Sorry Hermès, You’ve Got Nothing on the Capulana

Those who know me well are most likely aware of a strange, little fetish I have developed over the years. Yes, it’s true, I have an unhealthy obsession with scarves.

I can’t really explain it--it’s a strange little tic. I just love scarves. The way they look and feel and keep you warm and elongate your neck and make you feel momentarily like Audrey Hepburn. For some it’s chocolate, others cigarettes, FOX News, mystic tans or Michael Bublé. What does it for me…scarves!

I have heard the slanderous tongues of those who call them pretentious, others who call them the trimmings of a prude, and still others who claim they are just a second-rate accessory to headbands on Gossip Girl.

Blasphemous fools!

I think they are perfectly lovely.

But, being that I am in northern Mozambique where cold is more or less nonexistent, scarves are about as ridiculous and as nonfunctional as water beds.

What’s a girl to do?

Well, lucky for me, my love and infatuation of scarves has since been projected onto the capulana. In fact, the only thing here that successfully counteracts my loathing of chapas is my love of capulanas.

A capulana, my dear readers, is this beautiful, colorful fabric that women here and in other African countries use to wrap around their waists as a sarong. It is not exclusively used for clothes but also as curtains, table cloths, towels, sheets, head wraps, rags, cloths in which women strap their babies to their backs or bundle up food to cart on their heads. There is an infinite use to the capulana. It truly serves every practical function.

When the Arabs disembarked in Mozambique and began to integrate, they brought with them the capulana, the long rectangular sarong that Muslim women used to wrap around their waist and cover their heads. The Arabs forcefully encouraged African women to adopt this style of dress. And after years and years of this fashion indoctrination the capulana became a part of African women and a part of African culture. Women here came to love the capulana. They took the idea of it and made it their own, adding beautiful, bold colors and designs.

There is a special capulana to commemorate every holiday and celebration--Independence Day, Christmas, Women’s Day, Children’s Day, weddings, elections, rites of initiation. There are also capulanas that commemorate specific people. I have seen capulanas with the faces of Michael Jackson, Obama, Guebueza (the Mozambican President), and even Pope John Paul II graced the beautiful fabric of a capulana. The designs featured on capulanas are as diverse as the capulana itself. There are tie die capulanas, capulanas with stunning African patterns and images, capulanas with random objects like high heels, casseroles, turkeys, cupcakes, maps, and anatomy a la Georgia O’Keefe.

Now, most women here wear the capulana very tightly around their waists to accentuate their derrieres--badonkadonks that would send Beyonce spiraling into a Iago-like state of envy. Always conscious of this, Mozambican women tend to strut especially slow and honey-like when wearing a capulana. Thus, their pace is about equal to a Chinese woman with her feet bound. I have neither the patience nor the frame nor the swagger for this, and my long American legs like to take long American strides. So while I do don the capulana traditionally for various occasions, my site mates and I have taken to buying a capulana and taking them to the tailors for them to make an assortment of other more functional clothes for us--dresses, shorts, pants, shirts, everything!

Because Africa has slowly eviscerated most of the clothes I brought, my entire wardrobe is now essentially all capulana clothes. And I must say, our capulana inventions and designs would make Tim Gunn proud.

Make it work.

Being that capulanas are such a huge part of being a Mozambican woman, folks here adore that we adore capulanas. Whenever I wear something made from capulana, they like to tell me, “Oooh, Margarida, now you are Mozambicana.” It is such an enormous part of the culture here that even Mozambicans equate being Mozambican with the capulana.

So, to those fashion capitals of the world Paris, Milan, New York City I say, suck it. You may have Dior, Versace, and Vera Wang but Mozambique…we’ve got capulanas.




Modeling a little capulanaware. This one is my favorite capulana ever. And yes, I had them make a scarf for me.




My beautiful site mate Erin with one of her lovely capulana creations.



Yes, those are capulana shorts. I wouldn't be caught dead with them in Angoche but they're nice for other places.




A turtle capulana. Hah.



Another one of my favorite capulanas.



Erin and I with our butterfly dresses. A crowd favorite here.

I Just Felt Like Running

In the opening scene of Cool Runnings, the guy heads out at the break of dawn for an early morning run. We see the full sun slowly rising up over the sea, almost as if it is being born out of the ocean water. The dude sprints past a pack of giggling children offering up high fives, across a white, sandy beach and down a palm tree lined dirt road. He passes by a friendly group of old and weathered fishermen in their sailboats and then through an admiring group of chatty women carting baskets on their heads. All the while he greets everyone with a good morning and a wave.

Except for the fact that I am in Africa, white, a girl, geriatric-ly slow, and sans a really sweet Jamaican accent, that scene truly serves as a pretty accurate representation of my running situation here in Mozambique.

Running.

I always thought it was such a silly ritual. For years I watched my brother run and run, all the while thinking he was a masochist with entirely too much time on his hands to be devoting so many hours to running. Running from nothing and for nothing. Just running.

I don’t know what it was--maybe I took one of my brother’s crazy pills, but one day I too, just felt like running. It was relaxing and calming and made me feel good. I wish I could say I was born to run…that I was a natural but let’s be honest, I’m slow, have terrible form, have to wear custom orthotics, refuse to do speed intervals, prefer flat terrain, and once had a fellow runner on my favorite trail convinced that I was training for the Special Olympics. Let’s just say I will not be shipping out to run Boston anytime soon. Still, no matter how slow I am or how often my knees give me problems or how awkward and uncoordinated I may appear, I still just love running.

So, upon arriving in Angoche, my home for two years, one of my first tasks was to scout running routes. As luck would have it, I found a nice little dirt road that leads out past the salt fields to a beautiful stretch of open beach. On early mornings it is usually me, the road, a few fishermen headed out to sea and several small groups of women off to farm their little plots of land.

Those first couple months were definitely an adjustment. Because I arrived in the heart of summer here, I tried to be out on the trail no later than 4:45 A.M. to try to beat the heat. Some days though, even at that time, the temperatures were well within the 110s.

And when I first started running on the road, people were downright confused. Every single person I encountered stopped dead in their tracks and stared at me as I trotted on by. Little children who had never seen a white person before were terrified. In fact, several children out of sheer horror at the sight of me burst into tears and ran screaming for their mothers.

Once the kids realized I had no intentions of eating them or harvesting their organs or taking them off to the Land of Tall White Girls or making them wear clothes, they became infinitely friendlier. Now there is a core group of kids who will wait on the side of the road for me when I pass by. My site mate Erin and I, on a run together once, taught them the concept of a high-five. Now, every run the kiddos will see me hobbling along from a distance, and they will mobilize to form their high five line. They make me feel like Jackie Joyner-Kersee…that is until some of them start to accompany me on my run and eventually have to slow down to a glacial pace so I can keep up. Quasi naked, barefoot, and sometimes with loads on their heads, those kids can still run faster than I can.

Besides the kids, I have another favorite part of my run. You see, there’s this section in the road where some mornings, if I time it just right, the full African sun will be coming up, silhouetting a row of women working their plots of land, the alternating downswing of their hoes operating like a cog in perfect rhythm. The coconut trees create a sort of canopy and the reflection of the water from the salt fields makes the women in their beautiful capulanas appear almost angelic. I half expect a giraffe to pop its head up and serenade me with some Bob Marley or Justin Bieber song. That’s how surreal it is--that picture for me--it is so beautiful and quintessentially African it should be on a calendar or in the optimistic closing scene of one of those Sponsor-An-African-Child-for-75-Cents-a-Day commercials.

I try to relish the beauty in these vistas on my runs, though, because at any moment I could happen upon someone going to the bathroom on the side of the road. There is a big lack of latrines in the neighborhood closest to the road I run on so a lot of people just stumble out in the early morning for a public pooping exhibition. I have to be careful of fecal matter everywhere I step.

Along with the high-fiving kids, I have found that there is a solid group of people that has become accustomed to seeing me running and will keep tabs on me. If I start out thirty minutes later than usual, I will hear at least three or four people when I pass by tell me "Atrasou hoje" (You were late today). Once, after being away from site for a week, Erin informed me that she had been inundated with concerned folks from the trail wanting to know if I was sick because they hadn’t seen me out running.

Having these folks start to understand this crazy ritual and get used to seeing us running for other reasons than to avoid a careening chapa driver or to catch a chicken gone awol, well, it gave us an idea. You see, every year Angoche commemorates its founding with three days of festivities including a motorcycle race, a sewing contest, a sail boat race, live music, speeches, traditional dancing, and…a foot race. Historically, they have never had a woman enter the 10K foot race because it is reserved for “homens fortes” only strong men. Women, we were told, were physically incapable of running that distance. Nearly every person gave us this forecast.

So, what did we do? We signed up and entered the men’s race.

Angoche Day quickly arrived, and I found myself at the starting line in front of thousands of gawking Mozambicans, my ashen legs seeing the light of day for the first time in 11 months, getting ready to go all Title IX on their asses.

I have never felt so exposed, spectaclized (yes, I just invented that verb: spectaclized, as in to be made a spectacle of) and so damn determined.

They blew the whistle, and off we went. The race was a continuous loop 6 times around the main drag. The streets were lined the whole way. Some people cheered, some clapped, some hollered out marriage proposals, everyone stared. Not only were we women running in a man’s race, we were also reportedly the first foreigners to participate in an Angoche Day activity. The race was supposed to start at 8 am and in true Mozambican fashion, it started at 11:30, quite possibly the hottest time of the day. We all crossed the finish line to the incredulity of so many. When my friend passed one of the men (she eventually won third place and was even interviewed by the radio) his response was “Como?”-- HOW? That was the response of so many…Como? How was it possible that women could do the exact same thing as the men?

We soon became the talk of the town. Most people seemed to get a big kick out of it--I’m not sure if it was because I was running or because I was wearing shorts and they could see my knees. Some people congratulated me, some told me that the whole race my face resembled an exhausted goat just after giving birth, others told me I embarrassed them because I didn’t win. They didn’t understand why I didn‘t just quit after someone had already won. I explained our goal was to show that we could run the same distance as the men and faster than a lot of them. I just wanted to show them and all the marginalized girls here that they shouldn’t listen to those nay-sayers who are constantly telling them they are incapable of doing something.

With the Angoche Day race over, I am back to trotting along on my road at my own pace with no plans of using running to make any more grandiose statements on gender equality. Just running to run.

It’s funny to me that in the states there are magazines and stores and doctors solely devoted to runners. It would be ridiculous to me if I hadn’t at one point actually used the services of all three of those things. For the longest time I was so convinced running was a science. And like force equals mass times acceleration, maybe it was a scientific equation I would never master.

I think though, that after a year of running in Africa (my Nike pedometer thingy tells me I’ve logged over 1,000 miles in Mozambique) I am starting to understand why celebrities who want to run a marathon or something choose to come here to train. Whether it’s with Maasai runners in Kenya or giggling children in Mozambique, Africa makes me realize how innate and beautiful and cadenced running is--and how anyone can do it. I don’t think it’s a science. I think it’s music.

Roho ya we ykale sana

In Mozambique, I have found one thing to be truly universal and incorruptible: Death. No one is immune.

I see and hear about death a lot here, every day in fact. Being a health volunteer in a sub-Saharan African country riddled by HIV makes it nearly impossible not to. Whether from a student, colleague, or friend, I am always getting reports of a recent death. Life cut short is not a tragedy, it’s an inevitability.

This Mozambican familiarity with death and subsequent indifference to its effects is a morbid reminder of things I don’t think I’ll ever understand. Then, one of my colleagues explained that a large reason for the stoic reaction to death stems from the bloody civil war, a war that raged for 17 years and killed a million Mozambicans and which only ended in 1992, a relatively short time ago. For so many people, war and death have been a staple in their lives.

During the civil war here, the RENAMO soldiers (unanimously considered the bad guys) routinely targeted hospitals and schools, indoctrinated child soldiers, and used rape as a weapon to spread disease.

I was informed that that is why there is an impassiveness that accompanies death. “Margarida,” he said, “Everyone had at least one person they loved die during the war. Some, their whole families.” He went on to explain that even today, after almost 2 decades of peace, it is still strange for Mozambicans to show emotion at the mention of death. They are automatons in that sense, he said because if they cry and mourn too heavily for someone today, they will then think about those they lost during the war, or because of HIV, or because of any number of things that are killing Africa and “Nossas lagrimas nunca hão-de parar.”
Our tears will never stop.

Besides, he wanted to know. What good does it do to weep for someone? To him, showing emotion or crying at death was not only impotent, but also insulting to those who were suffering with or without your tears.

This Mozambican philosophy on death and dying recently entered my register when I received word that someone from home, Jessica, a mentor of sorts for me, a fellow Knight, a small-town Nebraska gal who also ventured to the red soil of Africa, and a girl I grew up admiring and wanting to be like was killed in a tragic car accident.

Being in Africa leaves you with lots of time to think and question and ask why. Why such a truly good and beautiful person? Why someone with a heart so big and generous? Why her? Why now? Why at all? Why? But Mozambicans don’t ask why. There is an unquestioning acceptance of death here. Whether it is HIV, a witch doctor’s spell, hunger, bad hospital conditions or any of the other unmentionables, Mozambicans see death as something that is out of their realm of control--it is destiny, not to be circumvented.

I read a book about the civil war here and one person’s observation on why it is Mozambicans seem to be so detached about death. He wrote, “People here have to be laid back to avoid having their personalities destroyed by disappointment and death.” Their stoicism isn’t a failure to engage. It’s a way to survive.

I guess from just the little I know about death, I still can’t imagine it gets any easier to endure each time, no matter how capable Mozambicans are of compartmentalizing. I would think your heart just breaks a little every time.

Good thing Mozambicans have strong hearts--perhaps fragmented, but they are strong.

That is just one thing Jessica and Mozambique have in common--strong hearts. And Jess, by donating hers, ensured that it will continue to love and be loved.

When I told my colleagues about Jessica, they at first seemed very unsure of what to do in the presence of foreign tears. And although it may have been strange for them to see me emoting at death when people here don’t because of the sheer masses of tears and anger and whys that would emerge, I saw in all their eyes what can best be described as empathy. They seemed to be telling me, “Margarida, we don’t understand your clothes or your accent or most of the things you do, but we understand this.” They recited for me something they wanted me to relay to folks back home about Jessica. It is an old Koti proverb they say here when a loved one passes away.

Roho ya we ykale sana
"Her heart now rests in peace."

And for how much space Jessica’s heart had to make to contain her love and goodness, maybe it deserves a rest.

It feels presumptuous to try to rationalize or say anything more.

Ramadan

I had an overzealous friend who, with every good intention, once informed me that I had as much game as an asexual amoeba and was most likely destined for a lonely life full of Nicholas Sparks’ novels and Lifetime original movies. To circumvent this, she offered to be my Mr. Miyagi in the realm of dating. After I objected to her twisted version of “Wax on, wax off” and then uncovered and deleted the Match.com profile she secretly set up for me, I finally decided (since if you can’t beat em’…pacify them until they forget about it) to at least indulge her on her philosophy of courtship and why I was so bad at it. Ever the Emma and well aware of my idiosyncrasies, she composed for me a list of things that I was NEVER under any circumstances to do in the presence of the opposite sex:

1. Reveal my childhood fantasy of being David the Gnome so I could wear a red cone hat and ride around on a fox all day.
2. Quote It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
3. Bust out my British accent (which always inevitably turns into Pirate anyway).
4. Wear skinny jeans.
5. Defend Flannery O’Connor.
6. Challenge anyone to an arm wrestling contest.
7. TALK ABOUT RELIGION--instant buzz kill.

“Clarification point,” I requested. “Number 7, religion. You mean don’t talk about sex, politics, or religion, right ?”

“No! Go ahead and talk about sex and politics all you want,” she said. “But religion…Hell NO, pardon the pun. All it does is invite controversy and awkwardness. You want on the white lace road to Weddingland? Then remember this when you’re chatting: No to transubstantiation. Yes to American Idol.”

Now, as a history major (that may not count for much but let’s throw in the fact that I’m an avid Jeopardy watcher--I’m still holding out for a Ken Jennings Bobble Head doll) as well as a 3-time Perfect Sunday School Attendance Award Winner boo-ya, I was well aware of the schisms that have resulted from a lack of acceptance or intolerance of different religions in the history of our world.

But surely as a semi-intelligent person, I was certainly capable of carrying on a civil conversation about religion and why I believe what I believe, right?

Or was my friend right? Should one stick to secular conversation in all social situations?

I got to thinking about this conversation recently, when after a long hiatus from current events updates or other information from the outside world, I managed to get on the Internet. Immediately I checked my email, Facebook and then of course the scores of the Husker games…priorities…and then I trolled the BBC website in order to figure out what has going down in the other corners of the globe.

A story that I came across that immediately piqued my interest dealt with the plans to construct a Muslim Center near Ground Zero and the hoopla that it was inciting.

I thought about my friend’s insistence to avoid the topic of religion at all costs because of all the chaos it invokes, I thought about 9/11 and the religious connotations that always surround it, I thought about Islam and how sad it was that a group of religious fanatics could sully such a beautiful faith, and I thought about how in such a short amount of time my proximity to Islam had changed so drastically.

If you’ll indulge me, I would like to share some of my experiences and observations of moving from a pretty universally Christian circle of acquaintances to being plopped down into the middle of a community that is predominantly, I would say over 80% Muslim.

Let’s start by trying to put that degree to some use. Here we go, then, a little history lesson: My site, Angoche, has a an almost Biblically colorful history. Long before the Portuguese arrival to Mozambique in the 15th Century, Angoche was independently ruled by Sultans and an important commercial center on the Arab-Swahili trade routes. In fact, it was one of Mozambique’s earliest settlements and an important stop on the gold and ivory trading post.

The consensus with most people I talk to here is that the Arabs were simply seeking a mutual business partnership with Mozambique rather than a colony to lay claim to. In fact, the remnants from the Arab/African exchange is wildly evident today from the capulanas the Arab women brought with them, now used almost everywhere in Southeast Africa to the descendants of the numerous Arab/Mozambican marriages and the religion that came with them: Islam.

Today, one can just look at the most popular names here…Fatima, Anima, Mussa, Amade, Ossufo…to understand just how big the Arab/Muslim integration was into Mozambican culture.

When the Portuguese arrived and colonized Angoche, they too brought with them their religion: Christianity.

So, we’ve got the predominant Muslim population that resulted from Arab integration and intermarriage. We’ve got a large Christian group that emerged from Portuguese colonization and attempted conversion. Toss in a large Hindu Indian population that lives here and while we’re at it let’s throw in those practitioners of the traditional animist beliefs and you’ve got what would seem like a hot bed of religious tension.

Surprisingly, Angoche is nothing of the sort. Never have I heard a discussion of whose God is the right God or which religion is better. Religious harmony and toleration here is incredible to me, something Bono would write a song about.

Sometimes I imagine Angoche to be like a reverse Hagia Sophia, that famous church turned mosque turned museum in Istanbul. To me, Angoche seemed to go through so many different religious stages that it finally decided to just be a neutral museum where all religions can be represented and appreciated. Still, it is obvious from the prayer caps, rugs, and tunics I always see around that Islam has been and will continue to be the Grand Exhibit.

Islam, that enigmatic faith to so many Westerners.

Historically, we have romantic images of Richard the Lionheart headed out to the Crusades to fight the Muslim infidel. Presently, we have images of subjected, burqa wearing Muslim women and Jihadist fanatics.

My experience is so far from this, it’s comical. Peace Corps volunteers are prohibited from proselytizing about religion, which is fine since I’m entirely too ignorant and self-involved to try to convert anyone of anything either way. What I can do, though, is share with you what I’ve seen and been a part of here.

Okie dokie…

The Call to Prayer. The first time I heard the Call to Prayer from the mosque I was terrified. It sounded like the song of a very sad ghost. Hauntingly and hypnotically beautiful. Now, after hearing it every day so many times, I have come to find it comforting, like a lullaby.

Friday is an extremely holy day. Muslims are supposed to go to the mosque five times to pray on Friday. Meetings and events have to be organized bearing this schedule in mind.

We keep an extra prayer rug in the office for when my colleagues want to pray. I feel like a pervy Peeping Tom every time I happen upon one of my colleagues praying, prostate on the floor with their hands outstretched. But they never seem to mind.

Friday is also when I see the most amount of poverty in Angoche. On Friday, a Muslim is not supposed to turn away a beggar asking for alms and so every Friday all the poor people will line up outside the bakery knowing the owner is a devout Muslim and will not disregard this tenet.

A lot of people associate Islam with the oppression of women. Let me break it down for you folks. The plight of women in Africa and in Mozambique has nothing to do with religion but instead with years and years of cultural norms. Muslim women are not subjugated more so than any other women here. Being a woman in Mozambique is hard. Being a Muslim woman neither exacerbates nor mitigates that.

I‘m not saying that culture and religion are mutually exclusive. In fact, probably the opposite. It makes sense that parts of religion and culture will take on aspects of each other. Like when you’ve slept so long with the same pillow that it contours to the shape of your head.

For example, Muslim women here are encouraged to wear the head wraps--not a full on burqa like you might be imagining, but a wrap to cover the forehead and hair. Some of my most devout female Muslim colleagues and students I have never seen with a head wrap. It was made clear to me that it was a choice. I also see on a daily basis women who are not Muslim who love to wear the head wraps. It started out as something religious and has since been absorbed into the culture.

Muslim women here are not prevented or in any way discouraged from going to school. In fact, there is an excellent Muslim secondary school where a lot of non-Muslim students choose to study because it has a more expansive curriculum and the teachers actually show up to teach.

My counterpart is probably one of the most devout people I know and actively participates in a program where he visits sick members of his congregation to see how they are doing and bring them anything they need. It reminds me of meals on wheels…but without the meals or the wheels. The sentiments are still there.

There is a definite link between the Islam that many people here practice and the traditional beliefs and machinations of the witch doctors. I can’t reconcile this. I think it is something that I just don’t understand yet.

One of the reasons the HIV prevalence is lower in the north of the country where I am is directly related to the fact that the Muslim population is so much greater here. Muslims are not supposed to drink alcohol and so whiskey-induced unsafe sexual practices happen less frequently. Also, circumcision is a key component in the Muslim faith, and studies have shown that circumcision significantly helps prevent the transmission of HIV.

In the Muslim faith, it is extremely impolite to shake hands, exchange change, or offer something with your left hand. Also, for many the left hand serves as the toilet paper substitute. So besides being a religious no-no, it’s also really friggin’ gross.

Pondering this difference of religions was especially interesting to me this last month as many of my colleagues, students, and friends were observing the holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan involved a whole month of fasting during the day and more frequent visits to the mosque. No food or water from sunup to sundown. It made for a rather crabby, unproductive month as students and colleagues became kind of narcoleptic, falling asleep during the day from lack of energy and because they had to get up in the middle of the night to eat. Also, during the holy month most of the music playing was suspended which was depressing because Mozambicans sure love to dance.

I wish I had the wisdom of Solomon to better understand and relay the different nuances of the religion here. I apologize that I don’t. I guess, though, if I could just leave you with one thing I have learned here is that while the topic of religion may be taboo, enough to have made my “Things to Do to Avoid Cats and Spinsterhood” List, maybe it’s because it’s misunderstood and branded a certain way because of the actions of a few.

People who do such awful things under the veil of religion seem to not be following their faith in its pure form.

The Islam, thoughtful and caring and pacifist that my colleague in this sleepy little African town practices is vastly different than the Islam associated with September 11.

Hello, Goodbye

For me, this summer in Africa took a cue from the title of a Beatles song (Or, I guess if you’re more inclined, the song from that Target commercial or Glee episode).

“Hello, Goodbye.”

And since my sentiments on goodbyes are fairly well known (I consider goodbyes to be like middle school and stirrup pants--an inescapable depravity of life), it was a bittersweet season.

I guess in all reality, it started with a goodbye as one of my site mates, Alex, a partner in crime and sage in all things Mozambique, said goodbye to Angoche to return to the states.

Everyone here has since been offering me condolences because they say the three of us (Alex, Erin--my other beautiful, amazing site mate, and I) are like family and it‘s like one of my sisters left. I guess when you’re in such a bizarre place so far away from everything you know and love, having someone around to remind you of all the familiarities of home is instantly comforting. Whether it was just speaking English together, cooking an American meal, playing UNO, commiserating about our recent bouts of tropical illness, or making dated cultural references to Saved By the Bell, it has been such a blessing to have two other amazing girls/friends/sisters here who understand the gauntlet of emotions you go through every single day.

So, when one in our Crazy American Branca Trio left, it was a hard, very sad goodbye.

The thing that did not permit me to dwell on it, though, was the visit of my dear friend from home. Hello, Claire! And hello to the Crystal Lite, new books, girly smelling products, and news from home that she brought with her.

Hellos are infinitely more fun.

Words cannot express how wonderful and refreshing it is to see a beloved, familiar face and have them see your new life and world. My literature professors while grading my papers always admonished me to show, Margaret, don’t tell. Show.

This place is nearly impossible to accurately describe using words so having someone here I could show, rather than tell…well, it was pure bliss.

Her trip entailed an evening on the town in Maputo, a weekend outing on the beautiful and haunting Mozambique Island, a chapa ride straight out of the depths of hell back to Angoche after which I am thankful she still agreed to be my friend, the meeting and greeting of so many of Angoche’s resident personalities, bucket baths, mosquito nets, the frequent lack of electricity, a dip in the waves of the Indian Ocean, a traditional Mozambican birthday party, a boat ride to a private, palm tree canopied beach, an 8th grade Mozambican biology class, capulana shopping, piri-piri eating, and ultimately and inevitably, another sad goodbye.

Every time I introduced Claire to someone new in town, they first wanted to know if she knew Obama or was my daughter. After I explained she was a friend, they responded incredulously, “Margarida, she came all the way here just to see you?! Wow! Ela é uma grande amiga!” Yes, I agree. She is a great friend.

Sometimes it’d be nice just to be desensitized to the constant hellos and goodbyes, but I really don’t think it will ever happen. Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye. That’s just how it goes.

And one big hello on the horizon is to the new group of volunteers that will be arriving in Mozambique next month. It’s hard to believe that one year has passed since I said goodbye to my home and hello to Africa.

When it comes to coping with everything Africa throws my way and all the hellos and goodbyes that go with it, I remember Alex, Claire, Erin, the rest of the volunteers here, and all the wonderful people back home, and I take a cue from another Beatles song.

I get by with a little help from my friends.



Erin, Alex, and I at Alex's Despedida Party



To me, this sums up quite accurately our whole relationship.



Claire's first chapa ride. Don't let the spaciousness and functioning seats fool you. This was just a tease.



Claire and I standing on the famous anchors of the historic ghost town, Ilha de Mozambique.


Claire with Fabiao, the mailman, and one of the nicest people in Mozambique and the world.


Beautiful Claire waving goodbye to beautiful Angoche.

Waka Waka

Several summers during college I lived together with 5 of my girlfriends in this beloved little white frame house. On those rare idle summer evenings when nothing--not margaritas, not mullet hunting, not Russian Roulette, not even Apples 2 Apples--seemed to trip our trigger, we would entertain ourselves by popping in a movie.

Side note: When we first moved in, we harnessed our inner Monks and in our OCD stupor, we managed to create the most intricate movie cataloguing system ever. Eat your heart out Blockbuster.

Soooooo, when the tequila ran dry or the weather turned wet or when any entertainment options that necessitated putting on a bra were unanimously vetoed, we resorted to our anally arranged movie collection, all the while congratulating ourselves on our undervalued skill of cinematic taxonomy. Our choices ranged from the following categories: action, drama, period drama, comedy, romantic comedy, vulgar Apatow-ian comedy, Disney movies, television shows, Classics, eye candy movies, pretentious movies only the critics and your smart friends claim to enjoy, movies you are mortified to possess (ummm…Lake Placid 2, Spice World, the whole Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen straight to DVD collection), and then, of course, there was the Sports section.

Whenever we were at an impasse in our movie decision process, the category we always turned to was sports. It was the great unifier--the middle of the Venn Diagram. It didn’t matter if you were more Anna Wintour than Jim Thorpe. Everyone could relate to a good sports movie. Everyone. Because although most sports movies stick to a formula that is painfully predictable, it is also one that makes you feel good about life. Everyone loves a good underdog story which is what most of the best sports movies are (Little Giants, Mighty Ducks, Space Jam, Bring It On!!!).

And it is also what Mozambique is, the underdog.

It came as no surprise to me, then, that my little Mozambican town rallied together in a show of solidarity and collective pride that Africa played host to the biggest sporting event in the world…the World Cup.

Africa United, the commercials broadcasted. United by the pure and simple love of a sport, soccer.

Nooowwwww, before my arrival here in Mozambique, I would definitely not have considered myself a soccer fan. First of all, I never played it. Secondly, in Nebraska, nothing eclipses Husker football. And lastly, my dad’s dislike for the sport seemed to rub off on me. To avoid getting a Howard Stern sized smack down from the FCC, I will refrain from using the expression he likened it to.

But being here with that vuvuzela noise and all those sport endorphins so close, I became hooked. I loved every minute of the World Cup. Before all my favorite teams were eliminated (by “favorite” I mean teams that either had the best looking players or the most offensively short shorts), I was catching every game with the locals in the only place here that has a television.

And talking World Cup action with the community members garnered me major brownie points. For instance, the owner of the local bakery and I became best buds because he was just as fired up as I was about the US being robbed of its third goal against Slovenia. Damn straight, Mr. Ossufo. WTF!?

But it’s not just professional soccer. Soccer in all forms here is just a way of life. At any point in the day you will encounter some sort of pick-up game. Kids, adults, boys, girls, Mozambican, Chinese, American, Portuguese. Everyone. And because there is really no equipment or soccer balls, they have to improvise. Bare feet on an open plot of land, with tree branches staked into the ground to mark the goals. Just playing a game they love. Their creativity and resourcefulness still amazes me. I have seen soccer balls fashioned out of almost every sort of material. It’s really quite unbelievable--like when Benny the Jet Rodriguez pickled the Beast! In Mozambique, you don’t have to build anything for them to come.

While most of the soccer fields are pretty rustic, Angoche does have one big field with actual goals where the local town team plays. And these games are major town events and a great way to mingle. Attending my first soccer game here was probably one of the most entertaining things I have ever experienced. After watching just a few World Cup games, I began my transition to the dark side…aka into a fan of soccer (I’m sorry, Dad, please don’t call me Benedict Arnold. I can’t help it. I mean, have you seen Cristiano Ronaldo!). Anyway, ogling the Copa Mundial players, I have been amazed at the finesse and fluidity of the athletes.

I don’t know why I thought an amateur Mozambican game would be the same. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t. The game was rogue, unpolished, and tears were involved. It was like Mozambique meets the WNBA. There may be no crying in baseball, but there definitely is crying in small town Mozambican soccer. One thing I’ll give em’ though, they’ve got flare. Whenever there was a remotely good play, both the spectators and players would celebrate with a soiree of acrobatics. When the winning team scored the only goal of the game, the whole team erupted into flips up and down the field. What now, Kerri Strug!?!

Maybe it’s not technically soccer that I am enjoying--perhaps it’s just being surrounded by so many people who just so much love a game. It’s like being back in Memorial Stadium.

What can I say, sports fans, Africa was most definitely an exciting place to be this summer. The World Cup was a welcome distraction from so many other things and one of the most successful ways I’ve found to get to know folks here.

Ahhh, the power of sports.

It’s enough to make me want to eat a box of Wheaties, put the SportsCenter theme song on repeat, and chant Rudy Rudy Rudy!

Or I could just pop in a good sports movie. I like rooting for the underdog.

We Can't All Come And Go By BUBBLE

Magic carpet. Yak. Dog sled. Enterprise. A yellow submarine. The Death Star. Cinderella’s pumpkin coach. Unicycle. Being shot out of a canon. Fred Flintstone’s feet. Piggyback. Centaur. Station wagon.

Of all the bizarre, paranormal, and unconventional modes of transportation that have ever existed in the history of the world, there is nothing…nothing folks…that quite compares to what we’ve got here in Mozambique. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to “The Chapa.”

A chapa, my friends, is basically any vehicle that is used to transport people and things from Point A to Point B anywhere in Mozambique. Like the word ironic (thanks Alanis Morissette) a “chapa” has a very loose definition. Semantics aside, the chapa is what anyone who wants to get anywhere in Mozambique uses to travel. It is the heart of the public transportation system. And unless you’ve got a car here, which most people sure as hell do not, then you are left to the mercy of the chapas. The typical chapa is generally a converted 12 passenger mini-van but because my site is a bit isolated, the chapas that run to and from my town oftentimes are big, open-back pickup trucks.

When it comes to traveling in Mozambique and chapas specifically, I have a very love-hate relationship. Each chapa ride I award myself 110 integration points--10 because it is such a big part of everyday life here and 100 because it friggin’ sucks. I have recently put in my petition to Jeff Probst and CBS for them to begin filming a Survivor 47: Chapa edition. It would be cutthroat because when it comes to riding in a chapa, survival is a testament to one’s tolerance level, threshold for pain, Job-like patience, and a robust sense of humor.

What I mean by sense of humor is that when it comes to chapas, you will see things so ridiculous and find yourself in situations so uncomfortable that the only thing you can do--the only thing that will possibly make the ride more bearable--is to laugh. One of my first chapa rides, I was in a large, open back transport pickup truck sitting on top of a lumpy bag of coconuts with three other people, fish juice flying in my face and my feet dangling over the edge because we had to make room for the goats. Throw in the fact that I was the only white person (I usually am the only white person on a chapa) tucked in amongst 40 other Mozambicans who looked at me like I was one of those Yao Ming-sized blue creatures from Avatar. On average, Mozambicans spend about 2 to 3 hours of our chapa rides discussing with each other just what exactly I am and whether I am lost or crazy. The eternal question, my friends. What can you do except laugh?

You know, it ultimately wouldn’t really matter if I was some sort of extraterrestrial creature because there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that they won’t allow onto a chapa. If more people and their things want on, people squeeze to make room. There is no capacity level. They have a verb here they use specifically to describe riding in a chapa. It’s called “sardinar.” Yes, that’s right. “Sardinar.” As in, to be like sardines.

When sardinar-ing in a chapa, proximics are uniformly ignored. I realized very quickly that like Scotcheroos, hygiene, and infrastructure, my penchant for personal bubbles was just something I was going to have to get used to living without.

Chapas are, after all, an industry and everything that you find on a chapa--whether it’s chickens, fish, small appliances, goats, charcoal, or large barrels of produce--it has a price. Anything that boards a chapa has to pay. Therefore, they want to fit as much on it as possible. If people have already squeezed so tightly sitting down, they will ask you to move your feet to make room for people to stand.

Now, I know I tend to have a hankering for hyperbole, but there is absolutely no way I could exaggerate “the chapa.” It is pure craziness. Not only because it is so awkwardly crowded--one ride someone’s armpit was so close to my nasal canal I nearly asphyxiated--but also because a lot of times the roads are so bad and the drivers are worse.

In Nebraska we have what we like to call minimum maintenance roads. Here I call them zero maintenance roads. It’s as if King Kong and Sasquatch decided to pound a bottle of Vodka each and then play drunken hopscotch up and down the road. That’s about the size and scope of the potholes. And because in Mozambique where vehicles rather than pedestrians, bicyclists, and little old ladies crossing the street have the right away, chapa drivers are usually Richard Petty wannabes with slightly better driving tract records than James Dean. Even atheists pray on Bingo night and on chapas.

Okay, so my site is about 4 to 5 hours by chapa from the provincial capital. What happens if you have to go to the restroom? Well, in my case I prefer to do anything, even risking extreme dehydration to ensure that I will not have to pee en route.

But if, perchance, a pre-journey Fanta proved to be too enticing for me and nature started screaming my name, I would not be entirely screwed. Usually, about halfway through the ride the driver pulls off on the side of the road and anyone who has to go literally jumps out and hightails it out into the bush to do their business.

Some of the lazier, less gun-shy pee-ers will just go right there on the side of the road in front of everyone. I once even witnessed a Mozambican who-can-pee-the-farthest-competition. Apparently when it comes to traveling in Mozambique what they lack in comfort and luxury they make up for in cheap entertainment. Kind of like Atlantic City. And ironically (it seemed a good time to pop that word in) people seem to emerge from both places in similar conditions: covered in dirt, sweat, rain, quite possibly fish juice or breast milk, sunburned, and exhausted.

As miserable as I am making chapa rides out to sound (and they usually are), in all honesty some of my best stories have arisen from these travels and the people I have met on them. I guess if it were easier it wouldn’t be such an adventure.

“And life is either a great adventure or nothing.” I’ll give you 17 of my integration points if you can tell me who said that. Nope, actually I won’t. Those points are too valuable. I’ll just tell you. It was Helen Keller.

And to tell you the truth, you’d probably be better off with her behind the wheel of a chapa than most drivers here. But what can you do? The Batmobile doesn’t make pit stops in Africa, and we can’t all come and go by bubble.

For right now folks, of all the crazy and bizarre ways to travel, I guess I’m in a chapa.