On Driving and Culture

In Mozambique, drivers drive on the wrong side of the road -- that is, the left side. Of course, it is not uncommon to see a driver, impatient with the progress of traffic, turn on his hazard lights and bully his way down the lane of oncoming traffic.

Chapas, the local name given to the swarms of privately-operated transit minibuses, are notorious for doing this. They will make a centre lane in traffic, and flash their headlights, indicating to oncoming drivers that they had better get out of the way, because the chapa is not going to give an inch.

The chapas always win. The drivers rarely own their minibus, and abuse them accordingly. The Portuguese word, “chapa”, has a more general meaning as well: sheet of steel. And that seems to be the only requirement for registration as a minibus. Certainly having a windshield is not a requirement. Neither is having all four tires firmly bolted on. Nor having a working set of brakes.

Forget about seatbelts, too. If they are all working, there may be eight of them. Certainly not enough for the fifteen or more sweaty people shoehorned inside.

Traffic becomes most interesting when the game becomes chapa-versus-chapa. Winner-takes-all. Chapas aggressively pursue passengers, competing against each other in a high-stakes, flying steel match of leapfrog. The driver’s helper opens and closes the door, and provides extra eyes and ears on the road. He also shouts destinations, and pounds on the chapa’s rugged sides.

I recently watched a chapa up the ante to beat his competitors. Already overflowing with passengers bashing their heads on the roof with each bump, the chapa driver hopped the curb and raced down the sidewalk, splitting pedestrians like a combine harvester working a wheat field. His door helper had to run alongside to keep up; so too did a passenger desperately – for some unknown reason – wanting a ride.

In the end, the chapa driver was forced to concede defeat, retreating to the paved roadway behind the victor.

It is easy to think that riding a chapa requires an unnecessarily high degree of risk. Risk not worth its reward. But entering the streets of Maputo is a high-risk venture regardless of method: walkers, drivers, cyclists, transit-riders. We are all at risk.

When I first sat behind the wheel of a car here, I did not understand what I was seeing. Driving on the other side of the road, traffic seemed to flow backwards. Red lights did not seem to matter much, and they were hard to interpret: sometimes they would flash yellow before green, sometimes after. Missing are the familiar patterns and timing of home. Often, they do not even work, reducing intersections to life-threatening chaos.

Before understanding the rules and being able to decode the hidden order behind the chaos, driving was scary and stressful.

“Just find a hole, and drive through it,” was the advice that I received. There is barely a soul who will stop and let another driver through. Occasionally drivers will be honked at for grid locking an intersection. They will almost always be honked at for not grid locking an intersection.

I quickly got used to chapa drivers who would go around me while I was stopped at a red light and drive straight through the intersection ahead. I can count on that happening every day. What really set me back was when a pickup truck full of impatient police officers did the same thing. There was no emergency, but neither was there oncoming traffic so, apparently, no reason to stop.

I often run red lights, not because I am in a hurry but because I fear that not running the red light will result in the unexpecting driver behind me to run into the back of my car. Up to half a dozen cars run the red light at each change. Green lights, by consequence, do not signal clear passage.

Traffic is often terribly backed up, often traceable back to poor or selfish decisions by drivers or pedestrians. But now that I am comfortable with it, driving is enjoyable. For the most part, other drivers rarely react in anger when I make a mistake, perhaps only because "mistakes" are so common. And some rules are innovative: like extra-wide shoulders on highways so that slower drivers can pull off the road without inconvenience and allow faster drivers to pass.

It is easy to think that the roadways would run more smoothly if they would just adopt some of our rules from home. But whenever engaging new cultures, we must always strive to be quick to listen, and slow to speak. On the roadways and in the culture, it has been useful for me to step back and understand the structure behind the chaos before rolling up my sleeves to try to "fix" things.

Calamity's New Face

A journalist reporting in the midst of Mozambique's brutal civil war once wrote about a young girl who, standing near him, pointed to the sky and whispered, "calamidades." Calamity. The year was 1988, and the journalist was in Morrumbala in the province of Zambezia. By the journalist's account, he didn't know what to expect. Perhaps the keen young observer was tuned into the early rumble of an incoming war plane, or perhaps warning of the onset of a torrential downpour that could lead to an equally devastating flood.

The journalist looked to the sky, to the southeast where the girl's small finger pointed, and saw nothing.

The rain fell gently. The child, thin, shivering and clad in burlap, continued to point to the sky, repeating the word: calamidades.

Calamidades was the child's shorthand for the Mozambique government's Department for the Prevention and Combat of Natural Calamities, and what this particular child noticed was a distant airplane approaching their airstrip near the Morrumbala mountain. (1) The calamity, as it turned out, was already present in her starving body, and her ears were acutely tuned to the hum of relief approaching from a distance.

Nearly 20 years have passed since that plane arrived in northern Mozambique bringing food and clothing to that weary child and her family. In June 1999, with civil war comfortably behind the country, the corrupt and discredited "calamity department" was replaced by a slimmed-down and modernized National Institute for the Management of Emergencies.

These children, now grown, still talk about calamidades, except that in urban Maputo, the colourful word has taken on a slightly new meaning.

With $100 a month, a Mozambican need not be too concerned about where his or her next meal is coming from. That level of income even leaves a little extra to spend at the local used clothing stores, shopping for calamidades, the word now used to describe the boatloads of used clothing donated by wealthy nations and sold in poor ones.

Timoteo showed me his shoulder bag, a stylish grey bag with the initials DKNY branded on its top. It's in good condition, which also means that it wasn't cheap. Calamidades, Timoteo said, are becoming very expensive. He spoke as if they have a cool allure about them, not unlike, I suppose, teenagers at home who shop at the local Value Village in search of the prized bowling shirt with some stranger's name embroidered on the breast pocket.

He pointed at the running shoes on my feet. Another example of something that he could buy at the local calamity shop, he said.

For those living in the city, Mozambique has taken a small step back from the precipice of poverty. Enough of a step back that these children have now grown up and purchase their calamidades at local shops rather than waiting for them to arrive by air drop.

A tentative step, but a hopeful one.

In urban Mozambique, calamity has become a good thing.


(1) William Finnegan, A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

A Motley Crew

Time – the precise time, anyway – may not be important in Africa, but that is not to say that no matter is urgent. That little lesson was reinforced as I sat at a local church meeting with Mario and Samuel about some project details.

I had been expecting a call from our landlord for the past several weeks, ever since he asked Laura if he could take some of the bars off of our windows to re-use them in another apartment. They are redundant so I did not mind, though I am not sure in Mozambique whether or not I would have legal ground to argue even if I did mind.

Weeks later, this is the day that he finally called. “The workers are here now,” he said, “Could you be home in 10 minutes to let them in?”

I have waited for this call for weeks, and now you want me home in ten minutes?

I was planning on returning to work out of my home office soon. “Give me forty minutes,” I replied. That gave me enough time to quickly wrap up the work I was in the middle of at the church and get home.

When I arrived at home, I was greeted by the crew that the landlord had hired to remove the bars. Three young men, none of them yet 20, all wearing tattered street clothes. One held an old and well-used screwdriver, another a hammer and the third a standard kitchen knife.

Under any other circumstances, I would have been afraid.

Once inside, they asked me for a screwdriver that would actually fit into the heads of the screws they were trying to remove.

Remember, labour is cheap. The proper tools are not. I did not have a proper screwdriver either.

They hammered and chiselled away at the stubborn screws. Several times, I was sure they were going to slip and shatter the window. The thought had occurred to them as well. They debated amongst themselves leaving the most difficult of the three sets of bars, and forfeiting the $2 prize that they stood to split between them once they had successfully completed their mission.

Doubts aside, they persevered. Eventually. “It will just take 20 minutes,” the landlord had assured me over the telephone, “and then you can be back on your way.”

It was at the hour-and-forty-minute mark that I looked up to see that the motley crew had woven my clothesline through the bars and were yanking furiously to try to free them from the window opening.

That was just 20 minutes after I had looked up to the sight of the boy who appeared to be the foreman standing precariously, partly propped into the air by a windowsill, and partly by the shoulder of his crew member. I got a ladder from the other room, and they thanked me.

When the crew was finished their assignment, they promptly left. Their work may have been urgent, but those three panels of iron bars are still sitting in my home, though no longer affixed to the window. I do not know when the landlord will come to pick them up. He will probably need them urgently next month, when I have long since forgotten that they are sitting there. And no doubt my phone will ring when I am doing something somewhere else.

A Fractured Understanding

Later today, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor will be awarded the $1.5 million Templeton Prize for his lifetime's work of arguing that problems such as violence and racism can only be solved by considering both their secular and spiritual dimensions.

This award will come as a surprise to many who draw a sharp line between the secular and spiritual realms. Many Christians in the West compartmentalize our lives in this way, limiting prayer to spiritual problems and our own intelligence and hard work to solving "real" problems. Atheists dismiss prayer as a psychological exercise at best.

"We will pay a high price," Taylor says, "if we continue to allow this muddled thinking to prevail."

Taylor's work would be received by most Africans as being, well, obvious. He might as well have won a boatload of cash for arguing that the sun is hot or that the rain comes from clouds.

Africans readily accept the role of spiritual influences and causes underlying physical events. Many access traditional spirits for protection, divination, and healing from witchcraft.

Several people have impressed upon us that these practices are "very, very common," and every time I'm struck by the emphasis that they use. A Mozambican woman with whom Laura works was bold enough to say that easily 95% of people still practice traditional beliefs. "If they say they don't, they're probably just hiding it."

Mario's mother recently asked to borrow money from him to buy a goat to bring to a sangoma. He wouldn't lend it to her, but faces pressure to abide. Sangomas often ask for goats or chickens. They use the heads and feet to make healing potions, and keep the good meat for themselves. It's a good deal for the witch doctor, Mario thought. They're well-fed.

Africans who engage the services of such traditional spiritualists are often looking to detect and cure physical or spiritual ailments, looking to foretell or alter the future. Perhaps they want to identify and punish someone who has committed a crime against them.

The practice is pervasive, though often hidden beneath society's veneer. I've heard stories of Christian ministers consulting these practitioners in an attempt to secure leadership positions within their churches. I've heard similar stories of government leaders.

This inclination towards seeing the world in its unfractured reality leads African Christians to be very spiritual people, and leads Africans of many faith practices to be keenly interested in discussions of gods and spiritual powers -- often moreso than the Western missionaries who have come wanting to teach them.

Some African traditional practices, like divination and witchcraft, are clearly inconsistent with Christianity, just as those of us in the West who rely on rugged individualism rather than on God are similarly inconsistent.

That notwithstanding, African Christians struggle to see why some Western missionaries preach that reliance on God is incompatible with healing using the natural restorative properties of tree roots and bark, while these same missionaries can themselves pop a Tylenol Gelcap to soothe their own aches and pains. Africans wonder whether Westerners dance dangerously close to an idolatrous devotion to science, while Westerners believe that tradition-adhering Africans are themselves tapping their toes clearly in the polytheistic danger zone.

Each group, focused on the faults of the other, believes that its own practices are safely within the acceptable bounds of Christianity.

Charles Taylor is onto something. But it's not enough to look at the world through our own physical and spiritual lens: we must try to look through our neighbour's as well. Even those of us, like Charles Taylor, who acknowledge an integrated spiritual-physical world, lack the wisdom of God. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror.

A Corrupt Chicken And A Broken Egg

Corruption is a risk wherever there are people vying for positions of power; that is to say, it is a problem in every corner of this Earth.

According to Transparency International, a watch-dog dedicated to reporting on corrupt practices, 99 countries do a better job at fighting corruption than does Mozambique.

That's not great. It's not even good. But it's not surprising given that the organization argues that there is a strong correlation between poverty and corruption.

There is a positive spin to the story: if corruption and poverty are positively correlated, then Mozambique is less corrupt than its poverty ranking implies it ought to be. By comparison, the UN's Human Development Index ranks 168 countries ahead of Mozambique.

Many people assume that, if poverty and corruption are positively correlated, then one must cause the other: that corruption causes poverty, or perhaps poverty causes corruption.

There are consequences to either interpretation.

To suggest that corruption causes poverty implies a moral flaw in the people of poor countries. They are inherently corrupt, and because of it they suffer poverty. This is dangerously close to arguing that the poor deserve to be poor; that their poverty is their own doing.

The converse is that people in poverty feel that they have little choice but to be corrupt in order to feed themselves and their families. But this interpretation allows people to shirk responsibility for their corrupt acts. We'll stop being corrupt when we stop being poor.

The government of Mozambique opposes this latter interpretation, but to others it is compelling. Not that people ought to have their corrupt acts excused because of their poverty, but that the civil society institutions that serve to uncover corruption require some degree of social infrastructure more readily available in wealthy countries in order to be effective guardians of society. A base level of education for all citizens, for example, would empower the citizenry to realize the social and economic harm that corruption causes, and stand up against it.

* * * * *

The stereotypical image of corruption involves a government bureaucrat accepting a briefcase full of cash in exchange for some favourable act. And sometimes this is true. Mozambique has certainly experienced some lavish examples of alleged corruption and cover-up.

In reality, a lot of bribery is more subtle. It can even sneak up on the unwitting participant, and it's not always easy to stand up against.

I was recently riding in a car with a colleague when he was pulled over by a police officer standing on the road's shoulder. After having been detained at the side of the road for 30 minutes, it was becoming increasingly clear that the police officer would not let us go without paying her 500 meticais ($20) on the spot. When my colleague rightfully protested, asking instead for her to write a ticket that he could later pay at the police station, the officer delayed further.

He eventually capitulated and paid the officer the 500 meticais that she demanded, which almost certainly constituted a bribe. We can't be sure she pocketed the money, but the scenario clearly fails the sniff-test of petty corruption.

I felt badly for hours afterwards, not because the driver had complied with the demands of the officer, but because we had done so in the presence of Mario, a Mozambican colleague. We modeled complacency -- even acceptance -- of corruption in a country trying to fight itself free of the grip of this scourge.

The next day, Mario expressed feeling guilty for having participated in a corrupt act.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether poverty necessitates corruption, or corruption leads to poverty. In reality, both are probably causally linked to some broader complex system.

Whatever the cause, poverty and corruption are inextricably linked. If more people were like Mario, a poor Mozambican with a heart to improve his country, Mozambique would quickly rise up the ranks of Transparency International's scale and rid itself of corruption.

Tired

A sun is setting on a common criminal.

The gathered crowd forces an old car tire around his neck.

A spark is lit, then a blazing fire.

Hearts pound to the rhythm of drips of flaming rubber hitting the ground below.

Screams of pain echo past the crowd's silent relief.

Justice and injustice are fused together in this most awful crucible. Where guilt ends and innocence begins, no one is quite sure anymore.

This tragic scene could be cut from the Civil Rights era, or from South Africa's struggle to loosen the noose of apartheid.

Lessons have been passed on from one oppression-weary generation to another.

But this scene comes from present-day Mozambique, brought about by desperate neighbours frustrated by the height of crime. And frustrated by the inaction -- or outright complicity -- of the justice system. Police officers are accused of being paid off by criminals in exchange for front-door prison breaks.

Mozambique is tired.

* * * * *

Give me your cell phone.

As Samuel told me of his experience at the Xipamanine market this morning, he recounted being slow to understand the boy's request. I like my cell phone, he thought to himself. I want it.

I want to keep my cell phone, he said out loud to the boy's repeated request.

You don't understand, the boy said. And very quickly, Samuel did understand.

Just as quickly, there were six boys where the first had stood alone. Samuel was surrounded, then on the ground. A fist struck his jaw, and a knife cut somewhere through the confusion.

As Samuel recounted the story, he still wore a shirt with two slashes in the back and one on the left shoulder. A plastic bag held more destroyed clothing, but luckily the knife didn't penetrate deep. Samuel's skin will heal.

His fear welled up; so did his eyes. He cried for his clothing, for his cell phone. And he cried for his country. Mozambique, he said to me, shaking his head, braving a smile.

Samuel is tired.

His cell phone has been taken. It will cost a month's salary to replace, unless he goes to the black market to buy a stolen one. Those are the choices he faces: a month's salary, or reward the crime of his attackers.

A rich benefactor buys him a new cell phone to dull the pain of the loss. I don't mind. The cell phone may be a month's salary for him, but for me it's just a fraction of what I keep hidden in my sock drawer.

* * * * *

Xipamanine market is crowded with people, but nobody sees Samuel's attackers. Not a person helps. Not a person notices.

Today, the thieves slip safely into anonymity. If they attack another, they may not be so lucky. Eventually, the community will rise up with matches and an old car tire. A series of petty thefts will turn into the irony called vigilante justice.

Mozambique is tired.

Step Up, Mollywood

I know that you've heard of Hollywood. Everyone has heard of Hollywood.

And if you're a real film aficionado, you may even have heard of Bollywood, India's answer to Hollywood.

Now, let me introduce you to the new kid on the block, which I'll dub Mollywood. Hollywood Mozambique. One of the many positive things that are happening in Mozambique. Probably the first movies that come to mind are Blood Diamond (2006, Leonardo DiCaprio) and previously, Ali (2001, Will Smith), but those aren't Mollywood. They're just the product of Hollywood looking for inexpensive and authentic-looking sets in Maputo.

This afternoon, Mario took me to the Theatro Gil Vicente on Avenida Samora Machel in search of the real Mollywood, to catch the matinee viewing of "O Jardim do outro Homem" (Another Man's Garden). Yes, Mollywood, though smaller than most movie-producing meccas, exists. Mollywood even writes, directs and produces its own films. For this eighty-minutes- plus-intermission, Mollywood was thriving.

No matter that the theatre, a cavernous and aging Portuguese monstrosity designed for stage plays not shown in decades, had all of six people in it. Perhaps the price was a deterrent, though at about $1.50 per ticket for the Monday matinee, I would have imagined that a few more people would have bitten. Maybe the after-dinner crowd is bigger, but I doubt big enough to fill the theatre's thousand or more seats.

The film that Mollywood projected on the screen was categorically not Hollywood. There were no explosions, despite the country's infamy with landmines. And I could have seen more guns standing on the theatre's steps looking out towards the street than I saw captured on film (the latter featured a grand total of zero).

Instead, the film showed a culturally-accurate portrayal of the obstacles that a teenaged Mozambican girl faces in her quest to qualify for university and become a medical doctor. The film addresses many of this country's biggest issues: HIV/AIDS, corruption and coercion, petty theft, and poverty.

Its title, reflecting persisting gender discrimination, is a derivative of the traditional sentiment in Mozambique that, "sending a girl to school is like watering another man's garden." Paying to educate a daughter is useless because her lot in life will be restricted to raising and feeding the children of someone else's son.

At several moments in the film, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. After one of the plot's critical moments, showing a male teacher advancing on a student in exchange for the promise of better grades, I thought of Captain Jack Sparrow. "This is as real as Pirates of the Caribbean," I asked with my eyes, not uttering a word. It's just a movie, right?

"It's very real," Mario assured me, understanding my silent discomfort. Mollywood punches with the strength of reality, producing socially-charged and relevant cinema that would be dismissed as drab documentary by Hollywood's red carpet crowd.

Mario felt encouraged by the film's message of strength in the face of adversity. I wasn't encouraged so much as speechless and contemplative. Sometimes reality is hard to swallow.

The Smiles are Free

A couple of months back, I encountered a power struggle between two guards offering to watch my car. The $0.20 wage that car guards stand to earn causes a surge in these freelancing entrepreneurs, particularly at Christmastime. I agreed with the first boy who offered to watch my car, but quickly a second emerged. "Come on," he urged, "that's just a child. I'm much stronger. I'll watch your car."

I'm just running into the vegetable market for a minute, I thought to myself. I proceeded to roll up a sleeve and flexed a rather thin arm, asking the older boy if he meant to imply that I didn't have plenty of my own muscle. I told him that I already had a guard for my car, too. The young boy would do just fine.

Humour -- if I can be so presumptive as to use that label to describe my little exhibition -- seems to be a great diffuser of conflict in Africa. And a great way to gently point out that you can't be taken advantage of by a vendor on the street.

"Come on," one market vendor whined in English when Laura and I expressed interest in one of his products. "I sell these things for 350."

I looked him in the eye and smiled. And then I asked him in Portuguese who actually buys those things for 350, aside from estrangeiros. Foreigners. I wasn't interested in the foreigner price, I told him.

His reply? "I'll give it to you for 250."

We eventually settled on 220 meticais, which I think still yields him a handsome profit. Our rule of thumb is that the vendors' opening price tends to be about double what a good closing price should be. And the safety valve is that street vendors seem savvy enough to not sell their wares for a loss. They're not afraid to refuse a sale.

* * * * *

Street hawkers will use what little English they know in an attempt to woo tourists. The most common sound around the market is a voice calling from behind: "Best friend, best friend! I'll give you a good price!"

I couldn't resist joking with one of these vendors. "If we're best friends," I asked in my broken Portuguese, "why do you want to sell me these things? Why won't you give them to me as a gift?"

Another vendor quietly snickered and took a step back, realizing that I'm not quite the easy target that I appeared to be.

"Ok, I'll give you these things," the first vendor responded, not wanting to be out-done in the exchange, "but only if you'll come next Saturday and help me to sell them!"

Neither of us thought the conversation was serious, which is what makes it most fun. We vigorously shook hands and included the cultural thumb-snap that only friends add, and went in our own separate directions. He understood that he wasn't making a sale, but had fun anyway.

* * * * *

"Best friend, best friend!" He wasn't gone for long. Give him credit for being tenacious.

My mistake was glancing at a batik, which he was also eager to try to sell me. "Buy it so that you'll remember Mozambique," he tried to persuade me.

"But I live right here in Maputo," I said. "What I'm really looking for is a reminder of Canada. I'll buy any souvenirs you have that are from Canada."

A laugh, a handshake and thumb-snap, and my best friend was off to make a sale to someone else. A real tourist.

A Lesson on Cellular Economics

It's Tuesday night. Laura has had a long day, and I'm tired too. Neither of us particularly feels like making anything for supper, so we call Mimmo's. Tuesday night is two-for-one pizza night.

And an hour later we receive a lesson on cellular economics in Africa.

My cell phone rings, but only once. I retrieve it from the office, punch in the code to unlock it, and a message appears to tell me that I have one missed call. An unknown number.

At home, I would have just stopped there. Probably someone dialled the wrong number, realized it, and hung up. But that's not how cellular economics works in Africa.

I suspected that this was the "Mozambican answering machine," so I hit redial. Sure enough, it was the pizza delivery man, lost. Five minutes later, we had our pizza, only slightly cold.

I wrote previously that cell phones are ubiquitous. That only tells half the story. Most people don't actually have any credit on their phones, so it is very common to receive a one-ring phone call. Call me back, please. On your credit.

In Mozambique, outbound calls are charged; inbound ones are not. That simple fact has a profound impact on cell phone usage here. Everyone with a cell phone is an amateur economist.

* * * * *

In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank's "telephone ladies" made popular a micro-enterprise of what amounted to a roving phone booth: a lady would receive a loan for a cellular phone and make her living by selling airtime to people in the community who didn't have telephone service but needed to make a phone call.

In Mozambique, a similar model is used by South Africa's OneCell. Even in the capital of Maputo, the streets are dotted with OneCell's bright orange umbrellas. Under these umbrellas, entrepreneurs sell phone calls over a cellular network.

These, like the phone booth back home, will soon be extinct.

* * * * *

Everyone has a cell phone, but few have credit. Sounds like prepaid credit is valuable, right? Right.

In fact, it is a convenient way for people to store and transfer wealth. By punching in a particular series of digits, followed by a recipient's phone number, users can transfer credits from one to another.

Imagine wanting to purchase a small bunch of bananas from the sidewalk vendor, but not having any money left. Rather than handing him cash, you can instantly "deposit" some of your wireless credit from your phone to his (that is, if you've conserved your prepaid credits!).

For the vendor, having less cash means that there is less risk of being robbed.

And I hear -- though I haven't seen it yet -- that there are even enterprising individuals who will purchase the street vendors' excess cell phone credit at a modest discount and resell it to people wanting to replenish their phones.

Cell phone credit, it turns out, functions as a second currency in Africa. Without, I would imagine, having to pay taxes to the government. Yet.

Don't Blink

Mozambique's flood waters are receding and the news cameras are shifting their focus to other crises elsewhere in the world. Blink.

As the water recedes, the full extent of the damage can be assessed. The government has estimated that cleaning up the mess will cost US$71 million, but that grossly underestimates the extent of the damage. More telling are the personal impact statistics: an estimated 494,000 people impacted, including 38 deaths.

Survival is assured only by the tenuous strength of a thread, as thousands depend upon the acts of selfless front-line volunteers like David Morrison and the countless people whose support allows them to fill their convoys of trucks with maize meal and supplies.

But for many in Mozambique, the real crisis is just beginning.

Over the coming months, hundreds of thousands of people will leave these temporary refugee camps and return to their homes to find little more than piles of mud. Their crops, which would have been harvested this month and stored to feed their families until the next harvest, have been washed away. There will be little to eat in the coming months, not to speak anything of excess to hawk at the market.

Those who do have excess to sell will have difficulty recovering their costs, having to compete against the tons of international food aid that will depress local market prices. The arrival of food is good news for the starving, but bad news for the small-scale merchants trying to make a living. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which coordinates food aid in such crises, has said that they will purchase as much food locally as possible, and is asking donor nations for cash to do so.

The WFP's challenge isn't restricted to feeding those families affected by the flooding. In the south of Mozambique, a short but intense heatwave this summer caused nearly three times as many hectares of crops to wilt as washed away in the floods. The heatwave didn't make the international news because, well, watching video footage of a heatwave is like watching video footage of paint drying. It's dull. Raging floodwaters, low-flying helicopters, washed-out bridges and dramatic rescues all help the newscasters to compete against other shows that feed our Hollywood-induced attention deficits.

Despite the action-packed video footage, floods are slow-motion disasters. Judging by the datestamps on the emails that we received, Mozambique was flooding for at least six weeks before it was severe enough to make the news back home.

And its people will be recovering long after the last news crews sign their bylines and file their stories.

Blink.

It's not realistic to think that the news could broadcast every emerging crisis around the world. That's not the point. But featuring these stories creates two opposing problems: first, that viewers assume that when there's not a story on the evening news, that there's not a problem. Far from the truth. Second, they paint these places as dens of permanent disaster, of places they would not like to visit.

Mozambicans that I've talked with are embarrassed that the floods make international headlines. They're embarrassed that the international community will think of Mozambique as a country that hobbles from one crisis to the next.

They want the news to focus on Africa's humanity, not its poverty. They want people to know that many great things happen in Mozambique in all the space between the punctuations of tragedy.

When we turn the channel, they continue to live. When we send our aid cheques to the next country, they continue to live. When our attention shifts, they continue to live.

Don't blink.

The Trains Run on (Africa) Time

The official tourism visitor's guide issued by the Cape Town government describes Africa time best. Its section labeled "local lingo" includes the following notation:

Just now: If a South African tells you that they will do something "just now," they mean they will do it in the near future but not immediately and possibly not ever!

In Africa, "just now" means "possibly not ever." Whenever I hear those words -- just now -- I can ignore the entire statement because it provides me no information at all. For example, what did Simo, our host in Cape Town, mean when he said that he'd get the keys just now for the garage door so we could lock up our little rental car?

As it turns out, he meant within half an hour, which surpassed my low expectations.

"Africa time" is such a widespread and well-practiced concept that, although the battery in my watch died six weeks ago, I haven't been bothered enough to replace it yet. I guess I'll replace it just now. (Of course, that's not to say that I have completely adopted Africa time yet. I still get stressed when we're running late -- just ask Laura!)

Our empregada is here cleaning our house as I write, and provides another great example of Africa time. She was supposed to come yesterday, like she comes every Wednesday. Without even a phone call she didn't show up, and without a phone call she appeared at our doorstep this morning. Alzira explained to me that, by the time she realized yesterday that it was her day to come, it was mid-afternoon.

This has happened several times before: imagine our surprise the first week that she missed work, when a 7:00am doorbell interrupted our sleep the following Saturday. There stood Alzira, ready to clean. No problem, not for her, anyway. And no acknowledgment that it was anything other than Wednesday.

I'm often sitting around wondering if she is going to show up just now.

* * * * *

I don't mean to leave an impression that Africans are lazy, or that they intentionally disregard time. Sometimes the deck is stacked against them. Sometimes the poor don't have the luxury of being on time.

I had a meeting scheduled recently with one such young man, and he was decidedly late. Once the meeting had concluded, he apologized for his tardiness and proceeded to explain to me what had happened.

He works for a restaurant, and his shift ended at 11:00pm the night before. He then usually takes a local minibus (or "chapa") home, but it was raining. Mozambicans don't like to work in the rain, and the privately-operated minibuses are no exception. Once he realized that he wasn't going to succeed in getting a ride, he started the hour-and-a-half walk home, arriving home after 1:00am, soaked and exhausted. He overslept, but not enough to make him late for the meeting. What actually made him late was that he needed a clean shirt.

He only has two, or maybe three, shirts, so his choices are to wash frequently or wear them dirty. Africans, just like the rest of us, would rather not do the latter. The rain-soaked, dirty shirt from the day before needed to be cleaned.

But laundry isn't a matter of throwing a shirt in the machine to gyrate on automatic while a quick breakfast muffin warms in the microwave. Not without electricity and running water. He first had to fetch water, and then had to wash his shirt by hand, and hang it to dry. And hope that the sun is kind enough to dry it quickly.

And when all that was finally done, he had to walk over to the nearest paved street and hope that he was lucky enough to find a minibus that is running in the direction of our meeting (which he was), or start walking.

* * * * *

Good rules-of-thumb for working in Africa are to be sure not to schedule meetings after meetings -- doing so rarely works -- and have a little mercy for those who arrive late, too. Sometimes the trains are running on Africa time.

The Widow's Mite

I asked several groups to rank in the order of importance to them the three components of a typical village-based savings and loan program: savings, credit and something called the "social fund." I was surprised to hear that, in each instance, the participants cited the social fund as being the single most important aspect of the program.

This was not intuitive for me: we had begun researching these types of groups as a way of eliminating some of the barriers to micro-enterprise development created by microcredit lenders and other organizations. I had thought that credit would be the most important, followed by savings (but even then, that savings only existed to provide sufficient capital for the credit program), and then the social fund a distant last.

The social fund (we might call it a benevolent fund) is not only a small self-insurance fund, but a way to build social cohesion within the group and community by allowing members to respond quickly to emergencies.

"The social fund is most important to us," one woman explained simply, "because through it we can help one another."

Here's how the fund works:

Every week when the group comes together to deposit savings, each member is required first to make a small deposit into the "social fund." The group decides how much is appropriate, but 1 metical per week (about $0.04) was typical. This social fund grows slowly, increasing by perhaps $1 a week.

If someone isn't able to scrape together the required contribution, they could simply make a double contribution the following week.

The social fund adds a degree of complexity to the program that I wasn't sure was warranted by its meager benefits. To be honest, I thought that the idea was a little silly. Meeting after meeting, the women and men who participated in these groups chipped away at my erroneous assumption. Had it not been for their overwhelming enthusiasm, I would have suggested scrapping the peripheral program as a needless distraction.

I dared ask a question that would never occur to me at home in Canada, but seemed obvious from my then-vantage point sitting on a caniço mat under a shelter built with mortar excreted from termites and a leaky thatch roof: is it difficult to save one metical per week?

The tone of the lady's voice who responded suggested that her answer was obvious: yes, of course it is. "But," she continued, "contributing to the social fund is a habit. I put aside enough money every week, just like I do for food."

The group collectively decides when to draw on the fund. All of the women I spoke with lit up when they recounted their ability to purchase medication for a neighbour's sick child, or to make simple funeral preparations for a deceased spouse, or respond to other unexpected events.

These families, living in rural southern Africa, are so poor that they could not otherwise afford a trip to a hospital room that would save the life of a child, even if that trip costs under $1.

These groups are community-based, not church-based, and many members are not Christians. Some are Muslim, others hold traditional beliefs. Regardless of their beliefs, the members of the group demonstrated over and over again what it would look like to have God's kingdom realized here on Earth.

Yes, every week through these groups, God's Kingdom is made real in rural Africa by women and men who can scarcely afford to eat, yet can spare an extra mite to help a neighbour in need. Every one of them makes their deposit hoping that they can help a neighbour, but knowing that it could very well be their own family that requires emergency aid this week.

The Price of the Church

A knock came at our door this morning from Samuel, one of the men to whom Glenn and I offered a job as a coordinator of our micro-enterprise development program. He stopped by to discuss some of the position's details.

Salary, it turns out, is a sticking point.

Some Mozambicans have an expression for jobs that don't pay very well. They pay the price of the banana. Bananas are cheap and so, I presume, are those employers.

There's a lesser-known expression, too. The price of the church. Apparently in the grand hierarchy of employment, the church is even cheaper than the banana.

It's that way for good reason. People are supposed to work for the church not for the promise of riches, but because they have a passion for the work. They accept such jobs because they feel a calling from God and willingly accept the sacrifice.

Sure, my conscience says, but that can't become an excuse for the church to abuse its employees, especially when the purpose of our program is to develop Mozambicans' economic well-being to ensure that hunger and illness are distant memories.

Besides, we want to allow them sufficient time and motivation to operate their own micro-enterprises, like Samuel's barber shop, so that they are received as credible, knowledgeable micro-enterprise trainers. We also don't want to cut them off from all other economic activity, knowing that this year's salary is backed by a promise, and next year's is backed by a hope. Nothing, until we have sufficient money in the bank, can be backed by a guarantee.

So what is a fair salary in a third-world country? We are offering a salary of 2,500 meticais -- or a little under $100 -- a month which is, apparently, the price of the church.

I don't have access to a proper salary survey to benchmark against, but I do know what some others are paying. I have only enough information to know that we're offering neither the highest nor the lowest of salaries.

And we're offering a high enough salary that nobody ever quotes it in the context of defining the poor. Extreme poverty is usually defined to be those people who earn something less than $1 per day. Half of the world, the same sources usually quote, live on less than $2 per day.

At $100 a month -- $3.29 a day -- our salary is, according to Samuel, higher than what entry-level government jobs are paying in Maputo. And, to be clear, Samuel wasn't arguing for a ten-fold increase, but a ten- or twenty-percent increase, not unlike anyone at home trying to squeeze out a slightly higher salary.

I have no illusions that this salary is anyone's idea of a get-rich-quick scheme, but it's not going to leave anyone in Africa hungry or homeless, either.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest that I approached the conversation in cavalier fashion. What moral footing do I have to argue that with the man sitting across the table from me in my $650/month apartment? Looking through my lens, I have made a huge sacrifice to live in Mozambique. To him, I am still a king, albeit perhaps one who relinquished a crown jewel or two. How can I look Samuel in the eye and argue that $100 a month is a good salary?

I've just closed the door behind my guest, and am feeling emotionally spent. I'm feeling a little bruised and beaten, not because Samuel was even remotely abusive or impolite. The bruises have been inflicted by my own conscience, battling the merits of offering a salary the size of which, I admitted to Samuel, would leave me starving to death.

A Culture Lost

A couple of years ago, Mel Lastman, the outspoken mayor of Toronto, embarrassed himself and our city with a demonstration of his lack of knowledge about Africa.

On the eve of travelling to Mombasa Hamisi Mboga, Kenya, Mr Lastman joked with reporters that he feared being hoisted into a vat of boiling water while natives danced around him.

He was preparing to travel to Kenya to promote Toronto's 2008 Olympic bid. The remark didn't help our city's chances to win the Olympic Games and vault itself onto the international stage, and the Olympics were eventually awarded to Beijing.

(Yes, there are infrequent reports of cannibalism in Africa, just as there was in Germany in 2001.)

Fears of boiling pots of cannibal soup aside, the tragic reality is that much African culture, like much native culture in North America, has been lost in large measure because of historic ignorance not unlike that exhibited by Mr Lastman in Toronto.

Traditional tribal languages have also been pushed aside in favour of European languages, though this is changing somewhat.

Laura and I recently had the opportunity to visit a cultural village established to celebrate the heritage of the Shangana tribe, which is the predominant tribe in southern Mozambique. We witnessed traditional clothing and dance, and partook in a traditional meal.

The meal, as it turns out, was very similar to the one that we experienced at Paulo and Olga's wedding. Traditional food, it seems, has not been lost.

The most significant difference was the wedding's lack of traditional appetizers: worms, crocodile and impala. These delicacies weren't in short supply at the cultural village. (Laura and I were thankful that they were well sauced!)

The very fact that we had to travel to a living museum to witness the traditional culture of the people in whose land we are immersed is telling. Today, many Mozambicans (particularly men) have shed traditional African flamboyancy in favour of the standard uniform of westerners' clothing: pants and a shirt.

In some places, this is because of used clothing arriving courtesy of westerners' donations. Evidence of this is common. People have no inhibitions about wearing t-shirts with tourist slogans scrawled across their chests, or sweatshirts advertising some little-known college in the United States, or someone's long-forgotten amateur softball uniform.

In Africa, a shirt's often just a shirt.

But this doesn't accurately paint the picture. Many Africans in Mozambique wear clean and well-pressed clothing. Tasteful clothing. But not traditional African clothing. Their colonizers taught them to wear Western clothing.

Men don't wear copalanas anymore. Civilized men don't wear skirts.

Contempt for the culture practiced by the majority population of the derisively-named Dark Continent was widespread among colonizers. Ian Smith, the last European Prime Minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), demonstrates this contempt in unapologetic fashion in his 1997 memoirs:

It is difficult for people who have never lived in this part of the world to appreciate that sub-Saharan Africa is different. It was the last part of our world to come into contact with western European civilization... The wheel had not even evolved, nor had the plough. The change which has taken place is absolutely phenomenal, and is a tribute to what the white inhabitants did over a period of ninety years. (Smith, The Great Betrayal, p. 55).

The colonialists and the naive, it would seem, saw native Africans as monkeys in the jungle needing to be modernized. Or exploited.

It's shameful that so much of African culture has been lost.

And it's a shame that Africa must battle its image as a continent where visitors will be encountered at the airport by a throng of salivating cannibals dancing in their leopard-skin loincloths.

Os Emprestimos

When I started learning Portuguese, I learned the word for "loan." Emprestimo. I thought that it would be a useful word to know when dealing with microcredit and business development.

I didn't realize how often I would hear it from individuals asking me for a loan. Queria um emprestimo, por favor.

Of course, the request is never that direct. Not in Africa.

We've been asked for many loans or gifts (the lines are rarely so clear) over the past months. This week, it was our empregada who asked for a loan. The conversation went something like this:

"Good morning, patron. How are you?"

"Good morning, Alzira. I'm doing fine, thanks. How are you doing today?"

"I'm fine as well. Laura is at school today?"

"Yes, she's at school."

"My mother is sick right now, but she's in Chokwe and I don't have enough money to visit her."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

(Notice my Western-style response: directly responding to the explicit statement. I didn't detect a request for a loan buried in there!)

I had inadvertently forced her to ask more directly:

"Could I have a loan for two hundred so that I can travel there this weekend?"

Even here, when my ignorance has forced her to be more direct, she avoids using the key words that I would understand: dineiro or meticais. Money or dollars. I almost missed the question. Then I realized that I had heard the key word: emprestimo. Still, I wanted to clarify:

"Two hundred meticais?"

She looked embarrassed, perhaps because I made the request more direct by using the word meticais. Or perhaps because she was asking for a loan in the first place.

Some people have advised us against lending money to Mozambicans. Their reasons vary.

Some people think that when Africans ask for a loan, they really have little intention of repaying it. In this case, if she had've asked for the $8 outright to visit her sick mother in a different province, I probably would have obliged.

Some people argue that we're not doing anyone any favours by helping them to live above their means. I'm sympathetic to this point, but I'm also sympathetic to her sick mother. And I would rather let her make a bad decision about her life than force my own decisions onto her.

In a perfect world, Africans would save their money so that they had some left over for a rainy day (or perhaps a more apt metaphor would be for a drought). In a perfect world, they would have enough to eat every day as well.

I can give her a loan because I can secure it against her future wages -- after all, those wages come from my wallet. But that's not the point. The point is that we have a cultural bias towards savings, in part stemming from the comfort that comes from a stable political and economic climate.

Africans have had too turbulent a history to be able to count on their savings having any value tomorrow.

Instead, African culture permits the borrower, not the lender, to determine the level and legitimacy of their request. In some ways, that's a freeing thought. At least this time, I won't worry about whether or not I'm helping or hurting.

Yes, Math is Important!

I had the opportunity of acting as a "quantity surveyor" recently on our post-secondary school construction project. I was asked to measure the amount of work that the tilers had completed to ensure that they receive the correct payment.

If they receive too much, especially in Mozambique, they would still ask for payment when the work was actually done. It's important to not pay in advance.

Africans have short memories, especially when they're on the winning side of a financial transaction.

We have some contracts in this situation. Some workers have received more money than they should have for the amount of work done to date, and the result is foot-dragging for the rest of the project. Having already been paid, they have little incentive to work.

That cultural reality is perhaps at the heart of a World Bank report that recently re-affirmed sub-Saharan Africa’s standing as the most difficult region in the world to do business. Amongst these countries, Mozambique is no exception as it continues to experience the pains of emerging from its post-independence days as a single-party socialist state.

Mozambique did particularly poorly on the sub-categories of "Enforcing Contracts" (7th worst) and "Employing Workers" (18th worst).

On this day, the tilers were requesting payment for their work. Their contract stipulates that they be paid in three equal installments over the course of the project. With roughly two thirds of the work having been completed, they were asking for their tenth payment.

I calculated the value of the work done to date. Melvin, the site supervisor, calculated how much money they had received to date. The balance owing was a meagre $8.

"Math is important," the trade's supervisor told me, exasperated. "I asked for an advance here, and an advance there. I didn't know it would add up to so much!"

* * * * *

Record keeping is incredibly important in Africa. That's true anywhere in the world, but here it seems that if we don't keep records, nobody will.

This is true even for well-educated people, like my language instructor, Jeronimo. We discussed an hourly rate for the lessons, but never discussed how long they would last, and never entered into any sort of written agreement. When I told him that I was finished, he told me to tell him how many hours we had spent in class over the 12 week period.

I asked him if he had kept records as well. He said that he had, as a smirk grew over his face.

I then told him the number that I had recorded, and he wrote it onto an invoice for me to pay. Maybe he knew how many hours we had been together, but I'm not convinced.

* * * * *

I can say with confidence that the tilers hadn't kept track of how much they had been paid to date. A just person would pay the tradesworkers what they are owed for the work completed. A merciful person, seeing the worry grow across their faces, may pay them a little extra in advance.

Getting that balance wrong is one of the factors for which many construction projects, particularly those by humanitarian and religious organizations in third-world countries, seem to go over budget.

Where should the balance be struck?

Alzira, empregada

Mozambique, like third-world countries in general, is characterized by low labour costs. As a result, everything is done manually. Here, for example, lines are painted on the roads by a guy with a big brush and a can of paint. The street sweeper is literally a lady holding a hand-made broom.

Because of the low labour costs, many middle- and upper-class residents of Mozambique can afford guards and cleaners for their homes. Alzira is the empregada (which translates simply as, "worker") that we inherited with our apartment to come and clean it once a week.

Alzira's husband died less than a month before we arrived, leaving her to tend her children by herself. She's only able to find work twice a week, so we decided to keep using her to provide her with much-needed income, though we appreciate the help cleaning as well.

Her wage is 140,000 meticais (about $5.75) per day, a raise of $1 over her previous employers. Combined with another part-time job that Alzira has, her weekly income is about $10. We also pay her an extra 10,000 meticais for her transportation to and from work.

We decided that if she was going to work for us, we'd like to visit her home and see how she lives, too. And once we were there, we knew that it was the right decision. The shy and reserved Alzira who avoids making eye contact in our apartment vanished. In her place was a broadly-smiling Alzira who was proud to show us her home and her children.

She lives in a simple house, the entire yard being perhaps 1,000 square feet. The main building is a brick structure where the "living" is done (mostly sleeping, really). There's also a kitchen at the front of the property, strung together with spare materials, and a hole in the backyard where she is slowly building a washroom with money that she saves.

I thought that it must be strange having a kitchen and a washroom outside the house, but learned that many Mozambicans think we're just as strange for wanting them inside. The difference is a function of several factors:

• Most cooking is done over open fires (of wood or charcoal), or with gas for those who can afford it. Keeping the kitchen outside reduces the pollutants in the house where the family sleeps.

• Not having to endure winter months means that "outside" and "inside" are boundaries that get blurred. Alzira's kitchen and washroom are just as close to her bedroom as are ours; the major difference is that our hallway happens to be covered by a roof, whereas hers is not.

• A family's kitchen and bathroom are functionally operational before a structure is built around them. For instance, cooking can be done in a fire pit beside the house before the walls of a kitchen are built around it. In Africa, homes are built in phases.
  

And, of course, because everything is done by hand in Mozambique, Alzira conducts these construction projects on her own. Her form of savings is very typical: when she has extra money, she buys building materials. She'll continue building once she has accumulated enough material.

A Clean Observation

I want to take a moment to applaud the cultural sensitivity of a major multinational corporation.

I recently purchased a box of OMO, the local laundry detergent produced by Unilever, the company behind such popular brands of consumer products as Lipton foods, Becel margarine, Vaseline, Sunlight detergent and Dove soap.

As I tore into the box this morning, I noticed that there was no scoop inside, so I had to actually consult the box to learn how much detergent to use to wash our clothes.

The directions don't say how much to use for a washing machine, because so few people in Mozambique actually have that luxury. Instead, the directions demonstrate putting a handful of detergent into a plastic tub for laundry.

These plastic tubs are ubiquitous in Mozambique. I instantly recognized it on the side of the box as being the same size and shape as the buckets that I see everywhere: in people's homes, at their preschools, and being carried by women on top of their heads as they walk down the street.

Whatever good or evil there may be to multinational corporations, Unilever gets a bonus point for cultural sensitivity. Good job.

Homes and Cell Phones

I've been meeting with a young man named Mario twice a week to practice speaking Portuguese. I've been paying him for his services because it's truly been helpful, and because, at 24 years old, he's trying to finish school and look after his younger brother at the same time. He's looking for work as a translator at embassies, or as a chef. He loves to cook.

I met Mario at a local church that I attend more frequently than any other right now -- perhaps once every second week. He took the initiative to approach me for a job, and takes his commitment seriously.

Mario just showed me his new cell phone. It cost him $80, which I loaned him as an advance on his salary, to be paid back over two months.

The ubiquitous cell phone is a major asset in Mozambique. Just yesterday I heard about someone who is in hospital suffering stab wounds from a screwdriver. The thief coveted her cell phone.

By contrast, Mario is also paying a mortgage on the house he lives in. Because banks in Mozambique aren't interested in such small loans (and may not consider his meagre structure to be suitable for a mortgage anyway), the home's previous owner holds the mortgage (and title to the house, until Mario has completed his payments). Mario pays whenever he can put together some savings. He's not expected to pay monthly.

The house will cost roughly 20,000 meticais nova familia -- or about $800.

In other words, I just lent him 10% of the value of his house to buy a telephone. I was shocked. Surely that's an obscene amount of money for a phone.

Laura and I dropped him off at his house recently, in a subdivision of Maputo called "Polana Caniço." The house has three rooms, but it's only half-built: only one of the rooms has a roof, which consists of corrugated steel sheets set across the tops of the walls. There are holes where windows, or at least iron grates, might eventually go.

Some common features of homes in Canada are unnecessary and unheard of here. You have a heater in your home? Everybody does? Most Mozambicans don't understand the Canadian climate, and don't care to.

And other common features are luxurious. Like running water, which Mario doesn't have.

He doesn't have electricity either, because he can neither afford to hook it up nor afford to pay the bills. It's all too easy to forget the luxury that we are enjoying in Maputo: our electricity costs about $40 a month, purchased in advance on a pre-paid card. By contrast, the minimum wage in Mozambique, for those fortunate enough to have full employment, is US$58 a month.

(And even still, I don't know how common adherence to that official statistic is. A news service recently reported that soldiers in the army will receive raises to boost their salaries above $38 per month. Not even government employees receive minimum wage, it would appear.)

Cell phones are as expensive here as they are in Canada, which make them exceedingly expensive for the average Mozambican. They're also extremely important: potential employers need to know how to reach him.

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!