Thursday, June 26, 2008

Five reasons why I appreciate the Peace Corps

1. Being part of the community
My return to Mozambique as a researcher working on a national level has really brought home how unique the Peace Corps experience is. Living abroad isn't unique -- I meet expatriate foreign service members, aid and humanitarian workers, and some industry folks, every day. But the expatriate existence is nothing like being a community volunteer. As a volunteer, even if living with email and working in an office, you are a part of the community in which you live. Your friends are nationals, your recreation is sitting at the corner bar with your colleagues and sharing one of the 750 ml bottles of beer, or maybe gathering for a party in which all the women bustle about cooking fish stew and corn meal xima while the men sit on plastic chairs and talk. As a born outsider, you may never be able to completely fit in, but as a peace corps volunteer you come pretty close.

2. Experiencing poverty
Every person who is born into privilege should somehow experience poverty. Peace Corps volunteers aren't completely poor, as they have their medical and emergency expenses fully covered, but our salaries are pretty darn low. Below the lowest tax bracket low. And it's a powerful experience to walk down a street and know that most shops aren't accessible to you, and to find yourself making friends with people whose company you don't necessarily enjoy, just because they can provide you with fancy food or rides in their car. It goes a long way to understanding how people without means end up putting themselves in risky situations.

3. Being different
As a white person in rural Africa, I got stared at everywhere I went. Babies sometimes looked at me and began to cry. Children begged and yelled "mulungo", white person, every time I passed. Men gave me endless attention and quite a few marriage proposals. My male friends were always approached by women trying to marry off their daughters. Being so different starts to weigh down on you, and you begin to expect the worst from everyone. I'd never experienced this kind of overt prejudice, nor the hardening of spirit which is produces, living in the States -- although many do.

4. Comraderie
Every time I meet a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), I know we share much in common. Even the volunteers from different continents or working in different sectors can understand my experience, and I theirs. Having been in the Peace Corps is almost like being inducted into a secret society within which there are few rules but much good will. It is an automatic feeling of acceptance when I meet other RPCVs, and the sense that we could talk for a long time, sharing stories from our volunteer days.

5. Self-sufficiency
There is much I'm still learning about, well, everything. But being in a strange place, speaking a strange language, and dealing with completely unforseen ups-and-downs as a volunteer has given me a sense that I can generally handle things. There's a certain "wait-and-see" mantra that volunteers need to adopt if they are to do well at site, which has also served me well back at home and at school. If I don't know how to do something -- well, I'll figure it out. Or, I won't, and I'll see where that brings me.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Sports, pride, and poverty



Sunday night of a football-filled weekend. Last night was the Russia-Holland match of the Euro Cup, a match which might have slipped by as one of the less important of the tournamet, if it weren't for the strong Dutch expat presence in Maputo. As it were, there was a rowdy, happy gathering of Dutch and others in one of the popular expat bars in the city, which I somehow stumbled onto. I don't watch soccer as a fan, but I do get caught up in the games when I watch with a dedicated crowd. And I have to say, the Dutch in their bright orange shirts won me over, and by the end of the game, an upset loss, I was almost as disappointed as the rest of them. I said almost.

Today, I had the opportunity to see a live game between the Mozambican national team, the Mambas, and the Madagascar team. Again, I had never watched a Mamba game before -- but it was impossible not to get swept up by the thousands of cheering, dancing, heckling, celebrating fans in the stadium. Here are some pictures:







Guys carrying Mozambican flags -- and dressed in Mozambican flags -- watch the band play the national anthem.




Goooool!




Peanuts!



The guards were carrying batons, guns, and gas masks. Good thing everything stayed calm.


The game made me so happy, as it clearly made everyone else so happy, that I got to thinking about sports and their importance in our lives. Sports bring out feelings in us that are basic and universal: pride, competitiveness, and comraderie. Athletes around the world, whether footballers in Mozambique or baseball players in the States, inspire these emotions in their fans.

Money, of course, can confer advantages, like fancy equipment and trainers. But an athlete is an athlete, a game is a game, and a fan is a fan. Sports provide an even playing field, as it were, for civic or national pride, and pride in the athleticism of men and women. In a place, like Mozambique, where it is hard to be carefree -- hard to forget about the difficulties facing life each day -- football provides a pure sense of pride and competition. Becoming enveloped in a game and infected by the enthusiasm of the crowd feels like freedom.

Friday, June 20, 2008

You can't go home again

(Fine, I'll admit it... this blog is driven 90% by fun titles.)

For the last few days I've been traveling up to Vilankulos, the town in Mozambique which I called home for two years. I was happy to come home to the States after my service ended, but ever since coming back here I've been dying to get back there.

I knew there would be some changes: about 6 months after I left, Vilankulos was hit by a devastating cyclone. The pictures my friends sent me almost drove me to tears, and probably would have, if they weren't accompanied by words representing the characteristic Mozambican attitude of, "Eh, we've been through worse and we'll get over this too". It's easy to underestimate this Mozambican resilience, especially before hearing the stories -- everyone has one -- from the civil war. But that's for another day.

In Vilankulos, there were indeed signs of the cyclone, even more disturbing because it is now a year-and-a-half later. The brand-new marketplace, almost finished when I left and functional for only a few months, was still roofless and empty. The hospital buildings that my organization worked hard to help the Ministry of Health erect also showed signs of enduring damage, and also weren't functioning normally. And, unrelated to the cyclone, the high school was holding classes in tents, because the public university had taken over half of the beautiful, new, World Bank-built structure that was supposed to be Vilankulos's new high school. I wondered, could someone just call the World Bank and let them know that their project was being so misused? Could I? "Hello, uh, World Bank...?"

Good things were apparent, too. A new bank and a cell phone store had sprung up near the center of town. A new market in one of the outer neighborhoods. New paint jobs, mostly the yellows and blues of the two leading cell phone companies, shined in the brutal midday sun of the tropics. But mostly, there was just the sense that people were continuing to live their lives. The buzz of the central market and the shuffle of the feet of women wearing colorful wrap skirts as they carried baskets on their heads and babies on their backs.

And for me, this was the saddest part. Life had moved on past me. My former colleagues greeted me with smiles, and we exchanged pleasantries and enquired about family members, before they moved on to their tasks at hand. Two new volunteers have replaced my sitemate and I, and their house has a familiar Peace-Corps-volunteers-live-here comfort. There are new babies, new relationships made, old ones broken. Life has moved on.

When I left Vilankulos this time around, yesterday, I didn't know if I'd ever return. I love the place. But what was once home no longer is; the home I have in my mind is not a place but a spot in time -- a time now past. I don't think I believed it before now, but you really can't go home again.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Notes on the Underground


Five hours in London between flights, and I decided to ride The Tube. There really wouldn't be time for anything much beyond that, but wouldn't that make the trip worthwhile? Living the life of a London commuter, minding the gap with the best of them?


It was actually a little bit of fun, even if I did get some funny looks because the quaint voice of the announcer kept making me spontaneously smile. But the experience was also a little worrisome: the smallness of the Underground car couldn't help but make me realize that Londoners too, not just their modes of transportation, are smaller than we are.
Every time I ride the NYC subway, I become worried because of how large we've gotten: large enough that only a small percentage of riders seem to fit within the confines of one seat. Even with my sample size of 2 hours on the tube, it seems clear that Londoners are managing the challenges of life with supersized fast food and little time for exercise better than Americans.
Maybe if we shrink down our public transportation we'll force ourselves to shrink too...?