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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

New Pictures: The Wedding!



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Megan in Mozambique

My First Mozambican Wedding

This past Sunday, I attended my first Mozambican wedding with my counterpart’s family. After trying on every capulana I own at the insistence of my host sisters, we decided on an outfit. I was dressed as a traditional Mozambican woman, with a capulana as a long skirt and a lenço on my head, and everyone loved it. I went to church with the family to see the ceremony, and afterward the wedding party moved in procession to a nearby house for the reception. And by procession, I mean slow wedding march on straw mats, with women constantly running mats from the back to the front of the wedding party, creating a path for them. After a lap of the premises, the bride did a ceremonial mixing of the vat of xima with a giant wooden spoon, serving the first plate. Then, the bride and groom fed each other, followed by my counterpart and his wife (the padrinho and madrinha, a best man/matron of honor and godparent hybrid). The couple then linked arms and drank Fanta out of champagne flutes, and kissed when the crowd chanted.

Some of the adults were then invited to sit at the tables for the meal; as a guest of the padrinho and madrinha I snagged a seat (everyone eats, not everyone gets a chair). If I wasn’t a foreigner, though, I would have been serving dinner along with my host brothers around my age. Then came a several course meal. Quick note: after a couple traumatic experiences of being in church with my counterpart for 4.5 hours and becoming manically hungry, I had eaten a giant breakfast in preparation (much more appropriate then my previous strategy: stuffing my mouth with cashews while everyone was praying out loud with their eyes closed). So when I was served lunch, I was uncharacteristically not very hungry. The samosas (fried puff pastry with a meat filling) were delicious and I ate everything but the chicken foot in my soup. But then came a full plate of xima with a generous serving of cow stomach. It was by far my least favorite thing I’ve eaten here, beating out pork liver. I’ve actually tried cow stomach before and didn’t hate it, but the caril (sauce) this time was Fear Factor-level. I ate it quickly to get it over with, and was left with half a plate of xima. My relief was short-lived, however, as the servers came around to dole out more of the meat, and it was hard to mask my panic when I adamantly declined. This course was followed by full plates of rice with beef, more beef with French fries, and finally cake. [Special note to Jesse, Diamondstone, and Berko: Yo dawg, I heard you like stomach. So I put a stomach in your stomach.]

Once everyone had eaten absurd quantities of food, it was time for the presents. Mozambican gift giving is fantastic; each group (grandkids, neighbors, etc.) sings and dances as they present their gifts. They can often goes as far as elaborate choreographed numbers and matching capulanas. The couple received sundry household items, dozens of capulanas, cash, and the grand finale, a bed complete with pillows and a heavy fleece blanket. Told at the last minute that I would be presenting that gift with the rest of the padrinho and madrinha’s guests, I was sweating it out, having now idea what we were going to be doing. So when they unloaded the mattresses from a pickup truck, I rushed over to grab a corner. People still didn’t understand why I wasn’t singing along, because not knowing the language let alone the lyrics was apparently not a valid excuse. The bride and groom were then told to lie down on the bed (which they did head to foot, rather awkwardly) and the blanket was draped over them as everyone laughed. Finally, the dance floor was opened to the wedding party, and the madrinha/my 50-something-year-old host mother/grandmother shocked everyone with her sweet moves.

With the exception of the cow stomach, the wedding was a fantastic day. I’ve never felt so integrated, and I can’t wait until the next one. Dressed as a Mozambican woman, I was a huge hit, and I was even propositioned to be someone’s second wife (and introduced to the first wife). Everyone expects me to dance at the next wedding, unfortunately, so I better start practicing.

MULUNGO! MULUNGO!

The very first Changana (local dialect) word I ever learned was mulungo, the somewhat derogatory term for a white person. And for a while after I first arrived at site, it was yelled at me regularly. I say “somewhat derogatory” because like most other words, it depends on the context. Kids yelling it in my face? Derogatory. Being introduced as one to a congregation of hundreds at my organization’s church? Not. Even when it bothers me, there’s not always mal intent behind it, and usually people simply don’t realize that I don’t like the term.

Being a very small, but very visible, minority has been a very eye-opening experience and frankly, pretty tough at times. Normally it’s easy enough to brush off; I’m quite obviously different, and for many people, I’m the first white person they’ve seen with the exception of some South Africans and Portuguese passing through town. But occasionally it reaches the breaking point, like when co-workers mockingly called another co-worker a mulungo for having lighter skin and compared his arm to mine. And sure, the fact that my pale face was the only thing to show up in a dark picture was funny, but not when everyone else was joking about it in a different language.

No matter how integrated I am, I will always be different. However, now that I’m much less of a curiosity in town, being called mulungo generally only happens when I’m going on home visits in more remote parts of town for the first time. I explained to co-workers who take me on home visits why I don’t respond to the word, and at a meeting with the organization mentioned above I asked people to call me anything else but not that word, and everyone’s been very understanding. Most successful of all was telling kids that they couldn’t color for a day if they said it; after one incident in which all the other kids yelled the equivalent of “OOOOOOOOHHHHHH you can’t color!” in Portuguese, I never heard the word again.

Now we sip champagne when we thirsty

Times were tough for a while in Macia. First, the taps stopped running. Then, the water storage tanks and the local well dried up. The closest source of water was the bakery on the other side of the highway and a 15 minute walk away when not slowed down by 25-liter containers of water. When the family told me this, I couldn’t hide my shock. Thankfully, the family took pity on me, or as they put it, “Caitlin (my former roommate) could conseguir (achieve) that, but you can’t,” and mandar-ed (ordered) their eldest sons to cart water for me in addition to the rest of the family. At the beginning though, I only got 25 liters every few days, which horrified even fellow volunteers. I cut bathing down to every few days, cooked rice and pasta in the bare minimum amount of water, re-wore clothing, went commando for several days, and finally went to Caitlin’s house in a nearby town to do laundry. Eventually, the boys brought me water more often, probably due to reports about my bathing habits from the kids. I felt really guilty about it, but I insisted on paying them and offered to make each son a mix CD.

One magical morning, I woke up to the sounds of running water. I immediately filled up every container I own with water just in case, but the water was back for good… or at least until the next time the town pump breaks down. So now I have running water, I bought a fridge from a fellow volunteer, and the family blasts Kanye’s “Power” (I snuck it in between the Michael Jackson and Eminem they wanted) from their house… just living the dream. I’m not gonna lie though; my bathing habits still horrify the kids, as they take three a day. But my new system is to claim I took one while they were eating dinner, since when they visit me afterward I’ve changed into my pajamas. Don’t judge me; even when one heats the water, bucket baths in outdoor bathrooms during African winter are cold.

Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor!

I really love my site, and even though the pace is slow, I’m starting to have successes at work. There are still lots of ups and downs, but overall I’m happy in Macia and with what I hope to achieve here. In particular, I love my dependencia and my host family. I entertain their children and send over a lot of baked goods. They took me to a wedding, and during a recent power outage, brought over a thermos of hot water for tea in the morning and a tray of beans and xima for dinner since they know I cook with an electric stove.

Kids

The majority of my friends at site are children, and I love it. My host family’s kids are always excited when I return from a trip, and they are constantly over my house to color or dance to Michael Jackson while wearing my giant shoes (see picture). And they love me too, although recently perhaps a little too much. During a game of animal bingo, an 8-year-old neighbor told me I was pretty and winked at me. My 9-year-old host brother gave my left boob a quick squeeze and then later that week said I was his woman. He looked so guilty after the former and it was such a surprise that all I could do was laugh. However, when a few weeks later all the kids started smacking my butt (or lack thereof) and telling me I looked like a vovo (grandmother) because I didn’t have a butt, it was time to have a discussion about private places. Since then, they’ve been keeping it PG, literally. We rolled out a straw mat on my kitchen floor and watched The Lion King on my computer one night; they loved it, and we watched it again the next night. And then Finding Nemo the following night. (Even though the movies are in English the kids can generally follow along and I give the older ones plot updates in Portuguese.)

Children’s Day on June 1st was also a lot of fun. The girls in my REDES group (youth group for teen girls) had collected money from their class and came over to bake 3 cakes for their celebration. The kids joined them while the cakes were baking and we played games, ate pasta salad, and danced. The REDES girls have since baked another cake at my house (chocolate this time), and the kids have formed their own group. For their first activity, we made peanut butter from scratch, which turned out really good but took nearly 3 hours of roasting the peanuts, removing the paper, and hand-grinding with a pilão (giant wooden mortar and pestle).

Simba

After I was gone for a week due to a conference, Simba was downright adorable when I returned, running over to greet me and cuddling with me in bed for hours. After being gone for a long weekend due to a meeting shortly after that, she had had enough. She started living in the family’s cozinha (shed used for cooking) and adopted Casstilio, the son in charge of feeding her while I’m away, as her surrogate parent. She was living the life, killing 3 rats in the 4 days I was gone, and even after I returned, she would run to greet Casstilio when he got back from school every day. Message received, Simba; your love is a privilege not a right.

All of the rat hunting finally caught up, however, and Simba had a bad case of worms. The agricultural clinic in town only gives rabies shots, but they wrote down the name of a deworming medicine and sent me to the pharmacy with the instructions to pretend I was buying it for a child. The pharmacist totally knew I was full of shit (“how old is the child?” me: “pequenino? (very little)” “how many years?” me: “ummm… two?”), but he sold it to me anyway. The agricultural clinic had told me to put a small piece of a pill in Simba’s mouth rather than putting it in her food, and with one of the kids holding her by the scruff, we forced it down her throat. After the serious cold shoulder she had been giving me, I thought Megba/Simgan might be over forever, but luckily she’s back to being healthy and my friend.

Work

Like I said above, work is going slowly, but at least it’s going. Since my last update, I led a two hour training on monitoring and evaluation for AJAAB as well as a series of short organizational development workshops. We’ve written a mission and vision, and are currently in the process of designing home visits for the families of escolinha (preschool) students. Additionally, an activista from Associação Cristã and I attended a weeklong Peace Corps conference for activistas that included two days of medicinal plant training. She and I are currently in the process of planning a two day training for all of our organization’s activistas at the end of this month, covering topics related to HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, nutrition, diarrhea, hygiene, and orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). Thus, even though work is sporadic, I am definitely making some progress.