Seattle to Mozambique

Well my first day is done and I’m exhausted. I don’t know how frequent my entries are going to be now. Sigh. But it is very interesting work. Today I just went over the information that has already been gathered from focus groups with church leaders, health officials, and people living with HIV/AIDS. They were asked about HIV treatment and their communities. Fascinating stuff. The Evangelical church that was huge in Brazil is also here and some of the members seem to have the same take on sickness…that it is caused by bad spirits from other animistic religions and that the only way to get that bad spirit out is some intense praying. What does this mean for HIV? Well it means that you can be cured by Jesus Christ. I bet those missionaries that I met on the plane will be pleased as punch to hear this.

Then I met with all the people who are conducting these interviews and I’m excited to start to work with them. Cungura, the guy who I will be working with, is great and very down to earth and funny. He’s excited for my help…I only hope I can live up to his expectations. He drove me to the Day Hospital (this is the name for the HIV/AIDS clinic inside the main hospital) and Mark and Lorina (a woman who runs a transmission from mother-to-child HIV study and whom I might live with!!!) showed me around. I was very impressed with the Day Hospital. It was spacious and organized and very clean.

I came home to cook dinner. Something that is easy since I can get pretty much get the same ingredients that I could get in Brazil. In fact, in general, I feel very comfortable and at home. It is so similar in so many ways. If you just take out the upper and middle classes from Brazil…whalla…you’re in Mozambique (ok and put more clothes on everyone--there is no tiny hotpants around here). I just wish that I could live in a Mozambican neighborhood. Unfortunately I would be the only white person there and therefore would not be particularly safe. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I have to live outside of society for a while. And don’t worry Mom and Sis…safety is my priority. Hopefully I’ll be so immersed in work that I won’t be too depressed about this.

Miss you all…many kisses and hugs

Oh and yesterday I saw something new...giant turkeys being herded by a little boy with a stick in the center of town. I'm familiar with goats and chickens and such but the turkeys I think are my favorite. I might try to track him down closer to thanksgiving and see if he sell me one...yummy.

I’m happy and content. I finally feel excited about what I’m doing and what this year will entail. I have to say that I wasn’t until tonight. Not really. What changed you may ask? Well I finally got to see the city…the REAL city. Not the expensive houses and the city center but the neighborhoods were most people live. Guess what…I LOVED THEM. They were full of people and full of life and music and bars on the corner and families on bicycles and intricate paths between simple houses that wove here and there. Beira has all that I loved about Brazil. Thank god!!!!! This will be good. It won’t be the same and it won’t be easy but it will be good…it might even be great! Thank you Mark for showing me Beira!!!

I have forgotten to post my favorite part about passing through customs in Beira. So let me set up the scene. Here I was arriving with two suitcases, a carry-on bag and a backpack that contained two laptops, one of which I probably should not have been bringing into the country. Plus I had various other electronic things in my backpack that I could have to pay a bribe to get in the country. So…needless to say I’m a little nervous as I roll my first suitcase over to the table to be inspected.

The customs agents looks at my stuff. I had put all my clothes in giant zip lock bags to make packing easier. He takes this as a sign of new things (for which I would have to pay a fee). So I happily take out my ratty clothes and show him that they are really not very new at all.

On to the next bag (which means the backpack is getting closer to inspection and I’m getting more nervous). I open it up and he pulls out the still wrapped package of movies that I bought at Costco. My friend Ana, who’s house I’m staying in right now, asked me to bring DVD’s for those nights when there is nothing to do. I’m not good at figuring out good movies so I went to Costco before I left and sat on the phone with Kate giving her my options and seeking her advice. She advised me to go with the Audrey Hepburn package of four movies.

Ok...so he pulls out the Hepburn movies...here is how the conversation went:

Custom’s Agent: These are pornos
Me: no, no they're not pornos they're classic American movies
CA: they’re pornos
Me: no they really aren’t pornos…see they're classics, old movies.
CA: open this package!! (I opened the DVD box and he pulls out all the movies) these are pornos!!
Me: (laughing at this point) no they really aren’t
CA: open up the packages. I think that the movies in here are not the same as on the front (I’m thinking…yeah that’s why they were still in their packaging, in the US they sell pornos disguised as American Classics)
Me: See the titles are the same

The Customs agent was getting more and more agitated through this whole process and finally, when it was clear they were not pornos, walked away in disgust. I stood there thinking he was going to come back when he turned around and waved me through. I gathered up my bags and my backpack and thanked Audrey Hepburn, the porno star, for getting me through customs without having to pay any bribes!!!!!!!

I have spent some time getting around the city now and I’m starting to kind of get the lay of the land. I now feel comfortable squeezing in a small van and careening about the city with 18 other people squished beside me. But I still feel so distant from life here. I guess it has only been a couple of days but it struck me last night as I lay in bed under my mosquito net and heard the distant drum beats that sounded just like the candomble (Brazilian voodoo) ceremonies. It got louder and louder and I sat there in bed wiggling…wanting to go out and see it, wanting to dance, wanting to feel Mozambique. But I don’t know anyone that I can call up at midnight to go hunting for a religious ceremony with me. I hope this will change soon…I want to stop wiggling and actually go places.

22 Sept 8:09 am (5pm for me)

Today has been much much better. I finally feel like I’m getting into the groove of Beira. I can understand everyone…this is a huge plus. And there are a thousand things that remind me of Brazil and make me feel at home. I made a friend, Bruno, who took me all over the city and has already taught me a lot. I also moved out of the funky hotel and into my friends Ana and Pablo’s house. Unfortunately they left but my colleague Mark arrived and I have so much work to do already that I have to put all my feelings of loneliness aside.

I went to visit the hospital yesterday but it wasn’t planned. I fell in a hole. Yes…you can laugh. I fell into a drainage hole that didn’t have a cover. I fell up to my knee. Luckily I was with Ana and Pablo and they took me to the hospital so that I could get a tetanus shot. I needed the shot because something poked into my knee. There were three little holes that went very deep. It was quite gross and I bled profusely. But now I’m just sore and walk with a little limp.

The experience at the hospital was very interesting. It was so so so so basic! Keep in mind that this is one of three central hospitals in the country. It had very little in the way of supplies, just walls and a floor and some basic instruments, but the staff there treated me well. That is until I went into the room to actually get my shot. I asked the woman to give me the shot in the right arm (since I’m left-handed). She didn’t say a word, just grabbed my left arm and jammed the needle in. Now I have a sore arm and a sore knee.

But I feel joy again. I feel joy in this place that I didn’t feel yesterday. There is a lot of sadness and it is still awfully awfully poor but there is joy here too.

21 Sept 2006 9:12am

I’ve decided to keep my computer set to Seattle time so I always have a little orientation. It’s 9:12am for most of you right now and it’s 6:17pm for me. We are nearly a full day off. So…here I am in Beira, Mozambique. I spent the night last night in Johannesburg and, thanks to melatonin I got a normal nights sleep and I’m on this time schedule now. Getting into Joberg was great. Arnold, my cousins husband, is from Joberg and his parents came and got me at the airport and I spent the night at their house. They only live 10 minutes from the airport so I really didn’t get to form an impression of Joberg at all but I did have tea, and a wonderful shower (probably my last hot shower for a long long time), and a comfortable bed to sleep in. Arnold’s mom made a great breakfast in the morning and then shuttled me back off to the airport.

Wow…that was complete havoc. No one knew where I was supposed to check in for my flight so I went from one end of the terminal to the other asking anyone who looked like they might know. This journey took forever because there were swarms of people with swarms of carts and lines for check-in that wrapped around other lines like some complex cat’s cradle. Every time you’d move a foot you would wait for a few minutes for another foot of space to open up and then you’d have to shove your cart into that space fast!! I have to admit that I actually rammed into the ankles of some old Indian woman trying to get my cart through. Sorry old Indian woman!!

Finally someone showed up who could check me in, though at that point I was not sure that my bags were actually going to the right place. Oh well…better leaving them with some guy who seems to know what he is saying then to wade through the throng of humanity again. My flight itself was only slightly harrowing given that we took off straight up and landed coming straight down…there was nothing gradual about our take off or landing. I also have to say that my flight mates were down right scary.

1) an American couple on Holiday. She had been crying and screaming at her husband in the airport because no one would let her through the throng of people. I suppressed the urge to slap her silly and tell her that it was because no one cared if she got through. If she wanted to get through she would have to rely on her own silly little head and do it. Her boyfriend looked frustrated with her as well but vainly attempted to tell people to step aside.
2) Missionaries…can’t go anywhere these days without of few of these beside you. All cheery and pepped up on Jesus. If the problems of the world boiled down to believing in Jesus Christ it would all be so simple. Unfortunately these cheery kids will soon find, I suspect, that even those who believe in Jesus die of AIDS.
3) Elephant Hunters…no shit. A couple from Arkansas who run a gun business and were traveling up further north in Mozambique to hunt elephants. SCARY!!! It was fascinating as their luggage came out in Beira. Gigantic gun cases that seemed to hold weapons capable of…well…killing an elephant.

Oh…and a side note. I didn’t have a window seat (despite begging and attempted bribary) the whole trip. This means that I don’t have any sense of where I am. I was stuck in a metal tube for days.

So finally I got to Beira. I stepped off onto the Tarmac and marveled at how much it reminded me of Brazil. It smelled the same, had the same heavy humidity and the same architecture. In passport control I had my first feeling of “am I ready for this”. Another American introduced herself as a nun from Seattle that runs an orphanage here. She said “bless you for coming, these people need all the help that they can get. But are you ready, really ready for this?” I told her yes but I have to admit that I was thinking no...no I’m not. But really how do you prepare…how do you get ready for poverty, sadness, death?

I went to the table set up for customs and opened my bags for the guard to see. He kept asking me if things were new and I kept telling him that my ratty jeans were not new. Thank god I speak portuguese otherwise I think he would have confiscated alot. Then came the tricky part. He found my four-pack of DVD's. It is four movies by Audrey Hepburn. Lovely classics. He thought they were pornos. I spent FOREVER convincing him that Audrey Hepburn was not a porn star. I had to take all the DVD's out and show him that everyone had all their clothes on. He finally got so frustrated that I didn't have pornos that he waved me through without looking through the things in my other bag that he really might have objected to.

I walked out of custons to find that my friends Ana and Pablo had to go to Chimoio (a city in the mountains that is another base for HAI) and so a HAI driver met me at the airport. We drove into town to a hotel called Lifeline. Minutes after leaving the airport we passed by a funeral procession. Then I really started to ask myself if I was ready for this. I still don’t know. I suppose I’ll just take it day to day.

The reason that I am in NY for a week is that my sister-cousin (no I don't mean this in an Appalachian sort of way...she's more like a sister than a cousin is what this is meant to say), her husband and my three year-old niece live in NY.

Three years ago, I was lucky enough to be there for my niece’s birth. I snuggled her soon after and spent a month in a cramped one-bedroom Manhattan apartment helping my cousin feed, burp, and change her. I felt quite close to my tiny niece.

Then I left. I went back to Seattle and had to be satisfied with occasional quick visits, pictures and stories and short phone conversations in which she invariably thought I was my sister. I was therefore scared to find out if she would remember and recognize me when I got in to Manhattan. Unfortunately she was asleep in the bedroom. I visited with my sister-cousin for a while and then quietly lay down on the air mattress beside Isabel's bed.

I woke up to find a little girl (she had still been a baby last time I saw her) staring at me from her bed with her thumb shoved firmly in her mouth. I was worried that she would be frightened by some stranger sleeping on the floor next to her so I quietly said "Isabel do you remember me?" She nodded and blinked her big eyes and continued to stare. "Isabel do you know who I am?" She nodded again. "Isabel do you want to give me a hug?" Then my beautiful little niece nodded vigorously and climbed down, ran to my bed lay her head on my chest and fell asleep again. We have been inseparable ever since.

My row buddies on my flight from SEA to JFK were a woman from Mexico in the middle seat who was moving to Montreal and a Seattle transplant whose best friend is the coach of the NY Jets. Not that I know this at first. I find this out through a lengthy flirtation between these two as I'm trying to sleep without leaning on the passengers lined up for the restroom. As I'm drifting in and out NY Jets tries to make the moves on Ms. Mexico by talking about football. Ms. Mexico responds by dragging out a folder of her mexican girl band with large, overly styled photographs of her in various positions (not all singing). She giggles that she is a model too. They slowly get closer and closer and soon their legs are intertwined and they are checking out the line to the bathroom. NY Jets was trying to speak the few words of Spanish to her that he could muster. Two of which, accidentally, were "mi esposa" (my wife). To which Ms. Mexico is astonished but continues to flirt and cuddle up. NY Jets continues to flirt as well but begins to nervously slide his wedding ring up and down his finger. Yes....the inevitable happened. The ring flew off his hand and his attempts to find the ring by jamming his hand between their seats wasn't working.

At this time Ms. Helpful, the flight attendant, comes by to tell him that this happened before to a NY Jets player (what is with the fucking Jets and my flight?) and that he never did find his ring. This comment from Ms. Helpful sends NY Jets into a frenzy and three rows of people get up and walk to the little space between the bathrooms clutching their seat-cushions-that-double-as-a-floatation-device to their bodies as NY Jets crawls through the gunk left by thousands of previous flyers. This went on and on....Ms. Mexico and I must have been standing at the back of the plane for an hour. I was amused and glad that I was ready for a water landing at any moment but Ms. Mexico looked embarrassed and guilty and NY Jets was getting more panicked by the minute.

He finally found it. The whole place gave a weak clap (all had been a witness to their intertwined intensity) and we went back to our seats in silence. Ms. Mexico and I chatted for the rest of the flight as NY Jets looked lost in relief and guilt. Ms. Mexico wanted my e-mail and made me promise that I would visit her in Mexico or Montreal (this is strangely not even amongst the first times that my seatmates on a plane wanted me to visit them afterward) and we all left into the great grey bosom of NY.