The Beauty and the Beast

These days I thought about written one of my last blogs. And actually, I want to focus most on the beauties that do exist, even in Mozambique. The past weeks were so nice. I had gone to Switzerland to start my Masters, which went well. I found work in Switzerland and am already looking forward to work with a fantastic team of midwives in a birth centre. Now I am busy studying a lot. I have to make sure these activities don’t prevent me from preparing the necessary paperwork to acquire a work permit for Switzerland. Like many people I tent to postpone the less interesting tasks, and administrative stuff is definitely not my thing.
Since Erik and I decided to leave Mozambique and this was finally accepted by Erik’s employer, we felt very relieved. We decided to make the best of it. The classes we both give are going well, we help Lee and Margaret, the South Africans, with translations for their classes, try to arrange as much follow up as is possible with the little cooperation we get.
And in the weekends, we go to Maputo, visit friends, dine out… just enjoy live to the maximum. For example these two past weekends we stayed in some friends’ flat. They live in a beautiful apartment on the 11th floor with views over the Indian Ocean. They were travelling, we looked after the cat, enjoyed the very well equipped kitchen for cooking and the hot shower was our private little “spa”.
We almost forgot why we wanted to go away so necessarily. But the rector of the Seminary reminded me today: Erik had handed in a letter to ask for our old car to be transferred to another NGO. The car was register on the name of the seminary, but was not paid by them or anything else. It was just that we could not register it ourselves without a residence permit. And they had urged us several times to find someone else to register the car. So well, Erik handed in the letter and I got it back from the administrator. A handwritten almost illegible note from the rector on it: bottom line: How could Erik be so bold to “approve” the transfer of car, rather than “kindly ask for it”. An “approbation” would have required the seminary to ask for it, and that was not the case.
Well, Erik how could you? :-) I am laughing about it because otherwise I’d have to cry. The Rector disliked one word (in a letter that is nothing more than a piece of paper to disappear in the archives of the seminary and will never be looked at again!) and made such a fuss because of course this was perceived as disrespect. In the first place, as the car was actually from Erik (or rather of another cooperating NGO) it would have been technically correct to “approve” the transfer, as the seminary should not give away a car which is not theirs. But even thinking that the car is registered to the seminary, and we would therefore have to “kindly ask” for the transfer, it seems just ridiculous to me. Instead of respecting that man, this kind of childish behaviour rather makes me disrespect the rector even more. And it is this how Africa works: Your position gives you respect. And rather than gaining or earning your position, it depends on family ties (with connections to the party, the powerful), money (to buy diplomas or bribe the right people) and of being able to make one thousand words without saying anything. That is perceived as impressive. And so you get a position and this position gives you respect, more money and other advantages.
Well, and after all, this is why we go away: I don’t want to cooperate with this kind of system. Because if one does not cooperate, one never gets a lot of things done. And as the NGO world is also a lot of hot air, a lot of money wasted, put into private pockets, people getting positions not for the capacities but other kinds of obscure reasons, I feel like I cannot be useful working in an honest way.
Nevertheless, and in order to take away some of these shadows that are darkening the scene in otherwise so sunny Africa, there are some project and organisations that do good work, without either exploiting volunteers or overpaying high rang officials and where a lot of people get good help in a concrete way, without time being spilled on long “chains of command”, where the people that organize everything themselves see the immediate effects and can adapt if something does not work out as planned. My impression so far is that some characteristics are good for this: small organisations, short lines between donors and receivers, projects that are not attractive otherwise because they would not give profits, organisations where personal commitment is the driving factor and not. Some examples are orphanages, like http://www.malaika-projekt.de/ (for the Germans among you) or medical aid, like the project I worked at in Ethio: http://www.barbaramayfoundation.com/ or https://sites.google.com/site/ethiopiebevalt/home and http://www.sypo.nl/engels/
Somewhere in the future, Erik and I might decide to engage in this field of work again, but we will look properly into what we are going to do. And being here, we realised, that there are enough people that might need a hand in our otherwise so rich home countries. We hope to be able to use or knowledge and time to do so. (So who knows a project in Zürich that might be good for us :-) ? )
And well, about African beauties, just look at the pictures! And you will know why I still love this continent!
Enjoy and see you all soon,
Anna
PS the sentence on one picture might be our motto: You ask me what shall I do. And I tell you: Live a wild and dangerous life!