Permagarden

This weekend we learned how to make a Permagarden (permanent garden).  The Permagarden technique is something universally done among Peace Corps volunteers in an effort to promote families in the community to develop and sustain their own garden, making for cheaper, healthier lifestyles and even a possible source of income.

As most you of probably already know, I am not a keen lover of gardening but for some reason the idea of setting up my own garden once I get to site sounds kind of fun! (Maybe it is because I am definitely lacking vegetables in my diet…)  But let me tell you, starting a garden from scratch is quite the process!

We started the day bright and early learning about composting.  (Dad, I can give you all kinds of tips now for your garden in the backyard!)  We used machetes and hoes to collect, chop, dig up, and gather green and brown materials to make our compost pile.  It rained super hard last night, so it was a pretty muddy adventure climbing through shrubs and gathering the materials. 

We dug a small hole about 10cm deep and then laid sticks across it to allow for some air flow.  Then we alternately added brown material, green material, soil/manure to make a pile about 1m tall.  We covered it with banana leaves to help retain some moisture and hopefully our pile will start to decompose in a few weeks to make some nice compost!

Then we turned to the garden.  The past group of volunteers had started a garden, but no one had kept it up, so we started with weeding and cleaning up the area a bit.  Then we made our planting beds, first digging up the dirt with the hoe, then forming mounds about a meter wide, then double digging and mixing in charcoal, manure, and compost with the soil, then building berms around the perimeter of the garden, and making pathways between planting beds.  Then we planted lemongrass and sweet potatoes around the perimeter in the berms which apparently are natural repellents.  I had no idea you could just plant the stalk of the plant and it will grow!  We filled our planting beds with tomatoes, corn, lettuce, and beans. 

Here is the final product!

A Few Distinct Differences

This will probably be a list that I will continuously add to, and I don’t intend to generalize for all of Mozambique, but these are a few things (not including the obvious like speaking another language or killing your own chicken) I have observed during my few weeks here in Namaacha that are distinctly different from things seen/done in the US.

·         Trash disposal: Walking down the street, it is not uncommon to pass open, unwatched fires or to see plumes of white smoke in the distance.  These are merely trash disposal methods.  So it’s probably not the greatest for the atmosphere or the air we breathe, but you gotta do something with your trash, and there is no organized trash pickup service or dump, so the Mozambique method is simply to burn it all. 

·         Passear – Passearing, or just wandering or walking, is a favorite pastime for Mozambiquans.  But my gosh do they walk slow!  And when you think slow, think about 100 times slower than what you might consider slow.

·         Strong women – The concept of chivalry and men carrying heavier things is not commonplace here, women do considerably all the heavy lifting around the house.  And by heavy lifting, I mean carrying incredible loads on top of their heads.  It really is a miraculous thing to see, women and girls carrying bundles of wood, barrels of water, buckets, whatever on their heads walking down the street, up hills, over cobblestones with the most relaxed ease!  How these things balance on their heads and how their necks can support such incredible weights, I have no idea…

·         Cars – Here, pedestrians have the right to get out of the way of vehicles.  Cars do not slow and do not really swerve but expect you if you are walking to move out of their way.  And not only do they drive on the other side of the road here, they also sometimes drive on both sides of the road.

·         Children – Once a kid has the ability to walk, they are pretty much independent.  It is not unusal to pass a group of two or three year olds playing on the street with no adult supervision in sight.  For the little kids who can’t walk yet, mothers do not let them stop them from doing things around the house and simply tie them to their backs snugly with a capulana. 

·         Obedience – Another interesting thing regarding children is their obedience towards their parents.  Never have I heard my siblings defy my parents or ask them why they had to do something.  Sometimes I can tell that they might be upset or not want to set the table or wash the dishes that night or my sister will tell my brother to do it, but never do they say no or argue with my mae.  For instance, here is a short anecdote.  The other night for dinner, my sister made a fruit salad.  Upon seeing that she had forgotten to add oranges to the salad, my mae scolded my sister telling her she made it improperly and needed to put an orange in it.  So my sister got up and went to the market and bought an orange to add to the fruit salad.  If it had been a teenager in the US, there would inevitably have been back talk and arguing, but here my sister just sucked it up and did what she was told.  When she came back, my mae asked where she had gone and said she didn’t mean for her to go right then, but even I heard her tell her to go and I don’t know much Portuguese. 

A Few American Influences I've Seen in Namaacha

·         Clothing: On Wednesdays and Saturdays, Namaacha has what is called ShopRite in which vendors gather in this outside marketplace and sell various things.  Amongst people selling food, shoes, bags, and capulanas, are many clothing sellers.  I have no idea how the vendors come to aquire the clothing, but I assume most of it is second-hand items donated by Americans.  It is not unusual to see residents walking around in shirts featuring logos of American sports teams or American universities and English phrases which make one question whether the person wearing the shirt understands the words written on it. 

·         Music: Residents here love their music and love blasting their music at all hours of the day.  My family uses the TV as their speaker, but many families have gigantic speakers in their homes making it feel like one is constantly in a discotech (club).  American music is everywhere, everything from Mariah Carey to Akon to Snoop Dogg to Katy Perry and Lady Gaga to music from the 80s.  I was walking to my class the other day and a teenage guy thinking he was all cool was walking down the road blasting Celine Dion’s “A New Day”.  My Irma sings a lot and I love when she sings along to English songs not really saying any words in English, but making sounds that are similar to what the actual words are.  Every now and then, I try to translate a song for them or at least tell them what the song is generally about, but my language skills are still in the making, so I am somewhat limited still.

·         TV:  The other night Mr. Popper’s Penguins, the recent movie with Jim Carey which I think came out just this summer in the US, was on TV here in English with Portuguese subtitles.   Later, I watched CSI: Miami with my mae, also in English with subtitles.  Another volunteer mentioned that she has watched Disney Channel and even “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” with her family.  I wonder who decides which programs make it to the other side of the world…

Visiting a Mozambican School

On Tuesday, we visited real Mozambique classes.  The science volunteers went together to a technical school in Matola, a large city about an hour outside Namaacha. 

First off, we have been prepped by other current volunteers about what to expect in the typical secondary school classroom.   For instance, class sizes typically exceed 100 students (yes, just 1 teacher), resources consist of merely a blackboard, and students cram into desks or benches or frequently sit on the floor.  Professors, though greatly respected in this culture, have a reputation for simply not showing up to class or being late, and teaching styles typically center around the professor writing definitions on the board and students simply copying the notes with little explanation or classroom participation. 

However, this technical school in Matola showed the other side of things.  This school has about 2500 students and 120 professors, if you do the math, that’s about a 20:1 ratio.  (In comparison, the nearby secondary school has 9000 students and probably significantly fewer professors.)  The technical school has 16 different areas of study including electrical engineering, mechanics, biochemistry, medicine, biology, etc. 

I observed an organic chemistry class.  The class had only 25-30 students and there was a blackboard and a periodic table on the wall.  The 45 minute lesson aimed at preparation for an upcoming exam and the teacher did somewhat a review of what the students should know, giving examples and asking for classroom participation.  The professor walked around the room while he lectured, he frequently asked “Estamos juntos?” (“Are we together? Do we all understand?”) and gave clear examples of what he expected of the students, and he seemed greatly respected by them. 

After the lessons, we met the head director of the school and then were given a tour.  The school has a computer lab with about 20 computers, but they said many were broken or not functioning well.  Their library consisted of about 4 or 5 bookshelves of books and some maps on the walls and the pedagogic director explained how they were trying to obtain more books but it was expensive.  The school also had a supply room with all the typical items one might find in a chemistry lab class: flasks, beakers, test tubes, even chemical compounds for experiments.  Granted there weren’t nearly as many items as one might see in a school for 2500 students in the US, but even the presence of any sort of chemical or laboratory equipment is extremely rare in most schools here. 

It was definitely an interesting experience visiting this technical school, but for most of us volunteers, our reality once we get to site will most likely be quite different than what we saw here.  In only a few weeks we’ll find out where we will be living for the next two years!

Line Dancing in Africa

Today we had our second Ngoma Time.  I thought there would be more Mozambiquans like last week, but today was just us and our professors, so about 20 non-Americans, but it was still fun.  The math volunteers did a rap song, a few volunteers played some music (guitar, drum), others organized some field day games like three-legged race, sack races, wheelbarrow racing, and crab walking which the professors excitedly participated in and it was a blast! 

I made up and taught a group of people a line dance to the song, “Country Girl Shake It for Me” (Shout out to Mary, Courtney, Chelsea, and Sam, my Incahoots buddies! You better all be praciting those line dance moves to do when I get back!)  

Anyways, here is a short clip of the dance we did.  Enjoy!

My first chicken.....

Tuesday for language class, we cooked with our maes (my mae was working, so my Irma came).  They showed us how to make a Mozambique dish while we made them an American dish.  We made for them the very American dish: chicken tacos. 

Many of you have heard stories about having to kill your own chicken here in Africa, and today was the first day I witnessed this process.  I did not have the heart nor the guts to take the chicken’s life myself, and let my friend Anna do the deed (she had already done it a few times before with her mae.)

DISCLAIMER: STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T LIKE BLOOD or goriness or animal cruelty or if you would like to continue thinking that chicken always comes from the grocery store, nicely plucked and packaged.  This is definitely not something for the faint of heart…..

So you choose to keep reading? You asked for it, so here’s how it’s done. 

You lay the live chicken on its side on the ground, its wings together behind its back then proceed to hold it down by stepping on its wings with your foot and holding down its feet with your other foot.  The chicken does not fight or even move really, like it knows its inevitable fate and is in a sort of trance state (the chicken actually moves more when it is “dead”/dying). 

Then you take the knife and slice the chicken’s head off, just like that.  (Side note: The knives here are typically not the sharpest.  As a result, rather than slice in a quick fluid motion, one must sort of saw back and forth, somewhat hacking at the chicken’s neck, trying to be “humane” and do it as quick as possible.  And if the knife is too dull to make it all the way through the chicken’s neck, you grasp around the cut part  and bend it open so that the blood can flow out as the chicken dies slowly.)  The blood squirted all over Anna’s foot (she was wearing sandals), yet she just kept cutting through that chicken’s neck, trying to go quickly as it was clearly still alive with twitching feet. 

Once the head is fully cut off, the legs continue to kick and the eyes still move around, the beak even opening and closing as the decapitated head lies there on the dirt.  This lasted for at least a few minutes, maybe even longer, probably shorter but feeling longer.  Gives a whole new perspective on the idiom “running around like a chicken with its head cut off”.  Thank goodness this chicken wasn’t running around though, but those legs continued to twitch and the blood continued to spurt out.

And then the chicken finally stops breathing and the blood stops flowing and now it is time to pluck it.  You put the chicken into a bowl and pour boiling water over it and then just pluck out those feathers.  (I swear, the chest still moved up and down as we plucked this chicken.)  With four of us doing it, the plucking went fairly quickly, like 10 minutes or so. 

Then Dylan’s mae proceeded to separate the chicken parts.  First, simply cutting off the feet, then the wings, then we were in for an anatomy lesson.  She uncovered basically the entire organ system of the chicken: liver, stomach, intestines, lungs, unrecognizable parts, just sitting there in the bowl with the feet, legs, wings, etc.  I’m pretty sure they use almost all parts of the chicken at some point as typically nothing is wasted here, but I have never been served the organs, at least not that I know of…  I’m still not sure why, but she also inverted the butt part of the chicken, which yes contained poop, and removed the inner lining (the poopy part), saving the rest.  She then braided the intestines. 

IF YOU STOPPED READING BEFORE, YOU CAN CONTINUE NOW.  NO MORE BLOOD OR GORE.

Now it was time to make our tacos.  Dylan separated out the meat part of the chicken from the other organs and body parts while I diced onion, tomato, garlic, green pepper, and lettuce and Anna made the tortilla dough.  None of us had made our own tortillas before, but it actually all turned out really good.  I fried the dough and formed them into taco shell shapes and then demonstrated how to assemble the taco.  The maes and our professors seemed very hesitant, but quickly said how good it was and went back for seconds and thirds.  The maes made a leafy dish with coconut and almond milk and xima (corn meal) and rice.  Made for a delicious lunch! 

Just something you might remember next time you go to the grocery store to buy your chicken….

25th Anniversary of the Mbuzini Tragedy

On June 25^th, 1975, Mozambique became an independent nation with Samora Machel as its first president.  Sadly, on October 19^th, 1986, Samora Machel, along with 34 others, died in a mysterious plane crash over Mbuzini, South Africa, under very questionable circumstances.  Thus, 2011 marks the 25^th anniversary commemorating the tragic events that occurred at Mbuzini.

This Monday, we traveled to Mbuzini, to the site of the plane crash to attend a commemoration ceremony.  We left bright and early at 6:30am crammed into Peace Corps vehicles and drove the 20 minutes or so to the South Africa/Mozambique border.  It seemed all of Namaacha was leaving to go to Mbuzini as well.  Huge charter buses shuttled people down the one way paved road to the border.  Once at the border, we joined the lines of people waiting to cross the double, barbed-wire fences.  Organized chaos, of course. 

As we crossed the double fence, people put red dye on the cuticle of our thumbs, making it look like we were bleeding but serving as our temporary passports for the day and permitting us to return to Mozambique after the ceremony.  We were then funneled between two fences, feeling like we were being herded like cattle.  (Indeed, there were cattle outside the fences and the occasional gigantic cow-pie as we walked along.)  We then descended this steep, rocky hill and approached the amphitheater.

The first thing I thought was how different this would be if we were in the US.  First off, this amphitheater violated every handicapped-accessible requirement, the main entrance requiring one to walk down a steep grassy hill and cross a few boulder-laden paths.  They literally just plopped down an amphitheater at the site of the plane crash.  The amphitheater itself, though, resembled any one might find at an American school, concrete seats overlooking a central stage area.  There was a main stage with a few seats in front of it, then the larger amphitheater sat on the left, and more plastic chairs were placed under a huge tent to the right (where we sat).  They had flat screen televisions throughout so one could better see what was happening on stage/who was talking.  Thousands of people were in attendance (The photos I have of the amphitheater I took when we first got there, but it definitely filled in shortly after). 

Another very un-American thing, the accessibility of the pieces/scraps of plane parts from the plane crash.  No one sat guarding or overlooking the plane remnants, and one was free to climb over them and take photos as they pleased. 

The ceremony itself began informally with a few dance groups and songs.  Then, all of a sudden the sound of a helicopter filled the air and right to our right, the presidents of South Africa and Mozambique landed.  We then sang the national anthem of South Africa and Mozambique (which I also sing every day before class, so I am slowly memorizing the Mozambique national anthem).  Following, the Presidents, families of survivors and other important people laid wreaths on the memorial site and the names of the 35 victims were read.  Next, there were prayers in several religions: Baha’I, Christianity, Hindu, Islam and African Tradition.  Then the Premier of the Province spoke, followed by Machel’s son.  Still, 25 years later, he choked back tears as he spoke about his father.  Then the Presidents of Mozambique and South Africa spoke about Machel, the generosity of each country towards the other and how the tragic event united them in comradery, etc.  (Everything was translated in either Portuguese or English, so it was definitely a long ceremony.)

We ended up leaving early, part way through the Mozambique President’s speech, which was strange to me, but I just do what I am told.  That’s another interesting thing, people kind of just walk around as they please during the whole ceremony, while people are giving their speeches.  Interesting cultural differences.