Immeasurable Impact

These days with Kevin here I feel more relaxed and, in a strange way, even more at home in Chimundo. What I didn’t really realize before is that living alone, although it sometimes has its advantages, can still be stressful. No one to come home to, no one to make dinner with, no one to go shopping with, no one to talk to, no one to travel with, etc, etc. I often envy Erica and Alycia because they live together and they do everything together. As a female living alone, I worry about my safety, I get scared of the dark, I have to fend off sexual harassment everywhere I go, I have to do all the housework, I have to kill my own cockroaches…

So I was amazed to find how quickly Kev and I could settle back into routine. He’s such a flexible person, adapting to Mozambican life was really no problem. (It probably helped him to know that he’d only be here a month. Exasperating children? No running water? Overcrowded chapas? All minor annoyances that would be soon left behind...)

Because of Kev, I often find myself less occupied with household chores and more willing to talk to and play with the neighborhood kids that came by. (Not all of them, mind you, because some are still as annoying as ever.) But since Kev brought with him a bunch of toys and stuff for kids, I put together a box of art supplies to give the children who ask to sit and draw on the veranda. It’s something simple, but they love it because they don’t have their own sets of crayons, colored pencils, scratch paper. (That’s probably also why, even with the older kids, their drawings are crude and their coloring skills generally lacking.)

Slowly, over time, I have come to recognize the faces (less so, the names) of the many children who live in my neighborhood. I can more or less identify the kids who belong in the “bratty and destructive” category, as well as the kids who are in the “generally good and harmless” one.

What’s also happened is that I’ve ended up “adopting” a group of boys. Rosthilio, Vasco, and Alex are 11 years old kids who live nearby and who come by my house every day after school to draw and color. I let them in sit outside my back door and do their thing while I do mine. I affectionately call them my Art Club and they sometimes refer to me as their art teacher. Every day they ask me what I want them to draw that day and I’ll pick a topic such as “animals,” or “fruits,” or “school supplies.” I believe that giving them a general theme helps them think outside the box of their own minds, where they would normally just produce houses and cars and Mozambican flags and guns. They leave their drawings with me, and I already have a plan for them: at the end of my service, I will bind up all their individual drawings and make a little book for each of them.

The other day I handed them a mirror and told them to draw self-portraits. It was obvious that they rarely see their own faces because each kid spent a long time holding the mirror in front of his face and giggling and ducking his face away shyly. They, being typical children, laughed and poked fun at each others’ drawings, but all in good humor.

Usually I’ll spend some time sitting outside with them and talking to them or coloring with them. (I gave them each a Fred Flintstone coloring book and they color one or two pages a day before moving on to free drawing.) The boys ask me questions about America (“Mana Vivienne, I heard that in America, everyone has a swimming pool!”), ask me how to translate things in English (“Mana Vivienne, why do you call Kevin ‘Sweetie?’”), tell me about school (“Mana Vivienne, I have a math test next week. Will you give me practice problems?”). I try to be a good role model for them and teach them things because it’s obvious they need some adult guidance in their lives. Unlike the girls in the neighborhood, who come by less often because of their household chores, boys rarely have many responsibilities at home and play most of the day (a preview of their adult lives, too.)

I teach them how to play well with the dogs, instead of throwing rocks at them like a lot of the kids around here do. I praise their artwork and encourage them to practice drawing the things they’re not good at drawing. I make them jello sometimes, and let them try new things like lemonade. I tell them about life in America and explain that it’s not all golden, that they can’t expect free things in life without working for them.

One day, I asked the boys to help me with my garden. They helped me dig down into the super compacted sand, and then I sent them to buy some cow manure from a nearby corral. (It was supposed to be 5 mts for a bucket, and 10 for a wheelbarrow-full.) I didn’t have two buckets, or a wheelbarrow, so I sent the boys on two trips, to collect with one bucket and one medium-sized plastic basin. The boys came back at the end asking for more money to pay the guy, who was trying to charge 10 mts per basin, although each basin held the same amount as a bucket and certainly NOT the equivalent of a wheelbarrow. I walked back down to the corral, told the guy off, tossed 20 mts at him (5 for each container) as he shrank down in his chair and meekly agreed that I was right, and then went back home. As Vasco and Rosthilio followed after me with the last bucket of manure, laughing gleefully at my victory, I said to them, “Boys. I want to tell you something. In life, don’t let other people take advantage of you. If you know something is wrong, speak up and don’t just accept it.” They nodded with their usual quiet, “Sim, Mana Vivienne.” As children, they won’t speak up against their elders. It’s a cultural thing. But I hope that as they grow older, they’ll remember what I said.

As I’m entering into my 4th month at site, secondary projects are just now starting to appear on my radar. It might be too much to expect that all of them unfold the way I want them to, but I’m going to try my best to get involved in any and all that come my way. From the onset, I’ve been interested in either JOMA or REDES, youth organizations funded by PEPFAR. JOMA groups are for both boys and girls, while REDES groups are all female. JOMA is communications-based, and can focus on theatre, journalism, photo-journalism, etc. REDES is more about the empowerment of women, self-esteem building, etc. Both organizations would enable me to work with older youth, my area of interest.

My friend Castigo also recently approached me asking for help with his new male youth group and their ideas for income-generating projects (raising livestock). Helping him would probably entail a more business-development approach, but I imagine I could also become involved with other group activities. And in time, it could also become a JOMA-related group.

The main problem I’m facing right now is, not having the right connections to integrate into these groups. I don’t work at a secondary school, so I don’t know any of the kids. I don’t have a viable counterpart as of yet, say if I wanted to start my own group. I rarely leave Chimundo, which means my network of connections is minimal. I have heard of most of these possible projects from Erica who, 8 months from leaving Mozambique permanently, is reluctant to take on more heavy responsibilities and would rather pass them on to a newer volunteer.

I’m hoping that things don’t fall through, and I can get involved soon because I am impatient to start on something new. (And I have a secret fear of lagging in “progress,” compared to other MOZ15 volunteers.)

Work at the escolinha is going okay, although a bit tedious because well, working with children means constant repetition. We sing the same songs and do the same activities on a daily basis. I walk around my house singing children’s songs in Portuguese all day, to the point that Kevin can hum the tunes to some of them. (“Please don’t work at a preschool for the rest of your life,” he says.) My work repertoire consists of the following commands: Sit down! Don’t hit her. Be quiet! Come here! Don’t speak Changana! Eat your food. Share the toys!

It’s not difficult, but it certainly is draining. Some days it’s all I can do to not just grab my bag and run, screaming internally, as soon as 12pm rolls around. I work a half day, which is more than enough for me. I’m a volunteer, not a martyr or a full time babysitter. More often than not, I lie down and nap for a few hours right when I get home; the heat of the day makes it unpleasant to do much else.

In the last two weeks of Kevin’s visit we’ve made chocolate pudding, brownies with fudge sauce, beer battered onion rings, curried couscous, garlic bread, passion fruit vanilla cake. I’ll probably be losing weight as soon as I revert back to two and a half meals a day, with no dessert. On the other hand, I’ll be saving a ton of money by not buying so much BEER, or sodas, or well, everything. I forgot that leftovers rarely exist when there’s a healthy man to feed.