You are cordially invited...

I was invited to a big party by one of my colleagues the other day for her nine-year-old son. Immediately upon hearing this, the following internal monologue/stream of consciousness ran wild through my mind:

“A party! Whooooooooo! How fun. It’s probably a birthday party. I love birthday parties. Except when there are clowns. Ugh. Clowns are creepy. And those big shoes! Overcompensating much!? Do I bring a gift? What do nine-year-old Mozambican boys want? Do they have Spider Man in Mozambique? Damn mosquito. Cake!! Ooh cake. I wonder if there could be cake. I miss cake. Betty Crocker. Crocker brocker bo bocker banana fanana fo…oh. I really really really miss cake. Warm, chocolate, moist, melt-in-your-mouth…”

until finally my cake fantasy was interrupted when she told me the party was not to celebrate his birthday but rather to celebrate his return.

From where, I inquired. She said he was returning from his “Rite of Initiation” in which he had spent thirty days away from home out in the country. Here in northern Mozambique, many of the old traditions are still practiced including male and female rites of initiation. For the girls, the rite of initiation is basically a glorified sweet sixteen party with food and presents and traditional dancing. The age is completely arbitrary, though, since the female rite of initiation signifies to all party goers that the girl has just had her first menstruation.

Imagine Hallmark trying to market a “Congratulations On Your First Period” greeting card. It’d be a disaster because in The States, talking about that female transition is completely taboo.

To illustrate my case, picture yourself in two different movie theaters that are both equally packed--let’s say it’s opening night of the next Twilight movie. In the first theater, someone yells “Fire!” You might get banged up a little in the ensuing chaos of people bolting to the exits, but your chances of survival are good.

In the second theater, someone shouts “Tampon!” Now, I hate to be a fatalist but unless you brought Bear Grylls with you, you are going to die. The stampede of people trying to escape anything that deals with female menstruation will crush you easier than a kernel of delicious but grossly overpriced movie theater popcorn.

In Mozambique, however, this new stage in a young girl’s life is not embarrassing or something to be ashamed of. No Carrie shower moments here. Instead, it is a cause for celebration and announced to the whole world in the form of a rite of initiation party.

Party on, Wayne.

For boys, the rite of initiation is not so cut and dry. (That will be funnier in a few paragraphs. Just give it time.)

I asked my colleague more about what the boys’ rite entailed--what goes on in her son’s thirty days away from home. After some continued explanation and the realization that it still wasn’t all entirely sinking in with me, she used her hand to imitate scissors and proceeded to simulate a cutting action. I’m fairly certain she even said, “Snip snip.“ Being perennially slow on picking up subtle hints and innuendos, I promptly asked, “But what in the world could a nine-year-old boy possibly have that needs cutting?” The room burst into uproarious laughter until I finally figured it out. Ohhhh.

Yikes.

The boys say goodbye to their families and go out into the “matu,” (a Mozambican term for the boondocks) for thirty days with elder men in the community, other boys, and a nurse hired by the families. It is here where each one is circumcised, signifying that he is no longer a boy, but a man. And when they return, their families throw a party.

Party on, Garth.

Not every boy or girl has a rite of initiation, my colleague explained. Some families just don’t practice this particular custom. Other families can’t afford it. For girls, it depends on whether the family can afford to throw a party. For boys, it is if the family can afford to pay for the nurse.

She assured me that the whole procedure was very safe and that the actual operation was performed by experienced medical personnel. I was still not entirely convinced on the whole process or the health implications that could arise, and I had a hard time understanding how anyone could fathom a nine-year-old boy a man (anatomical adjustment or not).

But what I’ve learned in Mozambique is that in so many situations here, the best thing I can do is just to listen, not judge, and try to understand.

I immediately decided anything Spider Man might not be appropriate for a circumcision/snip-snip/passage into manhood party.

My colleague was so excited about her son’s return she was cataloguing for me everything she was doing/cooking. I meekly, all the while thinking my question foolish, asked if there would be cake. Of course there would be cake she said. She seemed to understand the absurdity of a party sans cake.

“RSVP, Margarita?”

Abso-frickin-lutely. I just hope there's no ceremonial cutting of the cake involved.

With This Cow, I Thee Wed

I have no mirror. The sweltering heat has turned my hair into a permanent state of frizz beyond any means of containment. And I have this weird rash forming on my upper arm that looks freakishly similar to SpongeBob SquarePants. Perhaps most attractive of all, though, is the fact that I have the strong scent of a high school boys locker room. Not that I have intimate knowledge of the odors of a boys locker room--I have only heard the horror stories--stuff Hitchcock couldn’t dream of.

Still, my grizzly appearance and foul musk have not frightened away my would-be husbands. That’s right. Since arriving in Mozambique, I have been proposed to more times than I can count. Mrs. Bennet would be appalled at how I have turned marriage proposal rejections into an art form.

My first proposal, a man offered to slaughter a cow in my honor if we could get married. Ok, I’ll admit it. I was a little flattered. What gal doesn’t appreciate a good cow? Ladies, forget those half-assed Casanovas with their chocolate and flowers! Wait for someone who comes a-knocking with bovines.

Despite my initial susceptibility to flattery, I have since come to find these incessant propositions incredibly annoying. Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking, You’re thinking to yourself. “Duh, Margaret, they can’t possibly resist you because not only are you a whittler of wit, but your ethereal beauty is also powerfully disarming.” Touché, my wise friends. I can’t fault them their good taste.

The sad truth of the matter is, though, that it has almost nothing to do with my charming personality or (under normal circumstances) Ava Gardner good looks. (My wannabe hubbie and I rarely speak more than two sentences to each other before he pops the question. And ummm…remember my earlier reference to a boys‘ locker room. Yeah, I smell like a communal jockstrap and look even worse!)

Instead, most of their desire resides in the fact that when they see me, they see “white” and “American” and automatically the cash register in their heads goes ka-ching. They equate me with opportunity. My site mates here and most of the other girls in my training group can swap stories for hours of bad Mozambican pick up lines. Men have wanted to marry me so I could take them back to America with me, so they could learn English, or as one gentleman told me, “Margarita, you are tall like a man and look like you would have big, strong babies.” Ohhh. Be still my beating heart. The poetry. A regular Oscar Wilde, that one.

And it’s not just Mozambican men who want to rush to the altar either. Many male Peace Corps volunteer friends here have received similar proposals from Mozambican women.

Shucks. I hope I am not making all Mozambicans out to be these opportunistic nymphomaniacs with Charlie Sheen-sized libidos. It’s just that here, most people wear their hearts, and their hormones, on their sleeves. They say exactly what’s on their minds, and that in no way excludes the times when their heads are in the gutter. Verbal filters and subtlety are nonexistent. If they think your baby is ugly, they will tell you. If you have a giant zit on your face, they will point right to it and tell you. And if they want to marry you because you’re white and they think that will lead to a better life, they will tell you. Or (in my particular case) if they just want to marry you because you look like you would reproduce linebackers, you bet your britches they will look you straight in the eye and tell you. It’s not done out of cruelty or malice. They just say what’s on their minds and what they believe to be true.

The implications of this brazen forwardness on the Mozambican sexual culture and its link to the HIV prevalence rate could be the topic of a series of anthropological and socioeconomic books.

For now, my solution to this problem is to explain that I, unfortunately, already have a namorado (boyfriend). Yes, that’s right. I’ve invented a fictional boyfriend back home. He’s lovely. He’s six foot three and a dead ringer for Marlon Brando circa A Streetcar Named Desire. He’s an Olympic qualifier in the Pentathlon, speaks fluent Urdu and quotes John Donne. Anyway, there are some people here who always ask about him. They are hoping he will come visit me in Mozambique. I explained that it might be difficult since he is currently splitting his time between Lake Como (he has a modest little villa there) where he is working on his memoirs of which Paramount has already purchased the rights to and Antarctica where it appears he has discovered a mutant penguin species.

Blatant lying? Okay, yes.

Outlandish? Of course. (My Mom always did tell me I had a very wild imagination)

A tad bit pathetic? Maybe. But, it’s not like I have a blow-up doll or anything.

I instead prefer to think of my boyfriend as an effective defense mechanism and a means to set an example. If he and I can illustrate fictional fidelity in a place where multiple concurrent partnerships rather than monogamy are the norm, then I think my delusional hunka hunka man is accomplishing something here.

Once I start picking out the fictional colors of my fictional wedding to my fictional namorado, then I’ll know I’ve got bigger problems beyond my creepy cartoon-shaped rashes and caveman hair. But for now, I’ve decided that if it helps me demonstrate that a young woman can come to Africa by herself without a man, live here without a man by her side, work here without a man, function without the need or intent to find a new man, and try to make a difference without a man. Well, then I am just fine with using my imaginary boyfriend to explain to my hopeful Mozambican suitors why I just can’t accept their cow.

Terms of Bereavement

Dear friends,

I am here, Africa. The land where Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti (thanks Toto), where Simba and Mufassa philosophized about the circle of life, and where Kevin Bacon was allowed to play basketball. This is Africa. This is my new home. And to chronicle my Peace Corps adventures here in Mozambique, a lush and beautiful country on the eastern coast of Africa, I thought I’d share this little blog.

While I tend to find the whole idea of a blog rather self-indulgent in a Jack Kerouac kind of way, some people have requested it. At least this way, as opposed to having it forced upon you from my Grandma or in a mass email, people at home can decide for themselves if they want to subject themselves to my rantings. Well, here you go masochists. I am nothing if not an enabler.
So while I have technically been in Mozambique now for several months and am starting to get settled in at my permanent site, I thought I would rewind and start at the beginning. Sometimes, you just need a little context.

Back then we go to September 29, a chilly Nebraska fall morning when I officially left for the Peace Corps. That is, however, after a brief tryst through the tenth circle of hell I like to call packing. The next two years of my life were stuffed Procrustean-like into two suitcases. And since my Dad affectionately likes to call me Imelda Marcos, I continue to celebrate my shoe picking decisiveness. Three pairs baby.

The night before my departure, my Mom had persuaded my siblings to come home so we could all break bread together in what she deemed my “Last Supper.” She has a very sinister sense of humor.

At 3:00 A.M. in atypical Goll fashion, the troops mobilized. My whole family awoke and accompanied me to the airport to say “goodbye.”

By the way, I find the very essence of the word “goodbye” to be a giant contradiction. The only time I can even faintly remember goodbye being an excessively cheery occasion was when the Von Trapps were singing about it. “So long, farewell, auf wiedersehem, adieu.” They just confused me into thinking they were happy with their harmonious multilingual usages of goodbye. Damn you, Liesl. I don’t care how anyone expresses it, goodbyes (especially goodbyes in the back of a cold airport security line) are terrible.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Love Actually, and since it’s just past Christmas I’m thinking many of you may have busted it out, then you might remember the closing scene and thus equate airports with Heathrow and thus with London and thus with British accents and thus with Hugh Grant and of course thus with happiness. But for me that morning of my departure, even with all the excitement of my upcoming adventure, Eppley Airport was the saddest place in the world to me.

Meeting the other volunteers in Philadelphia and having people to commiserate with regarding goodbyes was a saving grace. Philadelphia was also nice because it gave me a chance to try to locate a showing of “The Night Man Cometh.” It was a failure. The Gang must have been up to some other degenerate shenanigans (If you’ve not seen the truly awful yet wonderful “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” please just disregard this last part.)

So, following a night on the town in the city made famous by the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Okay, everyone together now. I know you want to. “Innnnnnn West Philadelphia born and raised…”), a 3:00 A.M. bus ride to JFK International Airport, a 15 hour plane ride to Johannesburg, and another short plane ride to Maputo, we disembarked in Mozambique. Ahh…

After forty straight hours of traveling they immediately shuffled us off to this beautiful, swanky hotel for some decompression time and final sessions (not to mention final showers). I still am unsure about the philosophy of why they did this. Maybe it was a little calm before the storm--our own little Xanadu before they shipped us off to the boonies.

Okay, maybe I‘m being a little hard on our training site. Namaacha, a cold, rainy little city on the borders of Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa, was a wonderful community full of some of the most hospitable people I have met. My homestay family consisted of my mother, father, two little sisters and a little brother.

I would compare my host mom to the witch in Hansel and Gretel. That sounds terrible, I know, but I am referring to the fact that she was constantly trying to fatten me up. Our Mozambican host moms had a gossip network that would put junior high girls to shame, and one of the things they liked to discuss most was whose host son or daughter was plumping up the most. Needless to say, my host family loved to feed me. In what is probably construed as a giant paradox, I spent my first three months in Africa freezing cold and uncomfortably full.

Several people have asked me about the actual houses, bathrooms, water, roads, etc. As for the accommodations, everyone here had a different story, but my family’s house had electricity (yep, television and refrigerator) and an indoor bathroom with an actual toilet. No running water but it was a toilet as opposed to a latrine. Showers became bucket baths. I would describe the roads not so much as roads but more as goat paths. My house was cement with tile floors. My room was painted, and I constantly had large insect, rodent, and reptilian lodgers. Rocks kept the roof in place and sometimes when it rained, I was certain the whole house would collapse. I thought it was beautiful.

My daily routine for the first ten weeks went basically as follows: Portuguese class, health technical sessions, Mozambican cross cultural sessions, more Portuguese, some catharsis time with the other trainees, and then home to spend time with the host family. It would take a while to enumerate everything we did and everything we learned so I thought I would just share some casual observations, significant events, and particular musings about training and Mozambique that have accumulated so far. I apologize for the mass generalizations about a country full of dynamic and diverse people. I am banking on more mature, poetic insights to come later on in my service. For now, I’ve only got my junior-high-boy-sense-of-humor.

Music:
In Mozambique, there is rhythm in everything. From the way people walk to the cadence of their conversations to the way my little sister scribbled out her name. A beat can be found in the most mundane tasks and in inanimate objects.

Music in Mozambique is loved and appreciated in all its forms. Traditional Mozambican music, American pop music, my family even popped in an Elvis CD. They couldn’t get enough of “Hound Dog.”

Dancing is its own dialect. Children here don’t really have first steps; they have first hip thrusts.

I don’t care what kind of music elitist you consider yourself. Spend time in Mozambique and your Ipod will slowly but surely accumulate the musical stylings of Ne-Yo, Celine Dion, Chris Brown, and Rhianna. Guarantee it.

Cleavage smeavage:
I have seen so many exposed breasts here that I am quickly becoming un-phased. Boobs are not something women pull out of their arsenal of feminine wiles. They are not pornographic, but simply anatomical instruments for breast feeding. I have seen them whipped out at parties, strolling down the street, and in church on Sunday. Mozambican breast feeding would put Hugh Hefner out of business.

Anne Boleyn:
My host family was having a party and I had the dubious honor of beheading the chicken. With a dull knife. I named it Anne Boleyn. I was the only one who was amused.

“Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!”:
Spray N Wash!? Shout?! Tide!? Puhleeeease. Amateurs. My mãe in Mozambique could get the stubbornest of stubborn stains out of clothes. The way she attacked that laundry with her hands was something straight out of The Art of War. It was incredible. Laundry here is all done by hand usually against rough surfaces. Delicates do not survive long. However, my clothes are cleaner now than they were on the day I bought them.

Time:
For a lot of people, time is the most disobliging of things. When you want it to slow down, it speeds up. And when you would give anything for it to hurry up, it drags on. It is always there, reminding you that there is absolutely nothing you can do to affect it. Here in Mozambique, people seem to just ignore the arrogance of time. They operate in their own time zone--Mozambican time. The pace is so much slower and while most of the time I enjoy it, occasionally my Type A personality rears its ugly head and I just want to go go go. I think this adjustment to time will just take time.

I have frequently seen people mowing their lawns--with machetes.

Many Mozambicans love terrible action movies. Jean Claude Van Dame is to Mozambicans what David Hasselhoff is to Germans. The fixation is inexplicable and bizarre.

Mozambicans can have full conversations in nothing but grunts.

If you are a pedestrian in Mozambique, you are semi-suicidal.

Carting things on your head is definitely an art form perfected by many Mozambican women. I saw one woman with a bucket of water on her head, a baby on her back, and her two hands full of sacks. It was incredible. There are few things stronger than a Mozambican woman.

Mozambique vs. a cheeseburger:
When Todd Chappman, the Chargé d’Affaires, aka the interim Ambassador to Mozambique came to speak to us, he remarked that we Americans are an idealistic people. We were founded on those principles (somethin’ somethin’ life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness)--and with that idealism, the belief that we can change things, there comes a cost. In the case of Mozambique that cost is $1.50 every year for every American to be exact. Six quarters is just part of the price of global leadership he said. He then listed off several reasons, economic, national security, etc why investing in Mozambique was important and ultimately cost-effective to the United States. I am no economist. I actually only ever read “The Economist” for the book reviews. A supply and demand curve literally makes me physically nauseated.

So with my only economic experience coming from luck-luster Monopoly performances and after just writing a slew of surface level platitudes about Mozambique and Africa (Whoa, you mean to tell me they like to dance in Africa!? You don’t say!), what could I possibly say to convince people that their six quarters would not be better spent at the McDonald’s Dollar Menu?
I guess I would just say that I have seen the value of the people here--even if I can’t quite articulate it, and I think a buck fifty in Mozambique is a sound investment because it is an investment in people. And people is the greatest resource. Hah! Karl Marx couldn’t beat the idealism out of me.

Then again, I am only rounding out my first full month at my permanent site in Angoche, Nampula in northern Mozambique. I’ve got plenty of time to let my idealism morph into cynicism. However, judging from my initial reactions of Angoche, this sleepy little old colonial port city right on the ocean where you can occasionally see dolphins splashing around, I am banking on that not happening.

Yes, I survived training, my first holiday season away from my family, and my first month at site. And while my Portuguese is improving at the rate of a constipated turtle, I have managed to locate the market, the post office, and halleluiah, an Internet café.

I thought I would close this first entry (congratulations if you’ve made it all the way through. I applaud your resilience) with a few choice reactions from people upon hearing I was going to Africa with the Peace Corps. I still find them endlessly entertaining. Terms of bereavement, if you will.

“The Peace Corps, huh? You know what Richard Nixon said about the Peace Corps, don’t you? He said it was a haven for hippies and draft dodgers.”

“Two years is sure a long time.”

“Mozambique! Are you [expletive] crazy!?! They have an AK-47 on their national flag.”

“Nobody puts Baby in the corner.” (Referencing the fact that the main character in Dirty Dancing wanted to enlist in the Peace Corps. Whatever. She’s got moves.)

“Two years! Wow! That’s a long-ass time!”

“I bet you have like seven pairs of Birkenstocks.”

“Couldn’t find a job, eh?”

“What’s the adjustment stage like when you return? I bet you’re going to come back an oddball.” (Thanks, Dad)

“Two years! Are you freaking nuts? That’s so long.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you? No, I didn’t think so. Well, it’s probably a good idea then for a single gal your age to try your luck abroad for a while.”

“Two years is such a long time. Hopefully they have beer there.”

(One little old lady whispering not too discreetly to another little old lady) “My, goodness, she already looks black.” (Referring to my apparent overexposure to Vitamin D and UV, aka my tan.)

“Whoa. Twenty-seven months. That’s like over two years.”

But my favorite and so far the most accurate came from my professor/thesis advisor/life sage extraordinaire…“Margaret, you will learn much, cry hard, laugh often, and come back a fuller human being.”

Mozambique and Nebraska sure are very different--two small spots on a big globe (both only entering the radar of some twelve-year-old vying to win the Geography Bee of Random and Obscure Places). Still, they are both now what I call home.

I will do my best to update this as much as I can. Please know I miss you all and think of you often (it was especially fervent during the holidays). I now have a more or less permanent address so feel free to send me anything. I have a big affinity for the lost art of letter writing so I promise to write back. Happy holidays and all my love from Africa.

Margaret Goll
Escola Secundária de Angoche
Caixa Postal #8
Angoche, Nampula
Mozambique