Last time around we looked at how Mozambique is really like youtube, google, twitter, and ebay. This time we’re going to look at the rest of some of the most popular uses for the internet (no, not porn).
ILLEGAL MUSIC / MOVIE DOWNLOADING
Similarities: I've found that many people listen to music on demand via youtube, using it like a magical digital jukebox. Youtube is great if you only want to listen to, like, every song that has ever been recorded. But as soon as you want to slap that song on your iPod and have it portable you’re going to need to download those sweet rhythms to your hard drive.
But never fear. Go ahead and download that, because you aren’t going to pay for a whole CD worth of the one or two songs you really want.
Movies are kind of the same thing. Places free internet video sites are okay, but don’t have a ton of stuff.
Luckily, you live in Mozambique, so there are plenty of options, For music, I’ll have to refer you back to the principle of Youtube. You can just ask anybody to sing anything and they’ll do it, even if they don't know the song. For movies, as much fun as it was to watch the kids act out all 4 hours of “Lawrence of Arabia”, you need to be a little more brazen. Brazen enough to walk to literally any street corner and pay about 30¢ per title. Thanks to illegal movies coming in from China, I have access to a library of titles big enough to make Netflix jealous. About a month ago I got my hands on every Pixar film, all four Indiana Jones movies, about 9 Will Smith action movies, and every Jack Ryan/ Tom Clancy movie ever. There were a total of 29 movies. The sum I paid for them? A whopping $8.60. And the kids love the Pixar films. Well, anything would be better than the alternative.
3.5 hours of wandering around and 30 minutes of fighting wasn’t that hard to direct. Finding eyeliner, now that was hard
Differences: Every now and then I get a movie that has these “English” closed-captions that often make the movie much more complicated and sometimes change the entire plot of the movie.
“Luke, I had sex with your mother!”
In my never ending quest to paint a picture of Mozambique for you, the reader, today I will explain to you Mozambique using terms you most likely are familiar with. How so? By comparing Mozambique to the internet! By the end of the post I’ll have shown you that anything you can find on the internet you can find in Mozambique.
With a few exceptions.
Lets start with something that most of you internet users are pretty familiar with:
YOUTUBE
Similarities: I don’t know what YouTube has turned into now, but when I left America I vaguely remember it being mainly a collection of videos of cats, stupid accidents where somebody gets hurts put people think its hilarious (like a monkey punching an elderly gentleman in the crotch), people that aren’t good singers imitating professional singers (that aren’t good either), and people doing Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” dance. Well, its not that much of a stretch to consider that as a slice of Mozambique: People doing the single ladies dance, people imitating professional singers, and monkeys punching people in the crotch. Combinations of any of the are also very acceptable.
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.
Differences: The main difference would be instead of funny videos that your neighbor keeps emailing you of his cat chasing a laser pointer, your neighbor keeps emailing videos of his goat chasing a laser pointer. And instead of emailing you, he actually just comes over to tell you all about it.
Growing up in America there is a certain requirement for young boys to have certain aspirations for when they are older. These aspirations usually include wanting to grow up to be a baseball player, a dentist, a firefighter, a G.I. Joe, or a NASCAR driver. That last one was probably just me.
Growing up I never knew what little girls wanted to be. I always assumed they wanted to be married to baseball players, G.I. Joes, or NASCAR drivers.
We try to get our kids to aspire to high goals around here. When they say things like, “One day I want to be the governor” we don’t laugh at them at tell them to be realistic. They get encouraged to study hard and excel in school and know about what is happening in the world today. Lately, because school just started back up and with all the kids we sent to vocational school I’ve been asking the kids what they want to be when they grow up.
One day last week all the kids came up to me after school laughing at what Jordao did. Jordao is in second grade and when his teacher asked him what he wants to be when he got older he replied by saying he wants to be an appacho. That’s slang around these parts for guys that hand out in the industrial part of town and carry 100lb sacks of cement on their heads to the trucks of people that purchased the cement sacks. Its one of the crudest forms of work around here and all the guys that do it are illiterate, uneducated, and often crazy (from all that weight squishing their brains). They are lucky to get paid about a dollar a day for work.
It was actually pretty funny because he’s only in second grade and probably just got nervous in front of the class and couldn’t think of any other occupation, but it underscores a more serious point. A lot of the kids come in off living on the streets or roaming about in the jungle. Until we start explaining to them that (most) jobs don’t depend on your uncle being they mayor they have no idea that there are jobs here meant for people with a high school education and a knowledge of what the alphabet it. After explaining to Jordao that if he studies hard enough and passes school he could be anything - a banker, an electrician, or a teacher - he changed his mind. He decided he wanted to be an airplane.
