Updated at last!
OK this blog is pitifully out of date. I promise to do better from now on. At least now I can say that life has assumed some sort of routine - favourable for regular updates. Although I am travelling every other week, but that’s a good thing. Keeps blog content varied eh! Just returned from latest field trip to Chugubu district, north Gaza province. The most cut-off of all the districts we work in i think. It was good - field trips are always prime bonding time and good for my Portuguese. You also learn tons coz you're right in the middle of things.
Some things learnt over the last few days:
Women’s thighs are thought particularly erotic here - the skin is said to be farer than the lower leg as they don’t see much sun. The rebel army Renamo used to move through the countryside in formations like the 5 on dice to give the impression of greater numbers and capture more people. Avocado is considered a desert food, usually prepared with sugar and lemon. Brown scorpions are less lethal than black ones. There are 3 types of watermelon – pink ones with stripes on the outside, non-striped ones with lighter pink flesh and pretty marbly seeds and ones with white flesh. You know when they’re ready for picking when a little stalk next to the fruit has shrivelled up and they sound heavy when tapped. There are many types of fruit I didn’t know existed, e.g. orange spherical things as hard as a cricket ball and kind of pomegranate-like inside. Little yellow berry-like things with stones in that have milky juice and are really sweet. They use the big-brothers of these to make the liquor Amorula. When they’re in season (like now) there is about a week when each household makes a batch of home-brew booze and people circulate from house to house through the afternoon and evening getting totally sloshed. In Chigubu district, a lot of people simply arrange their things under trees and sleep outside. This often happens when a man has taken more wives than he can build houses for. Theft is pretty much unheard of. People also like to live in relative isolation – houses will be away from roads (tracks) and be around 2 km from each other. This makes providing facilities like schools and health care nearly impossible so the government are trying to encourage centralisation to villages. People use dogs to (illegally) hunt impala and porcupines (endearingly in Portuguese porcus espines, pronounced porcuspenus). You can buy a whole impala leg for 100 Mtn, about £2. Maize is impressively versatile.
The latest field trip (back yesterday) was good although the creature-ante was upped somewhat. Arriving late at night on Wednesday, it was a bit late to put up the tent I’d be sleeping in so I was just given a straw mat and some blankets to lie on in one of the huts. This was fine, surprisingly comfy really. But the hut was a literally little furnace: clay walls and corrugated iron roof. I lay prostate and tried to go to sleep. Just as I started to drift off I had sudden heart palpitations as I felt something crawl over my leg. I grabbed my torch and to my repugnance into the corner had scuttled a spider larger than my fist, big thick legs and, worse, white! Ugh. Besides the horror, it occurred to me that I hadn’t done my research on what’s poisonous in these parts so I darted off to get Gilda, my colleague to gesticulate about the grande aranha. She started chuckling about a thing called an ‘osgar’ that ‘nao fez mal’, doesn’t bite etc and declared it had run off now. I was not convinced but rather than cause a scene I resignedly cocooned myself in my sheet, sprayed deet on my face and baked away all night like a corn on the cob.
Next night the tent went up thank god and was nice and cool, but last night’s encounter had prompted a discussion on beasties in these parts and I’d learned that snakes (cobras, black mambas..) and scorpions were regular features. Ohmygod. They ‘only come in if you leave the door open’ and ‘only attack if you attack them’. Small comfort!!! Anyway from about 4 in the morning there was scratching and scrabbling around the edges of one side of the tent and I couldn’t stop thinking a snake was chewing its way in or a scorpion was burrowing under (not so paranoid – they do it a lot apparently). I was very scared. In the morning we discovered it was a big stag beetle making the racket and it met an early grave. Anyway, I don’t know if these encounters are making me more hardy or my nerves raw but all in the tapestry of life or whatever they say.
As for actual work, so far so good. I basically have to be some kind of institutional doctor and evaluate the 3 partner-organisations – Mozambican NGOs that are helping us (VETAID) implement the food/livelihood security project – followed by some kind of diagnosis and recommendations. I’m avoiding the word prescription as it’s all collaborative - they can tell me to take a hike if they don’t like what I come up with. That’s where the effusive term ‘capacity building’ comes into play – it’s fortifying the areas of the organisations that are weak/underperforming, e.g. fundraising, planning, reporting, human/financial/material resources, administration, any systems or structures really! Anyway I’ve just spent a week with one partner org which was really good. Worked at their office in Xai Xai and did various VSOey activities like SWOT analyses, flow charts, questionnaires (naturally open-question, ‘tell me about’, ‘how is’), meetings and lots of chatting, and then had 4 days staying with them seeing the field activities and more chatting. All in horrendously broken Portuguese but I got by. The language barrier is actually quite liberating as they presume you’re talking sense and it just got lost in translation. More importantly it actually works as a levelling tool as they initially view me with suspicion (white person come to criticise our organisation) but after much humble apologising for my Portuguese and asking them to help me, (and replacing ‘criticise’ with ‘support’!) we’re on a nicely even keel. Anyway it’s good skills-building stuff all round! Actually on that subject, the demand for English lessons from friends/colleagues is trickling in. I tried the conditional but I don’t really know what I’m doing, anyone got any suggestions for resources?
Anyway, back in my house this weekend has been nice. Rented 3 (pirate) dvds from the local store for about a pound and am enjoying sleeping, pottering, reading, writing. Have had to murder some more cockroaches and dispose of the corpses though which doesn’t get any less traumatic. I was promised that Nolly (my cat) was a good bug-catcher but he has so far shown neither the skill nor inclination. Just gorges on sardines, lies around all day and bites my ankles at night. Am off to Maputo tomorrow for a VSO secure livelihoods conference/workshop. Looking forward as will see some friends from initial training plus it’ll be interesting as all from tiny NGOs to big international ones are attending and there’s lots of scope to introduce new ideas at VETAID. Plus I get to buy things like chutney and balsamic vinegar when I go to the capital. Friday is a further 6 hour trip up to one of the districts called Chicualacuala (cool name eh) for a meeting on co-ordinating the activities of NGOs working in the region. There are lots of forums for exchange which is good. I need to write up all my stuff gathered from the week with ADCR too. I’m glad I’m busy and actually producing stuff, the first few weeks felt a bit structureless, just wading through reports etc.
Other general activities over the past few weeks: been to the beach at Bilene a couple of times. It’s lovely, all palm trees, white sand and warm turquoise water and only an hour away! South African friend Garth has been training me in chess as he’s an expert. Have also met up with the 2 peace corps lads in chokwe a bit. Went to Maputo last weekend for my friend Joanne’s birthday which was a yummy meal and then off to Coconuts for dancing fun! One guy Phil who came to the meal had a very interesting sounding and hard-to-come-by job with DFID. Did some shopping anyway (mostly condiments!) on Sat, visited Dutch ex-flat mate Katherina in her impressive new sea-view apartment (after her placement she got headhunted to help open a new Dutch bank in Moz!) then had a thai take away and watched Notting Hill with Jo.
Went up to Bilene on Sunday and met Matt one of the peace corps guys. He was there with this big Mozambican family, his neighbours who have taken him under their wing. They (and Mozambicans in general, if I may generalise!) are incredibly generous and hospitable. They brought everything with them and cooked 2 enormous meals including chicken and fresh fish and kept trying to foist more on us. They were a good laugh too. They were leaving quite late though and I needed to get back so I braved the chapas (minibus public transport) on my own back to Chokwe. I met a couple of local girls and travelled with them. Again, so helpful, insisted on carrying half my stuff and walked me to the stop where I needed to change buses. Should only take about an hour and a half but you also have to wait for them to fill up and then they stop and start according to the driver’s every whim. It took me over 3 hours to get home, by which time there was a storm and my electricity had gone off at home. Nolly had torn the toilet role to shreds and knocked everything over. Ah well!
Oh there was a most newsworthy occurrence about 10 days ago – the British army landed in little old Chokkers! I was under the tree for lunch when an annoyingly ubiquitous, rather stalkerish boy called Dominic came over to tell me that British soldiers were in town and they wanted to speak to me! I thought I must have misunderstood but no, they were here on reconnaissance (ha!) to plan a contingency disaster relief operation in the event of terrible flooding here like that of 2000 (water up to ceilings). They’d heard there was a ‘resident Brit in town’ (ha!) and wanted to ply me for info - save themselves the bother of gesticulating at the locals. They’d found my office (got to hand it to them) and were waiting on the bench outside. Most strange it was to have my Mozambican bubble punctured with hyper-Britishness. Hugo and Major Martin something or other. Anyway, we had a nice chat about infrastructure etc and then they declared a drink at nineteen hundred hours was in order! So I spent that evening drinking the local beer with about 15 members of the British forces – mixture of army and RAF. It was an interesting, if surreal evening and reminded me how weird military culture is. I suppose it has to be to cultivate a mindset that makes going off to war acceptable or desirable. Still I was quite surprised to hear a raving Neo-Con, pro-Iraq, thank god for America, beat-up the bad guys, intervention a gogo argument from the Hugo person. Despite being double-barrelled and a raging toff he was part of the Ghurka regiment and was fluent in Nepalese. The major person was a bit more nuanced and thought that perhaps alternative strategies were needed to compliment the military effort in the War on Terror… Another posh member of the cavalry (another thing learnt: they still call it that despite riding round on tanks instead of horses) had done War Studies at Kings and told hilarious stories of room-sharing at Wellington Hall before it was sold off. There was one rough-around-the-edges guy fittingly named Scruff or Smudge or something who made some disturbing nationalist/xenophobic/fascist comments and generally looked mad. I suppose the potent culture is needed to mask or bridge great gorges in class too. There was also the macabre/hey-ho conversation of which song to have at your funeral. A trio of one of the British patriotic anthems, Pink Floyd and something idiotic like the Cheeky Girls seemed to be the consensus. The next morning I met with a couple more of them to answer more questions. Later that day I received a text message apologising for not being able to say thanks and goodbye properly due to being escorted out of Chokwe by the Mozambican government/secret police. What on earth?! The newspaper the following day also reported that people had actually been dying due to really bad floods up in northern Moz. So the whole thing is either a deeply suspicious cover, or an embarrassing oversight, or maybe just bumbling British misdirection. I dunno.
Ooh I received my first snail mail letter the other day (thanks Manik!) very exciting, so come on people, put pen to paper!! Address to send to is:
VETAID Moçambique
Av. Eduardo Mondlane, no. 1270
C.P. 1707
Maputo
Mozambique
Presents of any kind also welcome J I hope you’re all doing well, email me with all news and write some comments on this thing! xxxxxxxx
Some things learnt over the last few days:
Women’s thighs are thought particularly erotic here - the skin is said to be farer than the lower leg as they don’t see much sun. The rebel army Renamo used to move through the countryside in formations like the 5 on dice to give the impression of greater numbers and capture more people. Avocado is considered a desert food, usually prepared with sugar and lemon. Brown scorpions are less lethal than black ones. There are 3 types of watermelon – pink ones with stripes on the outside, non-striped ones with lighter pink flesh and pretty marbly seeds and ones with white flesh. You know when they’re ready for picking when a little stalk next to the fruit has shrivelled up and they sound heavy when tapped. There are many types of fruit I didn’t know existed, e.g. orange spherical things as hard as a cricket ball and kind of pomegranate-like inside. Little yellow berry-like things with stones in that have milky juice and are really sweet. They use the big-brothers of these to make the liquor Amorula. When they’re in season (like now) there is about a week when each household makes a batch of home-brew booze and people circulate from house to house through the afternoon and evening getting totally sloshed. In Chigubu district, a lot of people simply arrange their things under trees and sleep outside. This often happens when a man has taken more wives than he can build houses for. Theft is pretty much unheard of. People also like to live in relative isolation – houses will be away from roads (tracks) and be around 2 km from each other. This makes providing facilities like schools and health care nearly impossible so the government are trying to encourage centralisation to villages. People use dogs to (illegally) hunt impala and porcupines (endearingly in Portuguese porcus espines, pronounced porcuspenus). You can buy a whole impala leg for 100 Mtn, about £2. Maize is impressively versatile.
The latest field trip (back yesterday) was good although the creature-ante was upped somewhat. Arriving late at night on Wednesday, it was a bit late to put up the tent I’d be sleeping in so I was just given a straw mat and some blankets to lie on in one of the huts. This was fine, surprisingly comfy really. But the hut was a literally little furnace: clay walls and corrugated iron roof. I lay prostate and tried to go to sleep. Just as I started to drift off I had sudden heart palpitations as I felt something crawl over my leg. I grabbed my torch and to my repugnance into the corner had scuttled a spider larger than my fist, big thick legs and, worse, white! Ugh. Besides the horror, it occurred to me that I hadn’t done my research on what’s poisonous in these parts so I darted off to get Gilda, my colleague to gesticulate about the grande aranha. She started chuckling about a thing called an ‘osgar’ that ‘nao fez mal’, doesn’t bite etc and declared it had run off now. I was not convinced but rather than cause a scene I resignedly cocooned myself in my sheet, sprayed deet on my face and baked away all night like a corn on the cob.
Next night the tent went up thank god and was nice and cool, but last night’s encounter had prompted a discussion on beasties in these parts and I’d learned that snakes (cobras, black mambas..) and scorpions were regular features. Ohmygod. They ‘only come in if you leave the door open’ and ‘only attack if you attack them’. Small comfort!!! Anyway from about 4 in the morning there was scratching and scrabbling around the edges of one side of the tent and I couldn’t stop thinking a snake was chewing its way in or a scorpion was burrowing under (not so paranoid – they do it a lot apparently). I was very scared. In the morning we discovered it was a big stag beetle making the racket and it met an early grave. Anyway, I don’t know if these encounters are making me more hardy or my nerves raw but all in the tapestry of life or whatever they say.
As for actual work, so far so good. I basically have to be some kind of institutional doctor and evaluate the 3 partner-organisations – Mozambican NGOs that are helping us (VETAID) implement the food/livelihood security project – followed by some kind of diagnosis and recommendations. I’m avoiding the word prescription as it’s all collaborative - they can tell me to take a hike if they don’t like what I come up with. That’s where the effusive term ‘capacity building’ comes into play – it’s fortifying the areas of the organisations that are weak/underperforming, e.g. fundraising, planning, reporting, human/financial/material resources, administration, any systems or structures really! Anyway I’ve just spent a week with one partner org which was really good. Worked at their office in Xai Xai and did various VSOey activities like SWOT analyses, flow charts, questionnaires (naturally open-question, ‘tell me about’, ‘how is’), meetings and lots of chatting, and then had 4 days staying with them seeing the field activities and more chatting. All in horrendously broken Portuguese but I got by. The language barrier is actually quite liberating as they presume you’re talking sense and it just got lost in translation. More importantly it actually works as a levelling tool as they initially view me with suspicion (white person come to criticise our organisation) but after much humble apologising for my Portuguese and asking them to help me, (and replacing ‘criticise’ with ‘support’!) we’re on a nicely even keel. Anyway it’s good skills-building stuff all round! Actually on that subject, the demand for English lessons from friends/colleagues is trickling in. I tried the conditional but I don’t really know what I’m doing, anyone got any suggestions for resources?
Anyway, back in my house this weekend has been nice. Rented 3 (pirate) dvds from the local store for about a pound and am enjoying sleeping, pottering, reading, writing. Have had to murder some more cockroaches and dispose of the corpses though which doesn’t get any less traumatic. I was promised that Nolly (my cat) was a good bug-catcher but he has so far shown neither the skill nor inclination. Just gorges on sardines, lies around all day and bites my ankles at night. Am off to Maputo tomorrow for a VSO secure livelihoods conference/workshop. Looking forward as will see some friends from initial training plus it’ll be interesting as all from tiny NGOs to big international ones are attending and there’s lots of scope to introduce new ideas at VETAID. Plus I get to buy things like chutney and balsamic vinegar when I go to the capital. Friday is a further 6 hour trip up to one of the districts called Chicualacuala (cool name eh) for a meeting on co-ordinating the activities of NGOs working in the region. There are lots of forums for exchange which is good. I need to write up all my stuff gathered from the week with ADCR too. I’m glad I’m busy and actually producing stuff, the first few weeks felt a bit structureless, just wading through reports etc.
Other general activities over the past few weeks: been to the beach at Bilene a couple of times. It’s lovely, all palm trees, white sand and warm turquoise water and only an hour away! South African friend Garth has been training me in chess as he’s an expert. Have also met up with the 2 peace corps lads in chokwe a bit. Went to Maputo last weekend for my friend Joanne’s birthday which was a yummy meal and then off to Coconuts for dancing fun! One guy Phil who came to the meal had a very interesting sounding and hard-to-come-by job with DFID. Did some shopping anyway (mostly condiments!) on Sat, visited Dutch ex-flat mate Katherina in her impressive new sea-view apartment (after her placement she got headhunted to help open a new Dutch bank in Moz!) then had a thai take away and watched Notting Hill with Jo.
Went up to Bilene on Sunday and met Matt one of the peace corps guys. He was there with this big Mozambican family, his neighbours who have taken him under their wing. They (and Mozambicans in general, if I may generalise!) are incredibly generous and hospitable. They brought everything with them and cooked 2 enormous meals including chicken and fresh fish and kept trying to foist more on us. They were a good laugh too. They were leaving quite late though and I needed to get back so I braved the chapas (minibus public transport) on my own back to Chokwe. I met a couple of local girls and travelled with them. Again, so helpful, insisted on carrying half my stuff and walked me to the stop where I needed to change buses. Should only take about an hour and a half but you also have to wait for them to fill up and then they stop and start according to the driver’s every whim. It took me over 3 hours to get home, by which time there was a storm and my electricity had gone off at home. Nolly had torn the toilet role to shreds and knocked everything over. Ah well!
Oh there was a most newsworthy occurrence about 10 days ago – the British army landed in little old Chokkers! I was under the tree for lunch when an annoyingly ubiquitous, rather stalkerish boy called Dominic came over to tell me that British soldiers were in town and they wanted to speak to me! I thought I must have misunderstood but no, they were here on reconnaissance (ha!) to plan a contingency disaster relief operation in the event of terrible flooding here like that of 2000 (water up to ceilings). They’d heard there was a ‘resident Brit in town’ (ha!) and wanted to ply me for info - save themselves the bother of gesticulating at the locals. They’d found my office (got to hand it to them) and were waiting on the bench outside. Most strange it was to have my Mozambican bubble punctured with hyper-Britishness. Hugo and Major Martin something or other. Anyway, we had a nice chat about infrastructure etc and then they declared a drink at nineteen hundred hours was in order! So I spent that evening drinking the local beer with about 15 members of the British forces – mixture of army and RAF. It was an interesting, if surreal evening and reminded me how weird military culture is. I suppose it has to be to cultivate a mindset that makes going off to war acceptable or desirable. Still I was quite surprised to hear a raving Neo-Con, pro-Iraq, thank god for America, beat-up the bad guys, intervention a gogo argument from the Hugo person. Despite being double-barrelled and a raging toff he was part of the Ghurka regiment and was fluent in Nepalese. The major person was a bit more nuanced and thought that perhaps alternative strategies were needed to compliment the military effort in the War on Terror… Another posh member of the cavalry (another thing learnt: they still call it that despite riding round on tanks instead of horses) had done War Studies at Kings and told hilarious stories of room-sharing at Wellington Hall before it was sold off. There was one rough-around-the-edges guy fittingly named Scruff or Smudge or something who made some disturbing nationalist/xenophobic/fascist comments and generally looked mad. I suppose the potent culture is needed to mask or bridge great gorges in class too. There was also the macabre/hey-ho conversation of which song to have at your funeral. A trio of one of the British patriotic anthems, Pink Floyd and something idiotic like the Cheeky Girls seemed to be the consensus. The next morning I met with a couple more of them to answer more questions. Later that day I received a text message apologising for not being able to say thanks and goodbye properly due to being escorted out of Chokwe by the Mozambican government/secret police. What on earth?! The newspaper the following day also reported that people had actually been dying due to really bad floods up in northern Moz. So the whole thing is either a deeply suspicious cover, or an embarrassing oversight, or maybe just bumbling British misdirection. I dunno.
Ooh I received my first snail mail letter the other day (thanks Manik!) very exciting, so come on people, put pen to paper!! Address to send to is:
VETAID Moçambique
Av. Eduardo Mondlane, no. 1270
C.P. 1707
Maputo
Mozambique
Presents of any kind also welcome J I hope you’re all doing well, email me with all news and write some comments on this thing! xxxxxxxx
posted by Elizabeth Drew at 4:49 pm
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