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.

Unwanted House Guests

We have a spare bedroom in our apartment, and on some occasions we've even had the fortune of having people use it. We particularly enjoy visitors from home -- not even necessarily people we know, but people passing through from familiar parts of the world.

And, this being Africa, we also have our share of unwanted house guests.

Ants are a common problem. There are hoards of them. Laura keeps a special towel in the kitchen, reserved for ant removal. I have to remember not to dry the dishes with that one.

And we have to store all of our open food in plastic containers.

The most recent intruders have been dining away at our table for the past week, despite our best efforts to eradicate them. The termites are literally eating the wood of our table, leaving little piles of sawdust on the floor below.

We have a smaller bedside table wrapped in a garbage bag in our freezer. If the kitchen table is the termites' home, the smaller table was perhaps their summer cottage. And judging by their activity, they liked their summer cottage best.

They don't help out around the house, and are really quite a nuisance. They've really been enjoying a novel Laura recently borrowed; it's such a good book that they've devoured the first 50 pages.

There was also a time a couple of weeks ago when a gecko came to visit. The harmless lizard sat on our wall, apparently hoping that we would watch something on television, but we rarely do. When we tried to show him the door, he hid in a crevice of our sofa, so we put the whole sofa on the balcony until the gecko had moved on. (Or had he merely found a better hiding place, deeper within the chair?)

Mosquitos are common back home, but here we have to worry about malaria, which infects nearly half a billion people a year and causes millions of deaths in this part of the world. We take precautions, but I worry about the impact on our health of those precautions, like the little chemical pads that we heat beside our bed to ward them off or the anti-malarial medication that can cause hallucinations.

At least they can't be as harmful as the chemical patch I saw for sale in South Africa. The one that works by seeping repellent into your bloodstream and "turns your urine dark brown and odourous," according to the warning printed on the packaging.

And then there are times that the unwanted house guests don't even have the courtesy to show themselves. We just look at our arms or legs and see the little -- or big -- red swells that they have left behind. Little housewarming presents most recently courtesy of spiders roaming our bed while we try to sleep. Small tokens to say that they appreciate our hospitality.

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.

...And a Filthy One

Sometimes when we snap the two padlocks closed and lock our front door, we are lulled by the comforting illusion that we have left the third world behind us.

But don't be fooled: it's just an illusion.

We've been having a problem with the washroom on our balcony -- it seems to flush fine, but hours later the dirty water reappears. Absolutely lovely.

The source of our plumbing problem was revealed to us this week in a charming e-mail from the apartment's previous tenants:

About the problem with the toilet. We had Zacarias, the plumber, come out and investigate it. He said those bathrooms where never built properly. The refuse from the one next door flows into your toilet and comes through the pipes into the bowl.

We did not have much trouble since the people next door were gone most of the time we were there. We just flushed it down a couple of times each day when they were home. Also, when we were leaving for a trip, we poured some bleach into the bowl.

Thankfully, we have two washrooms, and the one that we use most frequently (always, in fact) doesn't have this problem.

Of course, last night we couldn't flush any toilets, or wash dishes, because the water was off. It was restored sometime overnight. That's just Africa.

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.

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.

Thanksgiving for Two

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Most of our Canadian friends and family are probably eating left-over turkey sandwiches at work today (it's true -- you are, aren't you?).

Being in Mozambique and knowing no other Canadians celebrating this holiday, we feasted by ourselves, and had a wonderful time.

The Canadian government formalized Thanksgiving as a holiday in 1957, naming the second Monday of October a public holiday, "for general thanksgiving to Almighty God for the blessings with which the people of Canada have been favoured."

Previously, the holiday had been celebrated for numerous reasons: the end of combat, the end of cholera, the restoration of health and, most commonly, a bountiful harvest.

(This past week, on October 4, Mozambique had a public holiday in recognition of the 14th anniversary of the end of their civil war. Peace is still fragile, though many Mozambicans are tired of war, both in their own country and around the world.)

Despite being half a world away from Canada, this was a Thanksgiving Day for which we had many reasons to be thankful. We are in need of very little in life. Arguably nothing.

As if to emphasize the point, the electricity went out in the midst of cooking our meal. Knowing that many people in Mozambique don't have electricity, and those who do see it as a bit of a luxury, we weren't sure what pressure the electrical utility faces to restore the power when it's out. Children played in the streets, oblivious to any problem. (Thankfully, our dinner continued to cook on our butane stove.)

Once the power was restored, our Internet was spotty, though in the end we were able to talk to family and friends.

We feasted on a chicken so small that it would have been a stretch to feed a family of four with Thanksgiving-sized portions. Laura spiced her helping with piri-piri, just to make Canadian Thanksgiving a little more Mozambican.

The chicken was stuffed with dressing. Delicious dressing.

We also had pumpkin pie, though made with butternut squash, since in Mozambique pumpkins are things only read about in used children's books donated through relief agencies. Laura's first attempt at making a pie crust from scratch was a big success. (My attempt at whipped cream, using "boxed cream" that needs no refrigeration and has a shelf life measured in months, was less successful.)

We had plenty of delicious food. Laura even brought a left-over chicken sandwich to work for lunch today.

I don't know why we have so much when others so close to us are hungry, but for our lot in life, we can be thankful. And for that of our neighbours, we can work towards equality.

Tangled in Red Tape

The lesson that I learned today is that, in this society, bureaucracy abounds. It's everywhere, not just in government.

My experience started when the intake line on our water heater sprung a leak, squirting water onto the electrical wire, resulting in some pretty decent fireworks -- a little scary since our water heater is right in our bathroom. Naturally, I had to do some plumbing work to sort the problem out.

It took two people, a hammer and vice grips to get the broken intake line off the wall, but that's just an aside. The real lesson started when I had to go to the hardware store to buy a little adapter so that I could fasten a female-end steel braided hose to a female-end water line.

Inside the hardware store, I was greeted by a man behind a counter. "Can I help you, please?" he said, or something like that in Portuguese. Knowing that I'd have a hard enough time trying to explain what I needed in English, let alone Portuguese, I came equipped with the old broken parts and asked for a pen and paper to draw a diagram.

"Oh, yes," the man understood what I was looking for. He went in the back and got one. Perfect, I said. So he took it away and wrote the name on a piece of paper. He pointed toward another counter.

I handed the piece of paper to a man behind the new counter, who looked at it and wrote the part number on another scrap of paper and pointed at a third counter.

The man at the third counter typed the part number into a computer and sent an invoice to a printer sitting beside a woman at a fourth counter.

I wish I were joking.

At the fourth counter, the lady asked me to pay. I realized that I didn't even have the part yet, so I protested. Silly estrangeiro. Of course I don't have the part yet. Once I paid, I brought the invoice back to the man who first helped me, who went to some shelves in the back to retrieve the part that I needed (again), got his supervisor to sign and stamp the invoice, and gave the package to me.

Four counters and six employees later, I was thankful to have the $0.60 part in my hand. And Laura was thankful to have hot water again.

Home, Sweet Home

Yesterday, for the first time in 66 days, Laura and I unpacked our suitcases.

We’re grateful for the hosts that we’ve had over the past two months (most recently Larry and Susan Weil and their cat, Felix), but are certainly glad to be able to relax in our own space for the remaining ten months.

We have moved into an apartment that is not too dissimilar to any apartment in any urban area back in Canada. As in any new home, we are still adjusting to some unusual sounds and smells. The electricity is a little unsteady, so the lights take a little while to come to life, and the water running from the taps isn’t potable, but those are minor inconveniences. There’s a gas stove fed by a butane cylinder sitting on the floor beside it, which makes us feel a little like we’re camping every time we strike a match to make something for dinner.

Africans needn’t maintain the same sharp distinction between “inside” and “outside” as we do in Canada, since the snow never flies here. On the balcony, there is both a laundry machine and a “water closet” in the truest sense of the term: the whole room serves as the shower stall, with the shower head positioned such that one could literally have a shower while sitting on the john, though I would imagine that doing so would result in the toilet paper being a little more soggy than is my preference (for those less adventuresome souls who may be planning a visit, we do have more typically North American facilities inside the apartment, with better water pressure than our first shower experience).

The most unsettling part about life in Maputo is the need for security. Our apartment is surrounded with metal grates over every possible opening, including our three balconies. We secure the front gate with two heavy padlocks. This is Mozambique’s version of a screen door.

Our previous homes have been surrounded by walls or fences topped with razor wire. (Those who can’t afford razor wire make due with shards of glass from broken bottles fixed atop their walls with mortar.) Our previous homes have also had guards – not trained, uniformed soldiers carrying weapons, but boys whose job it is to open the gate when the patrão (boss) arrives and to provide a general presence around the house, for whatever that’s worth.

Some businesses have real guards with uniforms and menacing-looking guns. I’ve often wondered how many of those guns really work, but I suspect (and hope!) that my question will remain unanswered.

Our front gate and padlocks help us to feel safe. Most of the noise around us comes from children playing in neighbouring apartments. From in here, in many ways, the reality of Africa seems very far away.

A Special Thanks to the Berryman Family

We owe a special thanks to Glenn and Kris Berryman and their two daughters, Chelsea and Jessica. They picked us up at the airport a week and a half ago, and have opened their house to us as we've adjusted to life in Maputo. They took a lot of time out of their days to bring us to government offices, to teach me to drive, and get us acquainted with our new city.

I will be working closely with Glenn on the development of microenterprise initiatives, and Kris is a teacher at the same school as Laura (and, in fact, Laura is teaching both Chelsea and Jessica).

We moved out of the Berryman house yesterday afternoon, and moved in with Larry and Susan Weil, where we will stay until September, when our apartment is finally ready.