i like bananas

For the record, bananas are not my most favorite food, (my mom said that even as a baby i didn't like them,)but they are slowing growing on me (the taste, not the banana itself).

 

I have discovered an expensive yet educational way of solving every mother's problem of trying to get her kids to eat.  Remember when you were a kid and you had some food left on your plate, probably something you didn't want to eat, or when you had served yourself "your eyes had been bigger than your stomach" and now you were too full to finish?  And then your mom (or dad) said, "Finish all your food, there are starving kids in Africa." Well, current or future moms and dads of America, worry no more.  Don't try to figure out how to send your children's leftovers here, just send your kid.

 

I can't remember what i ate here my first lunch but i do remember there were green peppers in it.  I think green peppers taste great, i think they look great in food, but i get sick every time i eat them.  I quietly picked them out of the food and set them to the side of my plate.  I planned to eat everything else and then figure out what to do with them.  I didn't have to think of anything because in a flash Victor reaches across the table and stabs all them in one quick motion.  Every following meal, Victor took my peppers.  Sometimes he wouldn't even wait until i'd picked them all out.  They don't let a morsel go to waste here.  (A hungry bum would be hard-pressed to find anything edible in the compost pile here)    

 

After Victor had been eating my peppers for about a week, Mama Gloria (as she is affectionately called), watched me pick them out, i think she was catching on.  She, as well as Clemencia took some off my plate that meal, in fact, all three of them were eating more off my plate than i was.   She hasn't put peppers in anything since.  I felt bad because i really didn't mind picking them out, and it was pretty clear that every one else loved them.  (She has since been cutting them up and putting them in a side dish.) 

 

There is another main ingredient in the food here that still remains: onions.  Onions are in everything.  We eat salad for breakfast every morning, (that took a little getting used to), and regardless of what else is in it, be it shredded beets, carrots, garlic, cilantro, spinach, or whatever other leafy green vegetable i can't pronouce or spell, there is always onions.  When Mama Gloria makes spaghetti, she sautes onions in with it (that's really good).  When she makes eggplant stew, there are onions.  When she makes okra, there are onions.  (You get the idea.)  I should mention right about now that i can deal with the onions, raw or cooked, and even though i'm not fond of eggplant, i can eat that too, but there is one thing in this world that i truly feel should have never been created and when i get to heaven i'm definately having a heart to heart with God on this one: okra.  I was born a Yankee and didn't try to stuff until I went to highschool in Oklahoma, i promised myself, never again. (Forgive me if this happens to be your most favorite food in the world.)  I had been here 9 days and was beginning to think it didn't exist this side of the atlantic, i was wrong.  I walked into the kitchen after my English class had ended to see what Mama Gloria was cooking and if she needed help.  She lifted the lid and said, "you like?"  It was a mucilogenous stew of okra.  I almost choked right then and there.  I feigned a smile and shrugged my shoulders and said, "I'm not sure, i'll have to try it."  I thought i should at least try it since she had already quit putting green peppers in everything.  I always thought of myself as a healthy eater; someone who wasn't afraid to try anything at least once.  This is the first time in my life i have to draw the line and realize that i am indeed quite picky or that Africa boasts some of my least favorite foods.  I tried the okra.  It took all my brain power to keep it down and keep a smile on my face since everyone was anticipating a reaction.  (If i was on Fear Factor and this is what i had to eat, i just might lose.)  During lunch, Clemencia went on and on about how much she loved the okra and that it was her most favorite, (i'm only guessing here since it was in portuguese) but Mama Gloria kept saying thank you so i'm pretty sure that's what she was saying.  She said that most of the previous students and visitors wouldn't eat it (i can't imagine why) and that they didn't have it as often as they could now (i can't wait till next time).  I was anticipating a soon return.  Yesterday the okra lady came to our gate.  If i had only known portuguese i would have told her that we were out of money, that we forgot how to cook it, or that everyone had contracted a serious allergy to it...but alas too late.  A huge bag of it sits in the fridge, awaiting its death by stewing. 

 

Whatever we don't eat, Furia the dog, gets to eat.  That dog gets the royal treament when it comes to scraps.  They cut it up and cook it; her food sometimes looks better than ours.  Its not like she doesn't have teeth, they claim she takes a while to warm up to new people because i still see her pearly whites if i go near where she is chained up.  One day, actually it was the day we had okra, they made her mashed potatoes with some vegetable cut up in it...i'm serious when i say i considered sharing lunch with Furia that day, grimacing teeth and all. 

 

To save Mama Gloria's reputation i should say that just about everything she makes tastes great.  Really.  The okra was the only thing in the past 2 weeks that i struggled with and that really had nothing to do with how it was prepared.  Overall, the food here is really good, and even if it looks kinda funky, it usually tastes good and if all other reasoning fails, it's healthy.  I still look forward to dinner the most; it usually consists of a mango (which i love), a banana and a slice of bread.  I'm a month passed mango season but they have some of the best in the world.  Victor doesn't like mangos very much, so guess what i get to stab off his plate?     

 

(i also wanted to include an update of my room situation...i got an upgrade from prison cell to princess suite.  When Bettina and Lelio left for Brazil, Clemencia gave me their room.  It's huge, with a double bed in the center and its own bathroom with a gigantic tub (that i wouldn't have enough water to fill anyway, but a tub none-the-less), and geckos who climb the walls and busy themselves eating the mosquitos and other bugs.  Last night i took a shower, (it usually dribbles out of a showerhead about 6' high above the tub).  When i moved the bucket to catch the water i discovered another friend, a little cockroach.  I have heard that if the world was destroyed by a nuclear fallout that cockroaches would be one of the few surviving lifeforms left.  I think that if the nuclear warhead includes a squirt of Dr. Bronner's organic lavender soap then they will just keel over and die, just a hunch.)            

 

"Ogre's are like onions." 

"Why? 'Cuz they stink?" 

"Yes, uh, No! They have layers: Onions have layers, Ogre's have layers, you get it!"

(If i come back smelling like and ogre or an onion, now you'll know why.)       

 

 

 

  

 

     

stompin' at the savoy

Of the many talents these African's were given, two are singing and dancing. They can sing like angels and when it comes to dancing...there is no stopping them. Even the little kids have some major rhythm. When it comes to self-expression they aren't frugile with that either. My first encounter with all of this was on the second night that i was here, but let me back track a little first.

The week before i left colorado, while i was gathering various items for my trip, i went into REI to get some things and say goodbye to my friend Erin who works there. I found her as soon as i walked in and told her i was taking off to Africa, somewhere in the middle of the conversation it came up that i was looking for new and used clothes to take with me. I asked her if she had any ideas where i could get some. She said to hang on a second and that she'd be right back. She came back about a minute later with a smile on her face. One of the supervisors said i could take some of the clothes and shoes from their year-end gearage sale, so we went back to dig around. We looked through the boxes and i pulled out as much of the summer type clothing i could find. I brought what i found back to my apartment and had enough to fill up my large army duffle bag.

It was too late to unpack the first night i got here so i waited till the next evening. I brought Clemencia into the room and showed her the clothes for her and the students. She was like a kid at Christmas going through the clothes and shoes in the bag, she pulled out a few things for herself and then started to separate the other items into piles for various others that i had yet to meet.

After she had separated all the items she picked up a shirt and zip-away pants/shorts along with a pair of sandals and walked into the main room, she motioned to me and said in her thick spanish accent, "Choo come." She had a look of mischief in her eyes like she knew something was about to happen that i was completely unaware of. If i thought she was excited going through the bag of clothes, i was about to learn another definition of excitement. She called for Victor, an 18 year old student and worker here at the school. He appeared in the doorway leading to the back hall. She spoke to him in portuguese and had him sit down on the step of the split-level living room/dining room and handed him the shoes. He tried them on, they fit perfectly. Then the show began; he jumped up and down, screeched, yelped, danced, ran up and down the stairs a few times, banged the sandal on his forehead a few times (apparently that means you really like something) and basically turned into a one-man circus, complete with a finale of an eye-popping squeezing hug for me. The show was repeated for the shirt and pants. I believe the pants got the biggest production. It was later translated to me that he had dreamed of owning a pair of pants like these for a long time and saw them in some store but would never have the money to buy them. The zipper didn't even work and yet he acted as if i just given him the winning ticket to the jackpot. You'd be hard-pressed to find that kind of excitement in the states. I can just see it now...a woman buys a pair of pants for her son she hands them to him out in the parking lot of REI and the store has to call security 'cause he's so excited he's climbing the light posts.

A few days later a pair of merrel walking shoes and shorts was given to Eduardo, our driver. He tried them on, they both fit perfectly too. He is a bit older so his joy was contained to a Bill Cosby jig, which was still entertainment enough for me. He came back a few days later and with the few english words he knows and said that his wife couldn't get him to stop dancing in his new shoes. He also proudly showed me that he got the zipper on his shorts fixed, (they really have no boundaries here).

I gave Clemencia the bag of clothes for her to give out as she saw fit, she would know what would fit who. It seems that every day someone new comes knocking at our gate to talk or visit with someone here at the school and they usually leave with something from the bag. Each time she gives someone something new she calls me into the room where they are trying the item on. Each person has their own way of showing gratitude: a dance, a hug, a " muito obrigado" ("much thanks" in portuguese).

A big thanks to Erin and the folks at REI for their contribution to the happiness of these dressed and dancing natives.

Sing like nobody's listening, Dance like nobody's watching, Love like you've never been hurt before...

(...or if you're from mozambique, sing and dance anyway!)

my name is slim shady.

ok.  where were we?  (i think all has been righted in the african technological world and i can now update my blogspot.) oh, right, i was being picked up in Nelspruit by Clemencia and her driver, Eduardo. 

 

My bags were loaded into the back of the Mitsubishi SUV (this one is quite the piece of machinery but at least it gets us where we want to go) and we headed off.  I assumed we would go straight to the South African/Mozambique border but since neither of them spoke english the guessing games were about to begin.  We stopped at one shop and bought bread.  We stopped at another shop and bought cleaning supplies.  While at the second shop we picked up two people, Bettina and Lelio, both caucasian but neither of which spoke much English, at least not to me.  I would find out later that they were leaving in 3 days to go to Brazil, that Bettina was German and her husband, Lelio, was Brazilian, that they were staying at Lifeline only for a stop over to visit with Clemencia.  I thought that since we picked them up at some random store, that we were close to the school.  I was wrong.  Several stores, u-turns, traffic jams (which equaled hours) later we reached the border.  My sleep deprived state was aroused at the sight.  The border scene was straight out of a movie.  I was too tired to think of which one but i was fully expecting a director to come from behind some hidden camera and yell, "Cut!"  or at least i began praying one would.  We passed the locals selling their wares and the guards shouldering scary looking guns and went into the building.  It was stuffy and dirty and smelled a little like compost, BO and poo.  (just in case you have been fortunate to never smell any of those things in your life...in the words of my brother, Ethan, "I do not love that smell.")  We handed our passports over to the agent behind counter, he stamped them, and we were off.  Wow, that was easy.  -Not so fast.  

 

Along with our passports, Eduardo was given a sheet of paper that allowed our vehicle to pass over the border.  We started to drive over the border and pass between the gun-toting guards.  I think our driver was a little confused because he held the paper up but kept driving.  Another car was going through at the same time so the guard was talking to them.  Eduardo accidently gunned it.  The guards started to yell at him and i thought, "Oh great, i'm just in time for some angry africans to shoot at us."  Eduardo stopped our car and backed up.  He handed the paper over to the guard and the guard said thanks and smiled.  (wow, powerful piece of paper)  We drove about 300 feet and stopped at the next border station.  I groaned, i knew it was too good to be true.  We went inside.  It look similiar, smelled a tad stronger and was slightly larger with a lot more people in it.  Clemencia grabbed my hand and smiled at me, saying something in portuguese.  (Remember, we covered this about 3 hours ago, i don't understand what you are saying.)  She handed me a paper with a few english words on it so i started to fill it out.  She signaled and pointed to a counter.  I started to walk over to it.  I still must have look bewildered because a little man wearing a bright red shirt with an 8x10 of Eminem's face on it violently motioned to me to set my passport on the counter.  (Are you kidding me? I'm not letting this thing out of my hand!)  Regardless of his affection for my fellow countryman or whether he was getting paid or not to direct traffic, I wasn't going to let go of my passport easily.  Clemencia could see i was still in confusion so she motioned for me to wait in line until someone from the back office came out.  A minute or so later a guard came out, i looked at Clemencia, she smiled. (I'm gonna take that smile to mean i can give him my passport and my only way to ever leave this country.)  I handed it over.  He took it in the back for what seemed like eternity.  He returned it about 20 minutes later with a new visa inside.  I guess that wasn't so bad.  (Hey, twenty minutes can seem like an eternity if you've got an imagination like mine.)    

 

We got to Maputo a couple hours later.  We stopped to drop Eduardo off at his house, which i thought for a second might be the school, but since only he got out and Lelio got in the driver's seat i guessed we still had farther to go.  I was right.  (I should fill you in that both the back side doors to the mitsubishi are broken, the left side only opens from the outside and the right side is permanently locked.  The non-opening doors were good the first couple days here, otherwise i would have been hopping out at every stop, but now that i have more of an idea of what's going on, its been a tad on the obnoxious side.  I usually sit on the right side, which means i have to wait for everyone else to pile out before i can get out, i have now solved that by climbing out, Dukes of Hazzard style, -as long as i can get out before Eduardo rolls the windows up.)

 

When we got to the school it was well after dark.  Arlindu opened the gate for us and helped carry my bags in.  I was ushered under the staircase into a small concrete 8x12 room with a dangling lightbulb, a miniature bunkbed (my stature precedes me) and a complimentary mosquito net.  The room glowed an eerie blue, the kind of lighting you see in an old movie, just before someone gets mugged in an alley way, or in a sci-fi, moments preceding the attack of the mutant creatures...(maybe i shouldn't have watched every channel on the flight over.)  Clemencia showed me where the bathroom was and i hurried out of my prison cell to get clean.  If i was going to get mugged or eaten i was gonna go out smelling good.  Arlindu later translated for Clemencia that i was only going to be in that room for 3 days...oh, that's relief.

 

The next three days were filled with quite a bit of noise that i didn't understand.  I sat silently at meals (don't worry, I'll tell you all about the food later).  I sat silently at church.  I sat silently, pretty much for 36 hours straight.  On the third day, Monday, just when i was starting to give in to some self-pity and some serious consideration at checking myself out of hotel california, we went into town.  Bettina and Lelio were running errands that morning before flying out that afternoon and in the process of their errands we stopped at the South African Airways Ticket Office.  I stayed outside to avoid the temptation to escape.  A tall girl was pacing up and down on the broad sidewalk in front of the office.  She appeared to be waiting for a ride.  She turned to me and asked the time.  I pounced on her for conversation.  She was from Montreal, Canada.  She had been stationed here in Maputo for a some mining company out of Canada, had gotten to travel all over Africa and was leaving today.  She said she was so sad to go, that she had completely fallen in love with this place.  I looked at her like she was nuts.  She asked me how long i'd been here, then said, "Give it some time."  I thought about asking to trade places, then i remembered that Montreal is quite cold this time of year, and i had only packed summer clothes, so i kept my mouth shut.  Her ride came a few minutes later and with a "Ciao" she was off.  We didn't even exchange names but something in the conversation started to change my outlook on my present circumstances.  I don't know if she'll ever read this but thanks anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            

 

            

Fly me to the Moon

44 hours and 28 mins later I am in Maputo, Mozambique. The flights were relatively smooth. My first travel buddy was a greek god back in his day, his day being 40 some years ago. I sat down in my seat as we left Denver and fell asleep before we’d even taken off. When I awoke an hour later Mr. Greek proudly pointed to the headset he’d scored for me, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I already had a set so I used them until he wasn’t looking. There is usually that point when you break into conversation that there comes an awkward silence. He avoided that by talking until we landed. I think I could have written a biography by the time we taxied into Frankfurt. He had a thick accent so the book might have not been completely accurate.

The Frankfurt airport is one of my least favorite airports in the world, no offense German friends. I was instructed in Denver to get my next boarding pass once I reached Frankfurt but when I got there I was told that wouldn’t happen for another 6 hours. I waited for a little while but when I saw the “Ashgung” sign, I decided I would rather risk the trip into the city than stay in this very depressing airport. 19 minutes later I was walking down the streets of Frankfurt. It was cloudy, cold, with a dusting of wet snow on the ground. I was in search of a coffee shop. I passed up the 1^st starbucks, I figured I was in germany so I might as well go to a german coffee shop. Seven blocks later I had to admit to corporate america’s attempt at world domination. I went in to the second bucks I found on the same street. I got a soy chai and settled down in the last seat in the house, a big comfy arm chair. A few minutes later I made some friends, Martin and Christian, students at the local university, who have a passion for Jack Johnson and want to surf when they get to San Diego in July for an exchange program. (Well, mostly Martin thinks all this, Christian was studying.) The guys took off for a class and I went up to the counter to get some water, when I girls found out I was a barista in the states they were so excited they autographed a Frankfurt city starbucks mug and gave it to me…sweet souvenirs already.

I made it back to the airport with plenty of time to kill. The next flight was more comfortable but longer. My seat partner was polite but we didn’t engage in any conversation, I don’t think he spoke any English anyway. As soon as they started to pick up our dinner trays and turn down the lights I think they started pumping a sedative into the cabin, it seemed that every soul passed out. I woke up a few hours later and was amazed at the stillness. My watch said 4 am Africa time. I lifted to window shade to look out, thinking I was going to see the sun, instead I saw the most beautiful full moon and an amazing starlit sky. I watched until the moon dipped below the clouds. I think that is the first moonset I’ve ever seen.

A few hours later we arrived in Jo-Berg. I got my bags and left the airport to navigate my way to the citybug bus terminal. They don’t specialize in directions over here, they point in a general direction and say over there. I had been given specific instructions by Peter when I was still in Denver but they were doing me a whole lot of good in the console of my trooper. When I got to what I thought was the terminal I asked some others. They weren’t sure either but we were all waiting for the same bus so either we were all right or we would all be stranded together.

The bus arrived and we were loaded up, Three and half hours later we arrived in Nelspruit, where I was picked up by Clemencia and Eduardo, neither of whom speak a spit of English, this is going to be an interesting adventure.

leaving on a jet plane

I know at somepoint i'll be getting on a airbus but for now and for the sake of that Denver classic, jet plane it is.

I have nothing profound to say before i go on this new adventure, I'll start reaping witty comments as i go so you too can eat some wisdom.

I shall leave you with the words of the notorious couple, Jen "the gibbler" and Kyle Brock, "go big or go home".

(somebody older than them might have said it first, but few have lived it before)