Life on the farm

This is Dionisio. He is our resident green thumb. The last year or so he and a handful of other boys have turned into quite the entrepreneurs. Here he is pictured in his “garden”.

He and the other boys, taking small plastic bags, have been growing trees and selling the saplings. The have quite a collection of lemon, orange, papaya, banana, passion fruit, and tangerine trees. They have a little sign out front saying “plants sold here” or something of the sort. But unfortunately as the orphage is on a quiet and lonely street, nobody over comes by so the plants have just been slowly growing on their own here.

Dionisio and the others have diligently been watering and caring for their trees for about a year, and their patience has finally paid off as last week they landed whale of a customer that bought over two hundred of his plants: Victor.

The plants are to put all around our farmland we recently just bought that's about 20 minutes away from where the orphanage it. Dionisio and all the other kids spent days out there last week as we transplanted all the pants into the ground all throughout the land.

And Dionisio is learning a lot about entrepreneurship. Namely, negotiating before you perform a service or provide goods (of which he did both). Now, instead of him receiving the market price for his plants, Victor has given himself a volume discount,AND the friends-and-family discount, AND opted to not charge him for the water he used nor rent for the space on the orphanage where his garden sits, AND rang up the account on store credit.

The second lesson he is learning is to not forget your investors. You see, as the boys have been doing their project here, the person that has diligently been buying oranges and tangerines and the like and giving all the seeds to them has been me. Now that they've hit pay-dirt, I've come knocking wanting a return on my venture capital that was so earnestly invested in their enterprise.

This is all tongue-in-cheek of course. When we started purchasing the farmland last year (with the goal of becoming a source of income for the orphanage) we had asked the boys to start germinating plants to eventually put them in the ground. I think Victor promised them a couple of bicycles as a reward. And as the farm project has been taking longer than anticipated, they've enjoyed selling some plants on the side.

As the boys have seen his success after this last week when all his stock got bot basically with a standing request to buy anything and everything else to put in our farm, the other boys have been getting in on the gig too. Jordao staked out a section of the garden but is frustrated that the chicken bones he planted haven't sprouted yet and Jose has been religiously watering the salt he planted in his section. One of these days I will sit them down to explain how plants work, but I kind of want to see what else they'll plant first—pens, pencils, soccer balls, spoons, there really is no way to tell without waiting to find out.

Dial W for Whaaaaat?

I have long bemoaned the problems with cell phones here. Everybody uses them because as Mozambique started developing, it was cheaper and more practical than using landlines. Most people have at least one cellphone (with a prepayed account, no contracts) because it is both a status symbol, and they will have one for each of the two carriers. Nowadays, phones have started showing up for sale (that are obviously pirated and from China, but mostly functional) that have space for two SIM cards, allowing people to consolidate their phone into one big, shiny, Noika, Blackbery, Samsun, or countless other knock-offs.

The reason to have a number with each of the two networks is that one is likely to just plain not work. If you really need to you can use the other number to get a hold of somebody. I've talked about how calls drop at an alarming rate (and most never go through to start with) and how text messages can sometimes get delivered hours or days later.

But now I've got a new conundrum. What happens when your phone changes numbers on you?

Such was the predicament last week when I tried to call Daniel, a worker at the orphanage. I knew he was out as his farm and I needed to get him on the phone to ask him a question. I was a little surprised when my call to Daniel, who is single and my roommate, was answered by a girl. The exchange was a little awkward.

TJ: Daniel?

Random Girl: Who?

TJ: Umm, is Daniel there?

Girl: I don't think so. Who is this?

TJ: His roommate. Where is the owner of the telephone?

Girl: Right here. It's me.

TJ: No, the owner. DANIEL! Give the phone to him.

Girl: There is no Daniel here. Try calling again later.

There was considerable confusion on my part. I tried Daniel's other phone number, but the call wouldn't go through. I went to somebody else to confirm that I had the right number for Daniel, who I have called literally hundreds of times. I was using the right number. I called again.

Girl: Yes?

TJ: WHERE IS DANIEL I NEED TO TALK TO HIM NOW!?

Girl: Daniel you say?

TJ: Yes, Daniel. Daniel Daniel.

Girl: Hmm, I think he is a coworker of mine, let me call him and ask where he is.

TJ: No, he's a coworker of mine. Give the phone to him!

Girl: Hmm, I think you need to calm down. Goodbye.

Through the day, several other people started asking me what was wrong with Daniel's phone, because this chick kept answering whenever they called him. Eventually, Daniel called me on an unrelated not and was surprised to hear that I had been trying to reach him. His phone had been in his pocket the whole day. He was even more surprised when I called him and this girl answered once again! We finally figured out that she lives in Maputo (thousands of km away) and is tired of getting phone calls for this Daniel guy and wants to know what is happening.

It turns out that for whatever reason, the cell network (or whatever it is) just all on its own decided to redirect all of Daniel's calls to this random telephone number. The number also happened to be on a different network. A short trip the next day to the cell phone store and it all got straightened out and now his calls work just fine.

Now, I had known that calls occasionally get misplaced. I never answer my phone after 5pm from an unidentified number because it always somebody going, “Hey, [Billy, Fred, Susan, any name except mine]. How are you doing? What's up?” It is obviously a call never meant for me. I used to think people just typed a number wrong, but now I realize that there are these misplaced calls.

And yes, as numerous people have since told me, this is the kind of thing that breaks up marriages. Just a simple phone call to your husband, and then some strange unknown lady's voice answers, says that person is not here, and abruptly hangs up. People know that phone calls get "misplaced" so to speak, but all it takes here is for one person once upon a time to have used that excuse and now every Dick, Tom, and Harry is telling there wife that they didn't lend their phone to anybody, it must have been a bad connection.

There is already such a level of mistrust among spouses here at large that even little spark will set off a powder keg. When we have been doing construction and have workers staying late, we will have to accompany them home all the way to their houses, make eye contact with their spouses, and declare that he was working late and was not out somewhere he doesn't belong.

How long is "Miller Time"?

Maybe you are a type-A, pocket protector-wearing, penny-pinching, nervous-Nellie budgeter in your home. You know when you go into work what percentage of your time is paying for taxes, what percent of your time is going towards your mortgage, your food, car payments, vacation fund, and what part sits burning a hole in your pocket.

Or maybe you don't worry about that stuff, que sera sera, and when all the bills have been paid you go celebrate with a shopping spree at Nordstroms, or other times you're looking under the cushions of the couch to find enough spare change for a milkshake.

Regardless of how much or little you make, each of you kind of has an idea how much money you have for entertainment, shopping, eating out and the like.

A recent story in The Economist looked at how long people have to work in order to afford a beer in different countries. In America, a person at minimum wage has to work I think only fifteen minutes to afford a pint of average-priced domestic beer. Mozambique was not listed in that study. However, a quick calculation on my napkin tells me that a Mozambican working at minimum wage (which is not an average Mozambican) needs over two hours in order to afford a beer.

Statistically, in America, you make more than minimum wage and spend even less time affording that beer.

Statistically, in Mozambique, you don't have a job that pays a minimum wage the money you live each day would barely cover the price of just one beer. If you're a resident of Nampula, its about two beers every three days. And that is with absolutely no other purchases.

And yes, beer and alcohol is a real destroyer of families here. Its a vice that requires more money than what is left over a the end of the month. It is more likely to be the first thing that comes out of a paycheck rather than the last. And I have yet to meet the person that, when imbibing, will partake of only one beer. Drinking here is an activity with the motive to forget and escape everything and the beer (or wine, or moonshine) does not stop flowing until the drinker in passed out.

Christmas Time Is Here....Ergh.

Christmas tends to bring out the crazy in people. Not just in America, but in Mozambique as well.

For one, Christmas here is more a bank holiday than a month-long build up to an event involving food, presents, family, lights, and movie marathons on basic cable. Here it's a day of no work and usually some nice food. It's not full of movies and songs and TV specials that haven't changed since the time baby-boomers were kids. This is due more to not only utter lack of disposable income but also that culturally, Christmas is a Christian holiday in a culture that doesn't have a thousand years of history around the holiday. Heck, Christmas isn't even celebrated on the same day depending if you're in Egypt or Greece or Russia or elsewhere.

But really, at their root, there are many things about celebrating New Years and Christmas in America that just don't make sense. They are arbitrary days chosen to celebrate something (the turning of the calendar and the birth of baby Jesus insane shopping deals). Both come with their equally strange traditions that have nothing to do with actually celebrating what it is they are actually celebrating. You ever actually used a nutcracker that looks like that? Put stockings over the fireplace? Put a tree inside your house for goodness sake?! Have you seen Bethlehem? There is an absurd lack of 6 foot tall douglas firs there. It's the only month during the year when eggnog is acceptable and if you don't stay up till midnight on December 31^st there is something wrong with your “holiday spirit”.

I'm not being a Scrooge here. I genuinely love Christmas, being together with family, all the food associated with it, the weather, the lights, the sounds. As much as people decry commercialism or the hijacking of Christmas, at least in my family we get together to celebrate God's love for us and give gifts in recognition of the gift that Jesus is to us. I love New Years too, but the reason is because it is the second most important sports day of the year. I associate Keith Jackson with being the sound of the holidays more than Bing Crosby. Because really, I can't think of a single New Years tradition in my family other than waking up early, never leaving the sofa the whole day, and watching “the grandaddy of them all”.

Mozambique has lots of traditions for the holiday season too. Much of it is co-opted because the Christmas holiday itself is co-opted from a European tradition. Here, the week before Christmas is accompanied by getting all the food ready for your Christmas meal. Maybe something special like spaghetti, a goat, beef, cheese, (sometimes all together, there's no real basis for deciding what food can go together). There is no modern Christmas music. Actually, I don't think there is any awareness that there is such a thing as music specific to Christmas because I've heard Michael Bolton sing “Santa Claus is coming to town” on a radio top-ten-most-played countdown in May.

It also involves paying almost twice as much for those things as you normally would because that's how the laws of supply and demand work. Yes, there are laws regulating price gauging, but they are toothless and really only apply to staple commodities like rice and beer. Seriously. People go to jail for raising price of a case of beer by even a cent but can get away with doubling the price of cooking oil.

Nevertheless, price hikes are expected and most people just take it as the cost of celebrating. Everything is shut down for the day (and with Christmas on a Tuesday many things will be shut down most of the week) and people have the day to relax and be with their families and celebrate that fact. New Years is much like this also, except it full of some absolute crazy superstitions.

America has the saying/sentiment that Christmas is the time of peace on earth and good will toward men. Whether or not that is true on a large scale, at least on an anecdotal level, people find the good in their brother, in their neighbor, drop a dime in the Salvation Army. You might also get dejected when you think about that dude that totally took your parking spot after you waited five minutes for it.

Here in Mozambique, sayings/sentiments abound even when there is no great evidence for it. As we approach the end of the year people are constantly worried about getting sick or dying because, as everybody here knows, this time of year is full of accidents and sickness and death. On some level, a lot of it is kind of like the athlete that tries to pump himself up before the game. People like to say how difficult this time of year is so that when they get to January First they can breath a deep sigh of relief and celebrate that the bad has passed them over and they made it safe and sound into a new year.

Statistically, more people don't die or get sick in December than any other month. In fact, looking at just getting sick, the most cases of malaria happen between February and April. Its just one of the things that for some reason stuck, like eggnog. You can drink eggnog any time of year, but you can only buy it at Christmas. Do you know hard it is to buy eggnog in a grocery store for your Fourth of July party? Impossible.

So as we eagerly await the New Year when sickness and death will magically pass away, I wish you tidings of comfort and joy (and a great deal on your new flat-screen TV). And early and hearty Merry Christmas to all.

To Catch A Predator

One of the things that is hard, as I discovered while visiting people in America, is to make people realize how absolutely commonplace some things are. There is such a contrast between what is accepted as “normal”. One example is that, in Mozambique, littering is just what you do. That's because so little of what you consume is waste that usually what gets thrown out is a banana peel or maybe a pop can or something along those lines. When our trash heap gets full we just take it out of town and dump it wherever we want. Leaves, branches, wrappers, boxes, papers, everything. There is no such thing as separating your recycling. You are probably shaking you head saying that's ridiculous. You probably live in the Northwest where you get chastised for putting a plastic bottle in with the metal cans.

The point I'm trying to make is you see recycling as responsible and normative. Kids in Nampula see it as redundant; trash is trash. Just as you consider getting a coffee from Starbucks every morning as necessary and normal while I see it as addictive and prodigal.

I tell people different things are in Nampula and they just can't quite fathom it. I say how short life expectancy is (45) and it's shocking to them. I say how short school days are (3 or 4 hrs) and its a surprise. I say how widespread corruption is and it's alarming. I say how long people walk just to get water and it's saddening. But to me it's just the way things are and after a while I just accept it as fact. That's not to say I feel like anything is any less tragic or sad, it is just sometimes is a little lost on me because it's “normal” to life in Nampula.

But those are mostly just cold statistics. What is harder to accept sometimes is how different behaviors can be. I want to stress the idea that something can be normal without being right. If someone gets murdered in your community, it can be a real shock. If you live somewhere like Detroit, where folks are murdered daily, it can be numbing.

This year there was an incident at the high school here. Five students (NONE OF OURS, I WANT TO BE SUPER CLEAR ON THAT) came forward to say that a teacher at the school had given them HIV. A sixth girl came forward to say that she had slept with the teacher but had stopped recently and had not tested positive for the disease. Classes were canceled for the day and all the teachers were summoned for a meeting.

What was your first reaction at hearing this. If you just read through it without thinking, read it again. I'll wait for you....

Five girls got HIV after sleeping with their teacher! My first reaction was disgust at how these girls were probably pressured by the teacher in exchange for getting a passing grade. Teachers will sometime select certain people and pressure them and give them undeservedly bad results in order to exact favors from them later on. These favors are usually in the form of money or sex.

Then my second reaction was that there was no way that five and almost six girls got pressured. At least one of them would have to have stepped forward before now. How overt was this teacher, and why had nobody said anything until now. At least another teacher would be jealous or a boyfriend of these girls would have found out. I was mad and deeply saddened.

You really need to understand that is is not even 10% as shocking as it would be where you are living (assuming you don't live in sub-Saharan Africa). This probably isn't even 2% as shocking as you think it is. Troubling and deeply sad, definitely. But not shocking. The reason is, sadly to say, it happens quite a bit. These kinds of events flood the rumor mill, but hardly makes the news as a scandal.

Then as each piece of the puzzle came in, my opinion and emotions became more and more confusing and layered.

We learned that the teacher at the center of this had been kicked out of a high school across town for almost the exact same thing. I even found a few news stories online from the year before. That time he had been accused of giving 4 girls HIV in exchange for passing grades at the end of the year. Instead of being fired, he was just transferred quietly. To our school. Lucky us. This man started to seem like a predator who goes about quaerens quem devoret.

Then we learned that during the morning when all of this unfolded, there was an assembly held and the principal had all the girls come stand in front and told anybody else that had information to come forward and say it in front of the whole school. At this point any idea of privacy for these girls was gone and everybody knew their names and faces. I was horrified that these girls would be the ones vilified during the situation and made examples of in front of the class. The object was to subtly shame these girls and discourage anybody else from speaking out.

Then we started hearing from some of our kids that attend the high school. Two boys in particular that have class with all these girls and their teacher (they are all in grade 12). They say, in the case of at least four of these girls, that is probably the only way they were going to pass that year as they were mostly illiterate. But not because they were being treated unfairly or had to succumb to these means in order to pass, but basically because that was the way these girls had obtained passing grades since forever. It seems the girls went about quaerens per quem ad devoret.

You see, while some people try to get extra help from the teacher by asking if they can stay after class or come in during lunch to discuss a reading or solve some problem, these girls get extra help by on day one of the school year asking questions like “What's your phone number? What neighborhood do you live in? What hours are your wife not home?” The boys said—and while this is not exactly the expression they used it conveys the same meaning—that these girls were putting it on pretty heavily.

So here is the summary of what we have so far. Five girls get HIV from sleeping with a teacher. Abhorrent in every way. Girls appeared to be trading sex for passing grades. Not surprising in the least. The principal calls out the girls and has them show their faces to everybody. Shocking. The girls turn out to be the ones initiating with the teacher. Disgraceful.

I talked soon after with some of our girls to get their take on it. One that knows them basically had the attitude that they got what was coming to them and was glad because as girls get away with this it puts that much more pressure on the rest of the girls to do the same and almost becomes expected behavior. Others that didn't them were not surprised and say that almost from day one you can spot the girls that, as they say here, are running after teachers for some "special help".

The fallout from all of this? The story didn't even make the news. If it did, thousands of people would have been complaining wanting to know why the TV cameras and journalists never came to their school, because that stuff happens all over the place. The girls, they quietly stay put and are finishing the rest of the year. And have HIV for the rest of their lives.

The teacher, instead of being transferred, just went from teaching during the day to teaching night school. If anything, it might have been just the upgrade he wanted. He stays at the same school, and gets to teach for half the hours. People generally agree that the teacher came out a winner in this situation because they say he went from having only six girls to having at least twenty. Night school is full people that generally just pay a bribe to pass a class and is notorious for sexual promiscuity in every way shape and form. Teachers with other teachers, students with other students, and teachers with students. People will fail a grade five times in a row and keep enrolling in adult education classes not because they want to pass, but because it is the equivalent of going to a bar for a single person. If you want a hookup, and are looking for others that want the same, you go to night school.

As you wrestle with this story, keep in mind two things I said in the beginning. Being normal or a common occurrence does not make it right. What happened is wrong and sinful and detestable in every way. The second thing is to not impose your thinking or attitudes on the characters in this story. As deplorable as this situation was, the tendency would be to say this teacher is a predator and even if the girls voluntarily got involved with him, they were only giving into a sexist archetype and were victims of societal pressures. I argue that the situation is more complex than that, and I know many of you will disagree with me. But in saying that, I believe it does not make what happened any less tragic. Just know that what is normal here may not be so wherever you are reading this.

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.

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.

'mericuh!

Now having been back at the orphanage for about a month, I have been pretty much silent on how my time went in America. In a word: AWESOME. It two months filled with family, baseball, friends, hikes, baseball, food, movies, baseball, and baseball. Yes, there was lot's of baseball.

The beginning of my time was marked by a week in Los Angeles. The pretext of the trip was celebrating my Grandparent's 50th wedding anniverary. In Nampula, a land where life expectancy does not reach fifty years, the kid's were rather incredulous when I told them about the event. “Really, I think you mean to say they're turning fifty? Oh, they've been married fifty years? To each other? The whole time?”

Only one of us was actually there, but thanks to the extra shirts all four of us get to relive the excitement.

It included a couple days at Disneyland, where I resisted the urge not to eat every turkey leg in sight. Being back in America and then two days later going to Disneyland was not as much culture shock as I expected after being in Nampula for two years. If I ever started feeling out of place I'd just go and do the jungle cruise and feel right at home (seriously).

Lost Kids and A Haircut.

Folks often ask about how kids come to be in our orphanage. This post is not about that. This post is about me getting my hair cut. I know, it sounds like I'm misleading you. Yes, but at the same time I'm not misleading. This post is about getting my hair cut and how kid's don't come to be in our orphanage. See what I did there? This could be a very long post, but I'm thinking this is just going to be not a long post. Again, see it?

The first several times I got a haircut, I went to people I knew that had a barbershop in the bairro and paid a dollar for them to shave my head. This turned out to be more complicated then it sounds. That's also part of the reason I just never got a haircut. But then again, I've been not getting haircuts since about 8^th grade. I'd get a haircut at the start of spring and another at the start of school. And most the time it was just me or one of my brothers with the clippers in the garage making me look like I was auditioning for the marines. It's just easier that way.

Until one day I found somebody in Nampula that could actually cut hair worth a dang. Sure, it would have been easier to maybe go to one of the other missionaries in town that has a wife that knows how to cut hair, but it's not just an adventure that way. The guy I go, we now know each other by name and he's always thrilled to see me and has tons of stories to tell whenever I show up. His barber shop is right next to the hospital and so there's always lots of crazy stories about people getting treated after run-ins with the police or jilted ex-lovers or bandits. Its an entertaining time for sure. He knows I work in the orphanage and is always telling me how cool it is what I'm doing.

The last time I went in there he had whole story lined up to tell. I could tell that this one was much more somber by the tone he took as he started. It was two days before I showed up for a haircut that this all took place. He said that he came home one day to find his wife panicked and stressing out. It turns out that she had set her kid down for a minute to run around the corner and buy cooking oil. When she came back, her kid, age 4, was gone. She had no idea if he had wandered off or got taken or was just hiding. They looked all night and all night and finally wandered into to an orphanage on his side of town where somebody had found him wandering around and took him there not knowing who the kid was or who he belonged to.

He was telling me that even though it wasn't my orphanage and I'm on the other side of town, he's so grateful and appreciative that it existed for him to be able to get his kid back. He even try to give me a free haircut. I refused his gratitude and paid a measly two dollars for the haircut. It was really nice though to find people in Mozambique appreciative of the ministry that the orphanage is.

That might lead you to wonder if we ever wind up with lost and abandoned kids. The answer is no. Kind of anticlimatic, huh. There's actually kind of a system in place for that. Usually the kids just get taken to the courthouse and then info gets sent out to the police and announcements get made on the radio. Ideally, that's what is supposed to happen. However it is such a frequent occurrence that the radio station will obligingly mention it once or twice in passing and you'd be lucky to find a beat policeman that has valuable information if you're looking for your kid.

What is much more common is for people to come to the orphanage looking for a kid that was lost or abandoned. They leave their contact and we call them if a kid ever shows up, which has never happened. I don't know myself what is happening with these situations. Kids as young as three and four go missing, and everyday you hear about a lost child or children but word never makes it out if they get found. There also seems to be way more people showing up looking for a kid then presenting a kid that was found. I just assume that because of these numbers there is just a surplus of kids forever lost. Unfortunately that's the general consensus among folks here.