Grand Theft Auto: Nampula Nights

If there is one thing in my life that has prepared me to come to Mozambique it has been Jesus. If there is a second, it is has been playing Grand Theft Auto.

As is my custom, I'll explain.

Despite whatever your first impressions are upon hearing that I have played this video game, please put them aside for a moment. Yes, it is a game filled with violence, drugs, women, booze, and pretty much every type of vice you can imagine. One version of the game was even set in the fictional “Vice City”. It is basically a big open map where you can steal cars and then drive around however you want to.

I would play this game with my brothers, usually us taking turns at facing different challenges in the game. Yes, the game was set in an absolutely heathen environment (the object of the game is stealing cars), but it is also noted for it's incredible realism. Pedestrians, other cars, gridlock make it is closer to a driving simulator than a video game. But when it was my turn, here were some of the things my brothers could often be heard saying to me.

“You know it doesn't matter if you hit other cars, right?”

“You know you don't have to obey the speed limit, right?”

“You don't need to obey the stop light. Just go!”

“No, I don't know if the game uses red-light cameras.”

“NO, I don't know if the fictional city where the game is set recognizes free right turns.”

“Yeah! You hit a pedrestrian! 10 points for you. No no no NO! What are you doing? Why are you stopping? Are you putting her in you car? You need to take her to the what? The hospital? What is wrong with you?!”

Eventually, they would grow frustrated with my taking the game to be too much like real life and would leave. However, if there is one thing that stuck with me from the game, its than in order to not get hit, you need to drive defensively aggressive. You see, the way the A.I. of the game is set up, if you drive at another car, often it will detect a collision and swerve to avoid you. So, oddly, if you want to avoid getting hit, you need to try to hit people.

Nampula is nothing like that video game. There are more cars, more people, small roads, and more accidents. Thankfully, I haven't caused one yet. I think the biggest thing I hit was I backed over a stump. Still, on the roads its a no-hold-bar, anything goes type of atmosphere.

The city struggles with a case of having too many people suddenly able to afford cars, so they go and buy one. Seems great, right? Except in order to get a drivers license you need to sit in hours of class learning the legal rules of the road, drive the learning car once around the block (literally, and it's a small block), and then you are granted a drivers license. Or you can just bribe to skip the class and then get behind the wheel of a one-ton, six cylinder killing machine.

Even more dangerous is that most people driving do not come from a culture where they have always known or seen how to drive. Here, the odds of you having been in a context of watching someone else drive---much less having been in a car at some point in your life---are relatively small. If I give people a lift somewhere, I am constantly reaching over to open the door for them when they leave because they don't know how.

The streets don't make it any better either. The road we take to go to the city passes through our local marketplace. The road is not striped and, even for small cars much less trucks, barely wide enough for two cars to pass without at least one putting a wheel in the dirt shoulder. And for cars coming in from out of town, it is the first sign of other people you see. Many cars and trucks will approach it going near 50mph (80km) before they recognize that they need to slow down.

The problem of safety in this stretch is complicated by people. Last month the city came through and demolished most all the permanent food stand and vending carts and told people to move them further away from the road. They were previously right on top of the road and in many cases people would put down, for example, their fruit cart resting on the pavement. And then, not only do you have people selling fruit, clothes, soap, beans, fish, snacks on the side of the road, you have the people that use the street as the thoroughfare for wandering about between the food stalls.

Most people that use the road aren't motorists, they're on bicycles. And not just people riding their bicycles commuting to work to be eco-friendly. On their bicycle, instead of a person ridiing, will be a basket of fruit, coal, bamboo, sugarcane, corn, whatever they they are taking from out in their farm to be able to sell in the city. Second most prevalent, behind bicycles, are motorbikes. People use them as personal transportation, commuting to and from work, school, wherever they need to go.

So in our market, there is a stretch of about 100 yards (90 meters) where food stands, shoppers, bicyclists, motorbikes, cars, trucks, and semis all converge in one narrow spot. Bikes and motorbikes use the road as driving on the dirt shoulder is often unsafe and filled with people. Cars pass bikes and other cars not being able to see what is ahead because of the blind curve. Semi trucks barrel through not recognizing the need to slow down until theyre on top of the market. People consider the street to be theirs and pass at will from one side to another. What happens when all these things converge?

People die.

Despite years of incidents and accidents, most people just refuse to take safety measures. After the city destroyed the vendor's stands, many people rebuilt just a little further from the road. Many more just started taking a mobile approach and laying their wares and goods on the ground beside the road. Cars hit people, bikes, and other cars. Bikes hit people and dart in front of cars coming from behind without looking twice.

The most dangerous times in the stretch are in the morning when kids are walking to school and more so in the evening when everybody is returning from work and converges to by bread and food at the end of the day.. Last week, a man stepped out from behind a parked car and got hit by an oncoming truck. He died on the spot. In February there was a kid of about 5 years old that wandered away from his mom and got hit by a motorbike. He died later in the hospital. Also this year there was a pregnant woman that stepped of the bus, stood still as the bus drove away, and then got hit by a truck that came through. Nobody is quite sure what happened to her after the truck took her to the hospital.

Last year there was a fairly famous accident, it made the news, of a taxi that hit three people in our market. Two of them later died from injuries. The driver was drunk and scared, and fled the scene in his taxi. Later, about a mile up the road he hit three more people before people subdued him before he could leave. About that time some witnesses caught up with him and held him till police could show up.

And the lack of people knowing how to drive goes up all the way to the top. Last month the prime minister was in our province when a kid riding in the truck in front of him fell out. (People ride in the back of trucks, dozens at a time.) The prime minister hit him and just kept on driving. Killed the kid. And nothing ever came of it. I had a friend remark that if anything like that every happened in America he would be run out of office.

So next time you're out driving around, offer up a prayer for us here on the roads of Mozambique. Especially as most the time I'm out it's with a truckload full of kids.

Oldie but a goodie

Old people are important. I know that's an opening line rather out of left field. Although I could have written an even odder opening line. Something like: there is a shortage of dwarves in Mozambique. But while stranger, I have a feeling that somebody would get mad at me for saying dwarf and shortage in the same sentence. So that's why I went with the old people line. And while technically I don't know where the line is drawn between dwarves and pigmies, I yet to see one of either, leading to my conclusion that they are in short supply (look, I did it again).

But we're not talking about pygmies, we're talking about old people, which are many times short, but definitely not that short.

Old people are valued a lot here in this culture. They are in a lot of places. They are mostly very well respected and looked after. Some of that is just ingrained into taking care of the people that raised you and appreciating the wisdom and experience of your elders. A small part of that is worried that they will haunt you from beyond the grave. Most mostly, with this respect there are good connotations.

The elder generation merit some respect if, for nothing else, looking a horribly low (~42yrs) life expectancy in the face and keeping on living. If somebody makes it to about 60 years they become very respected. It's really a good thing, in my mind, the way the culture values these people and looks after them in their golden years.

That being said, not all people are so nice. As people get old, they can get cranky and, let's face it, mean. Some are more difficult to respect than others. There was one old widow that lives in our neighborhood came to us one day asking us to help clear up a confusion. It seems her neighbors all wanted to kill her and she had no idea why. We were pretty sympathetic until she took her cane leave and whacked a baby in the chest. This was a baby that was clearly learning to walk and happened to wander in front of her. Now we have a crying baby, a cursing grandmother, and more angry neighbors that want to kill her.

And while the elderly are well respected, they are often sometimes the easiest to victimize. There is an epidemic in the country right now that usually plays out in the following three steps:

Step 1: A person loses their job, becomes sick, has a bad crop, fails in school, gets robbed, beaten up, or a child dies.

Step 2: Blame their elderly parents, claiming they performed witchcraft to curse them.

Step 3: KILL THEIR FREAKING PARENTS!!!!

I'm not making this up. It's happening so much that president routinely takes time out during his speeches to condemn this practice. I can't say I've personally known somebody who was closely effected by this, but everyone I talk to has a classmate or coworker who lost their parent or grandparent or something of this sort.

So, if you are an elderly citizen of Mozambique, beware the next time that a nice strapping young man offers to help you cross the street, beware. He might in fact be helping you to the middle the the street to leave you to meet your end as a car hits you and avenges his stolen bicycle. Seriously. But only kind of. But seriously.

Taxes, yeah!

Today is April 15th, which probably means you are doing your taxes. If you are the more proactive type you probably did them a while ago. Good for you! If you're not the proactive type, you probably forgot or are doing it right now. In which case, why are you looking this post? Shouldn't you being doing your taxes? And don't tell me you're taking a break. Shame on you!

For some people, tax day can be a burden. For others, like people living in Hawaii, it is a day to remember the life of one Father Damien. He died on this date over a hundred years ago.

I'll let you read more about him if you want. Regardless of what you think about posthumous sainting and things like that, you've got to admit his story is pretty powerful and convicting. From all account an insanely humble person, he is not only a hero of mine but was recently voted as the greatest Belgium who ever lived (voted on only by Belgians). The fact that he beat out the maker of the belgian waffle should tell you something.

The place where he treated lepers is now a national park.
Here's his wikipedia page.

Happy tax day.

A Marriage made in hell

Well, I feel like enough time has safely passed that I can talk about it without opening any old ounds, so I would like to take this opportunity tell you about a wedding I went to last December. A wedding that traumatized me more than almost anything in Mozambique.

The wedding in hell. (If you read it in your Vincent Price voice it is waaaaay more ominous.)

I say wedding in hell, and not from, because that's how hot it was that day. But more on that later. The first thing you need to know is going to this wedding was not my first choice of how to spend my Saturday. My first choice was to stay far away from the outside, possibly in front of a fan the whole day sipping on a coke. There was a couple from our denomination, not even our own church, in the city that was getting married and since our driver had just worked the Saturday before, the lot of driving a truck full of wedding attendees fell to me.

I dressed in shorts, t-shirt, and flip-flops because I had absolutely no intention of going inside a hot building that day. As the driver it is your responsibility to stay with your car in Nampula. That way nobody steals your side-view mirrors, battery, or worse, the whole car. I picked up a group of people from our church and then went to the courthouse where the party (read: torture) was about to start.

In Mozambique, for a wedding to be official it needs to be done at the courthouse. Your pastor/rabbi/yoga instructor don't have any authority to recognize a marriage for the state. Most people never get married in the courthouse. Some folks will get married in the church (which is about as much as you need to do in my opinion). Most folks just start living together or knock somebody up and go with that. Even culturally, this happens before the step of sitting both families down and telling them of your intent to get married for the family elders to approve. Other times the family can semi-arrange a marriage for you, more like saying, “This is an option. Do you think she'll do fine?”

So we went off to the courthouse. After the courthouse as many people as unreasonably could piled into to the truck and we went of to their church. Once we were at the church. A tiny cement building with a hot tin roof is really when things started to get heated. As the sun crept up in the sky, the multitude of people packed in the church took turns going outside to faint from heat exhaustion. Seriously. Outside, the only source of shade was a solitary coconut tree. For future reference for anybody that might be wandering through a desert in the future: COCONUT TREES ARE HORRIBLE FOR SHADE. They're super tall and have really tiny palms. Me and the seven kids or so from the orphanage that weren't smart enough to stay home put a blanket out underneath the truck and camped out under the pickup for the duration of the ceremony.

That's when someone with a radio (yes, we are horrible people, leaving the wedding sitting underneath a truck listening to a radio) said that today is the hottest day of the year yet in Nampula with a temperature of 41°C (106°F). Just so you know, if you go into a hospital with a body temperature of that, they put you on ice so your brain doesn't fry itself! How hot was it? It was so hot that one lady left saying, “She's only my cousin. I'm going home to rest.” It was so hot that Victor, who was officiating the ceremony, LEFT AND WENT HOME HALFWAY THROUGH because it was too hot and told another pastor who was there to finish things up. Again, seriously.

But, this story wouldn't be worthy of showing up here if things didn't go from bad to worse. And then a little worse after that.

After the church ceremony ended (because it's Mozambique, so that means about three hours later) we got in the truck once again and went way down to the bottom of the bairro for the reception. By this point, our kids who were actually at the wedding I gave money to catch a bus home to the orphanage and get out of the heat, leaving me, Marta (other orphanage staff) and the truckload of weddingers (wedding attenders).

Wedding receptions are continually the most frustrating thing to partake in or be involved in. They involve the families all fighting over who is going to get to sit at a table, how close to the couple they are going to sit, and who is going to get served food first. After that, the MC will take about twenty minutes to introduce everybody and make sure everybody attending feels like the most important person in the room (hint: they're not).

For anybody not important enough to get invited in the gathering area, you are left to find a place to sit outside. This means mostly women and children. This is also the order that people are served food. People inside and at the important tables will get a pop, chicken, beef, french fries, rice, and wedding cake. Less important tables maybe get chicken, rice, and beans. Then if there is food left over the women outside will get rice and beans. Then if for some reason the people inside aren't still hungry the children will get fed. People are constantly infuriated on the rare occasion we host a reception at the orphanage because we serve children first, then the women waiting outside, which is culturally insulting and saying to the men inside that these children are more important than you.

If I could paint the picture of where the reception was being held: An atypically large house, about the size of a two car garage. Cement walls and tin roof. The front is an open porch where all the food is being dished out after it is cooked inside. Adjacent to the porch is an olive green, thick, heavy, military-grade tent. It is using the house as one side and the tent as the other three sides. For the top of the tent, providing shade, is a standard blue camping tent that is tied down on three sides to the tent and the fourth to the house. Inside are tables and chairs and place-settings for the family that will be chosen to sit inside the covering.

In case you kind of got lost there, what I have just described is a greenhouse. The wedding reception was inside a greenhouse on this, the hottest day of the year.

Realizing I was staring at a greenhouse, and realizing I would be invited in to sit at a table inside the aforementioned greenhouse, I quickly found a quiet little place and knelt down to pray. Marta saw me and asked if everything was okay. I said yes, I was just praying for strength and perseverance for when I have to go inside the hot tent. She started laughing. I told her to stop laughing, I was serious. At the reception I soon found a few familiar faces and started chatting up.

I spent a few minutes chatting up Mama Novitika and her husband. Mama is the other old lady splits the cooking duties with Mama Maria, coming and cooking three days a week for us at the orphanage. As we were talking we got invited by the person in charge of seating to enter the tent. As we rounded the corner into the tent you could literally feel the air start to stick to you. We three took the chairs closest to the only door. (This thing was probably not approved by the fire marshall, unless in Mozambique approval means it is a certified death trap, in which case this tent would get an A+ rating).

We sat there in the entrance for three minutes waiting for more people to file in. It was truly starting to feel hot as hell. Eventually, the seating-chart demon came in with a bunch more people and told me and Mama Novitika to go sit in the corner of the tent farthest from the door and closest to the bride and groom who, keep in mind, have never met before! There, I found at my table a slew of familiar faces. There was, of course, Mama Novitika and her husband, Victor's mom, and one of Victor's cousins. The first thing we did was grab napkins or anything we could and start fanning ourselves. Keep in mind that of those people I've mentioned, three are over sixty years old (except his cousin, who is about my age).

Then we had to wait for the seating-chart demon and his minions to seat all the others. Then as the place was full, the Master-of-Ceremonies demon decided to announce the presence and name every person in the room (about 80 or so of us). At this point my t-shirt was so soaked with sweat that it started dripping because it couldn't hold any more water. After the MC-demon had announced only five or so names, the best man decided that our time in hell was not going to end, ever, so he stood up and announced that the couple wishes for us to start eating, and starting dishing himself up.

At this point the bride was crying, probably from it being hotter than the surface of the sun! The groom had removed his jacket and tie. I looked down at a rather unappetizing plate of hot rice, hot beans, hot goat, and a glass of hot coca-cola. Even the coke was hot.

After five more minutes of that and nobody at our table touching anything but the goat, the best man started cursing and reached up try to tear down the tarp. He succeeded, but only a little. It really just kind of let the sun beam on us directly rather than letting the heat out. Keep in mind that right now it's about 2pm, the hottest part of the day.

At this point it was evident that people were suffering. The bride was still crying. Nobody at the head table had touched their food. My coke might have actually been boiling. Then, Mama Novitika's husband grabbed her purse and started shoveling the rest of his goat and french fries into her purse. Not a napkin, not a tupperware, just the purse. After shoveling the food, he stood up and said he was leaving. At this point, my attitude was 'cultural sensitivity be damned' so stood up, said, “Lead the way, Moses. I'm joining this exodus” and got in line with the other 8 people at our table that decided 30 minutes in hell was too much for us to bear.

Upon exiting the tent, the air was so much cooler and not torturous that I actually got chills for the first minute. Not five minutes after that was Marta, saying she didn't know why she stuck around so long in “the tent of suffering”. At that, we climbed in truck and headed for home. There was no happy ending. There is no moral to this story. No cute tag line. And that part about enough time having passed, I'm beginning to think not because all of a sudden I'm really bitter. So much for that. Maybe there is a moral: When it's 100+ degrees outside, stay inside!

The Show Must Go On

April Fools.