FAQ's Part 1

There are many questions I have been asked in my travels last year about just what goes on here. Most of them were phrased out of curiosity, “Just what is going on there.” Only on two occasions was is asked in that same tone my mom used when I came home from that chilly November high school football game covered head-to-toe in purple body paint, “Just what is going on there.” You see, tone is everything. I hope you are asking it without the same sense of shock and disapproval as my mother.

And while a more careful reading of my prose (and sometimes poetry ) may yield answers to most of these questions, I don't expect you to study every line like I was Emily Dickinson and you were cramming for your final exam in American Literature. Instead, I'll just straight up answer your questions, many of which were frequently asked. (How about that!)

How many kids do you have?

We usually have close to fifty kids. About forty of live here at the orphanage with me. The number is usually fixed and hardly ever changes month to month. The reason for that is, as kids come in to the orphanage, usually at a young age, we keep them until they graduate or get job. They don't come and go as they please or stay for a couple months until their family has the means to support them again. We are committing to a larger investment in the kids than just giving them a bed a food. We are raising them, educating them, teaching them about Jesus, and laying the foundation for their whole life to change. We are not a shelter or a daycare. The ten or so that are not here are kids that are in higher education, job training, or apprenticeships that we support until they start getting a paycheck.

How do they come to be in the orphanage?

That is a really big and involved question. Everybody has an individual and unique story, so I can't really typecast anybody by their circumstance. Most all the kids here have lost at least one parent, leaving the other unable (or unwilling) to care for their kid. Quite a few have lost both parents and end up living with an uncle or grandparent before ending up with us.

How old, gender?

We have both boys and girls and ages 5-20. We have had as young as two years old, but usually about the age of 18 is when we look for them to move on (i.e. get a job). We don't have the means to care for infants, and as long as a kid is doing well in school and has a good attitude and behavior we will look to get them in a higher ed program. The others get jobs straight away or apprenticeships to learn a trade.

Where do they study?

All the kids study in the public schools. When you only have about four or five kids to each grade level it makes it difficult to teach them in house. Instead, what I do is supplement their school heavily with tutoring and more lessons here at the orphanage. So the learning doesn't stop when they leave school.

What are their schools like?

The primary school students sit on the ground under the shade of big cashew trees with about sixty other kids in their classroom. If it rains, school is canceled for obvious reasons. Primary school is grades 1-7. For grades 8-12 they are in the high school, which is also about a five minute walk. The high school is quite new and all the kids have chairs and desks. They too, however, are with anywhere between 70 and 120 kids in a classroom. Elementary school lasts for three hours and high school for five hours a day. Including breaks. The school year runs from February to the end of October with November reserved for national exams for grades 5, 7, 10, and 12. Teacher delinquency is also very high, and near the end the of the year it is normal for students to only receive lessons about a third of the time.

What do kids do when they leave the orphanage?

That again is a big involved question. As I've said before in this space, some go on to be teachers, others get jobs at factories, become technicians, lots of things. In Mozambique, if you finish tenth grade you can attend teaching academy for a year and become an elementary school teacher. It's not ideal in terms of teaching standards or quality, but the choice has been made for availability. And even at that class sizes are still anywhere from seventy to a hundred (and often more) students in a classroom. Because of this opportunity, we encourage lots of kids to study hard, finish school, and become teachers. Teaching is a well respected, well paying, and guaranteed job in Mozambique.

Because many kids come to us not having been in school before they are a few years behind. Because of of that, if a kid has good grades and a good attitude we will allow him or her to stay past 18 in order to finish school and secure a good future, whether it means becoming a teacher or accountant or going to university or whatever. For kids that fall behind in school and fail classes repeatedly, and/or have bad behavior and attitudes (its surprising how one begets the others), when they turn 18 we try to find an apprenticeships or other work for them. This could be as a cook, hairdresser, factory worker, whatever we can get that doesn't require a high school diploma.

More to come later in the week, but let's pace ourselves for now.

In which there are ch-ch-ch-changes

Things can change. And things do. Many like to say that, “the only thing constant is change,” which is not only hyperbole, but wrong. Lots of things are constant. God will always exist, and until Jesus comes back, so will idiots, taxes, politicians, mold, I could go on. But I'm trying to save time on this post.

Just after even two years away from Seattle I came back and found so many things different. The hipsters all upgraded their iPhones to iPads. Next time I go back, I expect the technology to be integrated directly into their iFlannel. Even the things you don't quite expect. Lots of stop signs got run where there used to be no stop sign, causing me to be on the receiving end of lots of one-fingered salutes. Also, for some reason, they now sell cans of pop in 8oz sizes. I guess it is so you can make your kids feel inadequate when you give then an 8oz coke when you're working on the normal 12oz size. I'll say once again. There is nothing fun about fun-size portions. You may say the small size is for portion control, but all I hear is that your portion needs to be zero.

Here in Mozambique, lots of things changed too, just in the two months and found so many things different. The baker I buy my bread from (and made the best bread in the bairro) decided to hang it up and retire, leaving an empty feeling in my stomach and my soul. The soccer field down the road now has a curb separating it from the street so no more cars drive through your game. There was also a whole block of houses that got torn down to make room for a wider road.

Which brings me to the other big change I noticed: Cement prices.

The Great Chicken Debate

.Group-think is a terrible, terrible thing. When I say group-think you might be picturing something different than me. You may picture scientists working on a cancer vaccine, engineers developing an efficient and smart transit system, or artists getting together for one of those artisty-tributy albums celebrating Haiti or trees or something of the sort. Generally, you might picture collaborating and cooperation towards a common goal.

When I imagine group-think I picture angry Lakers fans burning police cars in Los Angeles after winning a championship. I see people joining mobs protesting this or that, but are really just there to robbing grocery stores. I imagine it's like when somebody says, “Let's start the wave.” And then the next thing you know the whole stadium is doing the mexican wave while you're trying to watch the game. All were once good things (championships, civic activism, a baseball game) and got turned into horrible, horrible things (the mexican wave).

Its that mob mentality, it's the thing that reasons with you and says since everybody else is cheating, I can too because the odds are so small I won't get caught. I'm gonna riot because there are thousands of others and I wanna be part of something. You, the person joining it, are on the outside most the time. You are waiting for an event or activity to hit critical mass before you commit. You won't show up to a protest when there are two people. You will when there are two thousand. When somebody asks you to go to a party, you ask who else is gonna be there and have a mental checklist present. You check the facebook page to see if all your other friends have committed first. You go to a sports game and do wave because SIT DOWN SO I CAN WATCH THE DARN GAME!!!

Getting caught up in and joining a movement or sensation can be good if you are getting caught up with how cool rocky road ice cream is, for instance. It can also be bad. Like in this story I'm telling you.

And even more "holidays"

As kind of an addendum to the school holidays, there is one more instance where kids will not go to school, and that's if a teacher dies.

The government has long bemoaned the problems of HIV/AIDS among public servants, especially in professions that are heavy on training and you can't just hire new folks whenever you want. Jobs like teachers and police are the most visibly effected by this epidemic.

It's hard to know just how much HIV is a factor because it never revealed is someone has the virus. If a teacher dies suddenly because they got hit by a car or their house collapses, everybody will know that it was obviously not HIV. However, if a teacher is sick, you will just hear that they died. It's never disclosed what the illness was or how long they suffered. The HIV rate is somewhat ambiguous and disputed here. (The gov't claims it is a remarkably low 5%. The UN claims it to be above 16% while other observers peg it as just over 20%. The true value is probably between the 16-20% figures. That is about one in every six people.)

Anecdotally, however, teachers are a philandering bunch and the rate of infection among them may be much higher. From what I hear from my teacher friends, it's not so much because teachers are involved with students, but because they are getting it on with each other—left and right and all over the place. It's that prominent.

When a teacher dies that same day is often given off for all the kids, along with the day of the funeral. In both the primary or secondary school in our area loses a teacher, the other will inevitably shut down also to allow the other teachers to attend the funeral. This happens about once a month.

I've touched on it before, but just to say again: Where there is a death of a teacher like this, it is sad. However, because of the high death rate (life expectancy is not even 50 years) there is also a sense that it is commonplace. It is not like a death in a western school or American school where grief counselors show up and it is talked about and there are memorials all through the year. When teachers die at a rate of about one a month, it starts to wear off after a while.

A Jolly Holiday

Well, first off. A hardy hello to you. I know, I've been a little bit absent as of late. Take heart knowing that it was not due to sickness or a national emergency or a fishing boat once again hooking the only fiber-optic line connected to the country and leaving everybody without internet and phone service. It was due to a horrid combination of me having quite a bit or work since getting back, and choosing my free time to finish a book I started reading rather then absorbed with writing, my former pastime. (Do not start "The Count of Monte Cristo" knowing that your flights are only 25 hours in total. It will take you waaaaay longer that that to finish it. Seriously.)

But, the good news is there should be pretty solid content up here about every other day or so for a couple weeks. I also have found the practice of writing 90% of a post thinking I'll finish the last ten percent another time resulted in about 12 unfinished stories, so those will be getting finished and put up here.

In the meantime, I thought today I would answer one of the most asked about questions I got. And that is how long the kids are in school. The easy answer would be "till it ends" which is both ambiguous, true, and shameful for those that understand how much kids are in school here. The school year run February to November. In that, there is one week after the first term and two weeks after the second term. We are in the final of three terms right now and it will end in about two weeks.

But apart from those breaks, we also have a variety of other days off during the year. Think of it this way.