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.

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.

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.