. It turns out it is “owned” by somebody from my church. I stopped by and started talking to him and then all the other vendors looked at us rather shocked until someone finally blurted out, “We didn't actually think you spoke anything other than English.” Now everybody want to bend my ear about everything when I pass by the market, which is every time I need to catch the bus. (The guy from our church is too much of a goof to accurately describe with a few short words. The easiest think I can say is he doesn't know that he's a goof. We was super proud to show me his fruit stand and what it's going to look like when he finishes. When I asked him what he plans on selling he responded, completely serious, “I don't know yet. I want to finish this first then I'll start planting fruit.”)

• I'll often walk the kids to school. Mainly its just fun for them to get dropped off for second grade and then wave bye to me in front of all their friends. Some of their friends will say thinks like, “Neato, isn't it just something that you've got a white guy walking you to school?!” I've been temped to respond with something like, “Golly, isn't it swell how you have parents?!” buts there's no way of doing that which doesn't make me sound like the biggest jerk this side I've the equator. Plus, it doesn't translate that well.

• Somewhat startling, and this one puzzles me more than the others, is that their teachers know me too. I went to the primary school last month to do parent-teacher conferences from the second trimester. We have 20 kids that study at the primary school, where they are with the same teacher through the whole day. Half of their teachers didn't show up for the conferences, one of them showed up drunk (at 9am) and doesn't count, but the rest of their teachers that were there that morning (and not inebriated) greeted me with, “Hi, you must be TJ.”

And thankfully none of these peoples have Facebook and want to be my friend. If they did, I'd be getting tons of updates reading, “Alguem vi o meu cabrito? Ele ja me fugio pela quinta vez este semana.” and be taggig in photo albums titled, “Aniversario de Marere – Festa no cajuelo 2011” and having five-hundred people recommend that I “like” kabanga.