The Season of Change

Christmas has come and gone for another year, and now it's time to make New Year's resolutions. Time for change.

In Mozambique, this really is a season of change, but not for the reasons you might expect. No, there's a different sort of change afoot...

Here, there's an important game of hot potato under way, stemming from the government's decision to strip three zeros from its currency.

The 1,000,000 meticais bill has been replaced by its successor, the 1,000. Each dollar is now equivalent to 25 meticais "new family," not 25,000.

And Mozambicans have until December 31 to get rid of their old bills. After today, they face the hassle of exchanging them at the government's central bank. Possible, but a hassle.

And the game is heating up. The new bills were introduced several months ago, but I've received more of the old ones in the past couple of weeks than over the past months combined.

They're withered, tattered, filthy bills. Especially the small ones.

* * * * *

There's another interesting phenomenon about change: apparently, in Africa, it's the responsibility of the person making the purchase to have the necessary change. Stores, particularly small ones, do not have much.

Here, the equivalent of a $20 is too large for all but the biggest stores. The cashier's glare frequently burns a hole through even my bills worth $8. In Africa, such "large" bills are argentum non gratae.

Because of this phenomenon, I recently paid $2 too much for a $15 refill on a propane tank. It was either that, or no gas.

And I'm routinely asked by merchants for change so that they can settle up with customers ahead of me in line.

I guess in this way, it's the season of "no change," unless the merchant happens to have a hot potato that needs to be passed along. Happy New Year!

A Nation's Own Sons and Daughters

They have put it off, postponed it, re-scheduled it various times, but late last week I was finally scheduled to meet once again with the church leaders. Over six weeks have passed since I first encountered their spirited opposition.

Then, as I was springing open the padlocks securing our front door, balancing an armload of bananas to bring with me to the meeting (since the oranges were such a hit last time), I received an SMS on my cell phone. The meeting was canceled yet again.

Now, with Christmas upon us, it won't happen until mid-January, at the earliest. With Christmas also comes summer holidays, and I hear that little happens in Maputo for three or four weeks.

My heart sank.

Since my last meeting with these leaders, I have taken their concerns and shaped them into a strategy that I feel works for everyone. I've sold it to our organization, to our board of directors, to supporters who will finance the project. I even had a conversation with a Mozambican elder who advises these church leaders. Wonderful, he said. Just what Mozambique needs.

Only I keep hitting my knees on this final hurdle. My attempts to sell the strategy to the leaders of the local churches has given me nothing but bruises layered on top of figurative bruises. Some on my knees, some on my ego.

I haven't successfully separated this project from the broader politics of development work swirling around me. The leaders of the church, it seems, are holding this project hostage until we bring money to the table. There's no point teaching us about business if you don't give us money at the same time, they argue.

It is painful for those people who are used to receiving charity to suddenly be asked to provide their own resources. They doubt themselves and their own abilities. And some even think that we're bluffing: that eventually we'll "cave in" and bring a truckload of money (your money -- donor money -- I might add). But that money would soon run out, leaving everyone in the same position as they are in today, and having dug the dependency rut a little deeper.

They see us as being selfish and greedy for having money and not providing it. The perception prevails in Africa that money grows on trees in the West. (Comparatively speaking, that may even be true.)

Our micro-enterprise development strategy is based upon the principle that Mozambicans have within themselves and within their communities the resources to be successful on their own, without being dependent upon foreigners. The strategy is also built upon the principle that Mozambicans are best equipped to convince Mozambicans about the reality of this.

Yes, it can be harmful to give money. Jesus taught that money is poisonous. That's not to say that everyone who indulges succumbs. It's just a well-reasoned caution. And this particular group of church leaders is intoxicated.

Their intoxication is not representative of the whole of Africa. Right under my nose, I spoke with my good friend Mario, who is sobered to the reality of Africa.

Sobered to the reality that Africans have all the resources that they need to survive and thrive. God has ensured this. He wouldn't have made it any other way. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?", Jesus asks his disciples (in Matthew 10:29, 31), "Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. ...So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

Mario gave me much needed encouragement for insisting that Africans have the resources to help Africans. Africans need to take risks, he said, so that they can value their possessions. "If foreigners keep giving us things, we'll never learn the value of money, or the value of hard work."

Mario's wisdom unleashed for me a compelling insight: if I really believe that Africans are best equipped and most credible to implement any development or evangelism work in Africa, then I ought to also believe that Africans are best equipped and most credible to convince Africans that such work is valuable and desirable in the first place.

Our micro-enterprise development strategy exists in order "to identify and remove any barriers to economic development that exist for church and community members."

I keep banging my knees against this hurdle because I myself am a barrier.

My organizational affiliation, my affluence, my language, my culture, the colour of my skin. All of these factors reinforce one another to form an insurmountable, impenetrable barrier.

I am a barrier to the success of my own program because, as long as I am the "front man," as long as it is me pitching the program, this group of church leaders will expect me to capitulate and bring money to the table. And they'll prevent me from implementing the strategy until I do.

In order to stay true to our strategic vision, I must remove myself from the equation and allow Mozambican to interface directly with Mozambican. In order to achieve success, I must surrender a degree of control over, and credit for, the program.

God has laid down the gauntlet for me. You say you want My will to be done? Are you willing to step aside from this project? Are you willing to withdraw your ego from this project in order for My will to be realized?

In order to stay true to God's calling, I must remove myself from the front lines.

God never promises that His call will be easy, but to step back from my own project is a challenge. Wow.

My work will move up-stream, with me in a less visible, less central role. When I return from holidays, the task will change from trying to get airtime with the committee of leaders directly in order to sell the need for the micro-enterprise strategy, to supporting, encouraging and equipping people like Mario to sell the strategy to his nation's own sons and daughters.

Don't Be Late For Dinner!

Despite our best intentions, we didn't make it to a Christmas church service this year. Instead, we were inescapably snared in the African time trap.

The trap was set a couple of days ago by my friend Mario, who was talking about his church's plans for an evening Christmas service followed by a social time afterwards. We don't have enough time to sit around and get to know one another, he said, and was really looking forward to creating such an opportunity this Christmas.

We offered our kitchen for Mario, his brother Dilson, and their cousin to come prepare some Christmas snacks. It would take two hours, they said, or three, tops. They arrived shortly after noon, and for hours we mixed, rolled and deep-fried samosas (or "xamussas"), spring rolls, chicken, french fries, and hamburgers (yes, deep fried!). Anything not deep-fried was smothered in mayonnaise.

Eight hours later, "some Christmas snacks" were finished, with a feast sufficient to feed the entire church of 40 people.

As we made the preparations, Laura battled to keep anything with meat or mayonnaise in the fridge. It was a cultural battle; a gargantuan battle between the fridge-people and the non-fridge people (the importance of keeping food in the fridge is lost on people who don't have electricity in their homes!). The battle ended in a draw.

My battle was more of an internal fight: an epic struggle to maintain bodily hydration. Our house, lacking air conditioning, strains under the African heat at the best of times; having the oven and several stove elements pumping additional heat into our cramped kitchen for hours made me crave running outside to roll in the Canadian Christmastime snow.

We can dream all we want. The snow isn't coming for Christmas.

Maputo was experiencing a communist-style run on soft drinks, forcing me to wait half an hour in the beating-down sun to exchange a crate of empties before the party. I fared better than Melvin, who was told that stores had run out of Coca-Cola and Pineapple Fanta.

The time trap tightened, with the tick-tick-tick of the clock growing louder and louder as the kitchen became hotter and hotter.

After 8 hours of sweating at the vegetable market, in the lineup for soft drinks, and in the kitchen, we were finished making the feast that would feed an entire church. Just in time, too: now past 8pm, the church had started their evening program two hours earlier. We loaded up the car and drove slowly to the church, weaving around potholes like we were in a battleground minefield, plates and platters of food balanced precariously in the passengers' hands, laps, and any other mostly-flat surface that could be found in the car.

The great virtue of the African time trap is that few people cared that we were so late, and even those few who did had their cares melt away at the sight of the feast. And an hour after we arrived, the evidence of our labour was reduced to crumbs on plates and smiles on faces.

Merry Christmas!

Manna from Heaven

It was a race so secretive that even its participants weren't aware of the plot.

Their sponsors released their entry into the race and cheered, hoping that it would finish the course quickly.

But the race was unpredictable, and fraught with danger. It was the modern equivalent of little boys and girls racing their homemade stick rafts down a river, coaxing their raft on from the sidelines, ever hopeful of victory, but in the end powerless to effect the outcome.

Some fortunate rafts fared well. Others would be detoured by the spiraling flow of eddies; others, their fate much worse, would get stuck in a tangle of bushes along the shore, or smashed against a rock.

Some of this race's sponsors expressed disappointment at hearing that they wouldn't finish in first place. Some wondered if they would ever finish at all. It was, after all, a race half way around the globe.

To finish the race at all was a victory in itself.

Even the race marshals waiting at the finish line to crown the champion had no knowledge of which entry was nearing the finish line, or which entry was irretrievably lost.

The victors of this race would appear suddenly, as if falling from the sky. Manna from heaven, the race marshals thought.

* * * * *

Having fallen from heaven, the manna landed in a post office box across the border in Nelspruit, South Africa.

The parcels that have been arriving have contained useful gifts, entertaining gifts, and gifts that remind us of home.

Our parents have sent gifts, our friends have sent gifts, and our small group from church has sent gifts. We've heard of other gifts having been sent, but they're probably stuck swirling in an eddy somewhere between Mississauga and Maputo. They may emerge yet.

We received some books to read, some games to play, and some television shows on DVD to watch. Otherwise, we only have Portuguese television.

Most of the household things that we would want can be found in Africa. Sure, most of the locals stick to the basic staples, but there is a large enough foreign and emerging wealth community that branded consumer goods are becoming available as well.

I should specify that general categories of food products are available, but often specific preferences are more difficult to satisfy. Milk is available, for instance, but fresh milk is a challenge. We buy aseptically sealed, boxed milk that has a shelf life, without refrigeration, that can be measured in months or years. Even the farm-fresh eggs are kept on shelves in the grocery store, unrefrigerated.

One of Canada's great myths -- that eggs need to be refrigerated -- has been shattered by Africans who have no choice but to store them on a hot shelf.

One lady wrote us an email from Oregon shortly before Thanksgiving. She hadn't met us yet, but would be traveling to Mozambique and wondered if there was anything that she could bring that we couldn't buy in Africa. A wonderful gesture, we thought, and without too much consideration decided that what we wanted were cans of Campbell's condensed soups.

Soup is available here, but most abundantly in powdered form, not cans of condensed liquid.

This kind lady from Oregon was amazed that Thanksgiving could be brightened by such a simple gift. Her Christmas, she commented, would be shaped by these strangers she met in Mozambique who, when asked for anything, wanted only soup. (Ok, so we really like soup!)

Thank-you to everyone who has sent a gift, a card, or an email. Your thoughtfulness is appreciated! Many of these parcels have been arriving just in time for Christmas, and have served wonderfully to soften the hard edges of homesickness that might otherwise have been felt this season.

By the People, For the People

We have started over the past days to have conversations with small groups of people about hiring them as "micro-enterprise development coordinators."

These would be people who we could train in our remaining time here to implement our business development strategy. If I can recruit and train trainers before leaving, they can continue to implement this strategy long after I'm gone.

These micro-enterprise development coordinators would be people from Mozambique who, because they don't have a cultural barrier to surmount, would be more effective trainers and mentors than I, a stranger, could ever be.

In our first such conversation, I was heartened that at least some of the people were catching our vision both for micro-enterprise development and for using Mozambicans as trainers.

"You guys see that Mozambicans have brains too," one of the meeting participants observed. "It usually seems like it's the white man to the rescue."

I have to admit that, for a compliment, it stung a little. Sometimes people back home have difficulty seeing past the colour of others' skin; I shouldn't expect anything different here.

The people we've spoken with have been unanimous in their enthusiasm for our vision.

* * * * *

Selecting the right people to hire to implement our vision promises to be an interesting challenge.

The first issue that we have to deal with is trust. Trust seems to be a commodity in short supply in Mozambique. Employees aren't used to being trusted. They are usually subjected to complex and bureaucratic structures that serve to emphasize this missing trust.

Compensating for missing trust is the driving force behind the tangle of red tape that I observed at the hardware store, and is commonplace throughout the country.

And employees don't trust that employers will award jobs based on merit. In African culture, it's the responsibility of employers to wield their power in a way that benefits their family and friends. To do otherwise would be to neglect the needs of those closest to you.

That's an interesting twist on the nepotism debate, but it's clearly at work in Mozambique.

RENAMO, Mozambique's opposition party, recently criticized the governing FRELIMO party over the lack of independence of the civil service. RENAMO claims that membership in the governing party is a prerequisite for government employment. Nonsense, was Luisa Diogo's reply. She's Mozambique's Prime Minister, and has responsibility of overseeing the independent body established to depoliticize the government's hiring practices.

What Ms. Diogo didn't find important to mention in her rebuttal was that the head of this independent body is her sister, Victoria Diogo.

"Is there nobody else in the entire country?", the RENAMO questioner wondered aloud.

Nepotism and other unfair hiring practices aren't restricted to the highest levels of government, either.

Yesterday, Timóteo shared with me the story of how he received his first job.

"I woke up in the morning and made a plan to knock on every door along Avenida 25 de Setembro," he recalled, referring to one of the major streets in Maputo. "After about three hours, I walked through a door and told the receptionist that I was looking for work, as I had for countless doors before. I told her that I was willing to do any work, it didn't matter what the task was."

"Did you read the sign above the door on your way in?" she asked him.

"Yes, you're a security company."

"And you're a young boy. How old are you?"

"23."

"We don't hire anyone under 25. And we're looking for tall, strong men. You're too small. I'm sorry, but we don't have anything for you here."

As Timóteo turned to walk out the door, he recalled sensing her attitude change. She saw something in me, he recalled, and took an interest in me.

"Young man," she called to his back as he retreated toward the door, "let me make a phone call and see what I can do for you." She proceeded to pick up the phone and dialed the number to her boss. "I'm here with my nephew," she said, "and he needs a job. His uncle has recently died, forcing him to move by himself to the city and ..."

Timóteo's recollection of her exact story trailed off. It wasn't his story. He had no idea where she pulled it from. But after a visit with the boss, who at first phoned the secretary back insisting that she must be joking that this small boy could be useful as a security guard, Timóteo was offered his first job.

He recalls standing in a line of new recruits as the boss fastened shoulder patches to their new uniforms. One stripe was typical for the new recruits, and two for select individuals with driver's licenses. Timóteo, not measuring up to the other security guards but mistakenly seen as family by the boss, was given three stripes. Unheard of for new recruits. His job would be to supervise a team of these bigger, stronger guards lined up on either side of him.

* * * * *

We can try to combat these issues of trust by demonstrating as fair and open a recruitment process as possible and by creating systems that promote trust rather than suffocate it.

But other challenges will remain, like putting people with little experience (nearly 45% of the population is under 14 years of age) or formal education (over half the population is illiterate) in charge of implementing the program.

And determining what is a "fair" rate of pay in a third-world country.

We're looking for people who are excited about our vision; people who will be excited to implement it. We're hoping that people don't come just for the promise of a secure job.

A Stop Sign Means...

Yesterday we were bouncing along a poorly-paved road on the edge of Maputo. Melvin was driving his truck, while Laura, Raul and I rode along.

Melvin cruised right through a stop sign, slowing down only enough to make sure that crossing traffic wouldn’t be a problem.

“You’ve really grabbed ahold of the Mozambican driving ethic, haven’t you, Melvin?” I chided him. “Every time I stop at a stop sign,” I continued, “Raul laughs at me and tells me that stop signs aren’t really for stopping, they’re for slowing.”

I looked over at Raul to make sure he was listening.

Raul doesn’t drive, so naturally Laura and I felt that our knowledge of driving was superior to his.

“The sign says ‘STOP’ in English,” Raul reasoned, “so that people know that it means to slow down. If they actually wanted drivers to stop, they would write it in Portuguese. Parede.”

We argued the logic for quite a long time, pretty much until the point that our stomachs couldn’t handle the laughter anymore.

But underlying Raul’s humorous logic was a point: why, even in a country where the official language is Portuguese, do they use the standard octagonal English stop sign?

And is Raul's interpretation of a stop sign really any different than our interpretation of speed "limit" signs back home? Yes, the sign says that the limit is 100 km/h. What they really mean is 120 km/h.

Christmas in July?

It can't be December yet. It can't be.

There's a strong wind blowing today, but not the usual Canadian crisp breeze coming down from Santa's workshop. It's more like the thick air blowing from a hairdryer.

It's hot outside. The kind of hot that requires two showers a day. Africa hot.

And yet, Christmas is coming.

We unfolded a small artificial Christmas tree over the weekend. It has some garland and ornaments, but no lights. It's a sad little Charlie Brown sort of tree. But it reminds us that Christmas is coming, just as it reminded our apartment's previous tenants for Christmases past.

We're thankful for the Christmas CD that we were sent from our friends Ray and Christine. We'll probably wear it out this year reminding ourselves that Christmas is coming.

At church on Sunday, there were no advent wreaths, no candles, no carols.

How will I be sure Christmas has arrived if I don't even have to wear my wool hat when I go outside?

In the Christian church, the four weeks prior to Christmas comprise the season of Advent. The season of anticipation and preparation for the coming of the baby Jesus. The King Jesus.

My usual prompts are conspicuously absent. The weather, the commercialism, even the religious symbols. Maybe this year we'll be able to focus on preparing our hearts rather than our homes.

There is always something to distract us from the preparations of Advent. Sometimes it comes in the form of a packed shopping mall. (There's nothing that saps my patience like trying to park at a shopping mall on a Saturday in December!)

For Martha, it comes in the form of the preparations themselves. The straightening, the tidying, the scrubbing. The incessancy. Distracted by making everything just so.

For us this year, it will be the heat. And the distance of family.

And yet, Christmas is coming. Jesus is coming.

Going "Postal"

There is not a governmental bureaucracy as oft-maligned the world over as the postal service. Particularly in the heady days of electronic communication, people often wondered aloud not only when, but if, their "snail mail" parcels would ever arrive.

Oh, how we love to make sport of berating the postal service!

In Mozambique, there exists no such luxury as door-to-door mail delivery. In our apartment, we have an often rain-soaked pile downstairs at the common entrance that serves as our "mail box." Some companies that want to deliver to us personally, such as our Internet service provider, hire their own courier staff to deliver bills. Others, such as the telephone utility, just throw the lot of bills on top of the heap on the ground floor.

And they don't use envelopes. Oh, to hear the laments of Canada's Privacy Commissioner if she were to find a stack of papers itemizing everyone's personal telephone calls sitting in that pile for all to see!

I needed to mail some letters recently, so I asked the natural question: where can I buy stamps around here? A litany of supplemental questions flooded into my head: Where can I drop my mail? Where's the post office? Will this work?

The post office, I was informed, is at the airport. That's good. My letter will be as close as possible to the airplane that will take it to Canada.

It also made sense: locals don't seem to use the postal service. There's no door-to-door delivery, and they wouldn't want to spend their little bit of money mailing a letter to their neighbour anyway, when they could just as well walk over and visit in person. The post office is located at the airport because, quite frankly, most of the mail is sent by foreigners shipping packages out of the country.

Once I located the small counter at the airport that serves as the correios, I wandered inside to find a woman sleeping behind the counter. One post office in town, and it doesn't appear to get much business. I gently whistled a couple of times until the woman awoke.

I asked her if I could send a letter to Canada, and she quickly calculated the cost. About $5 to go half way around the world. Not bad. Then she pulled a scrap of paper off a pile and ran it through an old postage machine that printed a stamp onto it. My letter was almost ready to mail. She found some scissors, cut the imprint out of the scrap of paper, smeared glue onto it out of a sticky jar using an oozing popsicle stick, and stuck it on the upper right hand corner of my envelope.

As she wiped the excess glue from my envelope, I paid her with a bill that was too large. She reached down and picked a plastic sack up off the floor by her feet, put my bill inside, and fished out the proper change. The plastic sack strained under the weight of the coins it held.

She was a lovely, friendly lady who apologized for having been sleeping. I may have been her first and last customer of the day.

The whole experience was fun and relaxed. It seemed more like a social visit than a business transaction, which is a good thing. And the best news is that my packages arrived in less than two weeks. Chalk one up for the Mozambique postal service.

* * * * *

Since my first encounter with the post office, I have since come to learn that Mozambique does, in fact, issue its own postage stamps, including this set of three that I purchased this week.

Yes, they feature the three pillars of African culture: a speed skater, a bobsledder and a downhill skier.

Maybe the lady behind the counter could tell that I am from Canada.

Zipping Around South Africa

Last week was American Thanksgiving, which meant that school was out for an extra long weekend. I quickly learned when several of our friends became teachers over the past couple of years that teachers are even more excited than their students for the arrival of holidays.

Laura is no exception. She planned for us a great long weekend in South Africa.

One of our first activities was an aerial cable trail near Hazyview, South Africa, which featured us being strapped to cables suspended high within the forest's canopy, zipping along from platform to platform for 1.2 kilometres. As Laura excitedly shared our plans for this activity with her Mozambican teaching colleagues, she realized that not everyone shares her sense of adventure.

The aerial cable trail experience wasn't entirely unique (but it certainly was fun!). I once had a summer job as the head instructor on a similar sort of course. I was even trained to conduct high-altitude emergency rescues using climbing gear. Having this background meant that I knew what I was looking at -- and that I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of their equipment. I knew that we'd be safe, which isn't always the case in Africa.

And we couldn't help but feel at home. The forest felt very much like the Canadian Shield. Nearby tourist shops even sell amethyst, Ontario's provincial rock.

We experienced greater fear at the Moholoholo animal rehabilitation centre, where we stood a (thin) chain link fence away from a roaring lion, and were able to pet a leopard (again, thankfully, through a fence).

The rehabilitation centre exists to care for animals that are injured or otherwise unable to live in the wild. They're not always there for their own protection, but for the protection of humans. The cats, for example, were raised as kittens by humans, so they have lost any fear of humans that they might have had in the wild. They are more dangerous now, not because they are ferocious, but because they would play rough and accidentally kill. And their instinct to attack weaker flesh is their basis for survival.

It's true that a leopard can't change its spots!

We also spent time touring around the mountainous Drakensberg area of South Africa, exploring such wonders as Berlin Falls, the "Potholes," and a view so magnificent that it is known as "God's Window."

Africa really is a beautiful, albeit abused, continent. Our weekend adventure serves to remind us that God did create the entire world and everything in it.

World AIDS Day

I cannot let World AIDS Day pass without some brief reflection.

Last week, as I stood talking with one of the workers at the seminary construction site, he looked down at a cut on his hand, and wiped the blood onto his pants.

In Canada, we are urged to be cautious around strangers' blood. Had I been administering first aid, the first step would have been to put on rubber gloves.

In Mozambique, where the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is 50 times that of Canada, people don't think about basic things like rubber gloves.

Mozambique is among the top 10 countries ranked by HIV/AIDS prevalence. The remaining 9 are Mozambique's sub-Saharan neighbours.

AIDS is a disease exacerbated by poverty. Poor mothers cannot afford the medication that would reduce the risk of transferring the disease to her children during birth. Even when they are given these medications, they often cannot afford the balanced and regular diet required to optimize the drugs' effectiveness.

And it's a disease that perpetuates poverty. Imagine a workforce in which one out of every 7 people has this one disease. Now imagine the number of additional people who miss work regularly in order to look after loved ones who are sick. And imagine the number of orphaned children who can no longer afford to attend school, starting their lives at a disadvantage.

We've seen homes where the head of the household is a 7-year-old child, struggling to be an adult.

Despite having lived in Mozambique for over four months, I have only experienced the ravages of this pandemic indirectly: through conversations about its impact, through advertisements, through stories.

This might partly be my fault, not having picked up on cultural cues. People sometimes refer to it ominously as, "the sickness." And rightfully so: it is the cause underlying one death out of every four here in Mozambique.

It has also driven the life expectancy rate down by 3 years since 1999. Here in Mozambique, people can now only expect to live to be 38 years old. And even that rate continues to fall.

Thankfully, I have not yet known anyone here to have died as a result of AIDS. That fact alone, perhaps more than any other, makes me a stranger in this land.