Chomping Grounds

So, it’s been about a month since I’ve been at my new site in Carapira, and I am happy to say that I am finally at Peace being here. Actually, I feel like this is exactly where I need to be.

Certainly enough, it hasn’t been easy getting to this point in the journey; getting really sick within the first week, integrating into yet another completely different community, feeling home sick for my host family and the South (once a Southern girl, always a Southern girl!), battling giant spiders and bats and bugs and animals and crianças of all kinds (will get to that soon enough), not having energy for a whole week because of the storms, and even as I’m sitting here typing this, it is pouring rain inside my house. I know that there will be more difficult moments ahead, but that anxious, awful feeling I had waking up for the first few weeks in Carapira, wondering what on earth I was doing here, is now gone. Hallelujah!

I must be honest and say that most of the disappointment and peace less weeks were of my own doing. I had blinded myself to what God had for me when he brought me to Carapira. While I lived my first few weeks here with my eyes and heart constantly focused on my own selfish desires and being angry at God for not getting my way, I was missing out on what He wanted me to see. It took me a good while to realize that no matter how badly I wanted the comforts and pleasures of being back in Maputo, I wasn’t going to have my way. Being ever so humbled, my eyes finally started to see clear of my own obstructing attitude, and miraculously I felt lifted from the depths I was living in. I’m starting to feel like this is exactly where I belong (although I still have my moments), and that there is a greater purpose for me being here than I know right now.

Contemplations: These are the scriptures which have greatly spoken to me during this time in “the swamp.”

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” – Psalm 37:4

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” – James 4:10

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” – Hebrews 11:1

“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”  So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” – Hebrews 13:5-6

“Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus. ” – Hebrews 12:1-2

In the Works: Through the grace and will of God, I’m starting to see all the things I can offer to the people in my community and my school, and I’m absolutely pumped! So of course, let me tell you all about them:

Community Computer Course

In the past our school has offered basic computer classes to the other local professors teaching at the school, but never opened it up to people in the community looking to learn very valuable, marketable skills just by knowing how to turn on a computer and type something. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve run into several women and girls in the bairro who have finished secondary school, but are just sitting around at home with no work and nothing to do, just hoping for something that will come up. Well, it’s about to! Beginning in March, I am planning to offer a community computer course teaching basic computer skills: typing, making documents using Word and Excel. Hopefully this course will not only help pass the time effectively, but also give the women an advantage and marketable skills for finding a job. (And of course, the classs is open to both genders who have finished school, but so far I’ve heard mostly from the women in the community.)

Menos é Melhor Campaign

I mentioned in my last blog that there is a serious criança problem in Carapira. There are just SO MANY kids running around! No supervision, no manners, yelling and screaming, banging on doors and windows, breaking fences, at all hours of a God given 24 hour day…completely out of control! It’s so evident to me the cause of the poverty and suffering for these kids whose parents cannot afford to pay for uniforms, notebooks, and pens for school, let alone clothes to wear and food to eat. Kids who cannot read at the age of 13 or 14 let alone speak Portuguese. The families here are so huge that who has the time or patience to take care of them all? They are left to wander the bairro, reeking havoc. Yet as pissed off as they make me, I sympathize with their pain of wanting attention and love from parents who are too tired from trying to provide for a giant family and have too many children to give it to any single one. Every single house in the bairro, save me and Jill, has kids. Not just one…imagine 3 or 4 kids, not to mention the cousins, and not to mention the ones that are already older and off somewhere else. I’d say the average number of kids per household in Carapira is about 5-7. That’s a lot of darn kids!

For families whose parents do not have steady work, getting by to feed a family of this size is the primary concern. Who could care less about if my child gets enough food with the proper nutrients if I’m worried about just trying to get any kind of edible food in their mouths? Who could care less about adequate care and attention for growth and learning in the crucial 1^st 2 years of life when I have 10 mouths to feed? Who could care less about if my children will finish school, let alone go to school in the first place when I don’t even have the money to cloth them or buy them the things necessary to go to school?

If you can’t hear the frustration screaming from the words in the above paragraphs, let me just say it now. I get so frustrated with the pain and suffering of the children here, knowing that all along there was a way to prevent it. That there is always the active choice of not having so many children to provide the one or two or few that I have with more resources and more attention for a much brighter future and just better life growing up. I do not understand how someone who deals with the pain and suffering of not being able to provide for even just one child, chooses to bring more children into the world for a few moments of pleasure. Even without having to nix the pleasure, having demais children is preventable. If only the parents would stop giving condoms to their kids as play toys, and start using them for their real purpose, they wouldn’t have to give the condoms out as play toys in the first place!

Ok. Chega. What I’m really getting at here, is that I want to start a health campaign called “Menos é Melhor” which means “Less is Better.” It’s just an idea that’s been stirring in my head, but I would love to have a health fair day at the health clinic here in Carapira and talk about family planning, the so many benefits of having fewer kids, early childhood nutrition, the importance of early childhood education starting from infancy!, HIV/AIDS, condom use, etc…. It would be an involvement of many people in the community, the health center, the kids at the school, health NGO’s from Monapo, etc. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas, let me know.

REDES Grupo Das Meninas

I’m planning on starting a girls group. Girls from the neighborhood ages 12-15 in the 6^th and 7^th grade. I sent out little invites yesterday for our first meeting coming up on Wednesday. My number 1 goal is to get them reading. Have no idea how many are going to show up for the first meeting and how it’s all going to turn out.

We had a spontaneous pre-meeting on Saturday when several girls came over and we built a volleyball pit in my backyard, played limbo, did cartwheels, threw sand at the boys and chased them out of my yard, and of course danced! I’m thinking our first meeting is going to be a big dance party…which of course I’m always down for (maybe I will even teach them the wobble!). 

The girls holding up the REDES invites

Spontaneous game of volleyball with the girls in my backyard!

And of course, it then turned into a dance party : )

I hope for the wisdom, perseverance, and grace to bring all this into fruition according to the will of God.

The Happenings: And while we’re at it, let me tell you more about what’s been going on in my stomping grounds here in Carapira:

So if you’ve made it this far in the reading, it’s about to get seriously good for all the folks back home. Definitely, an “Only in Africa” story.

Let me begin by saying it’s been raining a crazy ton here in Carapira, and all of Moz for that matter. There hasn’t been a single day in the past 3 weeks it hasn’t rained. That being said, behind the school there is a little damn or recess of water in which people use to take baths, cart water, and where the crazy crianças play sometimes. Because of the rain it’s been flooded and even within the first week here in Carapira, there was local fofoca (gossip) going around about a crocodile which had somehow gotten from Monapo Rio into the recess and had bitten two kids ( a little kid and took off the leg of an older boy) and had killed a dog. I was there when father of the older boy had come up to the school and asked our Chefe Pedegogico to buy two dogs to tie up near the water to lure the crocodile out so they could kill it. Last week the gente rallied to stop the croc once and for all, and went out with arms (and dogs) to put an end to the tirany of the giant scaly monster lurking the waters of our beautiful Carapira!!!

On Friday, as I was leaving school, there was a mad rush of the students running out to the front of the school. I asked one of the kids what was going on, and he told me someone was selling mangoes. As rare and exciting as mangoes are in Carapira, there was no reason for the full stampede toward the school gates. As I made my way, I could see all my students and all the people in the village gathered in a huge circle in front of the school gates. “Teacher, teacher, have you seen the crocodile?” “WHAT?!” You’re joking right? It certainly has been the talk of the town for the past month, but never did I think I would actually see the semi-living monster in reality. As I pushed my way into the circle, an old woman was shouting in Macua and dancing around the face of the croc stomping on it occasionally. I couldn’t tell if it was completely dead or just semi-stoned. Its snout had been crushed, but the rest of it looked intact, and it had been dragged up to the school by ropes which had been tied around its tail. I happened to have my camera with me that day to take pics of the students working in the mechanics shop, and so of course my students were all about taking some cool pics with the croc. There was a heated discussion about how the croc would be killed, venomous skin and heart removed, how the meat would be divided (supposedly super saboroso), and turns out that later when they cut it open they found a dog inside! As I left the croc for home and passed the rest of the village running up to witness the scene, hearing the shouts and shrill cries of victory ignite the night skies, I smiled and thought to myself: Only in Africa!

 Students and community members gathered around the captured crocodile monster!

As if it weren't bad ass enough to be standing on a crocodile, my students had to throw up signs as well! Too cool for school boys!