It’s
St. Patty’s Day and I should be laying on the beach with my fellow Peace
Corps friends in acclaimedly the most historically beautiful place in the
country – Ilha de Mozambique. Instead, I’m laying with my right leg propped up
on a pillow in my house in the unfortunately yet unforgettably beautiful town
of Carapira
writing this account of recent and ancient history.
As
the saying goes “history repeats
itself,” it describes the story of my life and Mozambique’s vast yet devastating history,
all of which I will aim to detail in this blog. JUST KIDDING! But brace
yourselves for an enlightening account, or just another sad story for the
books… Either way, it’s about to get real.
The
reason I’m lamely laying on my couch on what used to be one of my favorite
holidays is that I can’t get up. Literally. I can’t walk. My right foot no
longer looks like a foot, but more like a blown up rubber glove. Sadly, for history repeating itself,
this isn’t the first time. It’s the third time my foot’s been infected since I
got to my new site, and for the past two months I’ve been on two different
antibiotics which appeared to dissipate the problem but not entirely cure it.
So, now I’m sitting here doped up on “fraco” ibuprofen waiting for the lab
results to come in so I can start the correct course of antibiotics and get my
foot looking like a foot again.
But
to get back to the whole point of this blog, one of the things that I’ve found
heart with while being here is Mozambican
history. Recently, it’s been a recurring theme with the happenings at
school and in general I find that it’s greatly influenced the perspective of
Mozambicans and the way things go here. Let me attempt to explain:
It all started at
school when
…I assigned a PowerPoint project to the 2nd and 3rd years
about their vision for Mozambique
20 years into the future. I want them to believe that it is possible with one
person, a vision, and gumption to radically change something about the world. I
gave them an example of visionaries by talking about Martin Luther King Jr. and
how he radically changed the course of our country through his words and
actions. We read some of his quotes from his “I have a dream” speech and I
talked about how his dream back in the 1960s-70s during the Civil Rights
Movement is now a reality in our country. I couldn’t be more proud to live in a
country in which we have an African American president, where only 50 years ago
blacks and whites were not allowed to attend the same school.
Then
we started talking about the problems which still exist in Mozambique, and
surprisingly they said more than what I expected to hear, and not all in a good
way. I learned a lot about corruption in general (which I will speak about in
just a bit), “individualismo” – or the Mozambican version of saying ‘every man
for himself’, “estrangeiros” taking the country’s precious resources and paying
Mozambicans hardly anything for it, domestic violence, poverty, disemployment, human
trafficking of adults and children for body parts on the black market, and in
general a lack of good health and education.
I
can’t not go into it a bit more, so firstly about…
Health
in Mozambique: To say
that health practices in Mozambique
are faulty is an understatement. On a daily basis I see someone defecating in
public on the walk to the school. I cringe when I see my neighbor’s daughters
peeing and pooping in the sand in the yard, and then walk around barefoot.
Latrines and general hygiene are non existent in this tiny little community. It’s
probably how my foot got infected in the first place, but I can’t force myself
to think any further on how gross that is. I’ve taken clean potable water for
granted all my life, and now boiling or bleaching is the only solution and
frankly it doesn’t cut it. Poor babies and children are sick with diarrhea all
the time. Why? Cholera due to unclean water and poor hygiene practices. Then
there are the health clinics, which are always overcrowded with the sick and
yet are completely understaffed. The lack of doctors, nurses, technicians,
clean working space, and medical supplies is shocking. People walk for miles to
come to the tiny little health clinic in Carapira. If they don’t happen to see
the nurse or technician and get treatment that day, they spend the night
outside on “esterras” hoping to be seen the next day. Across the street from
the health clinic is the TB/HIV ward, where people literally come to die. My
heart pains everyday when I walk to school and see deathly skinny people with
masks covering their faces sleeping under the shade of a tree outside the ward
left to their pains and moaning. There are several underdeveloped,
undernuritioned babies born every hour at the clinic. A ghastly statistic for a
population incapable of supporting themselves yet alone the children they
choose to bring into the world. AIDS and HIV, as much as is advertised, is
still much of a myth here, as you will come to hear shortly.
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The Carapira Health
Clinic: Normally it’s packed in and out with countless people, but on a Sunday
afternoon I was able to capture it looking rather surprisingly empty.
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The TB/HIV
Ward: I pass by this place everyday, but never had the guts to actually go up
to it. Today I did, and the people asked me to take a picture of them, which I
was more than obliged. Normally there are lifeless looking people lying on the
ground on the mats or “esterras” with masks covering their mouths and noses but
today mostly just visitors bringing in food for the patients.
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Education in Mozambique:
According to UNICEF, the adult literacy rate in Mozambique as
of 2010 was 55%. In 1975 at the time of Mozambican independence the illiteracy
rate was over 90%. The progress made in nearly 40 years depends on whether you
view the glass half full or half empty – I’ll let you decide. Based solely on
the population, there are hardly enough schools to provide for what is called
an education here. The average class size is anywhere from 50-100 students or
more starting from primary school with nothing but a blackboard as the teaching
material. The kids in the primary school in Carapira are required to wear
uniforms, and when families don’t even have the money to feed their children,
it’s a ridiculous rule…maybe it’s their way of limiting the number of students.
There is no “escolina” or pre-school, and the concept of early childhood
education and proper nutrition starting at home is unheard of. No wonder it’s
so difficult for kids at the age of 6 to start making those synaptic
connections for learning which should have started at birth. But who can you
blame? It’s a miserable cycle.
Corruption:
Now we get to the good part. When you hear stories of Africa, there is rampant talk of corruption, but to hear
a country’s own people talk about it is heart wrenching. And it’s all over,
everywhere, all the time- ubiquitous and omnipresent. Just get one thing
straight - I’m not talking about specific people, but the problem in general.
1. In the
government: If you’ve got a job
in the government, great! But it’s one more reason to do everything you can to
protect your job, do favors for the people who will do you favors, and coming
back to the definition of ‘job’, just not doing it. My friend Elsa who has
applied for a secretary position in Nampula has been waiting 4-5 months. No,
not just to hear back, but to have the entrance exam corrected. Apparently the
person in charge hasn’t even touched it. Sure there are several hundreds of
people who applied for the position, who are desperately in need just waiting
and doing nothing, and yet the person who has the job, isn’t doing it! And of
course, it’s not like the entrance exam or qualifications even matter, all that
matters is how much you are willing to pay. For someone without a job, looking
to earn money, to come up with money to pay the person in charge for the job
sounds a little backwards doesn’t it? But my students were insistent that this
is a common practice in their line of work in the industrial jobs. In fact some
of the boys who graduated last year and made perfectly good scores to get into
the Institute were denied…probably because they didn’t pay up like some other
not so qualified students did. Some of my students were outraged and demanded
change and others accepted it as their sad fate that hard work and honesty do
no justice in this country. I pray that they never succumb to the system in
which they live.
2. In the
health sector: Getting
treatments in the hospitals is much the same. Whoever is willing to slip a bill
into the technicians pocket can skip the lines and be seen directly and given
more attention and better treatment. This may be “fofoca” but I’ve heard that
there are cases of people paying technicians to alter the findings on HIV/AIDS
reports. For personal reasons? Business reasons? I can’t imagine. What has the
world come to?
- In
education: Lastly, and most
tragically for me, is the corruption in education. The best jobs in
Mozambique are nurses and teachers, and often times people don’t become
these things because they actually like these jobs and want to sincerely
care for and teach people, but because of the money that comes with it.
But as the government goes, being a nurse or teacher still does not pay
enough, and so people are left to resort to other more vile,
under-the-table means of procuring money. For a teacher this means taking
bribery for better grades, sex for better grades, labor for better grades,
and stealing the school’s money for personal items. And the general lack
of interest in the job allows way for sexual harassment, forced labor,
lack of exam monitoring, condoning cheating, and deliberately increasing
student’s marks to keep up the school’s reputation with the ministry of
education (as occurred in Atlanta, it definitely occurs here too, but not
with such a scandalous appeal. It’s just everyday life). Phrases like
“paga me refresco” which translate to “buy me a drink and I will give you
a good grade” are common in schools all over Mozambique. Kids who never set
foot in the classroom and never take exams, miraculously pass with
splendid grades. How? My good, hardworking students at the school where I
teach grow extremely frustrated talking about it. Why? Because they
genuinely try, are curious to learn, work really hard, and it doesn’t even
pay off. But what’s worse, is seeing someone who clearly has no
qualifications and did nothing to honestly earn it, land the job my
student rightfully should have. What’s fair in life? And in the words of
Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.
So
back to what I was discussing with my students about problems in Mozambique:
One of my classes of third years, behaved and responded in a manner unlike all
my other classes when I asked them about problems in Mozambique. Quite frankly
the aftermath made me quite disheartened and it was definitely one of the most
hopeless I’ve felt since I’ve been in Mozambique. My too cool, rebellious
group of 3rd years said that all of the problems in Mozambique exist because of America and Europe.
Whether because of western influence or because it was actually our intent to
bring upon harm to the people here, they said that every problem that exists in
Mozambique and in Africa in general is due to the western world. Then they
asked me whether I believed if HIV came from Africa,
and when I told them yes, that’s what the scientists have traced it to, they
told me I was wrong. “HIV was invented
and made in the laboratory in the States deliberately to kill Africans.”
The conversation from here out – exploded into a fury of everyone angrily
shouting their opinions at me. Saying that “white
people only come to Africa to witness the
poor.” “No one cares about whether Africa will improve.” “It’s the trash of the world.” “Mozambique has
no future.” “It has no hope.”
Needless
to say I was devastated. I came here
all this way, to hear from the country’s young and brightest in one of the
nation’s best schools, students who have an actual chance of changing their
country’s future, that they don’t’ believe Mozambique has a chance. To leave my
family, my friends, my beautiful country, everything I’ve ever known and loved,
just to share the gift I’ve been given at a wonderful education with people who
haven’t been so fortunate felt like a totally worthless lie. What is the point?
Or like the Mozambicans put it, “Não vale pena!” But after thinking about Mozambique’s
history and given the fact that it is still such a young nation, just
recovering from an unforgotten civil war, I began picking up the pieces again.
After everything these people have been through, I have trouble thinking that
if I were Mozambican that I wouldn’t think exactly the same way my students do.
And for this suggestion to make any sense, we need to go back a few centuries.
It all started in Mozambique when ...in 1498 when Vasco
de Gama landed on the Ilha de Mozambique while trying to get to India.
From then on out, despite resistance in the north by the Makua people,
Portuguese occupation was what you’d call history with Mozambique
becoming an official colony in 1752. Through the 1760-1840s, Mozambican slaves
were shipped out of in-country ports including Ilha, and in the 30 years up to
the ban of slave trade in 1836 more than 100,000 slaves were sold to Brazil alone.
During Portuguese occupation, the Portuguese acquired the country’s rich
natural resources of mineral deposits, and abused the people by forcing into
labor either producing crops or sending them to work in the mines in South
Africa or cocoa plantations in Sao Tome.
In
1899, the labor law was passed which divided the indigenous from the
nonindegenous people. Indigenous people were forced to work and pay taxes and
the rational for the forced labor (chibalo) is outlined in the first Article of
the documentation:
“All
native inhabitants of the Portuguese overseas are subject to the moral and
legal obligations to seek to acquire through work those things which they lack
to subsist and improve their own conditions. They have full liberty to choose
the means through which they comply with this obligation, but if they do not
comply in some way, the public authorities may force them to comply.”
If there is one thing I can’t stand its injustice. If I were a
Mozambican reading this about my country’s history, I would be absolutely
furious with rage by now. The telling part in all this is the part about
“improving their own conditions.” As far as I can tell, none of what the
Portuguese did through this labor law helped the conditions of the people in
this country, if not making them worse.
In fact they did make them worse. In the 1930s and 40s the Portuguese
forced rice and cotton production. Because the men were forced to do chibalo,
the agriculture force was nearly all women. Due to the lofty quotas in rice and
cotton production, women were compelled to reduce personal grain cultivation
and instead collect “mandioca”, which required much less attention and care but
is much less nutritious. And to this day, these poor people are left collecting
the innutritious and sometimes poisonously, deadly cassava crop to feed their
families.
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The
“Caminho”: The walk to my house, cutting through little trails through people’s
yards. You can see the corn stalks already starting to dry up. What once was
green is now dead or trying. There’s been talk all abroad that crops are not
going to do well this season because of the rains, which were so rampant at
first now have absolutely stopped. I guess it’s just going to be stale mandioca
this year. Devestating news for people in the bairro whose only means of feeding
the family are through the crop raised in the farms.
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As if forced labor wasn’t enough, in 1941 the Missionary Act was passed
which left the Catholic Church in charge of educating the locals. This resulted
in the brutal deviation of the education received by the Portuguese occupants
and the Mozambican people. African education was divided into 3 stages. The
first stage was aimed to bring African children to the same level as Portuguese
children in primary school, which they did an
absolutely fantastic job of it, by
teaching exclusively in Portuguese. So obviously for indigenous people of whom
Portuguese is not the native language and of which was rarely spoken in the
home (even now), it was nearly impossible to pass the test to go on to middle
school. If you were lucky and smart enough to have passed an all Portuguese
elementary school, you could go on to the one year of middle school which
prepared you for high school or technical training. However, the catch was that
hardly any missionary schools offered this one year for the Moz students who
passed elementary school, which effectively prevented them from proceeding onto
high school. If you were the 1 in a million student who made it through
elementary and middle school, the maximum age for entrance to high school was
14, which was just outright cruel. Let’s face these
facts of the education system implemented by the Catholic Church. If their goal
was to prevent the indigenous people from getting an effective education, then
they surely succeeded. In 1960, nearly 98% of the population was still
illiterate, despite missionary education efforts.
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The Catholic
Church of Carapira: Quite picturesque isn’t it? The inside is even more grand
and intricate. It could be a postcard, and yet, to me it’s stark beauty and
grandeur in a place where the majority of houses are made of mud and dried
grass, where bathrooms are just bamboo fences, where there are no paved roads
just sand and trails, where the people walk barefoot with dirt stained clothes,
it is much more of a monstrosity than a sanctuary. It even goes to the point of
being disgustingly gaudy at night where the cross over the door lights up a
brilliant fluorescent white which is a rather bit much when often times the
neighborhood is without power. I’m not denying the good that the individuals of
the church have done here for the people in Carapira and for the students at
the school. In fact, I think they are incredible people and are incredibly
selfless for dedicating their lives to service. I just question the purpose and
effect of such extravagance in a place with such little.
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On
June 25th, 1975 Mozambique
gained its independence from Portugal
after over 400 years of colonialism. For 400 years of
occupation by a civilized, well-educated people, you think the country would
have had a decent infrastructure to move on without Portuguese control.
Yet, the remaining Portuguese after independence fled the country, leaving no
infrastructure of educated Mozambicans as capable doctors, teachers, etc. I
won’t go too much into the Moz civil war, but that shortly after independence
in 1976, RENAMO (Resistência Nacional de Moçambique) was founded
by the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organization and support for the
organization was backed by South
Africa in order to lift the ANC ban on SA
investment in the country. In 1982 RENAMO attacked the Maputo-Zimbabwe railway
line starting the “civil” war which destroyed any remaining infrastructure which
was left by the Portuguese, and left the country in shambles and ruins. The war
ended in 1990 but Mozambique
was considered as one of the poorest countries in the world.
So
for my students who were born shortly after the calamities that occurred before
the 90s, while they didn’t witness the horrid catastrophies of colonialism and
civil war, they live the consequences of it day to day, hear the stories of
their grandparents who might have been alive during Portuguese occupation, and the
stories of their parents who lived through the war which is still so freshly
imprinted on the hearts of the people here.
And
as for all the progress the country has made since the war, it’s impressive,
but not all of it’s wonderful. Mozambique
has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but on what account? And
to what cost? Nacala Porto (about an hour away from Carapira) is reportedly one
of the fastest growing cities in the world. They are currently building an
international airport which could conveniently get me a flight directly to D.C.
by the end of the year (hears to hoping). And this part is hearsay, but my
students who are from Nacala say that the land that is currently under
construction to build the airport was bought out for nearly nothing. This
precious land which used to be peoples’ farms, their only source of income, now
burned to the ground for a few lousy meticais per acre. Some of you may have
also heard about the rich Petroleum stores found recently offshore in Moz by an
Italian company, which could be huge for Moz, a country with such an affluence
of unexploited natural resources. Talks were made about the company selling
shares, but the only thought that went through my mind was what part of this
will benefit Mozambicans?
Based
on all this history, old and new, it’s no wonder my students think so lowly of
“estrangeiros” who came and come to this county to use its people, use its land
and natural resources for their own benefit, leaving it’s people to rot and die
or worse force them to kill each other. While in the past claiming it was for
God and country, now it’s to benefit the Moz economy and bring jobs to its
people. Really? Some how after 100s of years of people screwing this country
over, it’s hard to believe it’s possible. I can’t blame my students for thinking
the way they do, and frankly, I completely understand it. Why is it me
preaching change? A stranger? Whom for all they know is just like all the
foreigners who’ve arrived in the country in the past and have done the
Mozambicans wrong. What good has change been according to the country’s
history?
Oh,
boys! If only you knew how much I care that your lives would be blessed; that
you would get wonderful jobs without falling victim to the system of
corruption; that you would be able to provide well for you families and
children; that they wouldn’t ever see a day of hunger or want or sickness that
befalls the current population now; that HIV/AIDS is no longer a reality for
your children, but just a memory; that you would see out the chance to live out
your dreams without getting caught in the trap of sadness, pain, sickness,
corruption, and violent history that still echoes throughout this country. How
much I long that you would break free from the generational sin, myths and
lies, ill-will towards the outside world, and misunderstood contempt for
strangers and each other based on culture and tradition that still permeates
this nation’s youth. Lift up your eyes, boys. Seek the truth. Don’t live in
denial just because it suits your anger at the problems which face you, which
weren’t your fault to begin with. Live out a life of HOPE.
And
it is for HOPE, that I do this everyday. Despite the trials, the longing for
home, the doubts, the pain, the one functional leg. HOPE the reason for my existence,
my meaning, my purpose. HOPE not in anything of this world, but in the one who
sent me. That not me, but He has the power to bring about change in this world.
That it is in Him to instill faith in these precious students of mine that
anything is possible. And all this not according to my will, but according to
His. I pray I never abuse or use anyone all in the name of God or glory or
country or whatever else it may be in order for my own personal gain.
Let
us together break the bonds of history. It need not repeat itself any longer.
Let this be a new day. Mozambique
- a new creation.
