Spring time, bad luck and good luck

I’ll leave out the stories about bureaucratic hassles, as they were nothing compared to other excitements we had lately. Luckily the weather is getting better and it is warmer, although it is amazingly wind. But we were told this is normal in August.
Teaching at the seminary went well. The students are a very nice bunch of people. Some are smarter than others. Or maybe I should rather say they are more like we would expect it from European students: They open up, tell their opinion, ask questions and I feel they think about what I am telling. Others are still more into the traditional teaching and learning of Africa: The teacher holds a monologue, the students copy word by word and learn the monologue by hart to reproduce the exact same words in the exam. I try to explain them that I will test whether they understood or not. We will see how the exam goes. But from what I can see in the exams that the Farming God’s Way teacher gave me to have a look at, I fear I expect too much.
I have two groups of respectively 8 and 9 students. Although one of the students I only saw once, because he was ill and had to go to hospital. According to their curriculum I teach reproductive health, but I started with HIV/AIDS as this is still a big problem here. The HIV prevalence here is 11,5% of the population, so I told them in the first class, that statistically spoken there was 1 person in the room with HIV/AIDS. And what happened: halfway the second week that student died: of tuberculosis, related to him being HIV positive. Quite a sad example of how urgent it is, to talk about this disease. Apparently he was a very good and eager student, until he got weaker and weaker in the beginning of this year. He had been tested 4 times, each test was positive. But he denied any treatment, rather going to a witchdoctor or traditional healer. Understandably, this made some of the teachers at the seminary quite sad, even angry. And his wife (he also leaves two children behind) also seems to be HIV positive, but also denies treatment. She was not at the hospital when her husband died, but did not want to go there to at least have a last goodbye for her dead husband. This was, because she also got treatment of a witchdoctor who told her that his treatment would heal her from the HIV, but only if she would never again look at a dead body.
I am not one of the Christian fanatics that want to ban out any traditional healing, because the knowledge of some healers of medical plants etc is worth to be maintained and we could learn a lot from them. But that kind of witchcraft and healing, that does not help anybody, rather courses more pain. And now his wife went to life with his family, because they paid lobolo, a bride fee, for her, and she can only go back to her own family if they can give the money back to his parents. So she and her kids will have to work there probably being the ones with the lowest rank and basically no rights in that household.
This is what I find sad! It is a mixture of traditions of ancestral worship etc, often adapted to the new life style, and Christian believes that is often worse than sticking purely to a traditional life style. It would be too much to explain that in detail here, but for whom is interested, there is a good book about it: Family Secrets – risking reproductive health in Mozambique, written by Rachel Chapman.
So, that is one of the sad things that happened. Another one is that fact that some thieves – banditos in the words of our guard – took advantage of us being away so long and broke into our house, taking a computer, most of our shoes, all food supply (I wonder how our cook does know that exactly 15 packages of Spaghetti are missing), my new midwifery case, and some other stuff. We will have to check what else is missing, once we are back there. Luckily they did not find the cash and Erik’s Brazilian passport.
Now, our guard is in prison (even though we think he has probably nothing to do with it, but they say it is standard procedure in Mozambique... Only that I am worried about how he is treated!!), the maid did not water the garden, so that all our vegetables died, and we don’t know how we will find the things once we are back there.
It makes me feel sad as well. Because even though we knew things like this could happen, it is disappointing that people whom we try to trust, the people in the village, are doing those thing. And it creates new insecurity about how we should behave, what is okay and what is not. If we are rewarding work a bit more than would be that habit, does that cause jealousy amongst the villagers, or the idea that we have to much anyway and could miss the robbed things? How does it feel to walk through the village probably passing by or talking/working with the thieves without knowing it? That the police will only make work of it, if they get “rewarded”? (One week after the incident we called to see how things were going and why our guard was still imprisoned, and it appear they had lost the file (should we believe that?) and so had not done anything and that we would have to go to the criminal police anyway.)
I just read in a book (thanks to the advice of Corry I knew about the book “Mozambican Women” and by coincidence found it in a Portuguese translation in a bookstore in Maputo) that a Dutch couple “solved” a similar case by going to a curandeiro, a traditional healer. And there we go: That is a kind of practise I don’t want to encourage, but if it might give better results without putting in risk people and getting more acceptance among the locals....? And then: shall we employ another guard? If yes, how will we find a trustworthy person? How can we help our actual guard without losing our own interests out of sight? Many things to question our conscience!
But there is also a very happy news: YES, we finally got a car. And NO, it is not the one we were waiting for. Thanks to Marinas advice, we got a car through the car seller her family recommended. It is a basic 2003 Toyota Hilux, but in perfect conditions and a – for us – very acceptable price. The mechanic we asked to have a look at the motor is still haunting us. Because we didn’t bargain well enough and paid too much. Well, we got the price down considerably and we learned underway. So we are really happy. So, last Monday we went to pay the car and I had not though before that it had to get to Ricatla somehow: My very first driving experience in Mozambican, also being the first time driving on the left side in a car where everything is on the “wrong side” in downtown Maputo during rush hour!!! I am proud to announce we made it to Ricatla sound and safe! Even though I have to admit that my right arm crushed into the door a few times looking to change gear, I still automatically try to find my seatbelt on my left side and I usually clean the windscreen when I want to indicate directions and I indicate directions when I want to clean the windscreen. But that are minor details compared to dealing with crazy driving chapas, people crossing the streets at the most inopportune moments, no traffic lights due to electricity blackouts, the chaos as a consequence, cars without any light driving in the dark... Business as usual on Mozambican streets! We will need a good guardian angel on the backseat when we drive up north and I think we are going to pray a lot as well.
So I am positive that the next news you will hear from us will be from Nicane and I pray that it will be good news as well.
About the pictures: We have been in Maputo a few times to get the car buying done and from those trips there are still a few impressions, like the trainstation that could have ben the stage for Around the world in 80 days, including a timetable that matches the amount of daily trains of those times. And like you can see, there are still some honest people here, that leave ID cards they find at the station around that timetable, so the owners can recover them.
Then we proudly present our very new occasion car, we called her Brunhild, and I am still impressed by the nature around the guesthouse, birds, butterflies (all in a good mood these days), seeds, the people walking by... . One Sunday morning I went into town with Daniel, one of the teachers here, to see how he gives contextual bible study groups, which was very interesting. On the other hand you see the Mozambican flag (part of everyday’s life, e.g. printed onto flipflops like the Brazilian flag in Brazil), which doesn’t account for a very peaceful approach with the machine gun in the centre. So many contradictions...
Thanks for all your good wishes and thinking of us!