Putting the "zany" in Tanzanian

Thanks those that sent birthday wishes. Around here I usually just do something for Thanksgiving/my birthday and tell people I have my own national holiday back in America. This year it involved me and a few boys cooking 18 pounds (dry) of rice, grilling 12 chickens on the wheelbarrow grill, making 35 pounds of french fries, serving up 48 pops, and 3 gallons of ice cream. It was a splendid day indeed.

On to more recent stories, this is one that happened almost half a year ago, but I was reminded of it only recently. Victor's old car had been dying a slow death for the better part of a year. (It has since been replaced.) One of the major problems was a failing transmission. The other problem was it being the only automatic transmission of that model for several thousand nautical miles (it was a Japanese car).

The only guy Victor trusts to work on his transmission is a Tanzanian man that we'll call Bob. Bob has spent so long in Mozambique, but grew up in Tanzania and his first language is Swahili. Bob likes to bring his friends to work. By friends, I mean consultants for when he gets stuck on a part he can't put together right.

Working on cars is also a lot different that in America, principally in that the mechanic always comes to you, instead of you going to his garage. Well, he almost always comes to you, but does so if you want to be sure he isn't stripping your car for parts when you're not looking. And thus Bob came out to the orphanage nearly every day that week, each day with a different friend, trying to put Victor's transmission back together.

Now on about the fourth day of this it had been a particularly long and testy day, and it was about three hours after it had gone dark. I was tired from having to mind the mechanics all day. Bob was mad because after he finally got it all put back together I made him take it apart again because there were several bolts left over. Bob's friend did not take kindly to me as I kept sneaking up behind him and putting out his cigarettes. We were not exactly getting along.

Then things hit the boiling point. Whenever Bob needed to talk to his friend (also Tanzanian) they'd would just speak Swahili. I was perfectly fine with that, because I didn't see any sense in the two of them communicating in a language that was not their own. I did have a problem with it when I heard the only two words in Swahili that I understand: white-man, and money. There was also some pretty aggressive gestures and pointing in my direction.

At that point I jumped in, speaking our common language of Portuguese and telling them that the work on the car has nothing to do with me nor is it my money so it won't do any good asking for it. At that, they just put down their tools and just looked at each other stunned.

They wrapped up their work in mostly silence and then when home for the night. When they came back the next morning to continue work on the car, Bob demanded to meet with Victor first. After that meeting, I went up to Victor to ask what their meeting was about. Victor, laughingly, told me that Bob and his friend refuse to work while I was around claiming that I knew everything they were saying.

Un/Fortunately for Bob, I didn't have a clue most of the time, and within no time was the car patched up and Bob on his way, never to have to deal with me again.

So They Say It's Your Birthday

On Friday, October 6th, 1867 thousands of Alaskans went to sleep that night. When they eventually woke up, the date was Friday, October 18th. What happened so that the whole territory fell asleep and woke up twelve days later? Were they in some sort of time warp? Abducted by aliens and had their memories wiped clean? Was it a giant Rip Van Winkle sort of thing? Did they all do a mini-hibernation?

Look again. Friday the 6th to Friday the 18th. Naturally, from one week to the next there should be seven days. But this was an exception. There were twelve days in between Fridays. Last time I checked a week only had seven days.

What happened was that Alaska underwent a change from Russian control to American control. The US and much of the rest of the world used the calendar that we all know and love today called the Gregorian calendar (named after 16th century Pope Gregory). The Russians used the older Julian calendar (from the times of Julius Caesar). The calendar the Russians used had too many leap years—because in Russia, years leap you—hence the need to jump forward a dozen days or so.

So the United States decided that to bump the calendar up a few days so that people went to bed on Friday the 6th and woke the next morning being Friday the 18th. (They also changed time zones and moved to the other side of the international dateline.). My thought every time I hear that little historical anecdote is, “Man. Sucks for the people who missed their birthdays.”

For people that missed their birthdays, they just had to wait a whole year for the day to come around again for a chance to celebrate. Just like that. All because some government bureaucrats decided you were using the wrong calendar.

Some people can't fathom missing out on their birthday. Many that have young kids can't fathom missing their kids' birthdays, even though he is only turning two and will have no recollection of that particular memory and will have more fun playing with the boxes the presents came in than with the actual presents.

Others can't even fathom what a birthday would be like because they don't really know when theirs is. It's not necessarily by any fault of their own but just because their birthday is truly unknown. For some of the kids here, when they come to the orphanage they have so little documentation that we just have to pick a date and guess a year and give them a birthday. Others are the opposite, in which we have documentation, records of birth previous school enrollment, but they may have conflicting information, and not just maybe the difference of a couple of months (the difference between say, a hospital record of birth and filing for a birth certificate).

There are some kids here who know their birthday and it's not a big deal, others who know it and want everyone to knot it. But there's also another group of kids that doesn't know—not because of being to young or having conflicting information—because it's not a vital statistic that's been memorized.

That is precisely the reason I have so much fun surprised them for the birthday. There is no better surprise than when you have absolutely no idea to expect anything. I only surprise the ones that don't their birthday is coming. When they show up in the dinner line sometimes its a piece of cake, a plate of cookies, or a liter of pop (talk about haywired kids!). This is usually accompanied by a big “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” from me and then people just spontaneously singing happy birthday and then a room of people trying the give them their birthday spanking. Unadulterated mayhem.

After the kid comes down from the sugar high, they usually come up to thank me, but really they have a more important question to ask. The first is, “Is it really my birthday.” The second thing they say after I affirm what is maybe a completely arbitrary day chosen to mark the turning of time is, “Cool. So...how old am I?”

FAQ's part 3

Where does funding for the orphanage come from?

See the paypal button in the corner? Funding comes from folks like you. We are moving towards resources and finding ways to get the orphanage onto more self-sustaining grounds. Other than that its all from private sources. And no, the state here does not fund or support the orphanage.

Where does YOUR funding come from?

I don't try to take anything away from the kids. My funding comes from when people send to the paypal but send an email stating that the support is for me personally, for things like visas, travel costs, health care, my food, mental sanity. Much of what I get usually ends up just going to the kids in the form of soccer balls for the boys or hair extensions for the girls or new clothes or shoes for the kids, Christmas presents, whatever is both necessary and fun.

What do I do?

Again, big question. I get the kids up, keep them on top of their chores, teach school lessons, play soccer with the boys, play house with the girls, barbeque chicken, mix cement, build, paint, repair the electricity, repeatedly shock myself with electricty, fix the plumbing, lead Bible study everynight, carry the little ones off to bed after they've fallen asleep, collapse onto my on bed, fall asleep, rinse, repeat.

What's the climate like.

It's too damn hot. Right now it's 95F (35C). Later in the hotter months it will regularly push 104F (40C). Medically speaking, if you have a fever of 104, they put you on ice because your brain is in danger of frying. But the hot months are also the rainy months, so when it gets just unbearable it might start to rain, leaving the rest of the day muggy and hot. That was somehow supposed to be the bright spot, but now that I write it down it just sounds miserable.

What's the food like?

Simple, seasonal. If you think back to how people at in America a hundred years ago, that is much of how it is. You did not go into the grocery store and find apples year round because apples were not being shipped from Honduras or bananas from Guatemala or oranges from Brazil in February. You had apples when they were in season, only when they were in season. The only time you got a treat was when the Wells Fargo Wagon came to town with a box of maple sugar for your birthday, you got some grapefruit from Tampa, some salmon from Seattle in September, you hope to get your raisins from fresno, or the D.A.R. had sent a cannon for the courthouse square.

Beans are in season year round, and they are eaten with rice from Asia or cornmeal from America/Russia. Yes, Mozambique can produce rice and corn locally, but the percentage that it contributes toward total consumption is not even in the double digits. Other than that, mangoes, peanuts, cashews, bananas, oranges, papaya are main season things around here. To a lesser extent there are tomatoes, onions, garlic, coconuts, corn, lemons, tangerines, vegatable oil, chicken, and goat.

How are the utilities there?

SAT prep time. Answer the following comparison Nampula is to Dodge City as

A)Maputo is to New York City

B)TJ is to Marshall Dillon

C)the municipal water supply is to watered-down whisky.

D)all of the above.

If you answered D, you are correct. We are in the disparaged northern end of the country, far away from most luxury and development. Now, we are clearly not living in the bush with no electricity or water or anything. In fact we are far from it. But here is some perspective. Several weeks ago the capital city Maputo lost electricity for two hours city wide and it made news with people demanding to know why there was an outage. Then, not even a week later. The entire northern half of the country was without power on a Sunday from 5am to 8pm as a part of electricity rationing. (The news publicized it as planned maintenance, but people I know on the inside say it is rationing, as this happens about month). This is in addition to the electricity browning out at least an hour a day, every day.

Where we are, and heading into the high point of the dry season, water is turned off to most all homes on our side of town during the day and then selectively turned on at night. The reason is because there is not enough water to go around, and because during the day, water is rerouted exclusively to the beer factory. Many people I talk to are fine with this because, in their words, if the water was instead coming in to their homes and not the beer factory they would have nothing to drink.

The Tragedy Of Our Commons

or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Start Eating Mangoes

In relating the story of the mangoes, there was one glaring omission in the tale: the reason for people to eat unripened mangoes and get self-inflicted diarrhea.

If you haven't read it go back and take a look first. We here have all tried to wrap our heads around it and have come up with little in terms of motivation or desire to eat this hard, bitter fruit. Several people I talked to even compared the kids to drug addicts—for instance let's say a habitual meth user—whose practice is particularly destructive. Others bristled at the idea of comparing the kids eating unripened mangoes to hardened meth user, so we searched for another explanation.

The explanation I like is referred to as the Tragedy of the commons. It comes from early 19th century economics, and the parable states the following: Imagine there is a community where each member of the community raise his or her own cows. The cows all graze together in a large commons (a tract without an owner). Eventually, one of the herders decided that his situation would improve if he had more heads cattle to herd, and thus more milk/meat/income and he sets about increasing his herd. Say for example instead of having fifteen heads he now has twenty.

A second herdsman, seeing that his situation too may be improved also decides to increase his herd as well. Say that he goes from five to twenty. Eventually more herdsmen, seeing that their individual wealth may also be improved, set about buying more cattle and put the cattle out to graze in the commons.

Eventually, the herdsmen see that the cattle are consuming the food in the tract at an increasing rate. However, seeing that his individual wealth would be reduced by decreasing the size of his heard, he opts instead to continue with the present level (or even increasing the number) of cattle. Eventually, instead of the commons providing sustenance for, say, ten years, it only provides the cattle for two years, after which the farmers are without recourse and the cattle die.

It is tragic in the classical sense that the decisions of the herdsmen directly lead to their demise and ability to make a living. The idea is that each herdsmen made what was individually a logical decision to improve his economics, but that collectively the sum of their decisions was illogical and destructive to the whole of the farmers because the commons was depleted of grass sooner rather than later. This dilemma is also often referred to the shared resource problem, or the finite resource problem, among many other derivations of the same name. The idea is that there is a finite, shared natural resource (the commons) and if each takes the group into account the resource will survive, but each making an individual (and rational) decision to increase his personal holdings will invite the completion of the resource.

In the real world, the herdsmen would innovate and move to a different tract of land, or find a different source of food. An example is to think about how many whale farmers you know. You don't know any?. That's because there are no whale farmers

This doesn't count.

In the 18th and early 19th century there was an insatiable appetite for whale oil the world over. Companies and nations hunted as many whales as possible to feed the demand, however, hundreds and thousands that were also hunting and killing as many whales as possible. Whales practically disappeared. 

But when they almost went extinct, people innovated and developed substitutes for whale oil. That guy who invested in whale farms lost everything because the only people hunting whales these days are the Japanese.

And everyone knows the Japanese do not want to be fed, they want to hunt.

And how's that for an introduction?! If you're not already bored after more than six-hundred words, we're getting to the payoff pretty soon here.

So I began to think of the kids eating mangoes like this, as people competing to utilize a shared resource. But unfortunately for this explanation, the Tragedy of the Commons is very clear in stating that individuals make a decision which is in their best interest, but when everybody makes the decision, it is detrimental to the whole of the community. How is getting diarrhea from eating unripe mangoes in anybody's best interest?

But behaviorally, there is much more depth to this story. Think of it like this: How many of you grew up in a home with a cookie jar (I see the light bulbs going off in your head). Mom makes cookies, and when you were too short to reach the cookie jar (or granola if you're from a weird healthy household) she would dutifully dispense the cookies snack-appropriate intervals. You would notice that if you grew up with siblings, you would normally all receive the same amount of cookies. [Ed. Note: Mom loved me more and I got more cookies. Sorry to break it to you, brothers.]

However, when you were tall enough to reach the cookie jar, you found it in your best interest to eat a cookie whenever you darn well pleased. And you did as you pleased even though with your siblings doing the same thing it meant that the cookie jar would be emptied in a matter days—or in our household, a matter of hours—leaving the family without cookies.

How many of you, seeing the cookie jar with only two cookies left in it, would not race and cram those cookies in you mouth faster than you can say “diabetes”? All of you would, unless you're a saint, but we'll talk about saints later. In that moment you were individually putting your goals ahead of the families and you just depleted your shared resource. I would sarcastically congratulate you, but then I would remember you are pleased with yourself for eating the last two cookies.

Digging deeper, however, what you your fear is not that the cookie jar will eventually run out, but your fear is that your sibling* will eat half the cookie jar in the middle of the night and you will be left with nothing. Your desire to eat cookies is two-fold. 1) You wish to fill your tummy, and 2) you wish to prevent your brothers from eating a larger share of cookies, so you eat them first, thereby preventing him from doing the same to you.

*For those of you not understanding the cookie metaphor—say you grew up in a house full of health-conscious sisters—you can substitute sharing of shoes or clothes or shampoo or something. If that still doesn't hit home, imagine using all the gas in the family sedan. Who hasn't had their sibling return from his/her joyride as you wait to use the car only to find it has no gas. And if your parents were rich and the gas tank never hit the E, I'm out of examples. You're on your own.

Now lets bring our discourse back home. Remember, our motivation was to talk about my kids eating mangoes from the trees before they ripen, at great risk to their own health.

It is clearly in nobody's self-interest to get diarrhea. It is also not in the greater interest of the group to over indulge in mangoes. However, it is in the selfish interests of the each kid to insure the somebody else is not eating all the mangoes when she is not getting any. That is selfishness. That is sin.

You see, for me, I see this as a behavioral problem (duh) and not only as an economics problem. I see it as the inability of the kids to make a wise decision that will benefit both themselves and everybody around them. Adam Smith, widely considered the first economist, has said making a moral judgment relies on the ability of the first person to put himself in the position of the second person and, from that perspective, make a decision that is beneficial to both of them. But here's the rub: Adam Smith didn't say that first. Jesus did.

As is often the case, the mangoes did just fine staying put on the trees, but then one person decided to start eating mangoes and slowly the dominoes cascaded and a huge portion of the kids are now eating mangoes and giving themselves diarrhea. You may argue that they are only kids unable to make a clear judgment decision regarding mangoes. I argue that this orphanage is full of fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year old boys and girls that have been complaining of diarrhea for over a month, not because they want the mangoes for themselves, but because they are afraid of the mangoes ripening and another person eating more mangoes than herself.

The depletion of our mangoes is because the kids are more concerned with preventing their neighbor from eating ripened mangoes than they are concerned with loving their neighbor as themselves!

As some of the kids have bluntly told me, they continue frustrated because they know that if they change, and are the only person to change, the situation is not improved and individually they are worse off. The only way to improve is if everybody can multilaterally make the decision to lay off the mangoes. But if not everybody does, those that do are going to “lose”. While this situation is fairly anecdotal, it does fit in to the larger lack of altruism that is a hallmark of the culture at large.

The situation with the mangoes is hard to understand because it goes against conventional wisdom—kids intentionally over-indulging in mangoes and getting crazy diarrhea. But I would also posit that the phrase “conventional wisdom” is itself a misnomer because it wisdom was conventional, it would be cheaply gained it would not be valued as true wisdom.

So if you can't quite it out, know that we are right there with you. And if you've got a better explanation other than than selfishness and sin, please contribute, because after seventeen-hundred words I've got no more ideas on this end.

FAQ's Part 2

Here are some more of your questions that were asked frequently of me.

HIV/AIDS? Is that the biggest health problem?

The rate of infection for the city we are is guesstimated (yes, guesstimated) around 16 percent. Or about 1-in-6 people. It is a big burden on the state especially as they try to maintain large numbers of employed public servants. Imagine the shortage of teachers every year with the huge number of them are not going to be able to consistently go to work or that will just die during the year. In rural locations, the rate is less. In the bigger cities to the south of us, the rate is much, much higher, and may approach 30%. None of our kids our HIV+.

Much more common health problems are malaria, because of mosquitos, and diarrhea, because of a lack of sanitation and clean drinking water. Malaria is something that the average Mozambican gets twice a year. Our kids, due to rigorous use of mosquito nets, can often go up to two years without getting it. It is a disease that each time you get, you build resistance to. However, it is very dangerous among infants and the elderly. Diarrhea and, to a lesser extent, cholera, are also more that a nuisance. Diarrhea is a legitimate cause of death among children under five.

There are also other diseases among the general population, like pneumonia, tuberculosis, that are a complication of HIV. Since there is a stigma against testing or revealing your status, many people face prolonged illness when the underlying cause is AIDS. There is also a high rate of STD, and it is estimated that over 80% of adults have at least one sexually transmitted disease.

Are there lots of orphans?

Not as many as there could be. Mozambique skews very young, as more than half the country is under the age of 16. However, life expectancy is pushing 45, so the population isn't booming as much as you might expect. Also, child mortality is 25%. That means that one in every four children don't live past the age of five. This is due to just poor health and no development. That said, people have very large families (six and seven kids is not abnormal). This is not because of a lack of birth control or knowledge, but because kids act as a form of social security. When you are old, your kids take care of you, so the more kids, the more people there are to take care of you.

Going back to the orphan question, I have yet to see an official stat on that question, but needless to say that if we were to put out an add saying “Orphanage. Space available. Inquire within.” there would be thousands of people here before lunchtime. More so than orphaned children is just the absolute and utter poverty that exists.

What are incomes like?

There is a growing number of a wealthy class, people that have cars and satellite TV's and computers. It is putting a huge burden on the roads and traffic is generally horrible. However, on average, people here still live on just over a dollar a day. ON AVERAGE! Meaning that for all the people in their cars and computers, the harsher reality is that most people are taking about two dollars a day to support their whole family. Most people really do live hand to mouth.

There is no service sector (hotels, restaurants) and the northern half of the country is at large an agrarian society. There is no technology or manufacturing and traditionally the north has relied on the export of cashews. This year (and cashews are just starting to be gathered), the price of cashews has been set at less than half of what is historically has been because of supposed over-production the last two years, meaning the scores of thousands are going to lose an essential source of income.

The government has put an incredible emphasis on building the economy by way of luring foreign investment (read: China) in obtaining natural resources. However, new studies show that the Chinese prefer to bring their own workers and Mozambicans are almost never hired at more than minimum wage. Also, the people are angered because they know that these projects (for coal, natural gas, timber) are bringing in taxes and revenue to the state, but they are not seeing the returns. This is in part because a huge portion of the Mozambican budget is made of up foreign aid. As domestic revenues rise, this aid is pared back so that the overall cash flow remains the same. It's complicated.

But as for real jobs, unemployment is impossible to count and is estimated around 50%.

More to come later. And if you have a question you have frequently asked yourself, just put it in the comments section and we'll answer it.