TJ Goes to Africa

Our Family

2012-02-10T09:28:00.000+02:00

[Note: This is kind of a long post. In fact, it's a really long post. About four times longer than what I normally put up here. The reason is I worked a really long time on this one and believe it should be read as a continuous narrative, not broken up into little parts. With that in mind, I ask that you read it that way. If you don't have time now, come back to it later. Print it out to read it some evening. It might take you a little while to get through, but without understanding this, the rest of the stories here are just cheeky anecdotes and amusing tales. So please, read and enjoy, and maybe even pass it off to a friend when you're finished.]

You don't know what it's like.

Lets just start with that as the premise. You can't sympathize, you can't relate, you can't know how it feels. You simply don't know. You come from a life and a culture that is so foreign to the challenges and difficulties and the struggles that are part of the fabric of life here. But in understanding what goes on here there is no way to separate the individual threads from the whole tapestry. What I will be writing today I've already tried in the last several weeks to explain to the closest of family, to the best of friends, all the way to the strangest of strangers. The only way I have found to adequately explain it is by laying down the premise that you simply won't understand.

You don't know what it's like.

That is the admonition I have for you today. I want to warn you that this is not something that is intellectually out of reach as if I were explaining rocket science to you. It's not something like modern art that you either appreciate or think is unintelligible. It is as if I were asking you to hear colors, or draw with sounds. You have no adequate frame of reference for even understanding what that would mean. You're picturing yourself drawing with sounds right now, but I assure that you're doing it wrong.

Because you can't even begin to know what it's like.

The reason for this is that I'm going to tell you what our kids did for Christmas. Rest assured, it's nothing shocking. We weren't doing animal sacrifices or getting matching tattoos or something salacious. But at the same time, it should be absolutely puzzling and alarming: We sent the kids to be with their families. For the end of December and Christmas the kids got to spend two weeks with their mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins.

Did you hear that? I sure did. That was the sound of you brain saying, “What!?! I thought you ran an orphanage, not a boarding school or summer camp. What do you mean send then them to their families? Their parents?” Let me try to calm you down some.

+++ +++ +++

It has been three years since we last sent the kids to visit their families. In other words, this has happened before, and sending them off to visit is not a new thing. Also, even though these kids have been orphaned, at least everybody has a family member somewhere. There were only a few kids that stayed behind here at the orphanage. One group was Jose's family. They family they have is a grandmother who treated them beyond horribly and an uncle. They have only seen their mother, who is mentally retarded, on several occasions and have no idea where she is.

Then there are these boys (who themselves are not related). They have no relatives here in orphanage and because they would be visiting alone we deemed it best they wait a few years till they are older. The exception is Victor (back) who has a relative that lives in the neighborhood and he sees her often.

Then there are some who's relatives live so far away and it is impossible to contact them. They all got to spend the break here at the orphanage with us.

In order for the rest of the kids to be able to leave to be with their relatives, if they were younger (less than 14) they had to be with a kid from here older than that. That is how Muaparato (the short one) could leave with his brothers to stay with their uncle (the tall one). The safety of the kids was absolutely in mind and nobody went to stay with anybody in a dangerous situation.

This undoubtedly raises more questions. One question is, “Why are these kids in an orphanage if they have family to live with?” That is an excellent question and the only one that I can't seem to be able to answer, at least, not in a way that anyone has found satisfactory.

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One reason that kids can come to an orphanage is mistreatment by their family. For the kids here, this mistreatment often after they have been orphaned and living with a relative. One such girl was sent to live with an uncle who, through being terribly abusive, drove her legitimately crazy. Her late father had a close friend that, after some time had passed, went to check on her. He found that she had been driven so crazy she was wandering around eating her own shoes. He took it upon himself to take her away to care for her and eventually brought her to us many years ago. She spent her holiday with him and they consider each other family in their own right.

Kids that have been mistreated that are now older know enough that they can look back and disassociate a verbally and physically abusive family member with the alcohol that drove him to that.

Even with the years that has passed, these girls said that everyday during their visit they would sneak out of the house in the evening before their dad started drinking and came back only after he was done. Often during their time there, meals consisted of just rice as the money he would earn would go first to his vices. In the years that they have been at the orphanage, nothing has changed in him, the girls sadly told me.

Still, while it may appear that some people have the means, but they just treat their children horribly. Felex and his family (above) came from one such home. He, his sister and brother went to stay with their mom and much older sister here in the city. (They have two siblings and who both passed through the orphanage, graduated, and are now working jobs.) When they were younger, their late father, even though he was a pastor, treated them poorly and refused to spend even a cent on them, withholding them from school and refusing medicine when they were sick.

Living in the orphanage is stark contrast from the lives they used to have. They are sent to school and all their needs are provided for. As they go back and visit, it is a chance for them to build bridges and to be a testimony and witness to their mother, who often sends unsolicited advice in the form of telling her sons to abandon school and telling her daughters to be sexually promiscuous in hopes of getting pregnant and landing a husband.

+++ +++ +++

There is a strange paradox that we are witness to at the orphanage. For a culture that places such a high view of family as a social safety net, life here is a sad and harsh reality that often prevents this ideal from being fulfilled. Imagine---a mother dies in sickness or in childbirth, and a father passes away or abandons the family for a second wife---the obstacles that must be overcome for merely survival. Children, if given the opportunity by their parents to start school, drop out at an extraordinary pace but for what are, here, considered to be ordinary reasons. Most often it will be the simple difficulties of day to day life---drought, floods, hunger, sickness, poverty. For some of our kids, they said that everyday while they were with their relatives they spent an average of three hours walking to, getting, and carrying back water. Imagine what time would be left for school if you day was consumed with just be able to have water to drink.

Instances of extreme poverty are factors for a child having to leave his family or be sent away. Its a decision that not many can understand. Its a decision that can actually result in the life or death of a child. When, in our province--- keeping in mind that nearly a quarter of children never reach the age of four---poverty, malnutrition, or sickness occur, sometimes sending away your child is the only thing that will ensure they survive.

There may be only one or two of you reading that understand the decision to send your son or daughter to live somewhere else. I am not talking about having your son to live with his grandmother so he can reside in a better school district. I'm not even thinking of sending your daughter off to cushy boarding school in Kenya as you take up missionary work in Southern Africa. Not even having your son or daughter live across town with a friend in a better neighborhood because of fear he will end up in a gang or she will end up in prostitution. I'm talking about whether you child simply has food.

This is Fransisco's family. His mom (pictured above carrying a baby) faced that decision. After their father died they were faced with no way to provide for themselves, no access to education, and worsening health due to near-fatal malnutrition. His youngest sister at the time (in the red shirt) had ringworm covering most her head. As for their middle sibling (in the green shirt), she wasn't much better off. Were one of them to come down with diarrhea, malaria, measles, dysentery, or some other ailment, the quality of living that comes with having a place in the orphanage could be the difference in saving their life.

In the case of Fransisco's family, you'll notice three other children in the picture. That is because shortly after he and his sisters came here, their mother remarried and started having more children. You'll also notice how incredible small these children are. The girl is six years old. The twins are almost a year. All of them are incredible tiny and are in need of better diet and nutrition. Some of that is due to their mom being small in stature. Much of that is due to the difficulties of life.

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Before you make a comment about it being the problem in the first place and the lack of responsibility and so forth, you should know that having more children some times, but not all times, be the solution to the problem and not solely the cause of it. For the family, sending your kids away does not automatically mean the end of a drought or suddenly having access to food or medicine. It doesn't mean you life gets better.

Children sometimes amplify the problems of life, they don't create them. They will add visibility to insecurities about food. They will illustrate a parent's addiction to vice or sin. They will reveal a fathers promiscuity and selfishness that causes him to leave his family. For some of these most basic of life's needs, having children will temporarily increase problems such as hunger and lack of resources, but in the future they act as social security. Having seven kids gives the parents seven chances that one of them will “make it” and be able to provide for them in their old age. Most parents will sacrifice the burden of several years of hunger for the blessing of being taken care of later in life.

And while there are times that sending a child away may be a painfully difficult decision, other times it is a selfish one. Much more common for a child is to be sent to live with an uncle or cousin and to be raised there. However, this is functionally an exchange of charges rather than improving the life of the child. Many people all over the city are sent to live with these relatives not as adopted family, but as rented labor. In exchange, often times another family member will notice that you, having sent away you own children, have a vacancy or three in the house and sent their child to live with you.

This child functions not as a son or daughter but as a worker or laborer. Work and treatment that a parent would never place on their own child is now thrown upon this niece or nephew with often unrelenting fury. They are made to do all work in the house---laundry, cooking, cleaning, farming---while the relatives never lift a finger. This is often accompanied with horrible verbal and physical abuse. We have a member of our church living down the hill from us. Three of their children are living off with relatives, while they have four nieces and nephews staying with them that do absolutely everything in the home.

And this kind of attitude is very visible in the culture here. At least once a week somebody will come by inquiring if we can take in more children. Many times it is a man that will come by and explain how his sister died and orphaned her children and he needs help taking care of them. Those situations are hard because we just don't have the space or resources (funds) to take every request that comes. We know when the time is right God will clearly show us a child or a family to take in.

Other times, though, these requests are just downright absurd. Last week a lady came by and asked if I had space for her seven children. I asked what the circumstances were. Bless her for being honest, she gave a straightforward answer, “I'm tired of them.” I was a little shocked but pressed her to hear what she was tired of. “Seven children are a lot and I don't want to deal with them anymore.”

It is hard to classify any of these situations as more tragic than another---being orphaned, abandoned to a relative, bartered for labor, abused, mistreated, unwanted, denied food or schooling are all equally horrible. Just as tragic is when a child is living on their own in the streets. Whether it be by choice, as in escaping any of the aforementioned situations, or by edict of a family member, sometimes a child has no place to call his home.

That was the situation when we encountered Gabriel (pictured with his aunts). He spend his days more-or-less doing what he could to survive and his nights hiding in abandoned buildings. Not many children here have passed through that, and count it among their blessings.

+++ +++ +++

Finally, there was the question of just what exactly the kids would be going back to for their Christmas stays. That is part of the reason we wait till they are older and have enough judgment to keep themselves safe if that same uncle they used to live with tries to beat them or abuse them. Also, the kids contacted their relatives ahead of time so that a family wasn't faced with three or four more mouths to feed all of a sudden. Still, when the kids came back, there was one word that at least all of them used to describe their time: Suffering.

Kids talked about arriving at their family's farm, setting down their bags, and then being given a rake or hoe and sent out to work. Others talked about sleeping on floor (just like they used to before they came here) and waking up in the middle of the night to shake off the ants. I've already how one family spent three hours a day walking for water. That was an extreme case. The average kid took a little over an hour. Some kids talked about being in situation where they were told to eat less so that there would be leftovers for lunch the next day.

Most of the kids that were living here in the city prior to entering the orphanage (as opposed to coming from out in the country) left excited to see old friends that they had growing up. They came back disappointed, but not surprised, to find out that what friends they had left were no longer. For the boys, many of their friends now spend their days selling things in the market and their nights drinking and seeking out women. For the girls, their friends are pregnant or already caring for children of their own. Without them saying it, many of their friends lived a lifestyle so antithetical to theirs that our kids found these these behaviors foreign and unappealing to the lifestyle of following Christ.

So why would we send our kids back to that? Simply because we needed to. We needed them to be exposed life. What we have here in the orphanage is certainly real life, but it is very much removed from the trials and influences of their former lives. And for some that have become insensitive or ungrateful or entitled it allows an opportunity for them to remember what life use to be like and to be aware of the amazing grace they have been shown to have been rescued from that life.

We also sent them back to visit because of the strong attachment they still have to family. This hearkens back to that strange paradox I mentioned earlier: as strong of emphasis as is culturally placed on family and support, those same relatives will take in an orphaned child and treat them as second class or as an inconvenience. For the children that were living with just one parent (the other having died or abandoned the family) it is just impossible to care for anyone else when you yourself have no means of getting by. The kids need to be sent away for their own good.

For our kids, their relatives are extremely important to them. The kids see their family through a lens of grace and forgiveness and sometimes, when they become adults, reconcile with that same uncle that used to beat them or the same father who abandoned them or their grandmother who use to tell them they were unlovable and would never find a home in this world.

For the kids here that entered the orphanage primarily due to impossible difficult living conditions and constant necessity, you don't know what it is like to be told by your mom that is is better for you to live in an orphanage than to continue in my house. However unselfish or true that statement is, for a child it is never an easy thing to understand or come to grips with.

For children here that were mistreated, you don't know what it is like to be not wanted your own family. I'm not talking about being abandoned by a deadbeat dad. You don't know what it's like to be sent away with your siblings. To be treated as second-class because your mother's new husband sees you as bastard children. To be used as free labor. To have food or medicine withheld from you. To be told that if you want to eat you should comb the streets for trash or go out and beg. To have a family but be sent away you don't know where your next meal will come from. Sent away because you can't afford school. Sent away because malaria season is coming and you don't have access to medicine.

+++ +++ +++

You also can't imagine the desire these kids have to want to be part of that family they left. Even though they have been abandoned, mistreated, or left to care for themselves, it is still their family. When the end of the year came, our kids begged and pleaded to have this opportunity to continue and maintain the relationships they have with their relatives.

This is Gizela and her mom. Over the last year Gizela has been very active in trying to reach out to her mom and reconnect with her family. She has a brother that is being raised a muslim. The last year she has been inviting him to church, and he's been coming! Even these last several weeks since Gizela has left to study in Beira, her brother is still showing up to our little church. Gizela is rather shy about the subject, but reason she says for her interest and desire to repair relations with her family is simple. “I want them to know Jesus. They can't know Jesus if I don't tell them about him.”

Another reason for sending the children to visit was for them to come back with their primary family member. That afternoon we had a meeting with a room full of mothers, uncles, and grandparents. With the exception of two of them in the meeting, for many it was the first time coming to the orphanage since they brought their kids here. Not even once in four, six, ten years have they bothered to come by to see how their grandson, niece, cousin, son is doing! Our motivation was to encourage them and remind them that they are some of the most important people in the lives of our children, even if four or eight years have passed. Regardless if they are feeling shame or indifference, they should make an effort to maintain connections with their own family.

+++ +++ +++

Why would the kids be so excited about being with these relatives that left them in an orphanage? That's another part of the question you can't understand the answer to. The beauty of it is they're still children. One reason is they haven't had years to stew in anger or think about what might have been or wallow in self-pity or bask in pride having “made it on your own”.

More so than this, I can write that the only reason for them to be able to do that is that Jesus is redeeming the idea of family. Regardless of what a child experienced before coming to our orphanage---and there are a good number that came in too young to remember anything---we know that we are building a new picture of what it looks like to live as a family, to love each other, and model the gospel. A lot of times this picture looks a little smudged when put in practice. We fight, argue, borrow (read: steal) each others' clothes, and the rumor mill runs at 100mph. But I bet your family does that too. If your family was perfect it probably wouldn't be any fun.

But we love each other not because we are perfect (because we're not) but because we're family---and because Christ did the same thing for us. This is just not something we say, it's something we do. For the kids here, the bonds they are forging are stronger than the ones with their relatives. How do I know this? Because some of the kids were so happy to be back they cried. Yes, even some of the boys. Not because they knew that their plate would be full of food or water pumped from our well and leaving from the tap, but because when they got back the first things they wanted to do was hug the other kids here, to swap stories about their vacations, to share a pile of cashews they had brought back from the farm, to kick around the soccer ball.

It's not easy. It's hard. I constantly have to remind myself that the people we are serving, the kids we are raising, the family we are building, are full and abused and broken and abandoned kids that come from the fringes of society. But is is family. It takes work. As I said, we are building a family around Jesus, not around each other. Families built around each other look like what the kids left behind. Families built around Jesus look like what you find here: Not build around perfection, built around forgiveness and the Cross.

That's not to say that life goes on without any difficulties. Yes, there are still lots of problems. This isn't a self-righteous factory where we turn out perfect kids that do the right things and have memorized all the right Bible verses and have never missed Sunday school. People are still sinners and some kids here struggle greatly trying to reconcile the message of Grace and Hope that we teach here with everything they see going on in the world all around them. The difference here is that in solving the problems we look first to the cross for forgiveness.

+++ +++ +++

So when you sit back and ponder what our Christmas break, see it as the kids see it here. Don't become angry at "selfish" family members. Don't dwell in sadness and mourn over uncles or fathers that have beaten or mistreated their children. Don't shake your head in disbelief over condition of poverty and brokenness these kids escaped. Don't wonder why there could ever be reason to want to go back to that. Be happy for them for them and for the joy it was to spend time with their families and to visit relatives and maintain, and repair, relationships.

And continue to pray for the kids in this. Because they went back to visit doesn't mean that they were all welcomed into homes with open arms. Some were still called unwanted with their relatives "counting down the day until you leave here again." It doesn't mean that because they saw their relatives that their lives are now happy and full of joy. Life is still hard in Mozambique, and while it is drastically different in many ways, living is still hard in the orphanage. Aside from physical problems of food and health and expenses, there is an incredible social stigma put on anyone when it is found out you're from an orphanage. Some of our kids have friends in school that don't even know they live in an orphanage. It comes with the idea that your life is a torment and you pass all your days with just the most basic of necessities being met. There is no mark of pride saying "my parents died and my relatives didn't want me and sent me to be raised in an orphanage."

But God is redeeming that. These kids know and walk with Jesus. And redeeming doesn't mean making them happy and forget about everything they've come through and still have to deal with. It means saving, rescuing, liberating, restoring, not patching or covering up. The process is hard and still happening for some kids, and some struggle mightily with it. How do you reconcile the fact that you got sent to live in an orphanage while your sister didn't. Or how your parents more than had the means to support you and instead left you abandoned. There is no amount of mental gymnastics that can reconcile that. But God can redeem it.

That is our prayer as we live work for the lives of the kids that are here. Our hope is that Jesus transforms and saves these lives so that one day they will look around them and say, "The way I am provided for here, the family that adopted me as their own, and the God I've come to know and love are better than anything else that could have happened to me." Not for our sake, so we can boast and say look at all we've done, but solely for sake of Jesus, so we can boast and say look at all He has done.

In Which Someone's Retinas Burn

2012-02-08T21:41:00.001+02:00

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything in any way. It's just a real conversation I had with a real person today. I still can't believe it's a conversation I actually had, but, I have lots of conversations that looking back there is no logical reason for them to ever take place. My friend is not a kid in the orphanage, in case you were wondering.

TJ: Hello there, friend.

Friend: Hey, TJ.

TJ: How's it going?

Friend: Bad.

TJ: Why bad?

Friend: My eyes hurt a lot and they won't stop.

TJ: When did this start?

Friend: About a week ago. I was looking at the sun with my cousin to see which was bigger, the sun or the moon. It started about the same time.

TJ: How long were you looking at the sun?

Friend: About seven or eight minutes. Now when I look at things there is just nothing. I can only see stuff around the sides.

TJ: Realizing at this point, despite being fluent, I had never learned how to say, “Sorry, I think you've seared a hole in your cornea.”

TJ: Tough luck, hope it clears up soon.

Friend: Thanks, bye.

Dang, thems some pretty kids

2012-02-05T11:31:00.001+02:00

Jordao and Cocas relaxing during the heat of the day. If it doesn't rain, it's usually around 95 degrees and all activity comes to a halt. On days when it rains it really comfortable before and after the rains.

Marinho and I spent a good ten minutes messing with Vovo while he slept during the afternoon. When he woke up, he was not a very good sport about it

TJ: Hey, you two. Get closer so I can take picture.

Nolita: *moves closer*

Felex: *moves further away*

Nolita: *moves closer*

Felex: *moves further away*

TJ: "Good enough". *takes picture*

TJ: "Estela and Muaparato, it's your turn."

Muaparato: *moves closer*

Estela: *moves further away*

TJ: "I can see where this is going." *takes picture*

Gabriel and Merecido are trying to get Leonora to look at the camera for the picture.

Jose and Mena are much more comfortable smiling now that their adult teeth have grown back.

Isaty: *moves closer*

Zaqueio:"Stop it."

Isaty: *moves closer*

Zaqueio:"Stop it!"

Isaty: *moves closer*

Zaqueio:"STOP IT!!!."

TJ: *takes picture while laughing*

Virginia and Ofeita hiding in the shade.

Gizela, Manuel, and Gil acting perfectly normal. Salmon with creepy, shifty eyes.

Ganito and Jose.

The boys are taking a break from playing cards. This time of year a popular betting prop is cashews.

Here's the rest of their group.

Loopy? Crazy? Off-kilter? That's Gizela for ya.

Here is Gizela sitting with Anabela, and acting a lot less crazy.

A popular way to beat the heat is just to stay inside an braid hair, like Ronilda and Nolita have discovered.

Samito and Jeremias showing off the new towels we gave out.

Dorca playing with a friend.

Salmon is reading the paper to a group of our oldest kids as Regina, Leonora and Vovo all decide what is real news and what is propaganda.

Prayer Requests Jan 2012

2012-01-24T10:10:00.000+02:00

Here's a quick rundown of prayer requests for this week. So you know what's going on with on and how we could use prayer.

In short, people are sick. People are pretty much sick here a lot. I think just statistically having over 40 kids, somebody is always going to be sick. But also, just with the lifestyle in general here people tend to get sick.

==> Right now we have three kids with malaria just because it's that time of year. The rain has come (finally) and there's more standing water around and these things happen. Usually they get stuck with a fever for a day or two and then the medicine kicks in and they're back on their feet in a week. It's still not very much fun, as routine as it is. (Average Mozambican gets it nearly two times a year).

==> Times when malaria can be really dangerous---when it's caught early and treated it's not dangerous unless you're really young or really old--- is when a normal case turns into cerebral malaria. That's the case for Pedro, a staff worker in the office, right now. You need to undergo an aggressive treatment and be under supervision of doctors/nurses and lots of rest. It also means that our office work has ground to a halt. Unfortunately for us as well as him, cerebral malaria is affecting the part of his brain that controls speech, so when we talk or try to ask questions what comes out is blabber and non-sense. It's a really scary disease and he can use a lot of prayer.

==> I'm sick and had a bad stomach ache for the last two days. I've just become accustomed to the fact that from time to time everybody's stomach gets out of joint here. I told the kids and they just kind of shrugged and said, "Yep, you're probably due for one."

More Kids Out and On Their Way

2012-01-19T13:46:00.001+02:00

Having mentioned earlier in the week about a few of the kids that have left/graduated/moved on, I thought it be good timing to mention the most recent kids that have gone on their way. They are all going off to pursue extra-curricular studies a.k.a. vocations. In Nampula, that is a surer way to get work than earning a degree from a university (or even diploma from high school).

Their responses to the questions are in italics.

ISATY

Isaty is a very hard worker and very adept at learning with his hands. He wants to do a year long course in auto-mechanics. We basically told him him that we have full confidence that any skill he puts he hands to he is dedicated enough to learn it and master it.

Age: 18, came to the orphanage at 10 years old and in 2nd grade.

What will you be studying? Why? General mechanics because it is a service oriented job and I don't quite have the skills to do something academic.

What do you hope at the end of 2 years to be able to say? I want to be in Nampula and be close to my family. I want a job at a respected garage, not just as a call-for-hire mechanic.

What are your favorite things to do (at the orphanage)? What will you miss? Miss my brothers that are here and for everyone else as well as the work and projects that we do around here.

How would you like us to pray for you? For me to understand the subjects and stay healthy, as well as for my relations with my classmates and instructors.

ZAQUEIO

You might recall from this time last year about we mentioned Zaqueio in a group of kids that didn't leave. We had wanted to sent him to a trade school in Beira, but shortly before January rolled around he came down with a mysterious stomach illness that saw him do at least three stays in the hospital and the doctors were contemplating surgery. Because of that, he stayed around waiting the start of the next school year (Jan).

He is one of the best kids we've ever had. It kind and considerate to a fault, and takes initiative in helping others and with the maintenence and construction projects here.

Age: 22. Came to the orphanage at 15years old and in and 3rd grade.

What will you be studying? Why? Electricity. Its something that I like to to and enjoy doing it when we have work around the house. Its a trade that I picked up a while ago. I like getting shocked, it'll help me live longer.

What do you hope at the end of 2 years to be able to say? Its hard to say. I'd like to be back here in Nampula but it depends on the work and what jobs there are. I don't give much thought to other things like houses or motorcycles.

What are your favorite things to do (at the orphanage)? What will you miss? I'm gonna miss everybody, and especially all the work and things that come up for me. I like to work and I'm going to miss doing jobs around here.

How would you like us to pray for you? Mostly for my studies, and also for my health. Also, when I look at my life, I see this sickness that hit me last year. It hasn't returned, but it is in the back of my mind nevertheless. I want to thank you because, since that time when I thought I was leaving it has been a time of tension for me personally and I thank you fo the people that have prayed and prayed especially for me.

GABRIEL

Gabriel as well was about to leave last year to trade school. Unfortunately, he was only weeks shy from getting his drivers license (a big deal here) and couldn't finish in time to go. Now he has his drivers license and worked on on off as a professional driver during the year. Gabriel will be missed by all as he is extremely caring and helpful and looks after all the other kids here. He is going with the other to a trade school in Beira.

As Gabriel was preparing to leave, he was being very quiet and avoiding everybody. At first we thought it is because he's naturally shy. Later, we discovered it was because he was trying to remain hidden from the rest of the boys. You see, on their soccer team, Gabriel is the unofficial coach. He's also the unofficial treasurer, so all the money the boys win from barnstorrming and waging on their games stays with him. It wasn't till he was about to leave for the bus station that someone remembered he had all the soccer money and they hunted him down to get it. It was a pretty amusing sight.

Age: 22. Came to us at 14years and in 6th grade.

What will you be studying? Why? Auto-mechanics, but possible electricity also. They are jobs that I would be happy doing and can see myself doing for a living. Also, will help with my commercial drivers license.

What do you hope at the end of 2 years to be able to say? I want to have work, and want to be using what I learned and not having to work a job in the streets.

What are your favorite things to do (at the orphanage)? What will you miss? Goofing around with others, and my friendships because I've been here as while have many great friends. I'm gonna miss playing soccer too.

How would you like us to pray for you? This last year kind of felt like I was wandering. Since I lost the chance to go last year I have been confused and doubting. Pray that I would find a home in this schooling. Also, pray that this would open up tremendous opportunities for me, much more than I can imagine now. Also, for friendships that I will be making there to be constructive and real. Simply, though, I just want to say thank you. I don't have sufficient words. Also to thank our family here who have passed these years with me.

GIZELA

Gizela has been one of the girls in charge of taking care of Dorca the last severaal years. She has also been very intentful with reaching out and reconciling with her family. She has a younger brother who lives on the other end of town that is being raised in a muslim home. She is very active in inviting him to our church and talking to him about Jesus.

Age: 17. Entered the orphanage at at 10 and never having attended school. Her mother simply refused to enroll her.

What will you be studying? Why? In Beira I will be taking a culinary program and maybe also beauty school if it fits my schedule. Beauty because I like it a lot and culinary because its a fun skill and if I can use it to work.

What do you hope at the end of 2 years to be able to say? I want a lot of money, want a chance to live in and visit other countries, want to have my own house and a good husband. I'm joking in all that, but in the least I want a job and a chance to help other people that don't have anything, like I did.

What are your favorite things to do (at the orphanage)? What will you miss? I'll miss playing in the band. Also, gonna miss all the other girls here a lot.

But not the boys? Ummm.... hahaha maybe I'll miss them too

How would you like us to pray for you? I want to pray for success, for God to open doors for me to be able to make it. Pray for me to always remember and follow God and remember my family here in the orphanage.

This is going on the internet, so anything else you want to say? I only have thanks. Especially for Victor and the people that have raised me and protected me here at the orphanage. Also, thanks to the missionaries and cooks and people working here, to continue with joy and faith and for God to keep helping you. I know you all get tired a lot, but you do it because you love us. Also, to the people that help us a pray for us and support us, I have this life and this chance because of you, so thanks.

ALBERTINO

Albertino (the devious looking one on the right, standing next to our office worker, Pedro) is not a kid here. He's far to old (23) to be admitted to an orphanage. But he, like many people have needs. He lives down the hill from us with his brother.

They both work for us in some capacity. His brother works in the construction. As for Albertinho, he started coming by asking for work or jobs or things to do. Eventually, because jobs don't exist in Nampula, we notice that he too is an honest man of good character (all though still very goofy and immature at times) and because of all the help that he was giving us we started helping him out with food and clothing. He has a seventh grade education and a great work ethic and was a good influence being around the kids in this respect. Him being here the last 6 months though was primarily a chance for us to minister to him, take him to church, and influence his attitudes towards women and sex and marriage. (How a man can afford three girlfriends when he himself doesn't have a job I'll never know.)

The kids also know him as not just Albertino, but also Vieira. The first month working here he wore his only shirt, a soccer jersey with the name "Vieira" on the back. Because nobody bothered to ask what his name was he became known as that.

We are helping him out by sending Albertino to Beira with the others in order to learn a vocation. He was still undecided between electricity, culinary, or refrigeration and air conditioning. He'll be picking this week.

REGINA

Hopefully you all remember Regina. Last year she finished teacher's training and, since funding was scaled back, she along with many of her classmates were not placed in schools. (Here, you get placed into a job for teaching. There is no competitive hiring/selection process). This last year, she continued in school and finished twelfth grade. (Remember, after grade 10 you can get certified as a primary school teacher, which she did). This December after the school year finished she found out she got placed in a teaching job, finally.

Regina is heading out to the district of Angoche over on the coast. She is living in a community on the beach, but is about 40km (24miles) from the main town/electricity/roads/doctor. It is is the bush for sure. As she put it, she came from the bush and is returning to the bush, so it's nothing new for her.

Regina was in the first group of kids to come to the orphanage after every relative she was sent to live with ended up dying. Here brother Lazaro is also from the orphanage and is starting his second year of university.

I didn't get time do an interview like the rest of the kids, she has been busy the last month going back and forth moving stuff and taking care of paperwook at her new school. She's about a three hours away straight by car but transportation in the bush can be tricky sometimes. In spite of not having a lot of time, she did ask for prayer for three things in particular.

1) She is alone where she's going. There is only one person she knows, and he's a classmate of hers. 2) Living is harder out there and she knows it. Hopefully after several years she will have seniority to transfer back to Nampula or the district her family is originally from. 3) It is also a different culture, one that is not so welcoming to newcomers. It is heavily populated with muslims where she is going. She wants to find a good church and good community of friends to help with this transition.

Have a Coke and a Frown

2012-01-18T11:25:00.000+02:00

If this country were to ever revolt and overthrow the gov't, I would completely understand. You see, here in Mozambique, we don't have stock tickers and 401k's and 18 month t-bonds and Standard and Poor ratings to gauge our economic strength, we have prices. Prices are so fixed on a vast majority of goods that when they are raised it usually makes the national news for days at a time. In 2010, the gov't attempted to raise the price of bread. It would have made a hoagie-sized loaf go from 5 mets to 7.5 mets. The city responded with four days of rioting. People died and the gov't nixed the price hike.

Here in Nampula, on January 1st the price of a bus ride across town went from 5 mets to 10 mets. IT DOUBLED! The effect, lots of angry people pleading to ride for only 5 mets and in about 8 trips this year, not once have I been on a full bus. This is vastly different from before when I don't think I ever rode on an empty bus. Ridership is way down.

But that I could deal with. For me, it is the difference in paying 20 cents or 40 cents for a bus ride. The thing I could not put up with is my coca-cola.

I love coke, and I'm so glad that it's the only thing available here (and Fanta orange). There are only two choices for pop here. It's incredible simple. Coke or Fanta. And a year ago at this time, a case of 24 bottles of coke (trading in your old bottles) cost me 180 mets.

This price increased little by little until coke plaster official signs and billboards across the country saying the official price is 205 mets. I was fine with that, actually. It was an increase, but a standard one. And then everybody knew the price was always the same because it was plastered all over the city.

Then last week I went to buy a couple cases of coke for the kids. To my surprise, a case of coke now costs 250 mets. For those of you keeping track at home, thats just shy of $10. After being steady for about six months, the price of coke just jumped by 22%. It also means that in a year's time, coke has increased by almost 40%. And, just to rub it in the nose of doubters like me, the new price is actually printed on the bottle cap. It adds insult to my already injured wallet.

Not that this is really hurting my wallet, because I don't often buy coke, and I can always not buy coke, this could start hurting my wallet. So now when you read the news about the coca-cola riots in Mozambique and don't hear anything on this site for a week or two, I hope you'll be smart enough to figure out where I am.

In Which the Kids Give Back

2012-01-16T11:22:00.002+02:00

I can't really call them kids, because they're men now, but yesterday we got treated to something special thanks to these two.

Last year at this time we sent these two kids (along with about three others, all from the orphanage) down to Young Africa Vocational School in Beira, south of us.

Carlitos (left) had finished 12^th grade and Felex finished 11th. They both did six-month courses; Carlitos in accounting, and Felex in refrigeration and air conditioning. We helped them find internships up in Nampula which they performed for three months and at of the start of November each got hired as full-time, salaried workers in the same places they interned.

You don't know how much of a blessing it is for them to have paying, SALARIED jobs, especially Felix, who for AC repair is typically work only when someone calls you to do a repair job. Instead, he's out working at a chicken farm and slaughterhouse, making sure the fans keep the coupes cool and the fridges keep the slaughtered chickens frozen until shipping.

They still come by after church almost every Sunday and to visit, get in a game of soccer, and have dinner with us most weeks. After all, they're still family and we miss them. Its also great for the other kids to see great examples like these two, both of whom studied hard, have a great work ethic. Its also a blessing for them to be making money.

And as a way sharing that blessing with us, they decided to throw together a special meal yesterday. And by throw together, I mean planned for weeks and did it in style.

You see, whenever I want to do a special meal for the kids, I usually wait until a day when we're going to eat chicken anyways, buy a couple extra birds so everybody gets a good piece, buy a round of coca-cola, and top it off with some potatoes for making french fries. I cheat.

These guys went all out, and it was the kind of meal that we could tell they had been thinking of and planned as saved for several month to be able to put it together. They bought EVERYTHING. They went out and bought 15 chickens, they bought an extra 20 pounds of rice, oil, salt, seasonings, garlic, 40 pounds of potatoes, lettuce peppers onions and tomatoes for making a salad, and (accidentally) enough pops left over for another meal. They didn't do anything half-way. They even got a guy from church that has a car to help out and drive the stuff to the orphanage so we wouldn't be bothered (though I'd have been happy to take them if they asked).

Everybody pitched in with the preparation and cooking and that night we ate GREAT. Everybody was stuffed and the older kids that all helped with the cooking get an “A” for effort and an “A+++” for execution. It was the tastiest meal I've had here in long time.

Before the meal they got to say a little thank you to us (that I am passing on to you, my readers) for all the prayers and letters of encouragement this last year in their training, interning, and working. As they put it, it was a chance to say thanks, share the blessing, and to let us know they won't soon forget the help they received and the family they left.

In Which We Talk On Phones

2012-01-10T14:19:00.000+02:00

Communication happens at the speed of technology. (I should totally trademark that as a slogan.) Throughout history, technology has taken various forms: letters, telegraph, fax, email, whatever they're going to be using tomorrow. Maybe after the coming war with China we'll be reduced to sending messages by falcons.

Modern communication takes place, essentially, instantly. That's part of why they call it “modern”. You call somebody and can talk in real time. You can play video games and pretend to kill the Russians in Call of Duty and actually be playing against real Russians trying to kill the Americans. You can sit in the same room as somebody else and text back and forth instantly, and repeatedly, instead of walking over and actually talking to them. (Oooh that's right, 14 year-old girl demographic. You just got burned. I still love y'all, though.)

In Mozambique, communication happens at a different pace. Yes, there are cell phones galore here. No, it is not stapling a message onto a zebra and sending into the neighboring village. Infrastructure in Nampula largely skipped over installing land lines and just went straight to cellphones. That's actually pretty common in most of the third-world. Still, just because people carry cellphones doesn't mean they work. Also pretty common in most of the third-world.

The phones themselves, Chinese and hastily put together, have a short shelf life if any at all. It's not uncommon for people to buy phones and a month or three later have them stop working. But finding a good phone isn't the only difficulty you'll encounter if you want to talk here in Nampula.

The other difficulty is the networks. There are just two of them here, so there's not a lot of options for service. Reliability is non-existent for being able to send/receive calls as well as text messages. The trouble is there exists a paradox in how people view the reliability of the network. Even when the signal is strong and your meter is full of bars, you are no more likely to get service. Often times with a weaker signal the call goes without any problems. Lets throw some examples from just the last seven days.

Calls: Really, to be honest, they just don't go through all the time. When they don't go through phone will just ring and ring as if nobody is picking up, but in reality it can't find the other phone. Other times when you try to place a call it just goes dead and flashes a warning that network is not responding. Even though you have full bars there is no network. And yesterday, twice, I was sitting when my phone beeped and alerted me I missed a call. The call supposedly came five minutes earlier but my phone never rang. Than later in the day my phone beeped to tell me I missed a call. The only confusing part was it said the call came two days ago. I believe it.

Texts: Here, we call them messages, and they have a much higher chance of going through into the network. They also have a much higher chance of never making it to the recipient and getting stuck inside the network. Several days ago some visitors came by late in the afternoon to check out the orphanage. While we were talking my phone rang receiving a text. It was a message from these visitors, sent that morning, saying they were going to arrive at 3:30. I got the message after they had already been there for an hour. Later, I was in a staff meeting with Victor and Marta here. Then I got a text from Victor saying the meeting was going to start. “Pretty quick message, got here only a few minutes late,” I said to the others. Then Victor read the message and assured me that it was not a quick one. He sent it for the meeting that took place the day before.

Text are sometimes so notoriously slow that, after the events of the last week, I've started putting my own time-stamp on them. My time says when I sent it and differs from the one in the phone that says when it was received. This saves on the confusion when I get a text telling me to go somewhere in the truck to meet somebody, only to find out I'm three hours late.

And that is what its like to use a phone in Mozambique: Slow, spotty, inconsistent, unreliable. You may all now commence your AT&T and iPhone tethering complaints in the comments section below.

Prayer Answered!

2012-01-07T20:07:00.002+02:00

I'm a little slow in getting this up here, but I wanted to let you all know. I had posted in on the facebook a while ago, but now the news is super official: Victor passed his grade 7 exams!

For those of you that remember, last month I asked you all to pray for Victor. He was taking the grade seven national exams to allow him to enter 8th grade next year. Before coming to the orphanage, Victor's mom had never put him in school. And because he came just after the school year started he missed that chance his first year here. But now since he's passed, next year he will be a very normal 16 year-old studying in 8th grade (first year of secondary school) instead of a very tall 16 year-old studying in 3rd grade.

Having completed 7th grade will also be a big benchmark for Victor in the future as he/we look at opportunities for his future. Thanks to everyone that was praying with us, for him.

OHMYGOSHNEWYEARSEVE!!!

2012-01-04T22:44:00.000+02:00

It is undoubtedly THE biggest day of the year in Mozambique. For those of you in America, it's like combining the revelry of the Fourth of July with the family togetherness of Christmas with the gastric joy of thanksgiving with thrilling roar of the Daytona 500 with the urgency of Sleep Country USA's It-Only-Happens-Twice-A-Year-Sale*. For those of you living in France it's like combining the patriotism of Bastille day with the pride of celebrating that one day in history when your army didn't surrender or give up.**

*Author's views of great American holidays may not reflect your own.

**Ooooh, burn.

New years is kind of the turning point for the year here. That makes sense, as it is a new year after all. With it, school will be a few short weeks from starting, the fiscal calendar rolls around, and everybody usually gets together to celebrate the fact that they've made it through one more year. That's no trivial thing here where life expectancy is in the high 40's and your country is statistically in the top ten every year for death.

For one group of people, ringing in the new year is literally all about celebrating the fact that you've made it through the previous one, often times at church or with people from church. For the other group of people, this year it means stocking up on booze Friday night and losing all control of everything till probably at least next Wednesday. As in Wednesday the 11th.

Luckily all my years of passing holidays in Seattle prepared me for ringing the new year in Nampula. Why is that? Well, the festivities this year turned a bit soggy.

As in rain.

We should have seen it coming that it would be a less than spectacular celebration. On Thursday I was doing the shopping for our dinner on January 1st and buying pop and chickens and potatoes. Due to draconian (and necessary) price controls pop and chicken I was able to buy without a problem. It did take us about 4 stops till we found a place that had cokes (the only pop here) but we were able to pay the normal 210 Meticais. Thanks to the price fixing laws, anybody selling cokes for more than 210 Meticais a case can be put in jail and have their store confiscated.

This doesn't always work, because the sellers can just pay the police in cokes to avoid jail time. Also, right now the coca-cola bottling plant in Sofala province unexpectedly shut down because the electric grid blew up in that district and that entire province is without new pop, resulting in prices quadrupling down there.

When we went to buy potatoes for making french fries we discovered a different side of the story. Because of speculation on the holiday season and anticipation that everybody would be buying potatoes prices in the market had almost tripled. The price of beans as well had nearly doubled. Everything gets more expensive, despite laws that are meant to prohibit this sort of speculation.

There are two things that happen whenever this type of price speculation happens. The first is that both sides call bluff. That may sound confusing, but let me explain it like this. Mozambicans love to talk big and make a big show and absolutely will not back down. And not always in a proud and courageous sense. For example, around this time of year all the vendors of produce show up in the market and decide that they are raising prices because demand for Christmas and New Years will obviously increase. What happens next is that people show up and find that vegetable oil, beans, rice, pineapples, garlic, chickens, goats, potatoes, sweet potatoes all cost twice as much as they did the week before. The vendors simply say, “Well, if you don't want to pay, you can go hungry and have a lousy holiday.” In response to this, the people say, “Well then, we just refuse to buy and tomorrow you will see the light and lower the prices when nobody is buying.”

Neither side backs down, both call the others bluff, and people pass the holidays eating plain old rice and beans while the vendors literally throw out mountains of rotten potatoes, mushy pineapple, moldy beans. (And then yesterday the Minister of Trade and Agriculture gets on the TV to announce that he is pleased with this years sales because when he---and his deputies, and television cameras---passed through one market to ask about prices they were all fair and normal and thus there have been no confirmed cases of speculation this year and the country gets a gold star for good behavior.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: So potatoes and oil cost three times as much so we just stuck with chicken and cokes for our special meal.

Another indication it might be a lousy new years was that, one New Years Eve, somebody had asked if the mahe'o was ready. Mahe'o is a mixture of water, sugar, and cornflour brewed to a boil and then left to sit several days to settle. It's kind of like a Mozambique version of a Roy Rogers or a Shirley Temple, and the kids love it. At that point, the shock had hit us that we had forgot to make mahe'o. Anybody familiar with living in Nampula should recognize that whatever air was left in our party balloon deflated right then and there. But alas, that was not the final nail in our festive coffin.

At about 6pm it started raining. On New Years Eve.

What was supposed to be an evening of music and dancing and watching movies projected on the wall of the dormitory turned into a cold, soggy, dripping evening in which most people had gone to bed at 8pm with the anticipation of waking up around 11pm to party. I went to bed with that in mind too. The thing is, when it does rain here, it gets cold. And to top it off, it rained in the evening here, so it was super cold (maybe only 70deg, but when we're topping out at 100+ everyday, that's dang cold). It sucked the life out of the party.

I'm not exactly sure how we entered the new years because I was still asleep. Apparently, about half of the kids were asleep in their beds, and of the half that stayed up, half of them fell asleep watching a movie in the cafeteria. If you can do the math, that means about a quarter of the kids passed the New Years awake.

The next day kids slept in late just because they could (even though hardly anybody passed the whole night). The day passed fairly calm, there was no big activity or excitement or amusement. Just a normal day. Except the rain continued. At about 2pm it started raining again, and then when it came time for an early dinner around 4pm everybody ran into the cafeteria, ate their food, and then ran back into the shelter of the dormitories. Much later, around nightfall, with most people in their beds, we huddled around the TV in Victor's living room to watch the nightly news and then, in the continuing rain, called it a night.

But in case you feel bad, the next day when the weather cleared up, we played soccer all day and watched movies all night. All was not lost, and life continues. It also helps that there's probably ten kids here that just don't understand what a new year is in the first place, they just think we're partying because we can (which, fundamentally speaking, is why we party).

A Mudança VIII

2012-01-02T14:36:00.001+02:00

For those of you that have enjoyed reading the kids' essays, today is the last installment of "A Mudança". Sad. For those of you that have not enjoyed reading the kids' essays, you stink. Today's final entry comes from Virginia, who just finished 8th grade.

I would like that my country would change the minister of education. I would like for him to leave because, as for education,there is much corruption. Corruption exists much more in secondary school and training centers. There is corruption in schools because many students pass only because of bribes and not because they understand. As for training centers, people can undergo training [police, gov't, teachers, medical technicians] for up to a year, sometimes more, and when they leave be abandoned without work.

I would like for the president to change also because he allows the entrance of many foreigners and many of these foreigners come to do child trafficking and human trafficking.

Also, I would like to lessen how much I talk and now talk about otherpeople.

I'm not forgetting that also I would like if the streets were all paved out into the districts and for them to wire the whole city well with electricity to help develop our city.

For my family, I wish thaat my dad would change and stop drinking because when he gets his salary he spends it all on alcohol. Also, I would like for my older brother [who is much older and never lived here] to change and stop drinking and chasing women. He is very involved with much of both.

Also I would like if church would change. When we used to meet as a big church at Murrapania there was unity but these days people all they do is fight and create trouble and division.

A Mudança VII

2011-12-31T09:46:00.000+02:00

We're getting close to wrapping up the kid's essays on the mudanças (changes) they want to see happen. In this, the penultimate post, we hear from another 8th grader, Manuel. Manuel is one of the brightest kids we have here and, aside from having one of the best articulated essays I read, also mentioned a personal change that he wants to make. And just for mentioning that personal change he winds up in the winners circle.

The change I want to see is a change in the attitude of the government of Mozambique. I say this because I see that they aren't running this country well and how they ought to and I see that they are very corrupt and steal money that would be able to help this country develop and stop ruining itself. I would like to see a change of the president of Mozambique. Why do I say this? Because he also is corrupt and doesn't want to see our country develop. If he truly wanted to see our country develop he would have been doing everything in his power to strengthen this country instead of destroy it from within. What's more is that he is always saying we have to fight against poverty, knowing that he himself never fought to reduce poverty among Mozambicans and in fact contributes to it.

I would also like to see a change in the attitude of the teachers in Mozambique. Specifically, the teachers that seem to only want to hurt students without reason. I say this because there are teachers that harm students without reason and lower their grades, treat them unfairly, and never listen or acknowledge the smallest complaint against them. They only wish to be given money in exchange for preferred treatment, restoring or getting better grades, or for selfish ambition. It is these actions that I would like to see change.

I would like to see a change from parents that force their kids to marry young. I say this because there are many parents that force their kids to marry only because they themselves don't have any way to provide for themselves. I see this as very confusing because the parents left school in order to marry young because it was the will of their parents, and now they are facing the same difficulties and will be condemning their children to the same conditions in the future.

Lastly, there is my life. Why would I like to see my life change? Because it is for the better and sometimes I am weak and will think bad thoughts or other times lose patience when I am provoked to anger. I would like to see myself changed to be a person that leads well and knows how to act upright in the midst of other people.

A Mudança VI

2011-12-30T10:23:00.000+02:00

Now we get to the winner's circle of our portion. I told the kids there would be a prize for the best essays. However, I did not tell them what constituted having the best essay. Heck, I didn't even tell them what kind of change to write about. My criteria was that anyone who wrote something personal that truly meant it would win the prize. I wanted to read about a change they can make. Sure, theoretically they have the power to change the country or a system of corruption or kick out all the chinese, but they have even more power over their own actions and behaviors.

What I secretly wanted was to see the kids write about a change they have the power to make and I wanted them to mean it. I also watched the kids over a week before announcing the winners to see if they indeed meant what they said or just wanted to write something profound in hopes of gaining favor with me. Our first winner is Mauricio. He's not especially a profound writer, but he's an honest one. Not the sharpest tool in the shed either, but far from the dullest, very middle of the road. He also failed 8th grade this year in school. Keep that in mind reading what he has to say.

I would like to see the teachers of Mozambique not continue to receive money from students in exchange for passing classes. Many students pass when they don't understand anything and others than understand are failing because they can't pay money. I would also like to see in school only studying one subject per day. Each day now we have five subjects and students complain that it is hard to concentrate and learn.

I would like the president of Mozambique to not allow the entrance of so many foreigners because they use up all our resources and exploit our trees and forests. The chinese are exploiting the wood in Mozambique and it is destroying our country.

I want for myself and others to obey and stop climbing up in the mango trees to eat mangos. We are hurting and taking from those that aren't able to climb trees and this isn't good for us or them. With this I would like to stop fighting because nobody is helped by fighting. Furthermore God does not like it, and people don't like it. I can stop fighting and if my brother [or sister in Christ] is provoking me I need to forgive them. In the orphanage, more people would be happy and get along and God would bless us in this. The changes I want to see are these.

A Mudança V

2011-12-27T20:11:00.000+02:00

We're continuing our look at the kid's essays. The topic what what is the mudança(change) you want to see. This time we get to hear a different side of issues. For this group of kids, they're worried about a little bit of everything--- crime, public health, teen marriage, embezzlement of state funds, about what fancy-pants refer to as new economic colonialism. These kids refer to it mainly as China stealing our trees and selling us their crap.

I want for the police to start controlling things well because of what is happening. They are paid by thieves with money after crimes so they don't go to jail. Also the traffic police. They see something wrong and later ask for money before they will let you pass. Also I want to see the numbers of thieves reduced because it is very normal for you to buy something and the next moment are robbed of it. So I want the government to find someway that the people can stop committing these errors.

I also want to see the government construct streets, schools, hospitals, houses, bridges and to clean up the trash that fills the streets. I want for all Mozambicans to study so that our country can develop. Also, we can't be in relationships when we are young because many children get pregnant and marry and their lives becomes only farming and children. So first we need to finish school and studying and then we can marry. Also, many families force children to marry or to work instead of going to school. We need to force them to go to school and not marry or work.

-A very chivalrous sixth grade boy

I would like to se my country change the style of corruption. Corruption has been happening all the time, and not only in Mozambique but in the whole world. As for Mozambicans and their government, corruption easily happens in the form of robbing state funds. This, I see, faults the payment of salaries of government works and contributes to the poverty of our country. I feel that the government doesn't know how to lead because they rob money and think they are the recipients and not the people of my country.

In the case of the police there is lots of corruption because the police sometimes don't get their salary on time and get angry and plot with thieves to rob people in the city and suburbs and afterwards share the money. For this, the people themselves are corrupt too and need to change to develop as a country.

Outside of robbing money there is the problem of robbing trees in our country. We have lots of trees and wood, but as for where it has gone, nobody knows. For example, in the province of Nampula we have schools without desks and chairs and classrooms. All of these need wood. The ministry of education also contributes to this problem.

-An eight grader

In the first place I would like if we can change the president that is ruling my country. For me, he is not doing good as the ruler of the people. Because of this I see whichever foreigner arriving in my country. For example, the Chinese come here to Mozambique and rob our trees, sell bad computers, and make other crimes. For this reason I say that I want to change these, because every day it hurts my heart to watch them steal trees.

-This writer is in fifth grade and really likes trees

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T12:41:00.000+02:00

"The sacrifice is great for a heart which tenderly loves his parents, family, religious brothers, and the land where he was born. But the voice which invites us, which has called us to make the offering of everything we have, is the voice of God Himself. It is our Divine Savior who says to us as to his first apostles, 'Go, teach all nations,instructing them to observe all my commandments.' "

- Father Damien of Molokai (1840-1889)

All The News That's Fit To Blog

2011-12-22T09:10:00.001+02:00

Time for a break from the kids' letters for a look at current events. I post these from time to time, and they usually tend to raise a few eyebrows. Please be assured that I am not cherry-picking stories to make a point. There are so few news sources, and I'm taking all I can get.

The ones aren't here are all the news stories full of political rhetoric and telling people to just hold on a little longer because it will get better. Some people think that I pick the news to make it look like everybody involved has the intellect of Barney Fife, but these are about the only stories that are about anything at all.

Witchcraft Killings in Sofala Province – 16 women were killed having been accused of witchcraft. Often times when literally anything happens people will accuse one (or all) of their grandparents of cursing them. This could be their wife leaving them, a child dying, a car accident, or crop disease. You laugh, but people here really do witchcraft for bad things to happen, and then those bad things happen. This story reminds me of another one I posted earlier where the village chief was lamenting that there had been 12 lynchings last year in his village. He only authorized 7 of them and wanted to know who was responsible for the other 5.

The Republic of South Africa has announced it will be looking into the death of Mozambican President Samora Machel and is prepared to fully cooperate with Mozambican officials. President Machel died when his plane crashed in South Africa near the border with Mozambique. In 1986. Yes, he crashed in 1986. Thank you for your quick and timely response, South Africa.

A representative from Microsoft was on hand in Maputo to announce their continued support of computer literacy in the third-world and to check of the construction of what was originally supposed to be a computer literacy education center as well as the 9,500 computers they donated to the aforementioned center. I say it was supposed to be a training center because shortly after Microsoft left the representative from the government referred it as the the home of the Mozambican Space Administration. At the announcement of using the computer for a space program instead of job training and education, the twenty-five percent of babies in attendance that will statistically die of malnutrition/disease/malaria/bad water before they hit the age of 4 walked out in protest (or at least should have).

The only Mozambican airline is still banned from flying to Europe as well as basically anywhere that's not Africa. The reason is that their safety and inspection record is horrible. People in-the-know (like me) know its because there was an egregious amount of drug trafficking going on using the planes, and so Europe just straight banned them.

The central bank just announced that GDP grew by over 7% this year. Then the World Bank came out and said that the number was unadjusted for inflation, and said that that inflation is over 10%. Then I noticed that neither take into account population growth. I conservatively figure that the economy shrunk by about 5.1% last year. Hooray for bad math, Mozambique. Maybe your new Space Agency can help with that.

(As a side note, the economy of Mozambique has grown by almost the same unadjusted 7.3-7.5% margin every year for like the last four years. This means the economy is either remarkably consistent and unstoppable, really really bad at math,or (spoiler alert) like that Chinese company in The Dark Knight that was really just a front for money laundering.

A government health inspector released a report saying that, in a study done early this year, 64.4% of moonshine is “not fit for consumption”. Tests were done on over 140 samples. The country responded with a collective shrug of the shoulders and said, “Meh.”

(Other studies have shown that over three-quarters of adults in the country drink uncontrollably at least once a week.)

And finally, in a bit of sadder news, North Korean leader King Jong-Il passed away last Saturday. This prompted the leader of ruling party to issue a statement: “Considering the relations that exist at the state level, we also feel this loss. We have commercial partnerships with North Korea and know that Pyongyang gave its' support during the civil war”. Let's just hope that 'commercial partnerships' is not code for helping with Mozambique's space program.

A Mudança IV

2011-12-21T06:16:00.001+02:00

Apparently several of our workers overheard the essay prompt and decided they wanted to get in with it.They too wrote about the change they wanted to see, but went in completely different directions.

The first letter is from Carlos, one of our construction workers. He wrote on what he sees happening at the orphanage. It was by far the most entertaining letter of all of them I received.

From my point of view, I would like if we could change our attitudes because it they are strange. I say they are strange because when our leaders ask something, sometimes the children get angry for no reason. For example: the tell us to go to devotional and for some of us it is very likely that we won't participate. This demonstrates that we don't love the people that our leading and guiding us with respect to our God.

Another thing is that children* should have the right to travel to other countries to be able to know and visit other people and places in the rest of the world. Also to see how things are there in comparison with here. Another thing is that here in the orphanage we don't have somebody in charge of physical education. There exist several boys and girls don't want to work or carry water and tell others to do it for them because they are lazy.

Other ideas is that there is no swimming pool here. Not only for swimming but for activities and games. Mainly, on days that there is a party, this would play a big part in the festivities.

I would also like that we would be able to change from eating porridge for breakfast to eating cake [muffins]. The porridge makes me sleepy and lazy. But when breakfast is cake I have much more energy during the day for work. If we would be able to eat cake it would bring us more energy and the will to work hard.

It is these things that I have to contribute to the changes in our center. Thanks.

*[Carlos is in his early twenties and sees himself more as a kid here than as a worker. He was mad that he was left out of the church trip to the conference in Zimbabwe. He failed to understand that the conference was for leaders in our church an not construction workers at the orphanage.]

Next up is Vieira. His real name is Albertino, but because the first two months on the job his work shirt was a soccer jersey with “Vieira” written on the back that became his name. Mainly because at that point nobody knew his real name. He is also a construction worker here that also wanted to write, but didn't exactly talk about this he sees happening around the orphanage. I tried to go for a very literal translation to get the full effect of his message.

In the first place, I want to thank you or this opportunity that you gave me to write. The theme is change, and the setting I have chosen is my country, Mozambique. What I want my country to change is the corrpution. I say again, CORRUPTION! These days a student, in order to pass a class need money to pay even when the student understands. For this, I protest the government! Corruption is the thing I want to see change not just in my country but across my continent. The president makes me sick and refuses to change and people from America see this situation and know he refuses to change. For this, I protest the president! As well as city council for seeing trash collect in the streets and having broken roads, primarily the one that leads to the orphanage where cars can't go.

Next time on change we'll hear from kids about protecting the environment. Also, I'll put up some pictures on how construction on the orphanage pool is going (hint: it's not, and never will be, going).

A Mudança III

2011-12-18T10:55:00.001+02:00

This edition's letter comes from a boy in eleventh grade. He had some particularly insightful observations about how things work and what needs changing and how to do it. If he had stopped after the first sentence and written nothing more I would have been please with his essay all the same.

This young man hits on a variety of topics, and even manages to squeeze in his Christmas list, so bonus points for sneakiness. This is the change that he wants to see:

As for my country, the change depends on us ourselves. The government of Mozambique, on the subject of education, has to decide, when a student finishes school and job training, that the student has a right to work. Some of them bribe for spots and steal it over those who have education and training. Having finished with studies, the government is responsible for each of them to fill a vacancy. As it is now, the government thinks that they are capable of making a living, not realizing that there are no opportunity that exist. Therefore, I would like to see all of this change, starting with the corruption.

It is very normal for a student today to be intelligent and smart, have good grades, but the teacher wants that student's money and will decrease his grade if he doesn't get it. At the same time, students that don't know anything are passing because they have given the teacher a bribe. I would like to see this end.

As for here at Evanjafrica, there are a few things I would like to see change. I would like to find a place (perhaps a library) that would have different types of books and resources and put up a schedule for us to have access to more information. This will also help with the ability to read. Here we could also have a place for several computers to help us with our studies.

I would like [for us to have a TV and have] a staff member in charge of controlling a TV for us. Turning it on when there is news or telejournals, and soccer, because this would help us also to know what is happening in our country and in other countries. At the end of the program, the staff member responsible for the TV would turn it off and put it away.

We also have people with problems of being lazy and arriving late. They are also slow to arrive when they are called to a certain place. For example, if you are called for dinner and the person is late in arriving it is because they don't value eating and they need to have a punishment. It is not because they don't like eating though, it is because they don't like obey. This is one thing that must change.

On the next installment, we'll hear from some of our construction workers who also did essays. Unfortunately, their ideas involve building a swimming pool.

A Mudança II

2011-12-15T06:46:00.000+02:00

Today is the second post in our series of “The change I want to see”. As the kids turned in their essay, I was surprised at how not surprising their choice of topic was. About half of them chose to write about topics concerning school and the leadership of the country. A common complaint among people, especially here in the north.

Today we have two essays that come from two brothers. Not surprisingly, they are both very opinionated. One caveat is that I have trimmed down the letter and taken out quite a bit of content because if you voice your discontent with certain members of the government you are liable for libel. And it gets prosecuted quite a bit. Or rather not prosecuted, but maybe beaten during the middle of the night or assassinated quite a bit. Anyways, here's what they had to say:

Brother one; just completed grade 9.

I want to see a change in the corruption. I would like to see a change in teachers primarily. In my country, teachers want you to offer them money to pass a class. Even if you may be intelligent you have to offer money to the teachers to pass. In the case of girls who aren't intelligent, if you want to pass all she has to do is have sex with the teacher, but it a boy is not smart and doesn't have money he will immediately fail the class.

Also I would like to change the principal of my high school because when the government sends money to pay the utilities like water and electricity he takes the money for himself instead of paying these things and immediately goes out drinking and it harms the students. They go weeks without water to drink and those that study at night go weeks without lessons because of the electricity.

Ultimately I would like if the doctors and nurses could change. In my country when a patient appears at the hospital for an emergency they don't attend them immediately because they are not present or they wait for the patient to die so they can rob them before sending them to the morgue.

Brother two; just completed grade 11. Also very opinionated.

About the change that I want to see: I want to see a change in corruption, bribes, lies, racism and greed here in Africa but foremost in the country of Mozambique.

I, being Mozambican, get very sad with this way of corruption in my country because it is corruption that is inviting criminals and thieves from the midst of our people. But all of this is because of the government that doesn't know how to run or lead its own people. They invite corruption by robbing the money of the people and later those same people start to imitate this manner because they see it happening with their leaders. They will rob cell phones, power lines, anything.

Also I would like if we could end this way of the bribe. because with bribes the people are becoming stupid, illiterate, and poorly educated because they have become accustomed to a life of giving money to teachers in order to pass a class without knowing anything. Later, it is a great harm to the people to grow up knowing nothing. This life is full of prejudice and for this it must change.

Another cause is racism and greed. In our country there is great value in being the son or daughter of somebody important. For example, presidents, ministers, governors, wealthy foreigners, etc. This choice of preference is something very ugly and sad because all of us are equal without discrimination of color or race or religion and we all have the same rights. The greed is a thing that is very ugly and destroys the life of of people across the world.

Our country is changing, but it is going backwards. I think it will take the work of all Mozambicans to change our country for the better. It is this that I have to say about the change I want to see.

A mudança

2011-12-13T10:35:00.000+02:00

We're officially at the end of the year here in Nampula. No, the time zones are not such that here it is Dec 31st, but things have all winded down. School is all over and exams have all finished and now we wait til Jan/Feb to start that all over again. Its also time that we get some rest and relaxation here on the staff. Victor made a good point to most of the kids the other day that, of the guy we have working in the office with finances and the construction workers and cooks, there's really only Me, Marta, and Victor that work with the kids, and it's pretty dang tiring. 40+ of them versus 3 of us. Heck, my parents only raised us three boys, and while we turned out fine and are making them very proud, they'll admit at times that we made their lives a torment. And that was 3-vs-2. Our kids are mostly great also, but man, those numbers...

As a result, we're scaling back and taking things slow now until Christmas. As a result, I've decided to scale back writing. But have no fear. Instead of having nothing, I'm giving you a chance to hear from the kids.

A little over two weeks ago, I gave them assignment. We do extracurricular work quite often here, so it was not a surprise to them. The assignment was to write an essay of which the them was, “A mudança que quero ver é ____” (The change that I want to see is ________). I gave no further detail or explanation, only the length and the due date. I left it purposefully open because I wanted to see was was weighing most on minds.

For the first group of kids we'll hear from today either feel really guilty or now exactly what to say for every situation. The week I assigned the essays, we had a little incident involving mawowo. I'm guessing there are two of you reading this that know what mawowo is, so I'll tell you. Its basically the word for the burnt, crusty part of whatever it is you were cooking. Most often here we cook rice, and cooking twenty pounds of rice at a time is bound to burn some on the bottom of the pan. And for some reason the kids love eating this burnt rice stuff that literally tastes like you left hard tack in the toaster for twenty minutes.

Well, the incident involved a group of about four kids fighting in the kitchen over who would get the biggest share of mawowo. There was punishment doled out for fighting, and the kids had this to say in their letter about what they want to see change.

“I want to see my behavior change. I also want to see the behavior of Isac Pequeno and Muaparato [the other boys fighting] change. I want them to learn how to read and write. When people tell us to not steal mawowo we need to obey and we need to change.”

-Belson; Grade 4.

“The change I would like to see is stop eating mawowo because it hurts my health. I would like to see us forgive because it doesn't help to not forgive. I want to stop playing bad because it doesn't help to play bad. I would like to start to forgive people because the Bible says to forgive because if I forgive I will increase in wisdom and in knowledge of God's word.”

-Riquito; Grade 2.

“A change of how we carry ourselves in the orphanage. I would like to see the patio [of the boy's dormitory] clean every day and for us to not throw mango peels there because this is dirty and will make us sick. I want to stop the fighting between us because it will bring us a hard life if we fight. I like that I they stopped me from eating mawowo because it was harming my stomach and my health and I wasn't growing up good.”

-Muaparato; Grade 4.

Our Heathen Church

2011-12-11T09:46:00.001+02:00

Our church has some problems, but I bet so does yours. After you move past reasons like “organ vs. drums,” or ”too many/too few potlucks,” or “serving communion on Youth Sunday with coca-cola and doritos” problems with churches will boil down to two points. 1) People are sinners and, 2) your church is full of sinners. If you were not aware of those two points it is time to stop going to your church. It has failed you badly.

“Pastor's teeth are too shiny” is not a valid reason to not like your church. Though “Pastor is too creepy,” however, is entirely valid.

And let me tell you, no place is full of more sinners than our church, good old Evangelical Church Peace of Christ Nampula. (Warning: time to fasten your sarcasm seatbelt). Several weeks ago about 8 different churches from our denomination (the Evangalical Peace and so on church) got together to mark the end of a pastors conference, in which over thirty pastors from all over the province were gathered for service Sunday morning.

Things were going fine until at the end of service, the lead pastor got up for announcements. The first and only announcement was that this year, Christmas falls on a Sunday. In lieu of meeting in church that morning, he continued, all the churches would be shut for people to spend the day with their families.

What would have been more appropriate to say was, “Head's up, Christmas is on a Sunday and I'm going to be out of town for a family reunion [the part he failed to disclose], but feel free to do whatever you want. It's your church after all.” Instead, the message was, “shut your doors.”

Its as if all at once the Holy Spirit touched each of these pastors to stand up, start pounding their fists, and say that this was probably the worst decision ever made since Paul decided Jews could eat meat or something of that sort. Once the furor died down, the pastors began to speak one at a time. Each pastor reiterated the same point, which is that this just simply wouldn't do because his church is full of the absolute, most horrible human beings to ever walk the face of the earth.

The bulk of their reasoning was this. Friday, people will leave work and start drinking themselves silly. Without church to go to on Sunday folks will just steamroll through onto Monday. And most people, having absolutely nothing to do, will probably continue drinking all week. Then one of them pointed out that New Years is also on a Sunday. New years day, being the most celebrated day of the year in Mozambique, meaning that folks would spend almost two full weeks participating in enough licentiousness and debauchery to make Sodom and Gomorrah blush if they didn't have to go to church.

Now, I will grant that a big sin culturally here is drinking and other behaviors like spreading HIV to almost 25% of the population. I can see how this would be on the pastors' minds. But they were making a clear argument that without the threat of having to show up sober for church, these people would drift away until their blood alcohol level is so high the blood that the blood would be indistinguishable from the alcohol. One pastor said verbatim that without church people would have nothing to do other than drinking.

Don't think that your church gets away free though, just because people don't show up hungover on Sunday morning. That doesn't mean that you don't spend all your time gossiping about the pastor's wife, always happen to leave you money at home come time for the offering, and think that you're saved because you know the lyrics to every Chris Tomlin song ever written and Jesus is setting aside a special place for you in his personal choir, directed by Mr. Tomlin himself.

Now that I've fully offended the gossipers, penny-pinchers, and Chris Tomlin fanatics, I will say that I don't know what your church is like, but I'm sure it has its problems to. But as of now I know that ours is apparently full of horrible, terrible, drunken sinners and the only thing that I know that will save them is ~~church~~ Jesus.

Keeping Perspective

2011-12-07T17:43:00.002+02:00

Transparency International recently released their Corruption Index report for 2011. If you are a nerd like me or interested in those things you can discover more here (http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011). While it's not quite as expansive as the Mo Ibrahim Foundation lists (nerds will know what that is) it focusses only on the perception of corruption.

Basically, in terms of corrpution, I think Mozambique is pretty dang bad. Mozambique ranks 120th worldwide for corruption out of 170 or so ranked countries. The bigger the number the more corrupt you are. One-hundred and twenty is a big number. That made me sad.

But that's a lot like comparing apples to oranges to put us on the same scale as Sweden or China. Mozamique ranks in 28th place out of 50 for African Countries. That's right in them middle. That made me happy. But fifty is still kind of a big number.

Comparing just Southern African countries---more like apples to apples--- Mozambique ranks 12th out of 15, ahead of only Ziimbabwe, Angola, and the country formerly known as Leopoldville (Democratic Republic of Congo). This is a low ranking. That made me sad.

Than I looked at the rankings and saw the Mozambique was tied with Iran and only one step above Syria and three about Pakistan. This made me sadder. Then I quit reading the report. But I think I got most the essentials.

Prayer Requests Dec 5th

2011-12-05T07:21:00.001+02:00

Hey everybody. Hope you're enjoying the start to December. A nice short post today for those who like short posts, but also super important one for those who like super important posts. This one is about Little Victor.

Seen here looking about three years younger than he is today (in a three year-old picture).

I have mentioned little Victor before. He's a kid at the orphanage (thus little Victor and not big Victor, da boss). He's not so little anymore. He's fifteen and almost taller than I am. He came to us after being our neighbor and participating in devotionals and going to church and when his family moved away they asked if he could stay. He was about 11 at the time. Unfortunately, there was one thing that was going to be a major obstacle for Victor's future: school.

Victor had never been allowed to go to school. Because of timing of when he came here had to wait for the next school year to roll around (can't enroll in the middle of the year) and start first grade (can't skip grades easily). Surprisingly, he was not the oldest first grader at school, but as he and I have talked he has said it was and is struggle for him, mainly because of the shame involved.

Well, Victor has worked his tail off, is reading great (for learning a year ago) and about halfway through the year we decided that he would take the national exams for seventh grade at the end of the year. This would allow him to enter eighth grade next year if he passed. He would still be pretty unprepared for eight grade, but we've done this a time or two before with kids and they usually pass eight grade on the second try (which is better than being stuck in third grade as a 16 year-old).

Victor and I have been studying intensely for the exam, and he's been working with a leader from our church who is a teacher to prepare for the grade seven exams. He will be taking the exams in a testing center with lots of other older folks/ adults that are trying to pass school. Fortunately, maybe, we've heard a rumor that the department of education is just going to pass any adult (including Victor) that can read because the country is lagging in improving adult literacy numbers, and this is a benchmark they need to meet, so they're going to pad their numbers.

The short story is that, even though we've been studying for 4 months, Victor is woefully unprepared. He's highly capable, but covering 5 more years of info in four months is really hard. And the exams start today and go till Thursday.

You can say that it is a horrible injustice that he wasn't allowed to go to school. In my opinion, don't pray for justice, because what is just is for Victor to fail the test because he is woefully unprepared. PRAY FOR GRACE on behalf of Victor, the test proctors, the people grading the test, and this crazy rumor that everybody will pass. Our God is big and merciful and can make this happen. Thanks for your prayers.

The High Cost of Livin'

2011-12-03T13:46:00.000+02:00

Sorry about gaps in content. I'm busy, okay!? But really, I've been managing construction on the girls dorm the last two weeks and man is that thing finally going up fast! I've had a little bit of time to write but most of it has been drafting a ridiculously long ~~post~~ ~~essay~~ ~~article~~ tome about the socio-psychological underpinnings of culture in Mozambique. I'm so busy in fact that I'm outsourcing the writing to the kids. Look for their content to be popping up next week or so. But for now, on the meat of the post. Or should I say the bread, or the peanut butter (huh?).

I live in Mozambique. That's in Africa. The city I live in is called Nampula. It is hot, inland, and is seen by the rest of the country as a illiterate, backwoood, redneck truck stop for goods moving overland to Malawi that is home to about a half-million people. Life isn't great in Malawi either, but the fact that many goods are destined for there and not here tells you something. My city is poor. It has no port. The biggest “industry” we have is the coca-cola bottling plant. Cashews are a cash-crop that get sold and processed overseas. Fruit grows everywhere here and the growing seasons vary that if you just wait two months something else will come around.

On average, people here live on about $1.50 a day. That statistic is highly localalized to our city, but also about three years old. I'll be optimistic and say that nowadays people live on $2.00 a day. But, I'll also say that the amount of money that a wealthy person makes (shop-owner, car-driver, businessman, Indian) is highly disproportionate to what an “average” person makes. So much so that about 75% of the people here live on less than a dollar a day.

Most people hear that and have a set of reactions which are all very valid and very true---Wow, that sucks; Things must be really cheap then for $1 a day; People must have absolutely nothing for $1 a day; If people farm you just barter and don't use money; I'm reading this on a smartphone with a $100/month contract.

Some things are really cheap. Things made in Mozambique are really cheap. Things made in China are almost as cheap but always break after two days because, after China makes foolproof products for the U.S., Chinese engineers try to reverse engineer the factory and sell knock-off products to third-world markets at a fractions of the price. But I'm not here to bash China, even though it would be really easy and fun.

Things made in Mozambique are food. Actually, food is grown, not made, but you know what I mean. I wish I had some size comparison, but just remember when you buy stuff in the grocery back in the states, things that are 16 oz size is the same as a pound. Here a rundown of what grown is Nampula (or other parts of Mozambique) and a quick little comparison to a price you might pay. Granted, these are not a blue light special, bulk, everything-must-go-now sale prices. Just average ones.

Peanuts – 90¢ per pound. Unroasted. Cost in America: $3.99 (roasted)

Coca-cola - $3.99 for a 12-pack. Cost in America: $6.99

Eggs – Here they are $2.75 for a dozen very tiny eggs. Price in America: $1.59 for large eggs.

Oranges – 4¢ each. There is no price comparison here because it would just make you cry.

Mangos – 4¢ each. There are so many of these that you can't give them away in season. Also, no comparison.

Bananas – Again, 4¢ each banana. Also, 4¢ is the minimum denomination we have here for money. If we had a coin that was 2¢, oranges and mangos and bananas would be 2¢.

Tangerines – 8¢ each. That would make then two coins apeice, not just one. A little rarer.

Vegetable Oil – Bottle of vegetable oil: $1.40. Price in America: $4.29.

Peanut Butter – I have a friend that makes his own at $9 for a 16oz jar. Imported it is $10. Price in America: $3.49.

Cashews – If you have a tree, they're free. Otherwise they're about about $1.70 a jar. Super cheap American price: $7.

Sugar (unrefined/brown) – 60¢ per pound. Price in America: $0.99

Sugar (refined/white) – 80¢ per pound. Price in America: $1.69.

Ground Beef: Okay, there are a few cows here, but they don't do milk. Cheapest stuff you can get from the butcher is $4.50 per pound. In America: $3.59.

Goat: Maybe about $50 for one that will feed close to 50 kids. And yes, everything is included. No kidding (pun intended).

Chicken: For a big chicken, its about $2 per pound. Oh, and that includes bones, heart, neck, liver. No such thing as buying boneless chicken breast here. Our chickens have bones. For a nice, boneless chicken breast in the states, no legs, thighs wings, just meat, is $2.39 a pound

But for stuff that doesn't come from here, it is a little bit of a different story. Fortunately, because if people were faced with paying the real price nobody would be able to afford it, the government subsidizes off the top certain staples items. That means they help with the cost so the buyer can afford it. Subsidized items appear in italic. Most all of these imported items come from South Africa.

Milk (powdered): $4.90 per gallon. Yes, powdered milk.

Milk (real): $9-13.50 depending on how good you want your milk to be. All milk is long-life and imported. There are no cows here. Price in America: $3.39.

Butter: $5.80 per pound. Again, cows. Price in America: $3.69.

Diesel: $5.90 per gallon. Really subsidized. At levels bankrupting the country. In Seattle, USA: $4.09.

Gasoline: $7.50 per gallon. Also really subsidized, but not as highly used as diesel is. Price in Seattle, USA: $3.59.

Loaf of bread: 50¢. Also subsidized at levels bankrupting the country. Bread should costs 4x what we actually pay for it.

Flour: If you are a baker you can buy the super subsidized flour for your bread and sell loaves for 50¢. If you are just buying not-so-extremely-yet-still-subsidized flour for yourself it is $4.00 for a five-pound sack. In America: $4.19.

These are just the edibles. I don't have time to go into things like toothpaste, batteries, lightbulbs. Although I will say that a 110lb bag of portland cement is $12. Very comparable to American prices. It is imported, from Pakistan, at super cheap prices because the legitimate cement import is a front an expansive drug running operating that uses Mozambican ports as a midpoint for moving the drugs on to Europe and Asia.

Giving Thanks with Our Crazy Family

2011-11-25T16:00:00.000+02:00

I have two crazy families. One is back in Seattle and I was thrilled and overjoyed to wake up in the middle of the night and Skype with them for a little bit as they were all together to celebrate Thanksgiving.

The other family is crazy too, and they number as almost fifty of the best kids you can find in Mozambique. I mean that very sincerely and tell them that quite often. We also, like any family, have a healthy amount of, hmmm, how should I put this...

...friction?

Even the best of families get under one another's skin every once in a while. Its just a part of being human. And no matter how well the wheels are spinning, there's just something magical about the holidays and everybody getting together that just seems to suck all the grease right out of those bearings. In truth, there's no such thing as Thanksgiving here because there is no commemoration of the Pilgrims fleeing England and arriving on the shores of Mozambique and giving thanks to God while sharing a meal with the Indians. That never happened. Because we're in Africa. Not Massachusetts. Still, I thought it'd be fun to do a little something for thanksgiving by having the kids thank each other.

After breakfast I gave each of the kids a note card and asked them to write the name of somebody they wanted to thank and the reason why they wanted to thank or recognize them. They stressed that they didn't have to recognize or acknowledge only something that a person did for you directly, but it could be things that people do that benefited another person or even everybody in general. I also stressed that we were not voting for anybody, we just wanted to take some time to thank people.

After everybody sat around for about five minutes thinking of things (during which I encouraged people to be more aware when folks are helping and being selfless if it takes five minutes to find just one example) they actually wrote some really nice things about one another. Most of the things were actions not benefiting the writer directly. They were things like helping in the kitchen during the weeks that I was sick and the rest of the staff were in Zimbabwe, or how certain kids had taken an extra effort to help with construction, or kids that have been helping the younger students learn to read and prepare for exams at the end of the year, or people showing up early at church to help clean and prepare it for Sunday services. I'd say close to 75% were incidences of people doing things to help in general around the orphanage and with the day-to-day of life. I told the kids I was really happy hearing all the things they had to say.

Then, because the kids should know the nice thing others see in them, I gave all the cards to their respective kids so they could have them and know that the things they do are known and appreciated. The kids that got cards were really happy to receive them and read them.

The kids that didn't get cards? Not so happy.

While all of the kids filled out a card, the ones that got noticed were only about ten kids or so, with each receiving multiple thanks. Those kids all rightly deserved the nice things said about them. The problem is, there are also a lot more kids that do nice things and deserved to get a card and just plain didn't. I made a point of going to the six or eight kids I though really deserved a card but didn't get one to tell them how thankful I was for specific things they do, even if they didn't get a card. The problem is there are only about five kids who are completely selfish and don't deserve cards. That means about twenty kids got left out in the cold.

This was the scene I noticed at lunch. A kid finishes his food, stands up to walk his plate up to the counter and put it in the pan to be washed. The kid passes another who has also finished eating and motions to the one walking to take the plate with him the way. The one walking says to the one sitting, “Why should I bother taking your plate if you're not going to vote for me? Take it yourself.”

Ummm...

Later, a kid asking to borrow the cup of another to go get a glass of water. The one with the cup says, “And when was the last time you lent me your cup? Only if you promise to write a card to me next time.”

We might...

A kid carrying a bucket of water to go use in the construction of the girls dormitory asks another to help him carry it. The other responds, “No way! I work in the construction too and nobody ever thanked ME for it.”

...have...

A kid is pulling clothes in from the line and the wind picks up and blows a shirt off the line. As the shirt rolls like a tumbleweed it passes a kid playing in the shade. The one taking down clothes shouts, “Hey, quick. Grab my shirt fast.” The child in the shade doesn't even look up and drolls, “I helped you clean the bathroom yesterday when it wasn't my turn and you can't even vote for me with your card.”

...a problem.

Little did I know that a fun activity meant to thank and encourage folks was going to turn into a day of envy and folks that were not thanked were taking it out on their fellow kids here by flat-out refusing to help so they could spite people. Thankfully by dinner, most of the angst had worked itself out and people were back to their normal, helpful self. I made sure to explain that night at Bible study that the activity was not meant for “voting” the winner or most helpful, nor to discourage people from helping, only to thank and recognize people well deserving of it. I also tried to bandage the wound a little bit and tell them they all help a lot and, if it wouldn't take two days, I'd write a card thanking each of them.

But still, I kind of liked the activity, and the kids that got cards sure loved it, so maybe we'll try this again in a month or so and let kids write an unlimited number of cards and hope that nobody's feelings get hurt at the end of the day.

As for us, our dysfunctional family here is back to its old, normal, non-spiteful, crazy self. For that, I am very thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Math Camp III - Girls

2011-11-21T19:59:00.000+02:00

Before we get back going on math camp, lets do a little review of where we've been, since it's been about a month since we started. In math camp part one we talked about the logistics of our times table competition and ended with the shocker that, with over 40 kids in the competition, only 8 of them managed to memorize their multiplication table.

In math camp part two we talked about a few reasons why nobody bothered, revolving around the main idea that people here tend to give up at everything when things turn difficult, they also think that getting 50% done is grounds for achieving a reward. I mentioned how Celso came up to me cursing because he came up one set of numbers short and that was grounds for earning the reward. The problem is also having people that a trained to seek rewards in the short term. We tell kids everyday the two things that will change their lives are Jesus, number one, and education second. I wrote that many of the kids “are looking to see if the reward is going to be worth all the effort. If they don't see it as some huge gain for them they're not going to do it. I know all these kids very, very well. For some reason there are several kids that have managed to get all the way to eighth grade being illiterate. And I don't mean functionally illiterate, I mean really illiterate. They've never seen or considered how reading will benefit them and they just learned to read until it got too difficult and quit there.”

However, those are only about half of the reasons. Actually, they're exactly 50% of the reasons. The other reasons are the girls.

Yes, the girls...

They are so complicated (understatement of a lifetime) that they get a whole post dedicated just to them. I'm constantly having to remember that we're taking a long term outlook and (barring God's grace) change in a person doesn't happen overnight all the time. Even in a matter of months, it can be hard to see somebody's change of perspective on education (or friends, or drugs, or God, or anything). People that have kids already know this. You don't just say, “You need to do better in school.” and the next day it starts happening.

Where the story of math camp continues is that after Celso left my house complaining about not getting his shorts, I encountered a cadre of girls to complain on behalf of Tercia. They were saying that Tercia (16 years old) should receive the reward also because she was the best girl to finish, having recited up until her sevens. The competition was up to 12, remember. After finally getting the girls to admit that Tercia failed and quit, they tried to reason with me (read: shout) by saying that girls just aren't as good as boys. Before I let them set a dangerous precedent I quelled their anti-feminist crusade and sent them on their way.

Oh, the girls...

While you could say they are a product of their environment and mostly have not seen great examples of education or success in their families, the thing you cannot say is that they have been given low standard. Our expectations and hopes for what the girls (and boys)can accomplish are very high. What's even more remarkable is how much of the girls here get higher grades than our boys (although that will make great sense once I explain why). Much of that though is rooted in how the system works. The girls will readily admit that they don't understand much of anything that they're learning and therefore give up more easily. In reality, often times after just one bad test or a confusing lecture they refuse to keep fighting with the subject and give up first, causing them to backslide even more.

What the girls have learned to do is skip class, avoid doing homework or required reading. All they need to do is ask to see the work of a boy or two that had done the assignment, clean it up a bit, cross their t's and dot their i's with hearts, and get a better grade. They've become so good at this that there is only one boy in the orphanage that consistently gets better grades than the girls. That would be Manuel, who finished the multiplication tables on the first day, and he gets straight A's. Manuel has decided to not give the girls his work to copy because it is unjust. It a problem that pervades the culture of much of the city, not just girls that happen to wind up here.

The girls are earning a counterfeit education.

“Wow, TJ. Don't you think you're being a little hard on the girls? They're just doing what they need to to get by.” No, I don't think I'm being too hard on them. I don't stand for any of this. The people that are doing the work for themselves don't stand for any of this. The problem is that cheating is not part of the culture here. Cheating is the culture. A few month back Victor was preaching in church and there was this exchange. It was a sermon about living as a new creation and getting rid of the old sinful things in our life.

Victor: And Jesus doesn't want us to do things that will destroy our lives.

Congregation: Amen.

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to drink until we pass out.

Congregation: Amen!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to steal from our neighbors.

Congregation: Amen!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to fall into temptation and cheat on our husbands when they our in the field working.

Men: AMEN!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us out until the sun comes up looking for prostitutes and abandoning our wives.

Women: AMEN!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to cheat in school.

Congregation: huh?

Victor: I said Jesus doesn't want us to cheat in school. Its a sin and its wrong.

Congregation: Umm...no its not.

Victor: Yes it is. You're stealing knowledge that is not your own and lying to you teacher saying it is yours.

The sermon ended pretty abruptly after that as THE CONGREGATION SHOUTED DOWN VICTOR UNTIL HE STOPPED! It was remarkable. I've never seen anything like it. The only way you could have made a group of people angrier is by showing up and your home-school co-op meeting and reading your book report on Harry Potter. It was that outrageous. People did NOT want to hear that cheating in school is a sin.

I'm not going to say the girls are the only people that cheat. There's a fair amount of cheating among the boys too, the difference is the boys will usually put in a good amount of effort exhausting themselves first before taking somebody else's answer. They at least try to get from point A to point B before copying the answers. The girls? They aren't aware that point A exists, they just want to get right to the end.

Yep, the girls...

We do study hall every night after dinner. Its mandatory. The girls (particularly anybody in 8^th grade or higher) have an extreme fear that I will see them flat out copying somebody else's work or assignment and then tear it up. One day I had a particularly tense fight with of the oldest girls here that revolved around the fact I had no right to tear up her work something-something-something and cheating is not wrong blah-blah-blah. She loudly announced to everybody that I was wrong and she was going to have the last word and copy the assignment again and was going to turn it in. Unfortunately for her, my pride, getting the better of me, wouldn't allow her to have the last word. I found her backpack before she went to school and wrote in pen across her assignment, “Dear Teacher, I want you to know that I am lying to you. This is not my work and I stole it from somebody to else. You may give me the grade I deserve. Thanks.” She didn't discover it till she got to school and returned to tell Marta, another staff member, what I had done. Once Marta stopped laughing she told the girl cheating was wrong.

Some of you are no doubt complaining that I'm really hurting the kids by not letting them turn if plagiarized work or that I'm making mountains out of molehills by making so much out of a multiplication table competition. The math camp itself, like many of my other social experiments around here, wasn't the point I was making to them. There are lots people that don't know how to multiply. Multiplying is probably not the most important skill they learn in school. My mom doesn't know how to multiply. The difference is she's a librarian and it doesn't come into play that often. She has yet to tell me a story that involves somebody walking in with a book saying, “I really like this one, but I think I'd like it twice as much if the Dewey Decimal was twice as big. Can you help me with that.” I'm sure at some point in history somebody has said that, but because my mom does not work in the same neighborhood as Jeff Foxworthy I'm sure she'll NEVER hear that.

The point is that folk here, especially the girls, have found a system that works not because it is a shortcut. It allows them to both give up when things get hard and still come close to actually succeeded by copying the work, which in their minds is the same thing as if they had actually done if for themselves. It is an uphill battle. It is an uphill battle on an icy slope with a giant cliff at the bottom that has major consequences.

What is worse is the absolute honest shock when anyone (girls or boys) fail a test or course or grade. And for the kids here that have failed, almost all the time they chalk it up to bad luck and the next year exhibit no extra effort or overwhelming desire to succeed at all costs, they just think that this year they DESERVE a passing grade after having failed the previous year. Its a big change, and some of the kids here really try hard and do an amazing job, even kids that are not as gifted at schooling or learning. But for many, when the going gets tough, they just find someone else to go in their place.

Of the girls, Tercia made it up through their sevens, and another girl made it up to here sixes. The two youngest girls in the competion, Mena and Ofeita, had a lot of fun practicing with each other and finished on their twos only after spending over a week trying to memorize their threes. The rest of them? Didn't even try. Not one of them. Didn't even approach me with a question. There was even a rumor for most of the competition that the winners would go to the coastal resort town of Pemba with me for a week. That didn't even motivate them.

At this point, at the end of our story, I usually coin some well thought out, elegant reason as to why the girls continue to display total apathy towards the system, but I don't have one. I should at least include some smart, well-crafted plan of action for how we're going to motivate the girls to get a work ethic and take the reins of their own future, but there isn't one.

Cause, you know, girls...

Math camp 2-and-a-half?

2011-11-19T13:12:00.000+02:00

Editor's note: Just me, TJ here. I have no editor. That's partly why things here get so long. For example, the math camp posts keep expanding. It was originally one part but because I'm so stubbornly long-winded (thanks, Parishes) I can't and don't want to trim it down. That's probably why I'll never write a book. When I go to turn in my transcript to my editor he's going to quit and change professions after he sees that of the first five volumes (not chapters) three are about Ken Griffey Jr., one is about Darkwing Duck, and the fifth is pretty much a giant rant about McDonalds discontinuing 29-cent hamburger night back in the '90s.

I know that you, the reader, don't have an unlimited attention span. I know, the internet is a big place. Why spend 10 minutes reading about what Jesus is doing in Mozambique when you could be looking at last nights box score or browsing funny pictures of cats or posting on your posting on your favorite Taylor Swift message boards? (Oh hey! What's up 14-year-old girl demographic!) Heck, even my own mother will sometimes say, “I read something about that on your site and then gave up when it got too long.”

I normally try to keep the content maxed at two or three pages when I draft here on my typewriter, or about 1500 words. This second part of math camp clocked in at over 1800 words. Heck, this little side note here is an additional 331 words. That's a lot! Now it's gonna be three parts long. If it keeps growing exponentially, next time it's gonna be 7 and then after that be the running dialog into 2013 at which point the website will change from “TJ goes to Africa” to “That one time TJ did math camp and won't shut up about it”-dot-com.

Thanks for reading about us. Thanks for praying for us. Thanks for supporting us.

A very Scooby Doo health update

2011-11-16T18:05:00.000+02:00

Well, its been a rough-and-tumble couple of weeks. I think the best way to describe it would be by comparing it to a typical episode of Scooby Doo. “Really, TJ? That's how your gonna describe it?” Oh yes. Yes I am.

If you're unfamiliar with the general plot progression of a typical episode of Scooby Doo I'm sure you can zip on to youtube and find a million of them right now. Here's how it works. Every episode starts out with the gang going somewhere when the Mystery Machine breaks down and they get stranded at [an abandoned mill]. At first the gang is distressed, but relieved to be somewhere that has other people. That is usually when the locals come and and say something like, “It's be best to get as far away from here as possible. Don't you know about [the swamp thing]? Its been terrorizing the town for weeks.

Fred eventually says something like, “Hey gang, lets get to the bottom of this.” And Shaggy and Scooby make some remark about going to regret that decision. Eventually the gang has a run in with whatever spooky thing is in question and they catch [old man Smithers, the ex-foreman]?! Velma explains why it was obviously this person, Shag and Scoob high five that they can go back to eating cheeseburgers, and Daphne... come to think of it, what did Daphne ever bring to the table? Fred at least drove (and wore ascots).

Its right about then that you start saying to yourself, “There's no way [old man Smithers] really did it. I can't prove it, but if the case is really shut what are we going to do for the next 25 minutes that this episode is on? It can't be 5 minutes of crime fighting and 25 minutes of Shaggy and Scooby eating cheeseburgers, can it? They haven't even had their signature chase down a halfway of doors yet. They obviously didn't catch the right guy and had better get back to work.”

Before you know it, the gang goes back to enjoying their time at [the abandoned mill] only to discover that [the swamp thing] still exists and they had better catch it for sure. Hilarity ensues, Velma loses here glasses and Scooby's [swamp thing trap] ends up catching the thing that they find out that it wasn't really [old man Smithers] after all. It was really [the real estate mogul that wanted to turn the mill into a haunted house].

As an adult watching the show with your kids (or by yourself, that's cool too) three things are probably running through your head. The first is utter disbelief that Casey Kasem is really the voice of Shaggy. And the second thing is that how could your kid think for one second the first guy they caught was really the one that did it because, hey, 25 minutes of eating cheeseburgers. The third is why do they always think they'll have gotten away if not for these meddling kids. What is it these kids do that real police are not capable of?

I'm guessing that you are nowhere close to putting the dots together and mainly just wondering why I spent the last 500+ words shoddily describing every Scooby Doo episode ever. Well, it helps describe the progression of my health the last several weeks. At least in my mind it makes great sense, but that could be a result of the toll the last two weeks (or 25 years) have taken on me.

It was great that Christina got sick first. Not for her obviously, but for me. I thought. Maybe. Sure, she spent three days in the hospital recuperating, but I got into the clinic and out in less than three hours with the same diagnosis knowing what I was expecting. I caught [the swamp thing] in the first five minutes of the episode and was ready to get out of dodge and eat cheeseburgers for 25 minutes. Figuratively. Very figuratively.

Getting diagnosed and put on antibiotics in the wee hours of Sunday/Monday kept me fine till maybe Thursday. Thats when I started feeling markedly worse. By late Saturday I was in a bit of pain and having massive diarrhea again and a bit of a fever so I had friend take me down to the clinic to get more blood work down. (Medical services here are just kind of ala cart. You walk in and ask, “Give a blood test” and then they do it. You also sometimes have to interpret the results yourself.)

Having determined that the infection was way down and my white blood cell count was normal, I though it would be just a phase of the recover. One of my friends that took me to the hospital, his wife had the same thing last month and it took her over 3 weeks to beat this thing. Christina on the other hand was looking much better after only a week and seemed normal, so I was wondering where I, a healthy, manly young man, would fit in.

Where I would fit in was, after spending an hour or two on Skype Sunday night telling people how well I was doing, abruptly left those conversations and than collapsed with severe dehydration brought on by four days of intense diarrhea. I am not joking when I say it was the most intense pain I've ever felt in my life as my entire body cramped and spasmed uncontrollably until making it to the hospital (what felt like) hours later until they gave me an I.V. and a couple injections in my butt and tried to control my fever of 103deg.

This would be [the swamp thing] roaring back to life after thinking I had captured [old man Smithers] or whatever his name is. After a week of antibiotics and medicine and thinking it was just a gnarly case of paratyphoid, it turned into a GNARLY case of paratyphoid. To know how bad paratyphoid is, just think A) typhoid! That doesn't sound very good, does it. And the only word that shows up more than typhoid on it's own wikipedia page is salmonella, so B) salmonella! The only time I ever hear about salmonella in the States is when somebody gets like a $1M settlement from Taco Bell for getting sick, overlooking the fundamental flaw that the “victim” was willing to eat at Taco Bell in the first place.

(Editors note: Too bad there was no way to get the typhoid and salmonella to work against each other. I was reading a couple of months back about an experimental trial in which the “doctor” used HIV to attack and cure a patient's leukemia. Too bad that sounds REDICULOUS. Imagine hearing this from your doctor: “Yeah, so it appears you have breast cancer, but we're gonna give you some Ebola and that's gonna clear it right up by morning. Maybe...”)

So how is TJ now? Worlds better. I spent three days in the hospital getting constant I.V. bags and antibiotics directly pumped into me. Because, you know, severe diarrhea and dehydration for four days! And three days in a Mozambican clinic was quite enough for me, I'll tell you that. I came home a week ago Tuesday and have been resting up and getting my strength and weight back little by little each day. To give you an idea what the dehydration had suddenly done to me, I checked into the hospital the same weight I entered high school in. Granted, I entered high school 5'9” and fat, but now I'm 6'3” and handsome (take my word for it). That just ain't right.

The takeaway from the story is that, aside from being at the sickest point of my life, I was well taken care of. When people get sick here we always buddy them up because things can turn really bad in a heartbeat, so the whole week before (and after) my hospital visit there were people around helping me and checking in on my and minding me., and its great how when people are really down the kids all pitch in to help. The second takeaway from the story is that I've got some great friends here that several times dropped everything in the middle of the night to drive me to the hospital, (because Victor was in Zimbabwe). The third takeaway is that there is really a great community here that we've built up. Both weeks I was in bed sick there was at least a daily visit from a neighbor, a pastor, friends from the barrio, the kids' friends from school, that were all coming by to visit and pray with me and for me and offer to help out around the house. God's grace was very evident these last couple weeks and its very plain to see there there's lots of people here that really care about me.

So whats next? Barring any relapse, I need to be getting my strength back. I'm eating well and just being patient as my body is recuperating. I've been back home for 8 days now and Monday I managed to walk out the the market for the first time. Today, I went around the city doing some grocery shopping. It left me pretty tired though and I've just spent the rest of the day lying around (and thinking about Scooby Doo). I could still use prayers that I can get back to full speed, because I still feel only around 50% energy wise.

Service With A Smile - Health Update

2011-11-01T14:42:00.000+02:00

In the first several centuries of Christiany (and even in modern times, though often not publicized) some Christian communites had the hallmark of always being sick. They weren't identified as people who always wore WWJD bracelets or attended every single conference to come through town or be annoying by responding, “I think you meant to say Merry Christmas.” when people use “happy holidays”. The reasons for this was that, as you can imagine, people were diseased a lot (there's a reason life expectancy for much of human history was only 40 years until the last century or so) and the folks that stepped in to care for and minister to the sick were the Christians. They'd not only say, “Let me tell you about Jesus,” they'd also say, “I'll take care of you.” Because of this, it was often these same Christians that would themselves get sick by taking care sick people they were ministering and evangelizing to.

I'm not saying this to try to make myself sound super awesome or martyr-ey in any way, I'm just saying that service (aka worship) can and should involve sacrifice. Even if it's unintended.

OK. Enough prose, cause I'm pretty exhausted. Last week a boy here had a really bad case of diarrhea and was in the hospital. One night he pretty much exploded all over his sheets and clothes. Not a pretty site. While Marta took him to the hospital I spent the morning washing his sheets and clothes and helping clean up his bed. Celso got better, and I got worse.

Based on what we can figure out, I am Patient Zero. However, I was not the first to show symptoms. Christina started feeling sick and spent all day Sunday with diarrhea and vomiting and went to the clinic with Victor on Sunday night when it was clear this was not a normal case of diarrhea. So when I started experiencing all same symptons at about midnight I wasted no time in calling for Victor to come get me to join the party at the clinic.

We figure that Christina had contact with me and only started showing symptoms first because she already was fighting another infection. Because of my contact from helping Celso I was probably the first carrier. What we've got is typhoid-salmonella. Its technical name in English is paratyphoid, which is borne of a strain of salmonella bacteria, but that doesn't mean we're only para-sick or para-miserable. I got discharged only few hours after getting diagnosed and was back home by 5am on Monday with medication, at which point we filled all the kids on to what was happening and started an orphanage-wide cleaning of absolutely everything except the dirt. So far nobody else has gotten sick, so we're very thankful for that.

As for now, I've got just a huge feeling of malaise. I'm exhausted constantly and have a small but nagging stomach discomfort and no appetite, which is bad because I really need to eat a lot. Christina is doing much worse than I and as of now (Tuesday afternoon) they still have her at the clinic under observation. We both could use prayer but especially her as (unless I turn for the worse) she has a longer road to recovery.

What is mildly amusing about the situation is that Sunday night I was talking with friends on skype saying how awesome it has been health-wise because not since my infection in April and the wedding debacle in July have I even had a runny nose. Not two hours later I feel like that dude in Alien as the alien is exploding out of his stomach. Yah, on second thought, not mildly amusing at all.

Thanks for keeping us in prayer and for all the notes of encouragment and especially all my Nampula friends that have been calling/stopping by to check up on me.

I'll try to keep folks updated, but expect content to really slow here till I get better. Caio.

Math Camp Pt II- The Why

2011-10-28T13:39:00.002+02:00

Things get hard and people quit. Its just a fact. It's why New Year's resolutions sound great in January but come February you've forgotten all about it. It's why for the smoker every other cigarette is his last and the drinker always promises himself just one more. It's why people abandon Jesus as soon as he starts to tearing away the idols in their lives. Others give up before they get started because they're afraid of encountering difficulty (or failure). It's why that test will get studied for tomorrow. It's why a workaholic dad says he'll start spending time with his kids once they're older and can appreciate it more.

There's millions of examples of why people quit or don't even get started to ever have a chance to quit. Let's not even consider prospects of failure. I'm not talking about failure. A lot of times failure would be preferred over doing nothing.

I'm done pontificating for now. Lets get back to math camp. As you'll recall, we finished our multiplication table competition with exactly 8 kids completely memorizing all their numbers. Keep in mind that there's over 40 kids here that were capable of performing this task. I figured if the kid can count to one-hundred its totally doable to take an average of two or three days to memorize a set.

And now, as promised, I'll explain why so few kids achieved this herculean feat. (A good writer should never explain when he's being sarcastic, but I'm not a good writer and that last sentence is pretty dang sarcastic.)

I made the kids do their numbers in order so there was no skipping around and reciting your tens first. Like I alluded to before, a majority of the kids zoomed right through their times tables till they got to four. Up to this point, they could pretty much count by twos or threes to recite the table, but counting by fours took a little more concentration that they didn't have. Most struggled to memorize their fours for a day or two, and once they had that done there was no problem reciting their fives. After all, counting by fives is almost as easy as counting by twos or tens.

After a kid would reach his fives, something just clicked. Its like they had been satisfied with that and just stopped. They quit. Almost all of them. I think maybe one or two kids tried doing the sixes, failed, and just stopped at that. At this point the kids took a little longer to recite, often taking a day or two to study and failing the first several times they tried.

Like I said; when the going got tough, just stopped going. And they were content with that, stopping at their fives and not even trying the sixes. They justified it by saying the prize is probably a can of pop or a pat on the back or something inconsequential.

Some people will try to tell me that since they're only kids and I needed a bigger carrot to hang on the stick or you made the focus on the work when it needs to be on the reward. Or that it was too tough for them. I refuse to believe that by saying we had two second graders who got the prize and nobody older than eight grade wanted to be “bothered” with the silly contest. They're ones I was aiming it at. Remember those kids that didn't want to be bothered. They are major point number one.

So when it finally came time to collect our prize, I headed out with Manuel, Mauricio, Samito, Riquito, Victor, Dionisio, and Merecido. One had to do something the band that day and couldn't come. When I asked them what, as a group, they really wanted, they all responded with shorts. The kids have plenty of clothes, but unfortunately we don't always get to pick what gets donated. The last time a big donation came somebody (I think maybe World Concern) dropped off khakis and polos. They are the best dressed orphans I've ever seen (have I seen that many?) but don't have lots of options when it comes to playing around. So we decided some shorts would be well deserved accomplishing this mathematical feat. (By the way, those khakis and polos we got? There was over 100kg / 220lbs of them. Clothes are bought by weight here. Maybe someday I'll explain it...)

Anyhoo, of all the boys that gave up on their multiplication tables, only one of them made it past the fives. Celso made it all the way to eleven before throwing in the towel! He did his elevens and the next day tried once do his twelves, failed, and announced that he didn't feel like he needed more and he'd merited his award. I cautioned him against this thinking (he's about 14 years old) but he insisted on sitting idle the final two weeks without doing anything. TWO WEEKS he had to finish just his twelves and he didn't want to be bothered with trying. When the boys that won came back with their shorts, Celso proceeded to bang on my door and (angrily) ask where his shorts were. I calmly told him that the shorts were only for people that finished the contest. He (angrily) protested that he did and should get it. After lots of tricky wording about how eleven is not the same thing as twelve otherwise it would be called twelve and how there is no prize for people that failed, Celso (did I mention he was angry) slammed my door and said that he didn't want any shorts from this [expletive] competition anyways. Remember him. He is major point number two.

If you've been paying attention to the details, you'll notice that's there's lots of talk about boys. All the people that won the contest were boys. You might be asking yourself if the girls were prohibited from participating in math camp and if TJ is sexist. The answers are no for the former and only a little bit for the latter.

The short story is the girls didn't even try. Exactly two of them tried. One made it to the fours and the other to the sevens before giving up. And when I say tried, I mean even to count by twos they refused. They even accused me of trying to scam people. I asked them what the scam was and apparently I was making them better at math to make my job easier. Imagine that. Getting people to learn is suddenly a crime. Granted, the girls weren't in a great mood from all the boys making fun of them for knowing nothing. Remember the girls as the third major point. We'll cover that in the next installment.

I don't know if some of the things here describe all kids everywhere or just the ones I have here, but they certainly are emblematic of major behavioral patterns within the culture in Nampula. Here, I'm gonna try to be brief.

Main Point Number 1: Like the boys who did some of the table, people just quit when things get hard. Or, as is more common, they are looking to see if the reward is going to be worth all the effort. If they don't see it as some huge gain for them they're not going to do it. I know all these kids very, very well. For some reason there are several kids that have managed to get all the way to eighth grade being illiterate. And I don't mean functionally illiterate, I mean really illiterate. They've never seen or considered how reading will benefit them and they just learned to read until it got too difficult and quit there.

Honestly, it is hard to show them lots of examples of how working hard will get them somewhere in life, because so much of the system is bent against them that success stories are few and far between. I often try to tell people that work is its' own reward. It is a platitude I've heard hundreds of time, but unfortunately gets translated as “work rewards itself”, which is just confusing, or as “the reward of work is work”, which is just depressing if you really think about it.

Major Point Number 2: The other problem is that people think getting close is good enough. Celso had convinced himself he was getting the prize for finishing close and was shocked to find out he didn't. This is how they justify failure. They literally say they didn't fail, that they did it, just not all of it. This is a constant fight we have here all the time as we bring in people to do work here (fix the dents on the car, rewire our power box, build a security wall) and think that getting it close is okay and are offended when we want them to do a good job. Sometimes they'll leave without getting paid, refusing to finish a job until weeks later when they have no means and need the money.

When the kids' grades come out every-other month the group that has passing notes gets a coke with a big 'ole chicken dinner. That was great after the first trimester. Tons of kids got the prize. Then I said that for the second trimester you only got the prize if you had a C average with no F's. If you think people were angry when I told them they needed to raise their average from a D to a C you should have seen the vitriol when only 12 kids received the prize. The rest were upset because, in the school system, D is an average grade that 80% of the kids get. Complaints ranged from “My teacher says it's practically a C.” all the way to “It's good enough to pass, why isn't it good enough for you?” and even “Then I'm going to talk to my teacher to get him to raise my grade.”

Yah. Try telling you teacher to raise your grade on account of your guardian thinks you need to be doing better in school.

The point is, people like doing the minimum and think that failure is acceptable. When a kid is failing half his subjects, he thinks he's going to move up a grade at the end of the year because the other half of the subjects are passing. They may pass in a sissy-fied, over-emotionally protective American school where every child is a snowflake and needs to be loved and nurtured, but that doesn't work here where people fail in school. We try to set a very high standard for the kids here because we know an high level of education and good work ethic will be there best chance for finding a job. Sadly, many kids don't see it as unattainable, they see it as unnecessary.

Next time, get reason number three: Girls.

Yaaaaaay Math Camp!

2011-10-24T21:37:00.001+02:00

Math camp is that magical time of year when, out of school, you go with all your friends for a week of fun and games and bonding and more mathematical formulae than you can shake a stick at. It is as much as an essential part of growing up as losing your baby teeth or taking family road trips.

What? You never went to math camp growing up? That's OK, neither did I. But our kids here have. Let me tell you about Math Camp '11.

Several months back during their school break I did math camp with the kids. It was primarily out of a desire to create a positive incentive for the kids to do something academic. The idea wasn't even to do a full-fledged summer-camp math oriented program. I wasn't going to whip out math skits or math games or math movie nights or math-themed food or anything. The weeks revolved around one very simple, simple prop. A chart.

The idea for the camp, the only idea for it, was to get the kids to memorize their multiplication tables. It was so simple a goal and had such valiant motives. The reason for getting kids to memorize multiplication tables was that, as I help kids with school, a whopping portion of the time is spent them counting on their fingers or drawing marks on paper until they reach the wrong answer (because they're never right). This includes the two 12^th graders we have.

If you ask a kid to multiply 6 with 7 they will make 6 groups of seven marks on their paper and then go back and count the total number of marks. Even at that they are guaranteed to skip a number counting and get the wrong answer. If you take away their pencil they'll hold out 6 fingers and attempt to count through them 7 times. This method always results in them forgetting how many time's they've counted and arriving at the wrong answers. (More often they just forget to stop counting and when they hit 100 decide to go give up and ask somebody else to do it. I'd say 80% of the time spent helping a kid on math homework is waiting for them to count or multiply. Its a waste of my time and of the other kids that need help with things other than math. And if the problem has division, forget about it.

Christina lent a hand and made a great looking chart we hung in the dining hall to keep track of all the kid's progress. The chart soon became more of talked about fixture than leg/lamp from “A Christmas Story”.

What is it? What is it? Well it's an award, you know...like a statue.

Don't touch it, Ralphie.

It had each of their names down the side and across the top the numbers 1-12. To get a star under the ones they had to recite 1x1=1, 1x2=2 until 1x12=12. The same thing for twos all the way to twelves. If they couldn't remember the numbers they'd already done they wouldn't get a star next to their name on the chart. For example, it Manuel is reciting his sevens, after I may ask him 3x4, 5x8, and 6x12 to make sure he didn't forget his threes, fives, or sixes.

On the first Saturday of their school break I gave them the instructions and put up the chart in the dining hall and explained that whoever memorized their multiplication tables up through the twelves would get to go with me for the prize. I didn't tell them what the prize was because, really, it depended on how many people earned it. I decided to put up $100 towards the prize. If all the kids did it, it meant they were each probably gonna get a coke and a new pair of sandals. If only one kid did it, it meant we were gonna partay*. I left myself a little wiggle room and really got them excited with the ambiguity of a prize that was so awesome I couldn't tell them for fear of spoiling the surprise.

*Hi Grandma, how you doing. Its me, TJ. I just wanted to fill you in on some of the hip, new lingo the kids are using these days. The word “party”, when spelled with an additional “a” as printed above, is meant to reflect not a normal party, but a top-rung, barnstorming good time.

I quickly learned after the first weekend who was going to have no problem with this. By the time dinner rolled around on Sunday there had been two kids that finished the whole table, up to 12x12. They were both older and had already memorized their multiplication tables just by having been in school as long as they had and actually trying this whole time.

The thing is they were the only two kids that aced the table right away, so the next three or so weeks was packed full of kids coming to me at all times of the day trying to recite their table and getting frustrated when they would forget or I'd catch them counting on their fingers or their friends giving them the answers. For many of them it was actually great seeing them remark, “My homework is becoming so much easier, why didn't we do this program sooner.”

After three weeks and seeing kids struggle and fight and, dare I say, have fun memorizing their multiplication table, we made it to the last day the contest. It was an afternoon of action and nervous anticipation and there were three kids still fighting to finish their table. The only thing more nerve racking than going down to the wire to win an “awesome prize” is having to do it as fifteen spectators silently watch to see if you remember that 12x9=108 and so forth. All three got it before the deadline of dinner and got the chart marked off and a star added to their name and put on the list of grand prize winners. This brought the total number of kids that memorized their times tables to eight!

Eight kids? Only eight kids memorized their times tables?

Next time, find out why.

Prayer Requests Oct 2011 - Pt II

2011-10-17T15:43:00.005+02:00

[For some reason the blogger program is not liking when I do scheduled posts anymore. This one was automatically set to go out Wednesday with another set for today, Friday. When I plopped on my site today I noticed it did not automatically post itself, a recurring problem lately. Instead you'll get this today and the next one either Saturday or next week, depending on when I remember to post it.]

I play solitaire on the computer every now and then. Its really just to pass the time as I load web pages. With our slow internet in Africa, in the 30 seconds it takes to load the stats from last nights baseball games I'd rather be doing even the tiniest thing than just staring at a blank screen. I have the solitaire on the computer set so that it turns over three cards at a time from the deck and I can't undo moves. I figure if I was playing with physical cards I couldn't undo to the start of the game, so why should I on the computer. The game is also wired to tell me when there is no more moves and I have no chance of winning the game. This saves me from turning through the deck five or six times till I realize I've lost.

The other day I turned to play a new hand as I was reading about that extremely hilarious Iranian-Saudi assassination plot. As I started a new game, the little animation of shuffling the cards happened, it dealt out the cards, and then popped up a message. The message said there were no more available moves and the game was over. I had lost the game. I had lost the game before I even started it! It actually took me back a bit. The solitaire didn't even give me the chance of clicking through the deck to see if there was a card to play or not. And since I was not in control of the game and playing with physical cards I couldn't just turn down one card or shuffle the un-dealt cards. I was shocked, and a little mad that I didn't even get a fair chance. From the very start there was nothing to do.

School can be like that sometimes. Here, at least. I know that many of you are thinking, “Yeah, school is/was totally unfair sometimes.” But whatever ever teacher you swear had it in for you is just scratching the surface of what things can be like here. Kids that can't read or write pass at the end of the year simply because a teacher doesn't want to teach them again while kids at the top of the class are failed because their success and ability to get a job threatens the privileged status of the teachers themselves. Sending a parent to talk with the administration doesn't result in the parent becoming an advocate. It results in the child having a target put on it's back for the parent's haughtiness. If you don't have enough money for a bribe at the end of the year you risk failing because the higher grades have a certain quota of kids that are allowed to pass. Kids often will go weeks without seeing their teacher because the teacher has come down with malaria, is visiting another province, is taking a quarter off, or is too drunk to remember they have a job---during all of which you will not even have a substitute. And when classes are over 60 people there is no space for you to sit in another class.

We were told from a teacher at the high school that the headmaster held a meeting and told the teacher to make life hard for the kids from our orphanage because she thought that life is too easy for us and we need to be reminded how life is really like. On one hand, yes, we are very blessed here. On the other hand, try telling someone here who watched their father murder their mother that life is too easy. Or try telling that to children that were denied education because they were locked inside and used to make beer. Or try telling that to someone that watched their family die one-by-one until they were alone and unwanted.

So what am I trying to say? Sometime the deck is intentionally stacked against you so that there is no way for you to win. Other times, it just comes down to luck.

At the end of the school year the difference between passing or failing can come down to whether the teacher remembers your name, whether or not you spurned any sexual advances they made on you, or if you happened to spell the name of your school correctly on your final exam. Since I've started working with kids on their schoolwork I've gotten to know each one and all of their strengths and weaknesses. Last year I arrived as kids were taking their exams and there was not much I could do to even give them a crash course. Since then, I can tell you that we have kids that are functionality illiterate pass with great marks and kids who all their schoolmates would say are the brightest in their class fail in spectacular fashion. Not all is unfair, however. We also have lots of smart kids that earn their teachers' praise and not-so-smart kids that earn their teachers' ire.

School is wrapping up this week for all the kids here. For many, this will be their last official week of class. Unofficially, most of their teacher stopped showing up two weeks ago and the kids has been sitting around ever since. I wouldn't have a problem with the slacking attendance if this was the only time of the year it happened. The kids have 2, two-week breaks during the year which are unofficially four-week breaks because the weeks before and after the teachers skip out early and come back late.

For most of the kids now, all there is to do is sit around and wait to hear whether or not they passed. And since the system is the exact opposite of transparent, there's no such thing like asking to see grades on final exams or seeing how your grade was calculated. For many of our kids, passing is contingent on taking national exams at the end of the year. Unfortunately, for our kids in five kids in 2nd grade, one in 5th, seven in 7th, two in 10th, and two in 12th grade, They will now sit without doing anything for OVER THREE WEEKS before they start this process. I'll try my best to keep them acclimated to school and acctually thinking, but its not easy as the kids themselves have already mentally checked out.

I am glad that school is out. The year was pretty exhausting managing the kids and schedules and study hour and lessons and recess... it was a lot. They all attend school, but as school lasts for only 3 hours a day I try to do a lot in house to supplement what they're (not) getting. But we're not out of the woods yet. Even after the year is finished, if it's like last year, we'll wait until January to hear their grades. The system is very disorganized and understaffed. I won't say underfunded, because it is funded. (The funds are just misappropriated). Last year we waited until 10 days before the start of school before the national head of education announced when the new school year would start.

Here is how you can pray for us as we wrap up another school year here in Nampula at the orphanage:

There are many injustices in the school system, and I've barely scratched the surface. Pray that at we await grades and results that the kids who have studied and worked hard would be rewarded and receive justice and their rightful grades.

For the kids who have struggled in school and need to make progress, pray that they would receive mercy and be able to move up a class.

Last year we had 6 kids that failed and held back to repeat a grade. Yes, unlike wussy America, kids get failed here and held back. Of these, I believe only two really did not deserve to fail. That means that four kids deserved it. I also think there are three more kids that did not fail but should have, and are still in danger of failing this year. They are not failing because they are discouraged, but because they are complacent. So pray against complacency in those that struggle in their schoolwork. When a kid fails fifth grade for the second time and is on pace to finish grade ten by the time they are thirty years old it becomes difficult for them to motivate themselves. (More on that later in the week). Things get hard and people quit to find something easy, and school is hard so I'll just find something easier. That is the mindset of many a kid here.

Kids taking exams will sit upwards of three weeks out of school. Pray against laziness and complacency. And pray for me to have the energy for just three more weeks to keep them going on their studies.

The deck stacked against these kids here, and many of them understand that. They know that many times from the very start there is no way to win. It is discouraging. Pray that God opens up avenues for those in danger of failing to pass, and for those that are successful to be recognized for it.

Prayer Request October 2011 - Pt I

2011-10-15T09:51:00.001+02:00

Here's some prayer requests that we have over the next couple of weeks. There also kind of what has been kind of the main theme of what has been happening here on a day-to-day basis.

Truck Repairs: They are actually really going great. We found the windshield for the truck and it was the correct one (and expensive). The body work is mostly all done and we were painting it today. What remains is to assemble the cab and dash. We stripped all that out, so right now the cab is just a big glossy empty shell. Hopefully within a week we'll be up and running, but realistically with the way delays just naturally occur here I'm thinking it'll be 2-3 weeks before we're back on the road.

Rain: It hasn't come yet, and water has been shut off to our neighborhood for about a week. That being said, we were doing better than other bairros that haven't had water for about two months. Statistically speaking, in about a month we should be out of the rainy season. The drought hasn't effected us thanks to our well, but it has resulted in long lines of neighbors waiting to use it.

Typically, water gets shut off (for individual areas of about 10,000 people each) for three primary reasons. They are that people don't pay their bills, people break open the water mains to get free water, or drought. Right now we are in the last two reasons. Unfortunately now when the water gets turned off for drought, people break open all the mains to access any water they can, which results in nobody getting water that is “downstream”. It also results in flooded streets and unusable water after it gets turned back on.

Out in the districts where there is no water utility, it just means there's no water right now.

My foot: This prayer request is not for healing necessarily, its for TJ to use common sense and stay off his injured foot. I bruised my foot a couple of weeks ago playing soccer and haven't had the good sense to stay off of it for a couple of days. I thought I finally beat the system this last time when my foot was almost all better so I decided to wear shoes while playing soccer so nothing would happen to it. It was the first time I've played soccer in shoes in over a year. Consequently, it was also the first time I've been running in shoes in over a year. I'm convince the muscles used are completely different because I never am tired the day after playing soccer normally, and here I am still sore down to my bones 3 days later. And my foot got worse. I need to just not play for a couple weeks to fully heal my bruised foot.

New kid: We may or may not have gotten or been getting a new addition to the orphanage. Sound confusing? It is frustratingly so for us here, too.

We don't get new kids all that often. That is because we keep them until they are successful instead off setting them loose when they turn 14 so there just aren't many vacancies. It is also because we have a really high retention rate. We are not a hotel and we are not baby-sitters. Kids can not check in and out as they please. We take in kids when they are younger and work with them and teach them about Jesus so that we don't wake up one day saying, “Well, looks like Billy murdered somebody. Might be time for him to set out on his own.” We are not a lawless lord-of-the-flies orphanage like many others in the city are.

That being said, we know that kids with needs are in never-ending supply. Its just that we're pretty maxed-out on resources here and can't scoop them all in. There is also a lot of consideration that comes with taking a kid in here. We are welcoming them into our family and far too often people come to us saying they know of kids because they are trying to take advantage of us. Are this kids the one suffering? Yes. It is a very difficult situation to explain---there aren't any set criteria for letting a new kid come live in the orphanage. Families all over the place here have no means to take care of themselves much less their own children much less their nephews or nieces that live with them.

We also want the kids maintaining their connections with their blood-family, but when the family is advising them to steal money or food from the orphanage they don't have the kids' best interests in mind. When the family is encouraging the kids to engage in the sort of behavior that can get you HIV, they don't have the kids' best interests in mind. When the family is telling the kids that they are being used by us to make ourselves rich and to spread rumors, they don't have the kids' bests interests in mind.

The flip side of the coin is that we can't force anybody into the orphanage for the kid's best interest when we see that staying with the family is the thing that will destroy the child's life. A week ago a lady brought a girl to the orphanage that was living with a family that does not have her best interest at heart. Its actually a kid we've been trying to get into the orphanage for some time now. Allow me to explain.

Some time ago there was a girl that lived in our orphanage. Her name was Bionista and you briefly read about here on Victor and Christina's blog. She died about a year and a half ago, leaving behind a baby girl. This baby has been living with Bionista's aunt during this time. Meanwhile, Bionista left two sisters and a niece living with us still at Evanjafrica. We have all been pressuring the family to let the girl come and live here but up till now the family has had no interest in allowing this. That was until last Sunday, when the aunt showed up and asked for help taking care of the baby. Specifically, she asked for clothes for the baby.

And for a cellphone.

The cellphone was ostensibly to call and keep in touch with the baby and the three othher relatives here in the orphanage once she goes back to the village. Never-mind that the girls here don't have cellphones. Its good to know in a country where the average person survives on a dollar a day that a cellphone ranks at the top of the list of necessities. But, after some talking, we convinced the aunt that this is the best place for the child.

How could I make a judgment like that? The aunt has three kids living with her that aren't even her kids that do all the work (cooking, cleaning, laundry, farming) while her own children are living with some other relative performing the same function for them. That is very much the (tragic) normal for family live here, except life here is a little more brutal than cleaning the table and putting clothes in a machine and going to the grocery store. It's walking miles for water and then carrying 20 liters (45lbs) back on your head when you're 10 years old.

Were this little girl to stay with her family in the village the same fate would would apply to her---she would not be encouraged to finish school and would be married at too early of an age. Here she could be with her two aunts (ages 13 and 15) and one cousin (age 7) that love her dearly and would really want what is best for her. When the baby girl arrived here the, her relatives in the orphanage got everyone together and asked them to pray and give thanks to Jesus that the baby finally arrived in the orphanage.

The next day was spent mostly noticing how scared and frightened the baby was. You can tell how bad it must have been by the fact that the only things she was saying were phrases along the lines of “go away” and “I'm going to hit you”. Every kid when they get here has some variation of a look on their face that says they've been through far too much in too short of time. What's more is that for being 30 months old she was about the same size as Yohani, who is half her age. (Ton's of pictures on Victor and Christina's site for reference). And to top it all off she had a belly about the size of a basketball from malnutrition and worms.

Unfortunately, the story of potential redemption hit a false start. Barely 24 hours after arriving here, the relative came to take the child away. She claimed that it was because we would really just use the kid for our own evil machinations and she now needed to take the baby to the witchdoctor to undo all that we had done to it. In reality, she was trying to use us and in the future will use baby for her own benefit.

We have to right to demand a kid stay in the orphanage. The relatives have to sign off on it. There's no such thing as the government taking kids away here for poor living conditions. Truthfully, as far as living conditions go, to be living with an uncle or aunt where you are the one that does everything (laundry, farming, carrying two cases of beer on your head back from the store because your uncle is too drunk to remember his name) in and around the house, this baby's case is frighteningly normal in Nampula.

Pray for resolution and perseverance as we try to get this baby girl on the right track in life. I'm taking the long approach on this one and know that there are still several years left to bring the child in here before she gets too old to enter. Pray that God softens the hearts of the relatives and can do a miracle in this situation. Pray also for her family here with us in the orphanage, Anabela, Virginia, and Mena. Anabela, the oldest, was especially upset after this latest attempt and you can pray for her, and all of us, to have faith that God's will be done.

In Which Kids Fight Inanimate Objects

2011-10-12T15:19:00.004+02:00

The second had-to-be-there story this weeks comes from just a few days ago. But first, it involves knowing two of my favorite kids here: Jose (whom you've all met before In Which TJ discusses behavior) and his brother Jordao (The one about what Jordao wants to be when he grows up).

For those of you that forgot, Jose is mentally handicapped and we think physically too. We only think physically because legally he's 13 and currently the size of a 7 year old. He lost a tooth last week. A baby tooth. That he still had. He has problems talking due to his gigantic tongue and will probably remain in second grade the rest of his life (which if he remains the same size nobody will notice).

Jordao is in second grade with Jose, except he is a normal size, for a 14 year-old. (Jordao entered school last year for the first time as a 12 year-old in first grade and has a long way to go as far as catching up is concerned.) We last heard from him when he said when he grows up he want to be a pilot. Jordao has the problem of not being able to perceive communication. We're not sure if his difficulty is in the hearing or the thinking (thus wanting to be an airplane when he grows up).

Both Jordao and especially Jose are often the source of entertainment. This morning, I watched the two of the play soccer for about an hour. With only each other. It was the most heated match I've ever seen here---arguing and levying penalties for tripping (the ball was the one doing the tripping). Whenever somebody scored it was the most unbounded joy I've ever seen. And they played the entire length of our field (80 meters/88 yards).

Being here in the orfonato is the best environment for these two that society literally views as worthless. And here they are loved not just for being who they are, but also for the endless amount of entertainment they provide (see this morning's soccer game). They can also be very difficult and stubborn, but much of that is attributed to their mental conditions. They require a little more patience than normal kids do. They are also extremely attached to each other and live in a delicate balance of being one another's greatest friend, greatest protector/defender, and greatest tattle-teller.

Yesterday, Jordao got to do the tattling. When they came back from school Jordao ran up to me to tell me something really important. I was in a crowd of about five or six boys at that moment. Once Jordao finally caught his breath to be able to talk Jose came running up shouting his rebuttal before Jordao had even had a chance to speak. Unfortunately for us trying to understand what was going on, Jose was just shouting “Nuh-uh. He's lying.” over and over as loud as he could. Finally we got Jordao to start talking.

“Jordao, what happened in school today?” I asked. Jordao replied, “Today in school there was a fight.” I pressed Jordao, “Who was fighting?” Jordao said what we were all suspecting, “Jose was fighting.” So far Jordao that had said nothing we couldn't already have figured out from the protesting Jose. What Jordao said next surprised us.

“Jose was fighting with the pencil sharpener.” After a moment of stunned silence from us, the observers, we burst into laughter. This was just so hilarious for two reasons. The first was because we all know Jordao has a trouble with words. (Just the other day in church he came up to me to say that his bones hurt. And then when I asked him which bones he inexplicably pointed to one of the only parts of his body that doesn't have a bone, his nose.) We all figured that he meant to say the fight was about a pencil sharpener, so for him to say Jose was fighting with the pencil sharpener was beyond funny. The second reason that caused the laughter to continue for minutes on end was that we all pictured Jose actually fighting with the pencil sharpener. This is the same Jose that once spent fifteen minutes furiously wrestling against a jump-rope because he was practicing for snakes and then started crying when he lost and needed to be untangled!

We eventually figured out that Jose needed a pencil sharpener in school and wanted to borrow one from Riquito, boy in the orphanage in Jose's class. Jose, after being refuse and not understanding why, got upset and angry and upset and started demanding the pencil sharpener more and more (the difficult side of Jose's condition). Riquito eventually had enough of it and decided to start beating up Jose.

Most all the kids here, but not all of them, understand that Jose is a little different and requires more patience to deal with, so this is not a daily problem we're dealing with. When he used to get frustrated and angry we told him if he didn't stop that lions would come and take him away, but he wised up to that after a while. Now we're back to using just good old fashioned patience and love instead of implausible threats.

In Which We Practice Preparedness

2011-10-10T20:56:00.001+02:00

Every so often I worry about writing a story that is just too much of a “had to be there” kind of tale. The fear is mainly because I've been told I'm the king of had-to-be-there stories. However since this website is 95%* me telling you things because you can't be here I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't trying**. So since we're at it we might as well swing for the fences and go for broke. This week you're not going to get just one story, you're going to get two. Tune in tomorrow for the second one.

*The rest is 4% random pop-culture references and 1% passionate pleas for donations. Oh, who am I kidding. Its like 45% pop-culture references, 38% ramblings, and 17% head-scratching nonsense.

**Writing here is not my “job”, if I had a “job”, or if I considered it “writing”, or “trying”, hypothetically.

The first story I've been kicking around for a month or two waiting find some way to pair it as I don't feel its strong enough as a stand-alone story. By itself it's OK, but it really needs to be surrounded by other things or it has no real importance. Like an actor in an ensemble piece. Or salad.

This particular story takes place the night before we hosted a wedding reception at the orphanage. Victor had called all the kids into a meeting so we could talk about being on good behavior and dole out some jobs that would need to be taken care of the next day.

The thing about Victor is he is this weird, almost unnatural combination of personality traits. If there was a spectrum of attention span with one extreme being O.C.D. (obsessive and detail oriented) and the other extreme being A.D.D. (jumpy and unfocused) Victor would be 50% of each. But you wouldn't put a mark in the middle of the spectrum as a balance. You would put half a mark each on the the two extreme edges of the spectrum. Victor can be ridiculously detail-oriented but with a dangerously sharp fall-off in attention span.

That night in the meeting Victor just went around the room to the older kids handing out tasks. Saying things like, “You two need be at the gate telling cars where to park. Don't let them park in any spot they want---keep them orderly. You next three are in charge of water. Make sure we don't run out of drinking water and keep refilling the cooler. You two to stay in the dorms as security and make sure people don't wander in and start taking things.”

Then Victor turned to me and said, in English, “TJ, during the night you need to do a fire drill. Just go to the dorm in the middle of the night and blow a whistle and tell everybody to run because the dorm is on fire and see what happens.” Without skipping a beat he then went on to the next person and made them charge of checking the toilet paper supply throughout the next day. Some how, fire drills managed to jump into his frame of mind in being prepared for a wedding reception. Given my history with fire, it doesn't seem like a bad idea.

In case of emergency, break...something. What was it? Break down, break wind, breakfast, break glas----I remember: break dance. It's OK. Everything's gonna be fine.

Unfortunately, I am never doing an unplanned, unannounced fire drill. I really really really want to, but only because I think it would secretly turn into spontaneous hilarity (just like this). But something about running into a crowded movie theater and yelling “fire” sounds a little too much like RUNNING INTO A MOVIE THEATER AND YELLING FIRE. It will also turn me into the boy who cried wolf. Or man who cried fire. Or firewolves.

The internet search told me that there's no such thing as a firewolf, and the only pictures that came up were of actual wolves on fire. Here's a cute wolf puppy instead.

rawr.

When I did try to talk to the boys about fire safety I was quickly reminded by a group of boys that, "We don't need to worry about that. Most people here sleep so heavily that the fire will pass and they won't even wake up. They'll be fine." The next talk I had with the boys was about how fire works.

In Which TJ has blue eyes

2011-10-05T20:54:00.000+02:00

As I'm getting the papers together to renew my residency here in Mozambique, I was remembering back to a conversation last year with the case worker (if that's what you call them) that was processing my paperwork. It was a long process of me filling out forms and him reading back all my answers asking if they were correct or not. We did a few other trivial things like get pictures taken and do fingerprints, but mostly it was making sure that I knew how to write and he knew how to read, as most of the time was spent with him reading what I wrote.

We got through all the normal questions like where you home country is, where you residence is in Mozambique, what you do. Then this little conversation took place. My thoughts are presented in italics.

Case Worker: And your height is 190cm.
TJ: Yes, 190cm.
CW: Wow, that's very tall. And your hair is indeed brown?
TJ: You're looking right at me, how hard can this be.
TJ: Yes, my hair is brown.
CW: And your eyes are blue?
TJ: Yes, my eyes are blue.
CW: And your weight is--- wait. Your eyes are really blue?
TJ: Yes they are.
CW: That can't be right. Eyes aren't blue. Let me see.
TJ: He really wants to see my eyes I suppose---WOW that is some uncomfortable eye contact right there.
CW: No, your eyes are white, not blue.
TJ: What? Everyone's eyes are white. Look again.
TJ: And...there we go with super uncomfortable eye contact.
CW: You're right. They aren't white. They're black.
TJ: You're really gonna make this into a thing, aren't you?
TJ: Everone's eye's are black in the middle, they're blue outside of that.
CW: But I can't put blue, that's not an eye color. Choose white or black.
TJ:
CW:
TJ: Really? You can't put blue?
CW: Blue is not an eye color.
TJ: I pick blue.
CW:
TJ:
CW:
TJ: Stop staring into my eyes.
CW: Fine. Blue eyes.

In Which We Accidentally the Truck

2011-09-30T19:10:00.001+02:00

We accidentally what? The truck.

[Warning: rather long post.] Its been a flurry of activity the last two weeks here. Last week, as I mentioned, I was manning the fort as everyone else was at week-long seminars put on by various NGO's. That week went just fine. Then we pulled into a three-day weekend for Armed Forces day or something. That meant a little bit of housekeeping. I spent the whole day Saturday with the boys in the dorm as we pulled out everything for some good ol' fashioned cleaning. And when I say everything I mean everything. The girls were all watching and making fun of all the odds and ends that the boys were hoarding in there. Water bottles, toys, trinkets, bottle caps of all sorts (which are kind of used like currency around here) were found in their bunks as we cleaned out all the junk.

But the girls got their turn on the Monday holiday when Victor went through their house with them. They got the same treatment in their house while I got to do some much needed yardwork with the boys. I wanted to be there cleaning out the girls house with them, but lets face it, girls can be a little, ummm, touchy when it comes to going through their stuff. And I don't mean stuff in like all their clothes and things. I mean weird stuff. One girl was storing dozens and dozens of old toilet paper rolls. One girl had at least over a hundred pen caps that she had collected. Another yet had a backpack full of not books but pencil shavings. And those were just the girls over age 16 (seriously). The girls did not take to well to the non-stop shame and laughter that resulted from all the boys seeing tons of junk in their trunk because, well, girls.

After that, I spent about two days washing and sorting the old clothes and packaging them up do donate somewhere else (hundreds of kids just down the hill in the jungle would kill to wear good condition 3rd hand clothes). Because of those two days my house still smells “mountain fresh”, or however detergent is supposed to smell. I'm just glad that the detergent didn't smell like cake or cheeseburgers because boy would that make me hungry.

But today's post isn't about what I've been up to. Today's post is for the edification of all you out there. As one of the things I do a lot here at the orphanage is teach and give school lessons, I thought it about time a prepare a lesson for all of you faithful readers out there. This lesson addresses one of my grammatical / literary pet peeves. And I don't even like grammar, but this is still an annoyance of mine. Today, you are all going to learn about irony.

First, let us discover through some brief examples what irony is and, more importantly, is not. There are lots of types of irony, such as Socratic irony. This is when somebody pretends to be stupid and trap somebody else who doesn't yet know they're really the oness that are stupid. This would be like me asking, “Hey America, if we don't have any money left, why don't we just print more money?” Another example of irony is tragic irony. This is where a fictional character makes a decision that the audience knows will clearly end in disaster and so they scream at the TV as if the character can hear them saying, “No, don't do it [somebody from Twilight]. You know in your heart that [some other person from Twilight] is not right for you and you need to be with [yet another idiot person from Twilight].” Am I right, my 14 year-old girl demographic?

What we are focusing on today is situational irony. Lets have some examples first of what is not ironic.

Coincidence

A coincidence is two or more things that happen that are unrelated in causality. We have a fairly common example here at the orphanage with clothes. Because things get donated in bunches, its fairly common to see two or eight people wearing the same shirt on any given day.

Twinsies! (I'm the one on the left)

Here, Tercia and I are wearing the same t-shirt we got during a Christmas program last year. It would be wrong of me to say, “Oh look, Tercia. We're wearing the same shirt. How ironic.” This is coincidence, not irony. What would make the situation ironic is if I had decided to buy a different t-shirt that I was sure nobody else would have in order to be unique, and she also decided to buy a t-shirt with the same motive of uniqueness without knowing I had bought the shirt. The first day we both debut our new t-shirts discover the other has done the same would then be ironic because in our quest to be unique we ended up becoming more alike (you hear me, hipsters).

Synchronicity

No, not the album(s) by The Police. Synchronicity, as coined be Carl Jung, is two events statistically likely or unlikely to occur together in which, when occurring at the same time, have a perceived significance or “deeper meaning”. This is the secular term for what most of you are probably familiar with as Divine Providence.

For example, in cleaning out the dormitories this weekend we got rid of a lot of sheets for the beds that were no longer functional or just way too torn and tattered. We had no new sheets to give out, its just the old ones were unusable and needed to be trashed. When THE NEXT DAY a truck from World Vision comes by and drops by 5 huge boxes of sheets and blankets you would be incorrect to say, “Oh, how ironic of them.”

But would be correct to say, “Awesome! Divine Providence!”. (But only because if you were to say, “Awesome! Synchronicity.” you risk Sting appearing and singing Every Breath You Take.)

Irony

It's time to actually talk about irony. The key thing about situational irony is that it depends on causality. You try to avoid something and it happens in spite of yourself. Like a guy who is afraid of drowning so he takes swimming lessons and ends up drowning during the lesson, where as if he had just stayed home he wouldn't have drowned. Or that if Tammy Wynette, the country singer, had never sang and became famous for the song "Stand By Your Man" she never would have met and married (and later left) George Jones. Need another example?

This happened.

This week the truck got in an accident. Coincidental? Yes. There's a lot of people on the road here and statistically these things happen. What was nice was that we had just very recently paid accident insurance for the year. That makes it fall under that category of synchronicity / Divine Providence.

What tips the scales is that the reason the truck was in an accident is it was out doing extra work hauling goods to help earn back all the money we had spent on accident insurance. How ironic...

The truck is/was brand new and we practically drove it out of the factory two years ago when we bought it. This is the first accident to happen to it and thankfully the driver and passengers were okay. The truck had been going out the last week hauling goods to and fro to raise money. At the time I think it was carrying corn. The truck usually stays in around the orphanage and does work or errands or grocery shopping or trips to the dump (the “dump” is a ravine in the jungle near here). Its a blessing everyone was not hurt and, while it obviously sucks, we know God will get us through it.

The big obstacle is the insurance was not full coverage and only covers damage to the car we hit. The blessing is that we've looked most the damage over and it all appears to be structural, just a crumpled cab. We've been banging out dents and going away at it. Still it's gonna set us back a bit --- we'll need to replace the driver-side door, window, and windshield/screen.

We are currently figuring out how much we'll need to cover the door and glass. It won't be a fortune, but it won't be cheep. I will try my best to get more details out over our repairs in the coming days. This feels like a shameless plug, but a necessary one at that: If you feel like you would like to give to help support the repairs, we have our brand-new Evanjafrica Paypal account on the side you can click on. Once we figure out an estimate of the repairs I'll post it here for y'all to see. And as always, check in the mail works just as well.

And getting the Paypal account started last month to aid in the efforts would be an example of ~~synchronicity~~ Divine Providence.

In Which Everybody Knows TJ

2011-09-28T21:03:00.000+02:00

It turns out that not everybody is famous in a small town. I, however,am probably the exception. It is sometimes scary how popular I am. I mean, no complaints, but everybody here knows me. And when I say everybody I mean EVERYBODY. I made a list of all the some reasons why and examples of how I'm so well known.

I'm white. Lets just face it, I'm not hard to miss in a sea of black people. And albinos. They're not hard to miss either.

I'm tall. Even by U.S. standards I'm tall. And everybody here is much, much shorter on account of just being that way and receiving much, much worse nutrition during those first, oh, 18 years or so when nutrition is important to growing. I'm at least a head taller than everyone in our neighborhood. Combine that with the whole being white thing and it's pretty hard to miss me.

I take the bus. Seems innocuous enough, but the only other missionaries I bump into on the bus are nuns. The others all have cars. There's about 6 termini (end-of-lines) on the loosely organized bus routs here in Nampula, and I'm about a ten minute walk away from the end of one of those lines. And often, the buses won't go all the way to the end, they'll stop short and turn around depending on how well comported the driver is. It has gotten so that---I stopped wondering a long time ago---that all the bus drivers know where I live and won't slow down to pick me up. They'll just yell out the window and shout, “We don't stop [in my neighborhood].” It's not like I live in Compton or Detroit or Mexico, some place that everybody is afraid to go. They're just being courteous of telling me to wait for a bus that will take me all the way to where I want to go.

I'm fairly routine. I'm not nerdy or OCD, I just get habits that work. I do my grocery shopping on Fridays and stock up for the week. How consistent am I? So consistent that one week when I didn't go somebody from the small street market about a 5 minute walk from the orphanage sent somebody to see if I was alright!

Everybody in our neighborhood knows my name. Again, I'm not sure how and I stopped wondering a long time ago. But they also think I'm Christina's brother, so they're not all-knowing or anything. I try not to say much other than greeting and niceties to most the vendors because they all want to know way too much personal information. I noticed someone building a new market stand last week and so I stopped by. It turns out it is “owned” by somebody from my church. I stopped by and started talking to him and then all the other vendors looked at us rather shocked until someone finally blurted out, “We didn't actually think you spoke anything other than English.” Now everybody want to bend my ear about everything when I pass by the market, which is every time I need to catch the bus. (The guy from our church is too much of a goof to accurately describe with a few short words. The easiest think I can say is he doesn't know that he's a goof. We was super proud to show me his fruit stand and what it's going to look like when he finishes. When I asked him what he plans on selling he responded, completely serious, “I don't know yet. I want to finish this first then I'll start planting fruit.”)

I'll often walk the kids to school. Mainly its just fun for them to get dropped off for second grade and then wave bye to me in front of all their friends. Some of their friends will say thinks like, “Neato, isn't it just something that you've got a white guy walking you to school?!” I've been temped to respond with something like, “Golly, isn't it swell how you have parents?!” buts there's no way of doing that which doesn't make me sound like the biggest jerk this side I've the equator. Plus, it doesn't translate that well.

Somewhat startling, and this one puzzles me more than the others, is that their teachers know me too. I went to the primary school last month to do parent-teacher conferences from the second trimester. We have 20 kids that study at the primary school, where they are with the same teacher through the whole day. Half of their teachers didn't show up for the conferences, one of them showed up drunk (at 9am) and doesn't count, but the rest of their teachers that were there that morning (and not inebriated) greeted me with, “Hi, you must be TJ.”

And thankfully none of these peoples have Facebook and want to be my friend. If they did, I'd be getting tons of updates reading, “Alguem vi o meu cabrito? Ele ja me fugio pela quinta vez este semana.” and be taggig in photo albums titled, “Aniversario de Marere – Festa no cajuelo 2011” and having five-hundred people recommend that I “like” kabanga.

In Which it's tooooo quiet...

2011-09-21T22:36:00.000+02:00

It's been quiet around here. Almost tooo quiet. But for once in my life, I think I'll take it over the alternative. What's the alternative? Things catching fire!

Victor and the rest of the staff have been at a conference all week, thus leaving the orphanage in my very capable yet flammable hands. This means that the only responsible (haha) people at the orphanage are me and Mama Maria. She is very good at what she does (cooking all our food) but not so good at other things (example: saying, "Here, go clean this" as she gives a 3 year-old a butcher's knife). She's also very funny in a cantankerous sort of way.

With a grandmother's smile that says, "I love you," followed by, "but if you don't hold that chicken still I'm gonna cut of your head instead if his."

I like to think that we've been left in charge because we're the two most capable people here. The last line of defense, if you will. Like when President Lincoln finally sent in Gen Sherman to get the job done right. Or the Rebel Alliance sending on Luke Skywalker to take out the Death Star. Or.the Greeks calling on Archimides to invent a Death Ray.

OK, so maybe all those examples involve destroying things, but I chose them for a reason. That's because every time I'm left alone here things end up getting destroyed. More specifically, they catch on fire (Atlanta, Death Star, Roman ships). Disclaimer: Marrerre's roof burning down last week was totally coincidental because I was not left alone in charge.

So, three days into the week, things have so far been relatively peaceful. Food shortages were averted, as were power outages, wild animal attacks, and several mutinies. The animal attacks were our kids chasing wild animals, and the munities were too poorly organized to ever gain any real traction with the rest of ~~the proletariat~~ the kids.

But because of that, I've been a little pressed for time. It's really just the same stuff I've always been doing, it just feels more daunting now that I'm the only one around. I'm still trying to shuffle of 40+ kids to school on time, prepping meals, doing teaching and homework help, and doing bible-study/chapel daily and nightly (and ever so rightly). And when you throw on the burden of getting a soccer game or two in during the day, oh the stress...

I worried the week was going to be bad after an ominous start after I spent last Saturday night in clinic with one of our little girls here who came down with malaria. (On a side note: it's really really hard seeing your kids suffer and be sick when there's nothing you can do for them*.) And just this morning the sound of the batukis (drums) started up next door as Marrerre was finally, officially getting recognized as the chief. I was worried that is would then morph into a raging party with enough alcohol, music, and women to make a Miami U football player jealous, but as of press time nothing has materialized.

*What every real parent already knows.

So here's hoping that your week is full of excitement and my week stays so lame that I will have no choice but to make Friday's post about all the different types of spinach we use in our spinach stew (or something totally not exciting like that).

What up, Finland?!

2011-09-15T14:26:00.002+02:00

In a very self-reverential post, it's time to take a look at some of the oddities that are this website. Yes, the entire site is somewhat odd (I mentioned Bjork, Flounder from Animal House and Jar Jar Binks in the same article last week) but there are some other odd things to be found by digging just a little deeper.

First, I wish to apologize to the roughly 32% of people who, when clicking on the site, end up staying for over an hour. I hope that it's people actually reading and not opening a browser tab and then leaving to walk your cat. And I'm apologizing because I referenced Jar Jar Binks last week and I'm sure that's all you thought about going to sleep that night. Sorry.

Second, I want to acknowledge that ever once in a while somebody will come to the site because they are searching for something entirely unrelated. A whopping 95% of search terms that lead to the site are derivatives of [TJ Goes to Africa]. The other five percent over the last several weeks have been people looking for, “Danny Almonte”, “shopping in nampula africa kinds of stores”, “catch geese in an old mattress”, “hermie wants to be a dentist”, and my personal favorite, “in africa, what are the steps to follow when you are ritualing [sic] the sick person”.

Now, it's time for a random shout-out to new readers. These are people who have actually clicked on the site multiple times and not because they were searching for “Bjork touring dates Africa”. Folks that clicked on the site, and then decided to click back later and stay for a while. I want to send a big hello to readers from Finland, Taiwan, Norway, Australia, India, Saudi Arabia (in which I'm sure is still an accidental search, I just can't prove it) and Soviet Russia (where blog reads you).

In Which We Love Our Neighbors As Ourselves Pt II

2011-09-13T20:57:00.002+02:00

...At this juncture it started becoming apparent why nothing had been done to stop the music. We let the raging all-night party rage right on because, heck, everybody deserves one freebie. The kids here practice music all the time and rehearse for church on Sundays---guitars, drums, the whole 9 meters. I'm sure the neighbors think we're just the equivalent of rowdy high schoolers that try to be cool and form a band in their parents garage because chicks will like them and spend the whole day practicing Green Day covers because they think Green Day is a punk band (secret: it's a pop band).

On Sunday night, the music came and went with slightly less fanfare. There was no party, and it managed to stop in the middle of the night. But come Monday morning it was back on, playing away the whole day and blending into the night. At that point, Victor went over to have a little “chat” and to “persuade” him with “an offer he couldn't refuse”. No, he actually did all those things. There was no strong-arming or intimidation at all.

When Victor arrived he asked to talk directly with Marrerre. Maybe its time you know a little bit more about him.

Marrerre is our village chief. He's fairly new at the job. The old chief was also named Marrerre, too. (But for some reason our village is named Muthita while the next village over is named Marrerre.) Its all just a coincidence, I'm sure. It's also the only word I can't say, because saying it properly is predicated on being able to roll one's R's, something which frustrates me to no end. Anyways, the old Marrerre was well liked and was like 80 years old and died about 18 months ago. So now the new Marrerre is a punkish, 18-year old great-great-grandnephew-twice-removed-by-marriage (or something like that) of the old Marrerre.

He's pretty new at the job, which is somewhat difficult to articulate. The village chief, elder, and/or “traditional healer” (witchdoctor) are a legally recognized and respected positions here in Mozambique. If we were straight up in the jungle he would be mayor, sheriff, ATM, judge, jury, and executioner. Here nearer the city, his roll is a little diminished. He oversees land sales, settles disputes, upholds traditions, participates in ceremonies (ceremonies are bad), and other such things. For those of you over the age of 55 and living in Florida, imagine him as the president of you condo association.

So it's one thing for the president to remind you that you can't mow your lawn before 8am on a Saturday, or you can't have more than 6 cars parked in front of your house. But what do you do when the president is the one making too much noise after the 10pm curfew or letting his lawn brown? Who are you going to call? Anybody in power here is automatically above the law.

I wish to remind you that at this point we were still operating under the assumption that he was using rented speakers to disturb the peace. It's perfectly normal here to rent speakers for a party. It's like a do-it-yourself DJ. The equivalent in America is people that rent giant TV's just for a Superbowl party or newly-broke graduates that borrow friends furniture so when their parents come visit for Thanksgiving you don't have to explain why you're apartment is still furnished only with lawn chairs (but it's OK because you got a great deal on them during a post-Labor Day sale along with the inflatable wading pool that used to be in the corner).

Where were we? Right. It became apparent when the music kept going Monday that there was no intention of returning the clearly-purchased-and-not-rented speakers. So when Victor went over to confront them and ask them to turn the sound off, he was met by Marrerre's entourage of friends who are no doubt having the time of their life living off of Marrerre's spoils. There's still no word on how Marrerre's came about these spoils, or what his job is, or how he afforded a party for 300 people.

When Victor told the entourage he wanted to talk to Marrerre and tell him to the turn the music off, the friends all just laughed at him, a lot. Then after a long time of laughing and catching their breath, they asked (and it doesn't get any more clichéd than this) if Victor had any idea who he was messing with. After more of Victor's insistence on talking to Marrerre, he was informed that it would not be possible, mostly because Marrerre was passed out after having bought and drank all the kabanga within a 5km radius. Kabanga is the equivalent of moonshine , and it's pronounced just like sound you imagine people make after they swig it down.

After being denied an audience with the ~~great and powerful Oz~~ passed out Marrerre, Victor decided that to just have the entourage pass on a message. The message was that Victor is going back to his house to get his phone, and if by the time he gets there he can hear music he is going to call the police. Sure enough, by time Victor made it back in his door, the music had been turned off. And the next day, it stayed off. Peace returned, the natural order of the village was restored, and over a hundred people could now sleep at night.

Happy ending, right?

See, that's the point of the story that gets a little bittersweet. At this point, over the next week we had reached sonic détente. They would play music still, but only during the day, and never at a level where it sounded like more than a very distant thumping that couldn't disturb anybody. And it was like that for about a week. People were happy again, and there were no complaints.

Happy ending, right?

The whole week, people would talk about how they were relieved the noise had stopped, or if they lived far from the noise how what Marrerre was doing was messed up. Granted most of that talk was coming from those of us inside the orphanage, it was still all most people were talking about. And they weren't playing cool Botswanan music like our other neighbors do (and at completely respectable volumes, we're always yelling at the good neighbors to turn it up).

And then... this is where it becomes too strange to make up. The stuff that really happens here is so much stranger than any fiction that it just isn't worth it trying to make stuff up. There really is no way to put this other than just saying what happened as plainly as I can: the power surged, causing his speakers to blow up and set his house of fire.

Let me give that it's own line just to let it sink in.

The power surged, causing his speakers to BLOW UP AND SET HIS HOUSE ON FIRE!

I think I had some kids in my house playing cards teaching them go fish or something when it happened. All of a sudden the lights flashed brilliantly because of an exceptional power surge, which can be common here. About a minute later we heard shouting and crackling next door. I poked my head out the window and see a glow caused by the fire. I managed to scale to the fence to see what was going on. And in a span of 5 minutes the fire had managed to consume everything it could and died out.

Please take a moment to collect your shocked selves while I ease your minds. Nobody got hurt, and their house didn't get completely destroyed. It's a mud house with a straw roof. The mud, as you can imagine, didn't burn down. It didn't even look like anything happened the next day. The roof however was straw and went up like a Christmas tree on the 4^th of July (if you've ever kept your Christmas tree around till Independence Day, you know that it goes up just like a straw roof).

On one hand, I did find any sense of justice in this situation both poetic and completely hilarious. However, the next day, I was concerned that, you know, under slightly different conditions something really bad could have happened. Namely, those circumstances were 15 people passed out drunk inside of the house, but thankfully that was avoided. Feeling convicted that these people were more or less a huge thorn in my side for a week---still I wouldn't have wished their roof burn down---but none of this was “payback” or anything I decided to pay a visit and see if they were okay rather than just nod my head in approval at the fire like the rest of the village.

I basically went over just to view the damage more than anything and make sure everybody was fine. The roof went up so fast it didn't even burn down the bamboo beams that keep the straw roof up. It damaged a few things inside, and other than that everybody was fine. They just seemed a little pissed off. I would be too. I wasn't feeling super welcome and they were probably trying to forget the incident, which was now closer to being an embarrassment that a danger, so that ended my visit.

Still, of the hundred or so people that passed by his house that morning, ninety-nine probably thought that he got what he deserved. Still, don't think that my visit made him weep in repentance or apologize for destroying the peace for a solid week. I'm sure if he had to do it over he would have gotten the bigger speakers and bought twice as much kabanga. Still, I felt better having repented of wanting to stab my neighbor in the face and instead showing kindness towards him.

Still, pray that those speakers never return, otherwise this is one person who will fall back into temptation and lunge for the nearest sharp object. Meanwhile, the neighborhood has been enjoying he silence for the last week.

Prayer Requests 9/9

2011-09-09T22:43:00.000+02:00

Lets try something new. Every other week or so I'll try to put up a list of what's happening RIGHT NOW and what could use prayer. Everything, naturally, could use prayer, but I want to give people some specifics. People ask me time to time, usually about one email a week, how things and going and ask for some specific prayer requests.

Hopefully this will give you something a little more focused way to pray for those of you that like focus. And if you want to pray for us, really do pray for us. Don't just read this and then send a note like, "Sending good thoughts your way." Good thoughts are not really what we're going for here. Good thoughts make you feel as a better person. Good thoughts do nothing. Jesus does everything. Pray to Jesus for us and with us. Don't just think.

I will try to keep them breif and fairly comment free. But as always, there's no promises. That is unless, of course, I do promise. Then you can count on me breaking it. On to the bullet points!

School is about 5 weeks from ending before final exams. We're currently fighting end-of-the-year burnout. Not from students, but from the teachers. Please pray that the kid's don't get disinterested either and finish strong.

This deserves a post of its own, but many of the kids we sent to trade school from the orphanage in January are now off doing internships/job training in various cities. We're happy for the training they received and are praying as they enter the next two rounds of their fight for life: employment, and job security.

Just today I had a really great conversation with Marinho. He asked me a hypothetical question today about his "friend" who has two parents that are both rich and don't help and want nothing to do with his "friend". Marinho has two parents that both have jobs and drive cars (they're rich) and want nothing to do with him and left him to fend for himself. It was a really challenging conversation, the gist of which was learning to trust God's plan and know that people suck and are not perfect but God's love for us is perfect and that while his "friend" may be really angry, that is all the more reason he needs Jesus to help him love his parents. This was a horrible summary but it was a really hard, tough, spirit-filled, and edifying conversation.

Fruit. I like eating it, and now more things are in season (orange, tangerines, bananas, papayas, lemons, and at least 3 other thinks that at first glance look poisonous but are really tasty) and so that means tons of tasty fruit to eat, all for like pennies apiece. It's tasty and good for our health. And generally, these days the kids are all eating fairly well, too. Protip: a papaya a day will not keep the doctor away as it will lead to cramping and diarrhea. I did not try, but a kid here stole a papaya and got what was coming to her.

In Which We Love Our Neighbors As Ourselves Pt I

2011-09-07T21:49:00.002+02:00

If this post seems fragmented, it's because its gone through about three different rewrites as the situation develops. Its kind of like how Star Wars started as “Lets rip off Flash Gordon” and morphed to, “Umm, we actually need to put at least a little thought into this to keep making movies” and then, “Lets change everything about the movies by making prequels. And Jar Jar Binks. Lets add lots of Jar Jar Binks.”

But unlike Star Wars, that is the last time I will ever mention Jarjar Binks. And unlike George Lucas, I won't try to destroy your childhood by re-editing and drastically changing the Star Wars special edition blu-ray re-release.

Think of the millions to be made marketing sweet, tasty ~~carbonite~~ candy bars.

Here's how the story started. about 10 days ago on Friday night our neighbors decided to destroy the neighborhood. But really, the only damage being done was psychological. There was no attempt at physical destruction (yet), As happens from time to time, people tend to make generally not smart decisions and damage their future all for a quick thrill. This is how some of you were conceived. But we're getting off track.

Our neighbors had purchased a big, shiny, brand new set of speakers. These were not just any old speakers mind you, not even a big radio. This was a state-of-the-art, hi-fidelity hut entertainment system. And since Friday nights are generally party and drink like there's no tomorrow they decided to pump the music so loud that, to paraphrase the rapper Nate Dogg, the rhythm became the bass and the bass became the treble.

And these aren't some neighbors so far down the block that we could hear rumblings. These were our proper neighbors. The speakers were blasting all of 20 yards from Victor and Christina's house and 30 yards from my house. It's close enough I can throw a rock and hit them. I thought about trying, but decided not to. The music started just around dinner on Friday night, and kept going, and kept going, and kept going. The music. Never. Stopped.

Until 7am. Seven o'clock the next morning. The music didn't even stop in the middle of the night after the neighbors were presumably passed out on the floor with bleeding eardrums. They must have sprung for the 6-disc CD changer and bought as many bootlegged mixtapes as they could. And as I've mentioned before, buying bootlegged CD's here is kind of a mixed bag. You can try (as I have) to buy a CD labeled and packaged as traditional Congolese gospel music but when you put the CD in you end up with a mish-mash of gangster-rap.

Some highlights of the first night included lots of techno, Mozambican artists, a few dozen reggae hits thrown in, and every once in a while a smash hit from the likes of Eurythmics, Bryan Adams, and Shania Twain. I was also amazed that I never once heard a song repeat. I know this because I didn't get any sleep that night. Neither did anybody else in the orphanage.

Still that same Saturday, day 2 of Speakergate (or The Ampocalypse) we knew something was afoot when we started seeing hundreds of people descend upon our neighbor's house in the the middle of the afternoon. Then, the music started again. We were not super worried about security or safety, because our wall has been finished, and it's about 10ft high where it borders the neieghbors. But that noise. It just never stopped. If you saw my facebook page that weekend it was a conversation with Victor and Christina over just what the heck was happening. We tried talking in person but we just couldn't hear anything.

What was weirder is that now there were two sets of speakers going. I still don't know if there were two different parties or they just doubled down for the night. The mix of songs was also very weird. Not only do you have ridiculously loud music, you now have close to two hundred drunken adults (and teens, and I'm sure a kid or two) singing along to church songs, catholic songs, graduation songs, birthday songs, animism songs, and whatever they think the words are to the other songs on the radio. We thought we might be spared when the city lost power for about an hour, but that just made them sing louder.

It was like living next door to the Deltas in Animal House, except instead of Pinto and Flounder partying along while Otis Day plays “Shout” in the basement it was hundreds of watts of the most popular Mozambican DJ's, Bob Marley techno remixes, and techno remixes to every song you've ever heard and even one's you haven't.

A little bit softer now. A little bit softer now. A little bit softer now. And stop. Right there. Don't get a little bit louder, now or ever.

The highlight of night two was hearing Bjork's “All is full of Love” come on at about 1:30am). I'm sure the mix tapes were all probably intended to be sold in Europe where, as Christina so profoundly said, “It's like [Europeans] don't know that normal versions of songs exist. They only have ever heard the techno version.”

Another night of next door partying and drunkenness and totally annoying techno music until the sun came up. For some of you, that might mean you can still salvage three or four hours of sleep. But our day starts with the sun here in Mozambique. There was nothing salvageable.

This brings us to Sunday, day 3 of The Ampocalypse. Throughout the day, the general consensus was that our neighbor had just rented for the weekend these thousands of watts of speakers for whatever massive birthday/graduation/baptism/animism-ceremony/drunken hulabaloo he was planning for him and two hundred of his closest friends. Friday was obviously a trial and Saturday was the real deal. Surely he would be returning the speakers to Rent-A-Nuisance-R-Us or whatever store he got them from.

But then just before dinner on Sunday night, it started again. The music. That horrible, grating, sleep-depriving music. At this point, we decided that this would not stand. Something needed to be done. Somebody needed to stop this menace.

But what are you supposed to do when the guy playing all the music is the village chief?!?!

(That's called a cliffhanger.)

In Which TJ Tries To Tell More

2011-08-29T22:05:00.000+02:00

Living in Mozambique invokes strong reactions. These circumstances often stem from circumstances as innumerable---the education system, illegal immigration, food prices, government social programs, tribal culture, church traditions, refugees, economic progress, mechanical difficulties, flood, drought, sport, disease, crime, water, travel, access of information, to mention a few---as they are varied.

While many things in my life here evoke strong emotional responses, none are stronger than those that stem from working with the kids---my Mozambican family. They can often swing in a matter of minutes. I have seen my emotions go from the most joyous of pride to the deepest sorrow and frustration all in a matter of minutes. Daily, in fact, it seems.

A week ago I went to school to meet with the kids' teachers to get their grades from the second trimester. For the most part, the grades were good and, more importantly, had improved. I was happy for this because I've been investing the majority of my time in supplementing their lessons and tutoring and running study hour here at the orphanage. The emotions ranged from relief to joy to pride as I got to share the good news with the kids when I got back with their report cards.

Within minutes, that overwhelming pride came falling down as I had to break up two kids fighting with each other. Those feelings quickly turned to anger, frustration, and ultimately sadness. Why on earth would these kids want to be treating each other this way? Surely my parents never had to put up with seeing their children go from being exemplary to acting dysfunctional in the span of 5 minutes (I can hear them laughing right now),

One example I like to use is whenever we go another function where there are other kids present (and more importantly, food) I always remind them of two simple rules: be polite, and don't complain. This is so true when there is food because any other kid in this country is going to fight tooth and nail to get his [plate of food, handful of cookies, pop bottle] because there is never enough food to go around for everybody. Our kids know that if we're at a function/party/event and there is food, if they don't receive anything they'll be fed as soon as we get back home. They also know that if we're somewhere and they give out pops or candy bars and they don't get any I'll make a stop on the way home and buy pops and candy for all our kids.

A story I like to about how easily our kids are blown by the wind is a Christmas party we went to with several other orphanages. It was hosted by another orphanage and when we saw dozens of kids pouring in from the street hoping to receive handout we knew the food might not make it to us. As it turns out, the food made it around to everybody, but the pops and cookies ran out. As this became apparent, our kids (who had already received their pops) took it upon themselves to offer their pops to some kids that had come from a Catholic mission that takes care of disable kids who weren't able to run up and receive pops. Our kids did this all unprompted. They just offered. Why? Because we teach them to live as Jesus lived, and those are the people Jesus helped, too.

But what was a moment of real happiness and joy for me to see our kids do this quickly turned into shame and disbelief when, as soon as we were in the truck and driving home, they all started yelling and complaining about how awful the party was and doing their best woe-is-me and how ungrateful the other kids were and how righteous they were.

As we passed by the pop-stand on the way home, the complaining got even louder as I reminded them that “Blessed are you who offer your pop and then complain about it for 20 minutes in the car ride home, for you shall inherit another pop later on” is nowhere to be found in the Bible and, thanks to all their belly-aching, they would not get a pop from me.

Why do I share this with you now? Primarily because I would like to say why I don't share anecdotes this this all that often. I don't want you to think that nothing personal never happens here, or that TJ is merely a casual observer relating detached, albeit humorous, reports of culture like a travelogue of sorts. Yes, I like telling about the stuff that goes on here. Stories about giant animals causing earthquakes, the moon fighting the sun during an eclipse, the boys playing soccer, and profiles of our staff members by describing them using only lyrics from hair metal songs (that got left on the cutting room floor) while amusing and informative are not about what really goes on here.

What goes on here is people. And while many, many, many things can't be described or understood without understanding the proper cultural or social context, many things just can't be described. That's not because my life is filled with so many see-it-to-believe-it moments. The reason many stories can't be told is because they can't be told.

Part of the problem in writing about what goes on here is that stories almost invariably involve other people. And some of those people are people that read this website. I've mentioned before that if you forget the site, you can just search any combination of “TJ” or “Africa” or “Mozambique” or “Michael Jackson” and this will come up as the top result. Word travels lightning fast here, so I can't tell a story about how the pastor did [this thing that caused an incredibly emotional reaction] at church last weekend because word will undoubtedly make it back to that person.

I would also love to just give more commentary on just how things are here in Mozambique. I think a big key to understanding the challenges and difficulties of life here are understanding how Mozambique is. Unfortunately for you, this is a little difficult. I can't always talk freely about how health care or education or road building or utilities or jobs creation or law enforcement are here because, essentially, they suck. And because all those things are run by the government, and because that same government told me earlier this year to stop writing bad stuff about them, I can't. Remember all those Mozambique 101 posts at the end of last year? Remember how at no point did I ever use use the words “Mozambique” and “on the right track” in the same sentence? Remember how those post just mysteriously stopped for no reason?

I'm sure that someday I'll be able to tell exactly everything that goes on here. Not that there are any skeletons in the closet, but its really for the sake of relationships and privacy of people here, not people there. I'm sure someday I'll be able to tell about ALL the things that really produce an emotional response, the things that matter most here. I'm sure someday I'll be able tell about the hurtful things the pastor said about the orphanage during church, working with refugees out at the camp, or about how that day at the Christmas party the reason the kids didn't get fed is because the workers at the other orphanage were stealing cases of cookies and pops and putting them in their cars to take home for themselves.

So I hope you understand. My life is fairly open, but for the sake of everybody here, its not an open book. I haven't written the book yet. This is what it is. As for the good stories that don't run the risk of offending anyone (or getting me in trouble) we'll try to keep those coming.

And for a story that hasn't been written yet, tune in next time to hear about my neighbor's big new speakers and subsequent 50+ hour ongoing, noise-fueled sleep deprivation study. This story and the non-stop party next door has two possible endings. 1) The neighbors get taken to jail for repeated noise violations or 2) TJ gets taken to jail for repeated manslaughter.

It's like one of those “choose your own adventure” stories.

And Without Further Ado

2011-08-25T23:01:00.001+02:00

[Sorry for the site outage the last several days. If you tried to view the site you probably got a message saying you're not authorized and need to request an invitation. There were a lot of problems with functionality and I just shut it down until it got 100% good to go. Its now open and free and everyone can see it. Even you, China]

We’ve got some exciting changes to talk about here at Evanjafrica. What’s exciting is that nothing is actually changing. This is not because we’re all living in an episode of Lost and none of this is real (or for my older readers: Season 8 of Dallas, or all of Newhart), it’s because the changes are all happening in cyberspace. If you’ll look over to the right =====> > > you’ll notice that the old posts are still there, the swirling thing is still swirling, and you can now donate to Evanjafrica online through PayPal.

What!? I can now donate online through PayPal?! Yes. Yes you can. Evanjafrica is now a PayPal Verified User and you can donate us through the magic of the interweb. And the great part is donations are still totally tax-deductible, as we are still an incorporated 501-C3 Non Profit.

For us here, the move has been a long time coming. If we had a nickel for everybody who has asked us for an option like this, we basically wouldn’t need an online donation option, we’d just eat nickels all day long. The result is the ease and security of online donations brought to you by many hours of headaches on my part.

How does it work? I’m glad you asked! If you are a part of the faithful that support our ministry and remember to mail your check every month feel free to keep on doing so. However, if you’re like the rest of our online audience, you tend to be inconvenienced by remembering things. And if you’re like most of my friends, you don’t know what a check is. Having an online donation option gives anyone with a credit/debit card to make a simple donation and have it help out right away.

And the best part is you don’t need to sign up for anything. If you’re scared about needing a PayPal account, the best part is you can just go online and pay with your credit/debit card. It’s 100% safe and secure. And don’t worry, we don’t even get to see your credit card to be able to steal your identity (darnit). And because it asks for you name and mailing address, we’ll still be able to send your tax deduction information at the end of the year.

The PayPal link will soon be added to Victor and Christina’s site too. Also, stay tuned for changes coming to evanjafrica.org. That site isn't really gonna get much new content, but it'll be updated to look prettier and like it's not leftover from the ancient days of the internet back when Matthew Broderick was discovering how to change his grades and play global-thermonuclear war.

So from time to time, when you’re thinking of us here in Mozambique, or praying for the staff and kids here, and have a little latte money left over at the end of the month, you now have the ease and ability to make a few clicks and bless us, and then go back to playing Farmville or watching Netflix.

But wait, there’s more! If you think that God is calling you to make giving a regular part of your worship (cause worship is more than just singing) you can click donate to automatically give monthly. What that does is have a monthly amount charged to you just like any other subscription to a magazine or TV company or phone bill would do.

So here are three do’s and two don’ts that we ask of all of you.

DO continue to pray for us. I myself need to do better at letting folks know how they can continually pray for us. I’m going to try to start putting up even just short little updates about every 2 or 3 weeks with how you can pray for us here. If money solved all our problems we wouldn’t need Jesus. Prayer is the fuel that keeps our car running. The car is the orphanage. It’s a metaphor.

DO consider donating. And after you do, whether it’s infrequently or one-time only or a monthly pledge, do a little dance! Be happy, because the kids are happy. And if you're able to, do consider monthly giving. Even just $10/month is entirely doable. Think about it, that's like two trips to Starbucks a month, or choosing to not eat out for lunch one time a month, or a beer at a Mariner game, or not even going to the Mariner game (cause face it, why would you).

DO know that you are blessing us and we’re very thankful. Every night after dinner I get the kids together for Bible study/story time and every night we thank God for everything that has come our way and to thank for each and every one of you that has and will join with us in helping the kids.

DON’T give without praying. Pray about what amount you should give, and then ask God bless it and send it on its way. I will attest that every day we’re eating here is proof that prayer works.

DON’T think we’ll be fine now that we have a PayPal button. Our faith is in God to move people towards love and compassion to help us out. Our faith is not in an online-giving option. We are doing very well here, but it’s completely by God’s grace, not PayPal’s grace.

If you click the DONATE NOW button, it will redirect to the Support/Donate Page first. Then clicking on it again will take you to the PayPal site. Please read the Support/Donate this first time. Much of the content is the same, but presented straightforward and very much unfunny. It also has all the instruction on how to donate by check and mail.

Thank you for your prayers and your donations. And always stay tuned for whatever the heck happens next here in Mozambique. I have no idea what it will happen, but I do know that it will happen.

In Which TJ Shops Till He Drops

2011-08-20T19:42:00.009+02:00

I have a favorite pair of shorts. They’re just simple gym shorts good for most occasions. I can use them while I’m doing some serious sporting, I can throw them on for while I’m just lounging around, I can (and have) worn them to church. They also have pockets (woohoo!) so they’re good for carrying around keys or pencils or oranges or some spare change.

The most important thing that makes these my favorite shorts is that they just feel so unbelievable comfortable. There’s something about them that fit so good and the texture to them is just a little bit different then regular shorts. They’re not the same type of weave that I’ve in my other shorts. The mesh and the cut are just a little bit different. They’re such nice shorts that I even remember buying them at the Nike Outlet store just outside of Seaside, Oregon when I was still in high school.

I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to do with my hands.

Here’s a picture of me in my favorite shorts. They’re plain, simple, unappealing. They are currently being paired with the only ironic t-shirt I own (it reads “the Supes are back”), which itself is ironic because I don’t like ironic t-shirts and this t-shirt was not always ironic. The t-shirt is also complemented by a week of stubble, which I grew because everybody (read: my mom) asks to see more pictures of me to see how I’m doing and the beard helps disguise just how weight I’ve dropped. Several bouts with malaria and a blood infection are way more effective at shedding pounds than jazzercising.

(This current paragraph was originally unintended as I outlined this post, but I decided to use it to point out that jazzercise is recognized as an official word by the spellchecker.)

Perhaps the only thing frustrating about these shorts is that I’ve never been able find another pair like them. I haven’t even been able to find the same pair to start a stockpile for that unenviable day when these shorts will see their end, be it a ripped crotch, lost in luggage, eaten by rats (slightly common here) or just plain wearing threadbare. I have searched high and low online and offline for shorts that have the same distinct qualities as my shorts, and I just haven’t been able to.

I also have a pair of speakers. No, they’re not my favorite speakers, but they’re my only speakers, and that makes them my favorite. They’re just little desktop speakers that I got them here in Nampula, and that they’ve lasted longer than a week means they’ve beaten the odds for life-expectancy of just about anything here. Currently they’re sitting under my end-table and will get pulled up on top when its time to listen to music. But using them while they’re under the end table has an unexpected consequence: resonance.

If you ever sing in the shower you know what resonance is. If you never sing in the shower then, my friend, you’re just not living. You know when you’re in the shower singing your heart out to Taylor Swift (I’m going out on a limb and assuming that a majority my readers are 14 year old girls) and you hit that one note in than one song she sings--you know, that famous one--and that note just rings out forever? That’s resonance. What does that have to do with my speakers? Do I only use them to play Taylor Swift? Do I sing in the shower? We’re not there yet, no, and all the time!

By putting them under the table, it acts like putting them in a cabinet and slightly amplifies the volume. It also manages to ring out some notes clearer than others. I first discovered this effect by listening to a song and hearing a harmony in the synthesizers that I hadn’t heard before. And yes, I know what you’re thinking; the song was Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins. This prompted me to start experimenting with placing my speakers in other random places that I new would oddly modify the sound. I tried the fridge, the freezer, under the counter, the bathroom, the shower (it was a super busy week, if you couldn’t tell). This was all in an effort to find some combination of space that would allow songs to just echo and ring out in brand new harmonies without it turning into an indiscernible echo like any music they play at an empty Mariners game.

Lost? Good. If you’re not, you might be as crazy as me and should get yourself checked out.

Where does any of this intersect? Well, last month or so, my laptop just went bananas. Actually bananas would have been really tasty. I’d better say my laptop went porcupines. The screen all of a sudden started flickering and developed this bad habit of going crazy and freaking-out more than a 14 year old girl at a [Taylor Swift concert / Justin Beiber meet-and-greet / “Twilight” blah blah blah I give up on this analogy] and rendered most of what was on the screen as illegible. I was sure a wire had popped loose, and so needed to take it apart.

Unfortunately, to take it apart necessitated a really super small, really super specific screwdriver (T5-Torx). So, I was off to the city to hit the stores looking for just what I needed. I first decided to hit one of the hardware stores to see if they had anything for me. The problem, as I’ve mentioned before, is that that there are really only 5 types of stores here that all have a very short supply of all the same oddly specific items. You have the hardware stores (tools, nails, tin roofs, cement, pipe, tiles, barbed wire) the appliance stores (water boilers, blenders, speakers, electric clothes irons, cell phones and chargers) office supply stores (notebooks, paper, computer cables, calculators) the non-edible grocery stores (powdered milk, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, pots and pans) and the plastic bucket stores (plain old plastic buckets).

I had already tried my luck in the outdoor markets, and by luck I mean absolute lack of it. The outdoor markets sells tools like American hardware stores get rid of the useless stuff. They put fingerless gardening gloves on a table with odd-sized windshield wipers and a sign saying “ALL ITEMS $1” and next thing you know you’ve bought a specialized 9-volt battery tester before you’ve even had time to ask “since when did my tongue stop working as an acceptable tester of 9-volt batteries?”. Being as my screw driver was an oddly specific tool that nobody here really has a need for, I thought I might be able to find one, but after a good hour of searching I gave up that route.

This screwdriver, like my favorite shorts, was turning into something that was going to be impossible to ever find here. No matter how diligent I was, and how long I looked. I just didn’t find it at all. But, much like moving my speakers from spot to spot, each store I entered held a surprise of its own. I usually just asked if they had the screwdriver, and upon finding out the answer was no, asked if they knew somewhere that might. They always gave me vague descriptions of locations. They’d say things like, “Up this street and over a little bit next to the people playing checkers” and, “Behind the butcher, but not too far behind, just a little.” They also gave me and even vaguer descriptions of the shopkeepers. Things like, “he’s Indian” (because half the shopkeepers are Indian) or, “he’s Chinese” because the other half of shopkeepers are Chinese) or, “he has an eye patch and his wife is really super fat”.

And these directions, like the sounds I’d never heard before from the speakers, showed me placed I never had bother to stop in before--a store that sold nothing but counterfeit movies, another that sold only printer cartridges and disco balls, and one that had a shop window full of sequined fabrics that when I entered the shopkeeper said, “We have no drugs, come back at a later time.”

But at the end of the day I was tired and screwdriver-less. I had discovered a lot of new places, but it ultimately led me no where and back home. Just like how the shower was the best place for my speakers, I can’t leave them there all the time and eventually have to return them to the end table. And just like I had come to face reality with my favorite shorts--that they just didn’t exist and I would never find another pair like them--I was forced to come to grips with the fact that I would never find this oddly specific screwdriver to fix my broken laptop screen.

And then one night, something amazing happened. I was sitting in my living room when there was a knock on my door. One of the kids had been working on fixing something extremely tiny and had a pile of screwdrivers. They belonged to Victor and he wanted me to hold on to them and return it to him. After looking at the tools, guess what I found…

My screwdriver. The T5. The really tiny one I had spent a day and a half looking for.

On reflecting on that moment of discovery, I didn’t jump up and down with joy for finding the screwdriver I needed. Nor did I curse the wind over wasting over a day looking for what was right next door all along. You know what my first thought was?

Well, maybe now I’m gonna find some more of those shorts.

Upcoming Site Maintenance

2011-08-11T10:04:00.002+02:00

This weekend I'm going to be doing a little work on the site. Nothing major, just a few little minor tweaks. Hopefully look for it to come back up Monday or Tuesday. So if between now and the front of next week if you try to get on the the site and it doesn't work it's because I took it down to work on it for a little bit.

I don't know of a way to have it redirect to one of those "Site down for maintenance" announcements, so this is gonna have to do. Hopefully the repairs go well and its not down for more than a few hours, but this is the interweb, so anything could happen...

In Which TJ Gets a Little Homesick

2011-08-09T21:04:00.004+02:00

My life here is about Mozambique. Well, its also about Jesus, and that's the only reason I'm here. Its why I came to Mozambique, its why I live in Mozambique. Its very plain to me every day that I definitely don't live in America. And yet, there are many things that I consider to be part of my identity that got left behind when I came here. I'm not talking about getting rid of my sense of humor or love of random trivia or infatuation with Carrie Underwood. I'm talking about the things that I enjoy that I no longer have the opportunity to do.

The more I think about it--the things that I really miss--the more I discover that it really revolves around three things: family, sports, and the intersection of the two. Its hard because I really miss these things, and it can be easy for them to turn into idols. Its easy to lose track of time and sit in front of facebook for hours trying to figure what my friends are all doing. Its also a pretty narcissistic exercise, so I try to avoid it when I can, but there's just certain times that I can't help but miss things. Things like:

...my family. I miss them a lot. All of them. Especially bbqs and birthday parties.

...hamburgers. I would give a kidney for them to put a Red Robin in Nampula.

...my friends. Its hard not having them there to hang out with. I can't think of the number of times I've thought, "Oh, this would be fun if [this friend] was here to see this." Its also weird feeling like a 1-way street of information, as I put so much stuff up here I feel people have at least a good idea what I'm doing, and the pipeline of info coming the other way tends to be a little limited based on time and the aforementioned narcissism of facebook browsing.

...baseball. God, do I miss baseball. I don't even care that the Mariners are losing. Statistically over the life of the Mariners a normal season sees them lose 88 times a year. And I don't think Nintendo has any plans to change it. But not being able to go to games I try to read everything I can about baseball.

...Dave Neihaus. I can't even listen to the radio here and its still hard knowing that when I get back Dave will not be calling the games. M's fans will understand.

...sitting around with my family watching pretty much any sporting event. The Superbowl, Daytona 500, the Apple Cup, any one those 88 (or 100) Mariners losses, the NCAA tourney, the Stanley Cup, darts on FSN ("One 'onred eighty!!!").

...playing frisbee. Man, these kids here just do not get frisbee. Or any game with hand-eye coordination.

...getting destroyed by my brothers while playing pretty much any video game.

...watching Mom try to play the drums for Beatles Guitar Hero.

...seeing Dad sing along to Beatles Guitar Hero.

...changing seasons. The temperature moves here some, and the rain will come and go, but there are not distinct seasons like there are back home in Seattle. Granted, 4-out-of-4 season's in Seattle involve rain, where here it's just one, so Mozambique does have that going for it.

...food. Seriously, just pick about any food and we don't have it here. And a nice beer. Not a cheep beer, I can get that here. I'm talking about a good beer.

Please don't read this post and think to yourself, "Oh, dear. TJ's gone over the edge." Its not that at all. For all the things that I have given up, there are tons of things I have gained. I picked up 50+ family members here in our orphanage. I've got new friends (although I dearly miss the old). I get to talk sports with the kids (arguments always revolve around them being convinced Africa will win the next world cup and me desperately trying to explain that Africa is not a country). I get the extreme joy that comes from serving Jesus in a radical and life-changing way. I get the extreme sorrow that comes from serving Jesus in a radical and life-changing way. And I get the extreme comfort that comes from serving Jesus in a radical and life-changing way. My family and friends and love of baseball are all irreplaceable, but all these things definitely make up for it.

In Which TJ Builds His Vocabulary

2011-08-08T20:57:00.004+02:00

As I think I've mentioned before, there are several words that have crept into the vocabulary here that are almost beyond comprehension. Part of it is a result of globalism and the wide reach of English-spoken pop culture. One example of this was the car I saw this week that had "100% Lil Wayne" detailed on the side. Never mind that somebody just wrote a completely incomprehensible phrase on their mid 90's Honda Civic, all people see are Lil Wayne as probably the third most famous American next to Obama and Justin Beeber. And one of those isn't even American. And depending on who you talk to, the other isn't either.

There are many more examples of where the English language has been masterfully butchered, but unfortunately for some reason all the examples I have are horribly inappropriate for a site that my mother reads (not to mention my grandmothers). So perhaps I'll save those stories for some time when I'm really sad and dejected and just don't care about these updates anymore.

But whats even more fascinating then when stuff gets mistranslated is when entire words get adopted as if the English version was stolen. Granted that since English and Portuguese have latin roots many words are similar, like masticate (which means 'to chew', I say for the benefit of my brothers who are no doubt chuckling after saying the word "masticate" out loud). Except today's post isn't about words getting adopted into the Portuguese vocabulary, its about words getting adopted into Macua.

Yes, Macua. The local tribal language of most Northern Mozambicans. The language that predates the arrival of the Portuguese and Europeans who, as I was informed this week, gave malaria to the Africans. I was told that this is absolutely true because, "before white people came there was no malaria, people just got really bad fevers and then died" I'm not making this up. The language which predates the arrival of white people, it turns out, named things apparently before they were invented.

Every week I'm hearing new ones, but see if you can figure out what the following words are:

Tiketchi (accent on the first syllable)
Lipsi
Shuwinga

I'm not completely naive. I know that in the English language we've adopted our fair share of words from other languages and just given up translating. After all, how would you translate molasses, monsoon, or mosquito (all of Portuguese origin). In America we eat tacos, drive Volkswagens, take our kids to kindergarten, and buy things from Ikea. My readers from England are probably chequeing right now to find all the French words they use everyday (see what I did there...) All I'm saying is that I find the ones in Macua to be pretty funny.

And now for the results of our little quiz. For problem number one, give your self a point if you answered "ticket". You can now safely navigate the complicated rail system in Mozambique (hint: only one line works, and it only goes to one place). For question number two, if you said "lipstick" give yourself another point. On to Final Jeopardy. If you said, "The sound Wayne and Garth make when a babe passes by" you're wrong. Very clever, but wrong. The correct answer is "Chewing Gum"

Thanks for playing. Join us next time for where we try our hand at "Guess which of these animals won't poison you". Just kidding. We're not gonna play that. Its a real thing here, don't get me wrong, but we're not playing it.

In Which the Boys Go Barnstorming

2011-08-05T21:13:00.002+02:00

School has made it to the end of the second term here and so we’re on a bit of a break. While I assume most kids back in the states are eating sno-cones and riding their bikes to the park everyday for their summer break, the boys at the orphanage have taken a much more capitalist approach to their two-week term break.How so? Lemonade stand? Lawn mowing? Goat herding? No, no, and mostly no. We’ve been playing soccer!

How does playing soccer earn you money? It’s very simple. So simple in fact that if word gets out it could revolutionize professional sports. I’ll explain.

Say you have a baseball team, or basketball, or football team. Let’s exclude the fringe sports like roller derby or boxing for a second. It’ll soon become clear. What if instead of paying your players whether they win or lose with guaranteed contracts, you only pay them if they win and do a good job. This makes sense in real businesses, so why not sports. If I have an airplane company and the people building the airplanes haven’t quite figured out the whole “flying” thing they are soon going to be out of a job when nobody buys my defective product. Or let’s say you have a restaurant where the food is really good and the line is out the door. The chefs are gonna keep their jobs and you’ll need to hire more waiters.

Here in Nampula we have that system. It seems almost every day without fail there has been a group of boys (one day it was full grown men) coming to the orphanage asking to play soccer. Our boys usually take a good look over them just to make sure there are no ringers or anything on the squad, and then we begin negotiating the cost of the game. After several minutes of heated negations, we usually agree on a contribution by each team of about 50meticais (or $2) for a winner-take-all soccer game. The money then goes in to an escrow account (read: my pocket) and the game begins.

We keep the games refereed pretty tightly so there’s no bad play by the losing side (super common) and so far this break our boys have yet to lose a game.They are thrilled with their winnings. The money is going into the ball fund so we can keep having balls to play with. You might be wondering why we would get so worked up over winning $2 dollars every day. Well, if you’re the other team that has come all the way out here to challenge us, you just lost your bus fare home after the game. Now you might be wondering if we feel bad for winning money hand over fist. No, we don’t.

So just think about that next time you’re watching ~~Chone Figgins~~ that one guy on your team that is making millions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing.

In Which The Orphanage Hoops It Up Part II

2011-07-27T17:15:00.001+02:00

Our tournament was starting. Saturday was game day, and we were ready to go. All the kids were up early and dressed in their uniforms ready to go. The other kids not on the team were begging to go along and watch our epic victory that was by now all but guaranteed. But before we had a chance to trip out of the gate, we first had to get to the gate.

Our game was supposed to start at 8:30. We figured on getting there an hour early to watch the other games so the kids can get an idea of just what they got themselves in to. As the time arrived to leave we had a minor problem arise: We had no vehicle to take us. This would be not be a problem normally, we would just wait for our truck to come back from whatever work it was doing and then take us. I had called the driver, and he assured me things were fine and they’d be back shortly.

The problem is that culturally here, no matter how bad things are, it would be shameful to tell somebody how bad things actually are. I’ve visited people in the hospital that have been largely unresponsive and when I ask them how the pain is they say it is so small they don’t even know its there. So when the driver said he’d return in a few minutes with the truck, what he should have said was that he was broken down an hour outside of town and you should send help.

So as we patiently waited I soon realized that I would be faced with the problem of finding a minibus on a Saturday morning (not easy in our edge of town) and then fitting 24 kids onto it. The second part was not as worrisome to me because I’ve been on minibuses with 24 adults when they’re meant for only 15. So after chasing down a minibus we finally get everybody on board and try to pursuade the driver to drive fast but don’t take up all 3 lanes weaving in and out of cars/bikes/goats.

We arrived late, and by late I mean they were calling our team and saying it was last chance before a forfeit. As the team was taking the court for the tip-off I was going over in my mind all things sports movies were telling us we needed for a victory. Rag-tag underdogs? You bet it. Getting to the big game amidst sabotage/insurmountable odds? That’d be us! A rousing pregame speech about character and integrity and playing with the heart of a champion? Signed, sealed, and deli---

NO! Not delivered! I forgot the speech! I didn’t have any time for the last minute pointers and story about climbing the mountaintop and seeing the promised land! This was a bad sign. A very bad sign! The girls took the court for the 10-minute first half and by the time the whistle blew we were losing 18-0. I thought to myself that this is playing right into our hands. No worries, now we have another ingredient that all great sports movies need: We’re losing by a really big number at halftime. All that’s needed is change our uniforms, bring in the dog to play, and give a heart-stirring halftime speech about when I was a kid and how my dog died or I survived leukemia or I avenged the death of my mentor by killing the evil Darth Maul--- WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S NO HALFTIME?!? You just keep switch sides and keep on going?

Just as quickly as I was beginning to think that we were actually the other team is somebody else’s sports movie the game ended with the girls dropping the first round 34-0. That’s a big old goose egg. And while the boys didn’t end much better, at least they made it a fight and held the other team 12-4.

If you think that’s the end of the story, have hope. We had 6 more games to go. Even though the shirts and hats we all got as uniforms said “tournament” it really should have been called a league. There were 8 boys teams and 8 girls, each with 12 kids. The games were 20 minutes and were on shortened courts with 8 foot high hoops. This made the girls games a little more doable and the guys really exciting to watch. We got 7 games in all, one against each other team. And while the boys side was a fairly good mixture in the standings, the girls side looked a little different. There was about as much parity as there is in the NFL. The best team finished a triumphant 7-0 and didn’t allow a single point scored against them. And our girls, where did they finish? Unfortunately they were the Detroit Lions / Cleveland Cavaliers / ~~Pittsburg Pirates~~ Seattle Mariners of the tournament and finished 0-7.

The highlight of the girls time though was always rooting for the boys, who we always arranged to play right afterwards. What my team lacked in experience—EVERY other team I talked to practices year round and has several levels in their program, more like a basketball club—my boys more than made up for in pure athleticism. They were able to out-run and out-hustle almost every other team to their advantage, and it made fun games and the girls cheered enthusiastically the whole 20 minutes. They finished a modest 2-5, tied for 6^th place. And they definitely improved along the way. What was hard is that while we won two games we lost another 2 more by only ONE point. We just as easily could have been the breakout sensation that captured the attention and affection of all the fans at the games (an important ingredient for our sports movie).

We arrived at the final week of games and I started counting all the pieces that needed to be in place for our sports movie. We had the team of players nobody else wanted (literally), we had the lowly humble beginnings with zero talent, we had the bad start followed by continued improvement, our musical montage played in my head (“I Just Want To Celebrate” – by Rare Earth) as I pictured each of our games, the team playing better each time as the crowd slowly pulls to our side. We even had a non-intimidating name. The girls were the Margaridas, which is, I think, a flower. All I know is every time somebody said it I was craving salt and lime. They boys were named the Bears, which could have been intimidated, except we were up against the likes of the Dragons, the Jackals, and the Tiger Sharks. The only thing we were lacking we soon found when we got to the courts: an arch-rival!

The girls played first and as they got on the court, they we met with sneers and jeers from the other team. All season long we were facing several disadvantages outside of what I have already laid out. We were often walking several miles in the heat to get to the games, often we left early in the morning before eating breakfast, and we were easily identified as the team without shoes. Because so few of the kids had good shoes other than flip flops they were often playing barefoot or swapping shoes during substitutions.

As if this wasn’t enough, the other team was starting with comments about how the girls were ugly because the don’t have expensive hair extensions or jeering them about their lack of shoes or dusty skin from walking to the games. I’m not even kidding. I had more than a few words for the other coach after the game. And while I expected the girls to more or less give up after a few quick points from the other team, we managed to score our real first points of the season (the others that had gone it were seriously intended to be passes). Eight points we scored, in fact. And just when we were coming back, the whistle blew and we lost 8-11.

But, just like a good sports movie, this one had a feel good ending. The girls were so thrilled to have scored so many points for the first time and made the game so close that when the ref signaled the end the of the game they stormed the court and celebrated and then they all mobbed me in a group hug and we danced and celebrated. I secretly think they were also celebrating that they didn’t have to come play basketball anymore, but I’d have taken anything at that point.

Once the girls finished celebrating and cleared the court, it was time for the boys to get their turn. And as their story too would be incomplete without a villain, they to took to the court to discover this last game would be against a team we had lost to by 1 point just a few games ago. They knew we had gotten better and were ready for a battle. The other team made attempts to step on their toes and ask during the breaks in the game why our kids’ parents weren’t in the stands. On top of that, I noticed the other team using two kids that had followed us once during a practice asking if they could help because they were 14 and too old to play in the tournament anymore.

Come halftime we were losing 2-7. We needed some magic and quick thinking. After an Oscar-worthy halftime speech by yours truly and some crafty lineup changes we pulled back into it and managed to go ahead by one score to make 12-11. After a timeout I decided we would just hold the ball to burn out the clock. That strategy worked, and when the whistle sounded the boys and the girls took storming to the court celebrating our narrow victory.

And so the boys, like any good sports movie, got the victory in the end. But as you know, every truly great sports movie has an even greater victory that they are almost more proud of than the real thing. One of the orphanages decided to have a kid with AIDS be on the team as it would be a good diversion for him. Well, we had our own “Rudy” moment the final week when he got some playing time and scored one of our baskets. We had our own “Remember the Titans” moment as the other kids, who had disparaged us and seen us as impossible and outcast, watched us win that final game and celebrate as friends and leave with our heads held high.

The kids too, having known this all along, knew that winning was never the most important thing. They each and every week played will energy and excitement and loved this opportunity that none of them had every had before. And none of them ever get downtrodden because of their circumstances or lack of shoes or walking in the sun or the fact that they’ll never have their own “Field of Dreams” moment. But, most importantly for me, my kids, after we got home the last week, asked if they could pray and thank Jesus for the tournament and our safety and the fun time they had during all of it. And I don’t know if they made a movie for that moment yet. That one gets to be part of our story.

A snapshot of our boys team. My picture of the girls team didn't turn out.

The boys and girls that played from our orphanage. Top row (L to R): Isaque Pequeno, Estela, Ronilda, TJ. Bottom: Ofeita, Canito, Belson, Atija.

In Which The Orphanage Hoops It Up

2011-07-26T15:13:00.004+02:00

I wanted to take some time these next couple of days and let all of you know what became of our basketball team. Many people have asked me how it is going and have wanted to hear how our team did. I will tell you, but I want to portray it like a sports movie. And since I don’t have enough time to make a movie (thought about it though) I ‘ll just tell you.

The problem with doing this though is that sports movies are super unrealistic. Like, really super-duper unrealistic. Lets look at a few examples, shall we?

The first example of a sports movie comes from the 80’s classic “Karate Kid”. In this movie, Ralph Macchio gets beats up by the Aryan kid from the Kobra Kai dojo. Suddenly, we have our underdog hero. He runs into Arnold from “Happy Days”, washes his car and paints his fence during a musical montage, and is suddenly a 19^th degree black-belt or something. Ralph Macchio then beats up the Aryan kid who, mind you, had literally been practicing karate since he was in utero.

In at least the first 5 “Rocky” movies the title character (that would be Rocky) is a poor lower class worker that is too [fill in whatever underdog adjective you’d like] to get a job. He ends up earning himself a match against Carl Weathers and then starts training during a musical montage that shows him chopping wood, punching frozen meet, and running up stairs. He then survives against Carl Weathers. in a victory so pyrrhic that they considered renaming the expression ‘pyrrhic victory’ to ‘pulling a Rocky’. Pyrrhic because the real life inspiration for the movie refused to go down in the fight and suffered something like 50+ stitches to the face.

In the football must-see movie “Remember the Titans” we find ourselves cheering for a high school that has just been racially integrated. We root for the team as they overcome incredible odds to not only become friends but go on to win a lot of football games all set to a montage of awesome ‘60s music. Somehow, after being so thrilled that they happened to win a state title we seem to forget that, other than the whole 1960’s race thing, a big source of tension in the beginning of the movie was concern that the current team and coach had already won so many state titles that the new kids and coach were going to upset their system..

“Rookie of the Year” is a lovable baseball movie where this kid has a freak medical accident and, in a shocking turn of events, doesn’t sue the hospital but decides to become a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. The kid, Henry ~~RosenBagger GardenHoser Rudabager~~ Roengardner eventually loses his 98mph fastball but not before he goes through a series of fun musical montages and learns all about life and love and friendship and, since he plays for the Cubs, losing.

“Little Big League” is a movie where the Minnesota Twins decide to let a 6^th grader manage their baseball team because, hey, why not?! We got nothing better to do in Minnesota until hockey season rolls around and we’re inbetween filming “The Mighty Ducks” sequels. This movie is full of musical montages where the team somehow gets good and wins a whole bunch of games. But the movie is ultimately stupid become for some unconceivable reason Ken Griffey Jr. is the villain. Seriously? Yes, seriously. This movie just lost all credibility.

In “Air Bud” this kid who has no idea what a basketball is teaches his dog to play the game. Their team ends up winning because the other team is scared of the dog, the kid gets sagely advice from an old janitor (who for the longest time I though was Bill Russell until I learned what Bill Russell actually looks like) and most importantly, repeat after me, it has a musical montage. Its good to note that I’m only talking about the first Air Bud film because the other 14 are just too far-fetched to even consider.

Our story plays out a little more like “Bad News Bears” where the team is full of all the rag-tag misfits and I have the starring role where I get to play a (slightly) less hung-over version of Walter Mathau’s character. That’s about where the similarities stop.

Anyways, our story had all the beginnings of a great sports movie. We combined with two other orphanages into a basketball tournament, we had two teams of 10-12 year old boys and girls that had never seen basketball played before, and we had only 6 weeks to prepare. Instant box-office gold in the making.

Then practice started… Since I’ve coached baseball before I was counting on that experience to get me through. The first practice went great. We arrived early one Saturday at one of the two basketball courts in the city (a city of 500k people) that has backboards and rims and taught the kids to dribble and pass the ball and to not run away when they are being guarded. It was a great success.

Then the next week, nay, the next three weeks, were nothing but disasters. One week we showed up to the court and there was a roller hockey tournament (apparently they found the only roller skates in town and each team just took turns using them). The next week our truck was stuck out of gas and we didn’t want to walk 10km to the court. The third week practice got cancelled because it was raining cats and dogs. It wasn’t really raining cats and dogs, that’s just an expression. I know you know it’s only an expression, I just don’t want people to think that raining cats and dogs is an actual thing here.

We were sitting now with only two weeks to practice before the tournament and only one practice under our belts for a group of kids who have never ever played the game before. If we weren’t underdogs before, we sure as heck were now.

Then, with two weeks to go we turned in the official rosters for the tourney. We were met with more than a couple problems as all the boys (that came from one of the other orphanages) were too old to play in a tournament. Remember from my first basketball post a long time ago where I had a picture with my super-tall secret weapons affectionately dubbed Hakim and Akeem Olajuwon?

They were definitely both 15 years old. Their new nicknames are Danny Almonte and Miguel Tejada.

With two weeks to go we managed to get in two practices, albeit with a squad of 8 new boys and 4 new girls. The last session was a blur of rules and tactics and strategies for how to defend without punching and how kicking the ball to control it and pass it up the court is not legal (that one took a lot of repeating).

The day before the tournament started we received our uniforms and the kids spent the whole night trying them on and talking about how they were going to wipe the floor with the other teams tomorrow and then they would win a trip to Maputo (the capital). I’m still not sure why they though they were going to win a trip to Maputo. People assume that everything here with a prize is a trip to Maputo. For example, I have a contest right now to take kids that memorize their multiplication tables out to lunch. People were kind of ho-hum about it until somebody wondered out loud if it was lunch in Maputo and then they all started jumping and screaming with anticipation.

Part 2 is coming tomorrow, and we’ll find out how much floor got wiped and who did the wiping. This shouldn’t be that hard to figure out, especially if you understand my love of sports movies.

In Which We All Get A Touch Sick

2011-07-21T10:10:00.002+02:00

Some weeks are better than others. This last week has not been one of those weeks.

On Saturday, the orphanage hosted a wedding reception for a couple from our church. This involved about 250 or 300 people all coming by for lunch after the ceremony. It was basically an open invite to all the kids, teens, and young adults from our church (maybe the adults had somewhere more important to be) along with the family of the couple. This presented a unique challenge. Namely, it was how to convince people they were going to eat.

Wedding receptions here are notorious for one thing: running out of food. It’s not uncommon to have 200 show up for a wedding and to have food for maybe only 100 of them. What’s worse is when there is a conscious decision by the couple to only buy food for 100 people, knowing people are going to be left out. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as you’ll see) this was not the case and there was more than enough food to go around.

However, this does not mean that the attendees have any piece of mind over the food situation. Telling people that there is enough food to go around usually just makes them suspicious. And when everybody attending the reception is coming from a place where drought, famine, food shortages, and hunger are very real things it is not uncommon for fights to break out over the last plate of food.

Nevertheless, telling everybody there would be enough food to go around did not mean that there was any sort of order or calm in the line to receive food. This is where my job comes in. Most of us here at the orphanage all had some sort of responsibility Saturday: organize parking, make sure there’s enough water for drinking, help out in the kitchen. My responsibility was to to keep people orderly so a riot didn’t break out in the food line. It was a job that turned out to be stressful but thankfully uneventful when all was said and done.

“Well that doesn’t sound so bad,” you say. I would mind you to remember that this was only Saturday, and the weekend was far from over.

On Sunday morning I got up and went about my day getting ready for church. I had not so much as gotten dressed when my stomach started grumbling something fierce. Sparing you from any details, I spent most of the morning in the bathroom with a case of diarrhea. Before continuing, I will apologize for those of you that think this is gross, because it is gross. Still, at the same time I ask you to keep an open mind that here in Mozambique this is something which effects people at least once a month here and it’s a really common part of our life.

And the funny thing is, because it is so common here, it is talked about all the time. When greeting people in America with a simple “How are you”, if the person is sick you might hear, “Eh, I got a case of the sniffles” or, “I’m feeling a little under the weather.” If somebody ever says, “I’ve got a case of diarrhea” you tell them to shut up and keep it to themselves. At the most, they might say they have a stomach ache. Here because it is so common an occurance you can be buying something from a street vendor you don’t even know, ask him how he is, and he’ll tell you if he has diarrhea or not. I’m not even kidding. Folks are not put off by talking about diarrhea.

Here at the orphanage, the first thing that people are supposed to do when they sick is tell somebody else about it. This is so we can keep track of how long somebody has been sick and how they’re progressing. It is also so we all know and can be on guard if it’s a bigger problem. So back to Sunday morning: After a little while I pull myself together and head out of the house to let some folks know that I’m sick with diarrhea. At first, I didn’t find anybody, and thought they all might have left for church already. Then, when I made it around the corner to where the bathrooms are, I discovered them. Everybody in the orphanage had taken a chair and just set themselves down by the bathroom. THE WHOLE ORPHANAGE had come down with a case of the runs!!!

There is really no way to express the scene that I witnessed. I think because people so often get sick with one thing or another there’s a certain amount of “gallows humor” about everything here. As each person would leave the bathroom they would raise a fist and shout “Viva Diarrhea”, which was responded to by the rest of those in line with shouts of “Oye” which is kind of like our version of saying “yee-haw”. Weirdly disturbing? Yes. Funnny? Definitely! When everybody is sitting around in discomfort it’s the little things that will lift your spirits.

As we set about to start the task of figuring out just which meal we all ate gave us diarrhea the answer quickly presented itself. Soon, we started fielding phone calls from the pastors at church asking what happened at the wedding yesterday and why everybody that attended was at home with diarrhea. It doesn’t take Nancy Drew to figure out that something we ate at the reception got EVERYBODY sick. However, there were two kids who didn’t get sick, which made it slightly puzzling. After a little more sleuthing, we figured out the cause of the diarrhea was from some bad beans, as the people who were sick didn’t have any beans.

Now, just because folks were making a joke in light of a bad situation, don’t think that Sunday was all fun and games. It wasn’t. It sucked. And it sucked a lot. Many people, including myself, were feeling better come Sunday night, but still about half of the kids weren’t willing to venture more than a few steps from the bathroom.

Come Monday, much of our gang was feeling better, but still about ten people were suffering from what was being dubbed “The Replay”. By the end of the day Monday those numbers were down quite a bit to only five or so kids, but at this point the diarrhea had morphed into just a general stomach illness.

And then in the middle of the night on Monday/Tuesday I was struck with a case of “The Replay”. But because on day two the diarrhea had morphed into some different, equally unholy form of ailment I spent the whole night vomiting out the entire contents of my stomach . Thankfully, in the big picture there were only about 4 or 5 of us that were still sick at this point so the whole orphange wasn’t joining us. Unthankfully, we were each throwing up stuff we ate so long ago that we don’t even remember eating it.

We’re mostly on the road to recovery, and I’ll keep you posted if this happens to become “The Replay - Part Two : Revenge of the Replay”. But in light of everything that has gone one, I just want to explain why I’m telling you about any of this in the first place. I contemplated not telling any of this but I decide to go ahead and do it for several reasons.

The first reason is that it was a major event here. Most major events get put here for you guys to know how our lives are going, and everybody getting sick for 2-3 days is a pretty major event. Its already being referred to as “marriage of diarrhea”.

A second reason it my continued mission to help you get a grasp for what life is like here in Nampula and the orphanage, and a part of that life is diarrhea. On average, a kid will pick up a minor case every month or so, that’s just the way life is. If infants get diarrhea in the jungle they can die from it. It is unpleasant, but it is not uncommon. And while diarrhea is not contagious, it usually seems to hit at least 5 or 6 kids at a time when it does come.

The third reason I’m letting you know is because I want you know that every single day we really need/appreciate your prayers and support. While God is always good to us here, its only because we’re continually seeking his favor and asking for his help. And as many bad things that could have happened from eating tainted food, that fact that we came away with only diarrhea and upset stomachs is a sign of Gods grace.

So until next time, here’s hoping that that your food is a little bit healthier than ours.