The Great Trek, part 1

Greetings loyal blogsters!

To say that I’ve been moving and shaking in the last few weeks would be a bit of an understatement…since I left my home in Pretoria on the 12th of November I have been in 3 countries (SA, Mozambique, and Swaziland) and about 3 different provinces of South Africa. Right now I’m living the Rotary dream! Traveling around, giving speeches, and bathing in the hospitality of the beautiful Rotarians of District 9250! Many thanks to all the people that have put me up and put up with me…no easy feat at times when dealing with a girl with her head in a cloud…I’m sure!

I took my last exam on the 22nd of November (it was a sick test for Genetics cos I was sick during the actual exam), but otherwise I was mostly done w/exams around the 10th of November. Exams went decently I guess. So far I’ve gotten 2 As (aka Distinctions) and one 69%...which I was happy about because the class I got a 69% in had a really tough final exam. I bet a lot of people failed that class!! So unless I really fail this last exam I’m waiting on the results of…it looks pretty good that I’m getting into veterinary school here. Woohoo!!! I find out about whether or not I’m going to veterinary school in a few weeks. By Christmas I should know.

So, in the last few weeks I’ve been traveling around the Rotary District in order to take care of some of my scholarship duties…acting as an ambassador, spreading peace and goodwill, absorbing the good vibes and hospitality of Southern Africans, and giving speeches. I’ve spoken to Rotary Clubs in Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa…and even got a gig speechifying to a group of high school girls in Swaziland. I’m sad to say that I wasn’t too happy with my efforts on that speech. Which is unfortunate. It’s good to speak to Rotarians, but the chance to inspire youngsters is a unique opportunity and one that is probably worth more than giving 100 speeches to Rotarians. I have so many wonderful things to say to young girls and I think, to date, my life’s been something that young kids could probably look up to…I just wish I could have expressed that better to them. I suppose I have a long way to go before I become a motivational speaker ;)

I started my sojourn in Mozambique a few weeks ago because my visa for Mozambique was expiring the 17th-ish of November and it was a damn expensive visa. I got the embassy to give me 2 entries into the country on the visa…so I really wanted to use it to its full potential. I was put up in Maputo (the capital city) by Rotarian/Assistant Governor Max Scott. Max is in the business of importing car parts from overseas, particularly truck toppers. He was born in Scotland, but has lived his entire life (since the young age of 1 ½ years) in Southern Africa (Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa). When he was telling me the story of his life, at least the geographical story, I was just thinking to myself “Wow, people like you really DO exist!” It interests me to think of the life of a person who is sort of a foreigner in the sense that his original culture is somewhere else…but that has really only known Africa as his home. It sort of made me think about the future of my own life and the potentially rootless character that I can imagine it taking on.

Max lives in a townhouse sort of setup in Maputo with his son (maybe his stepson) Claudio and a young lady named Elena. Elena’s about my age and originally from Swaziland. I don’t think I’ll go into too much of a description of the house structure because one thing I’ve learned here is that sometimes a lot of people live together in complicated woven tapestries of life (i.e. not necessarily directly related). As a person spending a day or three or four in a house as a guest it’s really not my place to tease out all the information of this interconnectedness. Who am I to sort it out? People live together and that’s that. This takes another form here in Southern Africa as well, in particular with black families. Extended family networks stretch out past the horizon…cousins and aunties and moms and dads and brothers and sisters and grannies and such. For example when I was in Swaziland I stayed with another Rotarian, Julian (more on her in a bit). We went to go visit some “family” on a Sunday. She introduced me to a woman that was the “friend of the grandmother” of Julian’s child. So I said “oh so this is also grandma?” and Julian was like “yeah.” Friends of the family often take on an extended family role such that they are also referred to as family members like auntie or grandma. It’s not something completely foreign cos at home I have an Uncle Bobby that is not related to my family by blood and I’ve never known him as anything other than Uncle. I also have a second family in the USA as well…the family of my best friend since I was 6 years old. But here the networks of people go on and on and on. I think it’s really nice because it’s always good to have “family” around. But I’m sure having so much family around can also get complicated and messy…isn’t that what movies have taught us about the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday? See, makers of Home Alone 1, 2, and 3…I was paying attention!

There are a few other cultural items that also lend themselves to this great big extended family network. A lot of houses (or you might call them homesteads) are arranged such that on the property a family inhabits there is a main house and then one or a few smaller houses or “flats” on the property. This is something you will see in white and black families here, in rural and urban areas. In white families these flats tend to be where the older children live (like kids my age) or sometimes they are rented out to strangers. In black families these flats tend to house more family…or also the older kids. It seems in particular that if a person lives in a more urban area that these flats will accommodate relatives coming from the rural areas that are looking for work in the city. And this trend seems to hold true in many countries…even as far north as Kenya. So, where as in the USA we might just have the main house and that’s it, there is plenty of place to put people up in houses here. One of my friends from Durban was telling me about her family’s place and it sounds like there are a number of houses where the family lives. She said she has like 25-ish people living there. It might be even more than that. She said she has like 50 brothers and sisters…but like I said when someone says ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ here who knows if they mean blood or extended family. And does it really matter anyways?

Another cultural item that lends itself to large family networks is what I will call the ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ phenomenon. Or maybe you can call it the ‘baby’s daddy’ phenomenon. It seems like a lot of families here might be constructed of kids from many different fathers. It’s not necessarily a negative thing like we might think in the USA. I really like the way it plays out here because instead of being a big deal it seems like people just get on with this business of living. I heard a phrase here from a Congolese guy that went “no fruits, no roots.” While I can safely say that I’m not interested in putting down any roots right now…I can dig the concept. I’m sure that people here get abortions and stuff, but it seems like having a baby here isn’t a life ruiner as it might be construed at home. So from these ‘many daddies’ there is also an extended family network that comes with each daddy…making the network even bigger.

Okay…so I stayed at Max’s house for a few days and visited with all the Rotary clubs in D9250 that are in Mozambique. There are 3: Polana Club, Maputo Club, and Matola Club. The first 2 are in Maputo (the capital of Mozambique) and the last club is in Matola, a town just outside of Maputo to the west. Maputo and Matola are predominantly Portuguese clubs and Polana is predominantly English-speaking. I spoke at Maputo and Polana…in English. My Portuguese skills are not quite up to speech giving just yet. Raoni, you gotta teach me more!

Many thanks to all the Rotary Clubs of Mozambique! Muito obrigada e muito prazer! It was nice to visit your clubs, see so many familiar faces from conference in May, as well as making new friends! Mozambique still has the friendliest people in my book ;) I look forward to visiting again!

A quick note about Rotary Clubs in Moz re: customs. It is customary for everyone in the club to clap after the Rotary bell is rung at the beginning of the meeting. I saw this at every club in Moz, and not really anywhere else. There isn’t really a “seargent” part of the meetings (that I can remember) where people are light-heartedly fined for various infringements. I can’t recall exactly, but don’t remember seeing a “wine draw” like what I’ve seen at clubs in Swaziland and SA. A wine draw is where raffle tickets are sold at each meeting to raise money. There’s a draw during the meeting and the winner gets a bottle of wine. I’ve seen 2 clubs in SA (White River and Hatfield) that do a variation of this where each person in the club either puts 2 hands on their head, 2 on their butt (“tail”), or one hand on head and tail. Then 2 coins are flipped. If it’s 2 heads then the people w/2 hands on their head go on to the next flip and all the rest of the people sit down. You can switch up your head/tail combination between each round and this continues until someone wins a bottle of wine.

Polana was my first club and speech in Moz. Polana is a smaller, younger club. Younger in the age group of attending Rotarians as well as the actual length the club has existed. It seems like they have some administrative things to work out, but I can see them being a very vibrant club. Maybe the hip young professionals club ;)

Matola Club was my next visit. This club is a bit outside of the main happenings in Maputo, so that is something that brings flavor to their club. They seem to be a club that has been around for a bit and are fairly established with dedicated members. I heard a speech on biofuels while I was there. I say heard because it was in Portuguese and if it weren’t for the powerpoint slides…I would have been 93.5% lost ;) I think there was some miscommunication as far as my giving a speech was concerned, but that also seemed to just be par for the course when dealing with the Mozambiquan clubs. Maybe it was a language thing, maybe not…I’m not sure.

Finally, Maputo Club. It’s the oldest club of the 3 that I met in Moz and the largest. There was a pretty diverse crowd there as far as ages were concerned, but it seems like it is the more prestigious club of the 3 I visited. They meet at a super fancy hotel overlooking the ocean…nice! They actually had a powerpoint set up for me, so I gave one of my prepared powerpoint speeches. There were even representatives from Rotaract (the “youth league” of Rotary…ages from highschool to 30-ish years old). I don’t really see Rotaracters or Interacters (high school age Rotary program) at many clubs in SA, but they seem to have some sort of presence in Mozambique and Swaziland.

Staying at Max’s house was really cool. He’s really laid back and took me to all the clubs as well as gave me rides to some other places. Thanks!!!! It was REALLY hot in Maputo while I was there…like almost 40C (104F) with the blazing Moz sun. But it was really nice and because Maputo’s by the ocean there is always a nice breeze blowing thru the city…even if it sometimes feels like an oven breeze. So it was nice to get rides! Max works from home, so he was basically around most of the time and I didn’t have to worry about disrupting his business day, per se. He has a lady that works in the house during the day (I forgot her name, d’oh!) and she would cook food and steal my clothes to wash them when I wasn’t looking. Sneaky ;) One day I opened up the pot for lunch only to see whole baby calamari lounging in a sauce. I got sort of scared at the first glance because all I saw was lots of tentacles. I sort of yelped to myself and then said “well I’m going to eat that, no matter what it is.” I figured out it was calamari and relaxed a bit after that. And…it was SO delicious. It was cooked in the perfect way so as not to be too rubbery and chewy. Nice job! Such a nice job that I ate it for lunch and dinner!

Maputo is a really cool city. It’s easy to get around. Walking isn’t too bad (unless it’s 1 million degrees). The local transport isn’t that hard to figure out and people are pretty nice. Also the streets are all basically grid-like in the main city area, so it’s not that hard to figure out where you are. And the streets are named after famous socialist/communist/African heroes, so it’s easy to remember the street names cos they are names you already know like Mao-Tse Tung and Vladimir Lenin. Plus, although it’s a tired looking city, it’s a really beautiful place. Colonial at times, big avenues, always something to look at. And because I was there a few months ago (and had walked around a lot when I was in Maputo w/Raoni) I sort of knew where things were in relation to one another. It was like being in Chicago until I moved to the city…I recognized parts of the city when I passed thru them, but didn’t always understand how the geographical puzzle fit together. Give me some more time in Maputo and I’ll be set ;)

It was really nice to meet up again with some people that I had met my first time in Maputo. Jane, a German girl studying in Maputo, and I went out a few days and just spent time together. We went to a market in a place called Xipamanine (SHEE-pah-ma-nee-nee). A large sprawling affair where you could purchase just about anything you need: muti (traditional medicine remedies), rat poison (there was a stall that sold only poisons), fresh fruit/veg, fish (of course…this is Moz), pots and pans, cow head soup, Raiz beer (which I had never seen in Moz), and such. Someone tried to rob me while I was there (Raoni, you were right), but they were not successful. When we first arrived in the market I had a shoulder bag on my shoulder, but I wasn’t feeling comfortable with it on my shoulder. There was too much crowding in the market passageways and also I felt like at one point someone was trying to do something to my bag…and I was right. Someone cut my bag w/a razor, but they didn’t cut all the way thru so I didn’t lose any of my stuff. But, because my spidey sense was tingling I moved my bag around even before I realized someone had tried to rob me. When we stopped for a cold drink I realized my bag had been cut (d’oh!...my Beautyshop Band Bag is now in shreds…no more representing Champaign IL) and then I was on point and looking out for robbers. Sneaky bastards…I got some sandals (that have already broken, but will be fixed soon), some things from the witch doctor pharmacy, some beautiful cloths, and some Mozambique matches (cos they have a cool map of Moz on the box). A really nice lady in the “pharmacy” part of the market gave Jane and I both bead anklets as a gift, which was really nice. Mine was red and yellow and Jane’s was multicolored. Mine fell off already, but when I get home again I’m going to fix it. She said it was a gift to traveling friends. Nice!

I also hooked up w/some crazy Brazilian dudes I met with Raoni, Junior and Elias. Junior is super funny and taught me all kinds of swear words in Brazilian Portuguese. It’s weird, but I can understand so much of the Portuguese he speaks. I think it’s because he tries really hard to talk to me and make me understand. He doesn’t speak any English except to say “my name is Junior and I make music” or something like that…so we really have to stretch and work hard to talk to each other. But it was really nice to go say hi to him. I just came into where he was staying shouted “porra cara…” and it was on. If you don’t know what “porra cara” means then go make some Brazilian friends…it’s the only way you will learn. I also saw this guy I went out with one night called Sibia. He’s a musician as well and we spent a lot of time talking and stuff when I was there before. Also, we kissed when I was in Maputo the first time w/Raoni. But I had to avoid him this time for reasons I will go into later. He gave me a ride back to Max’s place one day and it was nice to see him again… it was also nice to get a ride cos it was REALLY hot that day!!

After Mozambique I headed off to Swaziland to do my Rotary thing in a different area code. I took a minibus to Manzini and was met by Rotarian Julian Mlangeni, a really awesome Swazi lady with a great family: one son 13 (Letu) and one son 18 months (Phephiswa, said: PEH-pi-swa), and Jabu (the house lady/nanny). Swaziland is definitely a place I could see myself settling into. It’s really really beautiful with rolling hills, green moutaintops, rocky outcrops, and expansive fields of pineapples and sugarcane. It’s a very rural country with some hints of the urban and generally seems to be lacking the mental static that comes with being in South Africa. Crime, yes in some places, but not to the extent that is experienced in South Africa. And Swazi people are super nice too. The country is so small, so you can drive across the whole thing in a few hours. It’s like Connecticut or Rhode Island in that respect.

I stayed with Julian for almost a week. She has a big scary dog that had never really seen white people before, so I had to stay in the house most of the time, but it wasn’t so bad. I watched a lot of TV, which is pretty novel for me and not really boring since I never do it at home. I arrived on a Friday and during the weekend we went out for dinner, relaxed, visited a dam in the south of the country, and visited some relatives.

Again, many thanks to the Rotarians of Swaziland. Again, I saw a lot of familiar friendly faces from Conference in May…in particular Bheki of the Matsapha club! Great to see you again!! Julian is also a lady I met in Pretoria at the conference in May and because I remember her the best, I was eager to stay at her house. She’s pretty young for a Rotarian, maybe late 30s/early 40s, and we got along really well. It was so wonderful to be part of a family for a week-ish. Her family’s great. Letu is very inquisitive and super smart so it was really cool to talk to him. Phephiswa’s a very adorable baby and he was fascinated by me, so we had a good time. When we went to go visit Julian’s family on Sunday she was joking that I was going to be Phephi’s future wife but that in the mean time the father was going to “take care of me” until Phephi was old enough to do it himself. All I could say is that I’m worth a lot of cows because I have a university education ;)

Oh yeah, on a random note…when black people get married in Southern Africa the husbands have to offer a lobola to the family of the future wife. Nowadays it takes many forms: money, cars, cell phones, cows, etc. But back in the day it was primarily an agricultural offering (usually cows as that is a sign/currency of wealth). For example, my friend Cliff is going to be marrying his girlfriend in the next year-ish, but before he can do that he needs to pay lobola to his girlfriend’s family. I think he’s just giving them money…which he is working hard to produce right now. The guy that ran my dormitory is a Xhosa guy that was marrying an English lady. As a part of his symbolic lobola to the English family he sent 100 greeting/post cards with pictures of cows to his fiance’s father. Lobola is something that, like many old customs, has definitely changed with the times to meet the demands of the modern Southern African family. Lobola isn’t just in Southern Africa either. I think it’s something that can be seen in many different cultures around the world. But, of course, we have nothing like it in the USA…so far as I know. I haven’t gotten married too many times, so I might be wrong.

With that little tidbit of cultural information…I’m going to end this post. I have much more to say, as I’m sure you can imagine, but it will have to wait til tomorrow! I’ll finish up my story tomorrow.

Enjoy it!

Keep the faith and spread it gently
Love, Lynsee