Who's scruffy looking?

This is a long one! I’ll break it into three parts: Mid-service Gone Wild, Drew, and Josephino.

Part 1: Mid-service Gone Wild

As most of you know I was traveling around Mozambique up north for several weeks. But before returning to Mabalane, there was a mid-service conference in Maputo. A week long conference for all the volunteers that started together back in October 2010.

The actual conference part was pretty miserable. It was required training from Washington DC, lots of information both useless and boring. We had mental and dental exams which were not much better than the lectures from the conference. Besides the boring conference, the hotel had a pool, a nearby store with snicker bars, AC in the rooms, and hot running water. In addition, we finished about 1230 everyday. The rest of the day we were free to roam the streets of Maputo. It was a week-long party for most with little sleep because we were visiting, going out, and partying. Many of us had not seen each other since leaving Namaacha over a year ago. Most of the volunteers, fresh out of college and early twenties, love to drink and party. Each morning had handfuls of hungover bodies either absent or completely out of it. That probably made the conference appear even worse.

Maputo has many places, good places even, to eat. I had this amazing spicy Tai peanut chicken, lots of pizza, Korean bbq, and fresh fish from the fish market. The Korean bbq was near a carnival, so after eating a group of 14 of us all rode bumper carts. That was a ton of fun. The fish market is famous in Maputo. First you buy all the fresh fish, and then pay one of the little shops to cook it. I went with Helen and Viv and we had so much food. The shrimp was the highlight. Helen ate so much shrimp. It was amazing. She looked like one of the hot dog eaters on the Fourth of July. We wanted to leave because it was getting late, but Helen wouldn’t leave a single shrimp behind. Needless to say, I ate well that week.

One night at the hotel in our conference room we had a burlesque, a French stripper party, followed by a superlative presentation. The stripper party was for Micha’s birthday and a handful of his close friends stripped for him. For context Micha is gay, and his friends all mostly stripped to their underwear. I was impressed. The night was really fun, and I laughed so hard. Audi performed and hosted the burlesque as this foul mouthed English person. Oh man she could and should have her own TV show.

The superlative presentation had mixed reviews. Example: Who is most likely to have diarrhea and still refuse to treat the water… that was one of my awards. There were some pretty bad ones, bad as in people got really offended. It was more a mini roasting for us volunteers, Anne and I read all three pages of them. We had one for each volunteer and a few of us had multiple. I helped write them which was really fun. Reading them was okay. We had some bad judgements, but most people enjoyed it.

Another night we partied at the train station which, yes has a club at night. It is this really expensive club and bar that is full of foreigners and rich Mozambicans, not my preferred crowd. But since there was a big group of volunteers, it was fine.

One day when buying snickers I noticed a badminton set and bought it for about six dollars.I later found out that it wasn’t worth one penny. One of the rackets broke after maybe five swings. I guess it was worth the risk, nothing else though.

In case you didn't notice, I didn't tell the gone wild version. For the gone wild edition imagine drugs, sex, and lots of drama mixed within the above events.

After six weeks of traveling and getting little sleep, it was so nice to return to Mabalane. I probably averaged twelve hours of sleep per day that first week back. I finally got back on track with working out and started running again.

It was cool to get back and people appeared to be genuinely happy to see me again. They were wondering where I was. I had forgot how cool the “boa tarde” kids are. I don’t think I ever mentioned them but there are several little kids living at the houses near the old park (a rusted old playground from the Portuguses) where I workout. I normally do my workouts in the afternoon and always tell the kids, “boa tarde” (good afternoon) when I run by. They always yell back, “boa tarde” (but it sounds more like “bo tata”). They go crazy. I recently taught them high fives. Last night it was dark, and clearly time to use the greeting “boa noite” (good night), but these boa tarde kids ran out for me to get their high fives yelling, “bo tata,” “bo tata.” It made me laugh and feel happy. Most people speak the local language at home and children don’t learn Portuguese until they go to school. So my “bo tata” friends just learned “bo tata” from me saying it, not from greeting me in Portuguese.

My new teaching schedule is not so nice. I have to teach Monday mornings and Friday evenings. So I will not be traveling much or far this term. But that is fine. The classes are very small because so many students failed 10th grade. My 11th grade morning class is 7 students, and the night class is about 20. And my two 12th grade classes are about 25. Classes are much better. I get to interact and measure learning easier and have more fun.

Friday morning we rocked a Bob Marley song.The students stayed during break and wanted to keep singing and listening to me play guitar. So I played a few songs. Eventually the classroom was full of students from other classes, and we jammed for the whole 15 minute break.

Part 2: Drew

We had our first volunteer visitor this last weekend, Mr. Drew Garland. Forrest met Drew in Chokwe and escorted him back to Mabalane Friday. Drew was able to experience Mabalane to the fullest.

First a little about Drew's Peace Corps life. He lives about 50 yards from one of the nicest beaches in Mozambique. He has a refrigerator, running water, indoor bathroom, shower, and most of the things Americans keep in a frig. He was a teacher before joining, and he teaches at a teacher training institute. The quality of his school, house, and life is much better than Forrest and I.

Friday was hot, over 100 degrees in the house. Drew went to the latrine to take care of some personal business. He came right back, asked for bug spray. Forrest and I started laughing and giving him a hard time. I was like, “dude, you’re not using bug spray. Go take a dump in the heat with the bugs just like the rest of us!” Later that day, I tried to pee in the latrine, and to my surprise the flies were by far the worst Forrest and I had ever seen. Haha, it was so funny. I had to apologize to Drew. I seriously would have pooped out in the field somewhere if I had to go. There were 100s of flies swarming around. Welcome to Mabalane Drew!

Friday night Drew joined me for class, and that was fun. We did a math game in English with numbers. Then The class asked Drew questions, and we finished class by playing music.

For dinner, Drew brought ranch, blue cheese, and this breading batter, so we deep fried veggies and dipped them in ranch. Later we made sandwiches with ranch. We pretty much pigged out Friday night, and watched Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and BSed.

Saturday we went to the river which was quite the trek. We were knee deep in mud, and waist deep in water several times on the walk there. It was a slow muddy hike through the fields but it felt like an adventure, like being a kid again. Everyone warned us not to swim in the river because of crocodiles, two people were already attacked and sent to the hospital this year. So we were pretty scared of crocs walking through these large flooded areas. When we finally arrived at the river, we quickly jumped in and cooled off before heading back to the village. Saturday was the hottest day I felt this year. And on the walk back things took a turn for the worse for Drew. First, one of his sandals broke and the ground was way too hot for bare feet. We ended up tying my bag around his foot to keep the sandal on. At one point he tried to buy this old man on a bike’s shoes, but Drew was rejected. Then Drew started to get heat exhaustion.We found out he didn’t eat anything for breakfast for some reason. It was about 2pm on the hottest day of the year, and Drew was a heat casualty on an empty stomach, with one sandal, one bag foot, and probably dehydrated too. To add insult to injury Forrest kept telling Drew, “we’re not in Vilanculos” and “this isn’t Vilanculos.” At first it was funny, but the jokes got real old real fast for Drew. Finally we made it to the village, and Drew was looking pretty pathetic.

At the village we went to the restaurant where Forrest and I eat. There Drew experienced his most refreshing drink of his Peace Corps service. We drank a two liter grape soda and six liters of water with our half chickens for lunch. Then we walked home down the train tracks.

No, the Mabalane experience was not over. We got home relaxed and jammed on the porch singing and trying to write dirty acoustic rap songs. We got ready to chill and watch Rocky III. During Rocky a storm hit hard. The energy went out (it’s still out now). These were the strongest winds I have felt in Mozambique. The roof blew off the latrine. We had to barricade the door shut, and prevent water from flooding the house. There was a sweet lighting show. But it rained hard. “Good luck leaving tomorrow,” we told Drew.. Luckily for Drew the storm died down after a few minutes.

Drew woke up and left about 5am the next morning. He only had to wait in the rain about 45 minutes for a ride. Drew, in his two night visit was able to poop with the most flies I have ever seen, became a heat casualty on the hottest day of the year, felt the strongest winds I have seen in Mozambique, and had to sit in the rain waiting for a slow ride out of town on a flooded road. Congratulations Drew you did it! And that is why no one ever visits us.

It was a fun guy’s weekend. Hopefully Drew didn’t get too beat up, and I’m really happy he came out and got a little taste of Mozambique outside of paradise. Haha.

Part 3: Josephino


I started writing this post at 0730 in the morning. I was sitting in class alone waiting for my students. School starts at 0700, but the only student on time to school wasn’t mine. At 0732 I got my first student. I had two students total today. This is Mabalane for you!

Last year there was a problem with students dropping and going crazy, maybe I mentioned it. It is all psychosomatic, but a real problem here in Mozambique. And it is back again this year. A few students fell last week and now 90% of the students stopped coming to school. “Josephino is hungry” is what the students tell me. Josephino is the name of the ghost or spirit. Some of the students are not afraid because they say they are protected not because they don’t believe in ghosts. Every Mozambican I have talked to about this believes in ghost and black magic. They think it is part of African culture and tell me I don’t understand or believe because I’m white. The other day I had eight students in my 12th grade class. They tried to explain and convince me that Josephino is real. People pay money to the witch doctor to cast spells. Then the witch doctor sends spirits to make students pass out. Then this gives power to the spirits at the stores and makes you buy more things from the owners who pay the witch doctor.Then repeat the cycle. That is the generalized reasoning from my students. The lady who owned one of the biggest stores was ran out of town last year because everyone blamed her. We used to buy oil, porridge, and large bags of cookies from her. I understand why they believe these things, but needless to say, I’m not convinced.

Last night I saw one of my students when I was buying bread and he asked if we were going to have class today. I told him of course. He told me, “Okay teacher I’ll risk my life”. He texted me this morning and said he was too afraid and didn’t come to school.

Sorry this was a ridiculously long blog, so enjoy it you might not get another one for a while, haha.

Peace, love and do good things,


Jimbo