Afro-trippin'

It’s the first day back to work after the holiday break, and the place is dead quiet. Besides the birds (and their chicks) that have slowly been building a nest in my office and the swishing of the pool outside the door, there’s a beautifully reflective silence. “I wish it could be this relaxing everyday,” my lone co-worker muses over lunch.

I agree. After blitzing through Southeast Africa for the past three weeks, all I want is peace. Since arriving back in Lusaka last Thursday – sick, stinky and nursing a festering foot sore – I have only left the house for food, internet and to rent the first season of 24. With the rainy season in full effect in Zambia, every cool downpour washes away a layer of mental fatigue and refreshes the soul. The fever broke, the foot is healing and I definitely smell better; I’m ready to reflect on the Afro-trip.

One of the things you have to respect about Africa is its size. Everything is immense. From its distances and poor governance to its heat and natural beauty, it can make you feel impossibly small. Going from Zambia to Tanzania to Mozambique and back again, I covered at least 6000km and only saw portions of a small corner of the continent.

Even within that relatively small slice, there was incredible diversity. The temperate highlands of central Africa gave way to the infernal heat of the east coast; Nyanja and Bemba became Swahili and Makua; mostly Christian places turned mostly Muslim; the thriving port of Dar-es-Salaam contrasted with the economic depravity of northern Mozambique; the black Bantu peoples of the interior diversified into myriad shades of brown as they mingled with Arabs and Asians on the coast. You would even swear there was a twinge of European blood in some of the fairer-skinned Mozambicans.

Maybe it’s a good thing that most African countries are enormous, because one of the miseries of traveling here is crossing borders. Not only do you get hit with gratuitous visa fees and unnecessary waits on the way in, but you have to pay the even more medieval ‘departure tax’ when you leave. Just like living in Zambia, on my trip I ended up paying more for visas than I did accommodation. Again, money that should have been recycled into local economies was being sent somewhere where it was unlikely to help anyone who actually needed it. The benefit of being repeatedly gouged, if there ever was one, was seeing a myopic pattern emerge from the top on down.

In Mozambique, it’s what aid workers call the ‘orphan spirit’. Working with children whose parents have died or are unable to look after them, it’s a struggle to get them to think long-term about anything. When you’re used to fighting only to survive and there might not be a tomorrow, there’s no use investing time, money or effort in anything that doesn’t bring immediate reward, or so the theory goes. As a result, stealing, cheating and general malfeasance ensue.

Since many in the government came out of similarly desperate circumstances, and most African countries were hastily abandoned after colonialism, politicians exhibit the same ‘survive first, ask questions later’ attitude. Even the hospitality industry, which should be based on customer service and satisfaction, is shockingly near-sighted. In heavily touristed Zanzibar, an hour’s wait for food was normal, the hotel staff lost bookings, security deposits and treated paying guests as more of a nuisance than the source of their livelihoods.

As a casual traveler with enough money to pay the fees and time to wait for my food, it only amounted to a small annoyance that added a layer of exhaustion to a long trip. Contrary to what I think is popular belief, travel in Africa (at least where I’ve been) is neither cheap nor that difficult, but you need to be patient and understanding. Perhaps it finally helped me come to terms with the visa fees I feel I’ve been exhorted to pay for the past six months. The more frustrating thing is seeing places like war-scarred northern Mozambique, with its coral reefs, endless sunshine and friendly people, not investing or even believing in the future.

Christmas Day in Mozambique

PEMBA, MOZAMBIQUE – When the staff and students at Arco-Iris Ministries sat down to plan how to feed thousands of villagers on Christmas Day, there might have been more faith in God than in the organizers’ ability to maintain order when giving away free meals and gifts in one the poorest countries in the world.

“Just pray a lot, and love a lot. And that’s it,” implored Erica Grimaldi, one of the student missionaries in charge of the event. With a corps of 40 volunteers set to serve an estimated 2000 people, another asked to be blessed with “God’s wisdom where man’s judgment would surely fail.”

In the five years that Arco-Iris has been inviting Pemba’s village communities for Christmas dinner, problems have always arisen when food begins to run out before everyone has been fed. Last year, volunteers nearly avoided a full-scale riot when gifts and chicken became scarce towards the end.

According to 44-year-old Don Foster, an experienced American missionary who organizes smaller-scale village feedings in and around the ministry, feeding the poor in northern Mozambique during the holidays is a traumatic, if humbling experience. “The greatest culture shock for me is the cafeteria: children run for food, and they beg and they plead and they manipulate. In my entire life in all the countries I’ve been to for Christmas, I’ve never seen people begging and pleading and going hungry.”

With the kitchen staff working all through the night on Christmas Eve to roast 800 chickens and steam over 600kg of rice, everyone hoped that there would be enough. But with an event that’s not even advertised in advance – the villagers just show up in the hopes that the ministry will keep doing it – nobody knew for sure if it would be. “Miracles aren’t just raising the dead or making the blind see,” said Mozambican evangelist Norberto Sango, one of the original children adopted by Arco-Iris in 1995. “If we can pull this off tomorrow, it will be miraculous.”

***
“It is Christmas Day in Mozambique,” stated Sango with a deep inhalation, “This is going to be great!” The volunteers could be forgiven for not sharing his optimism, but when people started to show up around 1:00pm, they were in position and ready to go.

Once a critical mass was attained outside the compound’s front gate, the word was given to release the smaller kids in to the next holding pen – a giant circus-like tent inside the walls – and they sprinted across the grounds under a mercifully overcast sky.

Herded expertly by the cudgel-wielding crowd controllers, the young ones soon had their pop, chicken, salad and rice. For most of them, it was the only time of year when they received such a complete meal, and possibly their best chance of getting anything to eat at all that day.

“My house didn’t make any food for Christmas,” explained five-year-old Nassia Carlos in Makua, the local language. “I’m so happy to receive the food. This year is so good because last year I didn’t get enough.” 14-year-old Juma Bichele added that his “Christmas is very good because many people came and I’m full of food.”

After being fed and watered, the children got gifts ranging from tennis balls to stuff animals to candy before being sent on their way. Amazingly, wave after wave of kids were funneled through the cafeteria with minimal chaos. Even when it came to the last group – the often querulous teenage boys – everyone managed to stay calm in the reassurance that there were enough gifts for everyone. Even if that meant young men receiving stuffed toys and dolls.

“I think everybody had a good Christmas,” said Pedro Jume, a Mozambican volunteer that helped translate instructions into local languages. “They all went home happy and blessed.”

***
Exhausted, sweaty and ready for some personal time on one of their holiest days of the year, the volunteers took a few moments to reflect on what, for many, had been a very different but rewarding Christmas. Though most were far away from home in a hot, humid and mostly Muslim region, they considered it a privilege to be able to serve a decent meal to all those in need.

“They villagers know there’s something different about this place; a lot of the village kids want to live here because they see the hope and light that we have,” said Grimaldi, who normally spends the holidays in Kansas City, Missouri. “Inviting them in shows them why there are so many people from around the world gathered here to serve and love Jesus.”

“In Maputo there’s a lot more Western influence,” explained long-term missionary Jennifer Mozley, who has also spent the holidays in Mozambique’s capital. “There you see a lot more ‘Christmas’ around. You don’t see so much of it here in Pemba, but even if I don’t see it with my eyes when I woke up this morning I felt it in my heart.” Even Sango, who has participated in the feeding year after year, relished the opportunity to serve once again. “This whole day just makes me want to show people how much Jesus loves them. This is a direct love, like ‘Boom!’ straight from heaven to them.”

But as much as the day meant to the missionaries, the day belonged to those who, for whatever reason, came to be fed. For those like Don Foster, it is days like these that keep Arco-Iris relevant in the community and grounded in its own sense of mission. “Iris comes into this situation with one strike against it already because it’s foreigners and not Mozambicans. Iris has to prove itself. And every year they prove that Iris loves Pemba. And that Jesus loves Pemba.”

With files from Michael Amido Abibo

Don't Quit Your Day Jobbie

For anyone with a tragic lack of seeing The Painted Veil, Edward Norton plays a soft-spoken but determined character that has to fight cultural norms to avert a cholera epidemic in colonial China. Minus the colonial China, that’s pretty much what mom does here at Arco-Iris.

With a formal education in nursing and Christianity, she’s made an impressive transition from missionary student and clinician to public health officer for the entire compound of over 500 people. With over 300 of those residents being orphans not acquainted with modern standards of hygiene, the onset of the rainy season (around now) is usually accompanied by the medieval-sounding ‘cholera plague’.

Luckily for her, this place teems with kids wanting the ubiquitous ‘jobbie’. In fact, it’s almost become my mom’s surname, like: “Mama Linda! Jobbie?” As such, she cuts costs on all her projects by hiring one or two responsible people, then giving all grunt work to village kids (ones that don’t live onsite) desperate for something to do. She pays them pitiful wages, makes each work day a lesson in moral fortitude, and for some reason they absolutely love it. What I don’t understand is how she can put up with the hassle of working with these kids: they steal, fight, lie and cheat each other like that’s their jobbie. I can’t count how many times mom has thrown up her hands saying “Ugh, no more jobbies!” A cudgel would have made a fine Christmas gift, I think.

The kid that waters plants only does the ones he knows get checked. The latrine shithole diggers, in a rather intrepid move, have sub-contracted their wage to even younger kids who’ll work for less. Construction workers bribe the guards to let them steal materials. Cash payments are cynically ‘lost’ within hours. A work pair that got paid together fought so much over a single bill that it actually ripped in half. Someone with access to the compound has been stealing gasoline and threw a dead cat in the drinking well.

Each screw-up comes with a maternal morality check that reminds me of how I was scolded for misbehaving as a child. The lectures are almost word-for-word. Maybe it’s that sense of evergreen motherhood that gives her the patience to give jobbies to even the most incorrigible children. With the corrosive influences they have in the village – alcohol, idleness, abuse, neglect and like – hopefully the life lessons they learn on the jobbie will make up for their minimum wage.

Mama Linda!

PEMBA, MOZAMBIQUE – I knew it would be an exhausting week when, arriving in Pemba straight from the stinking heat of Dar, the kids were upon me before I could get out of the truck and into my mom’s house.

“Mama Linda! Mama Linda! Mama Linda!” they cried into the fading twilight, chasing after our Land Rover as it roared up the hill towards the missionary compound. Just when I thought we’d lost them, a particularly determined pack raced around the corner into full view. “BROTHA BRANDON!” was all I could make out as spindly arms and Portuguese greetings came flying at me from all directions. And so began the week at Arco-Iris Ministries.

It was a welcome change at least. After a solid week of traveling and drinking, I was ready for a spiritually fulfilling Christmas detox on the beaches of northern Mozambique. Despite my awkward lack of evangelism, I was willing to deal with the southern accents, ridiculous heat and wily orphans of the compound to see how faith-based development works (or doesn’t work, like the agnostic variety). Plus, my mom was rumoured to be a chicken farming, latrine building, public health officiating missionary banker nurse who announced months ago that the Biological Son would return for the holidays.