Perspective: Education

           Though the rare private religious-based school does exist, the large majority of Mozambican students pursue their studies at a government-run public school.  First through seventh grades are completely free, while 8-12^th grades cost around 250 Meticais (around $8) per year, an amount not easy to find all at once for many.

            The school system was roughly based off of the South African system.  Grades 1-5 are considered first level primary school.  I am not that familiar with the general curriculum for these grades, but like in The States each class has one teacher with them all day and who teaches all courses.  During these grades some courses are still taught in the local dialect while the students learn Portuguese in the classroom.  With that said, many students learn Portuguese first at school and then more at home.  Local dialects (all Bantu based languages, of which there are a few dozen in Mozambique) are the primary tongues for all interactions, conversations, and work outside of the largest of provincial capitals.  Sixth and seventh grades are the second level of primary school.  Local language is all but absent from these lessons and instruction of English as a foreign language begins.  Students have the same teacher all day except for English.  This introduction of English in 6^th grade has begun only in the last couple years and is part of a national effort to make English a commonly spoke alternative language.  All countries bordering Mozambique are English-speaking and as are most tourists that pass through here. 

            Primary schools of the first level are by far the most common schools in the country.  Traveling down every passable road in the rural areas you’ll find a 1st-4th grade school about every 10-15 miles.  Sometimes these (and this goes for secondary schools as well) consist of little more than a grass roof on four posts and a dirt floor with no desks, while in other areas they are blocks multi-level bare plastered brick classrooms with double desks and windows.   Clearly there are many more people that do not live on these roads and need to walk miles to school everyday.  6th-7th grade schools are always attached to a 1st-5th grade school to form “complete primary schools”.  These are a little harder to find in the very rural areas.  In some areas students will stay at a house near school, of a friend or relative, during the school week and only return home on the weekend.  Sometimes this need for room and board leads to students also being ‘maids’ in a house near the school they attend (see the Cooking section).  

            Each district of every province has at least one first cycle secondary school (8^th-10^th grade) and more and more now also have a second cycle secondary school which includes 11^th and 12^th grades.  In 8^th-10^th grades each student studies the same 10 subjects (different topics each year, obviously) for 3 years: Portuguese, Mathematics, English, History, Geography, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Drafting, and Physical Education.  At the end of 10^th grade everyone takes 9 national exams (no exam for PE) in one week.  These exams cover any material from 8^th-10^th grades and count for a very significant portion of your final grade which determines if you graduate. 

            Now, in many countries this task would be daunting but possible.  Textbooks, resources, worksheets, and the internet would make it possible to be prepared for such a week of exams, though personally I still would not want to do it.  The situation here is a little different.  To pass a test or grade you only need to achieve a 50%, but it is rare to find a student who achieves above a 90% on everything (Actually, I have encountered teachers who believe that students should not earn 100% because that means they know as much as the teacher.  Also, students who consistently earn above a 90% are doubted as is it assumed to be impossible.), and there is a reason for this.   You can expect that the teacher in the room is the only one with a textbook.  The walls are not covered with posters, diagrams, or student work and most schools do not have a library or the means to make worksheets that can help.  And as for the internet….no; only accessible with some cell phones and still its not reliable.  Each student has his/her notebooks for each subject for each year of secondary school.  These are treasured.  What this also means is that the teacher’s role is changed.  The teacher’s principle job, in the 3 lessons per class they have weekly, is to pass on information, not explain it.  There just isn’t much time to practice, apply, and integrate topics. Just imagine what this does for critical thinking skills.  Just imagine how easy this makes passing those national exams.  Just imagine what kind of cheating this induces.

            Cheating here does not have the same sense of moral evil as it carries in the States.  In fact, it is super common and some teachers just look the other way.  Its complicated and has cultural ties.  I’ll get more into this another time, but community ties here are iron strong.  Common thinking dictates that you give what you have to the person that doesn’t have, regardless of your circumstance.  This applies for knowledge, even in a classroom and even during an exam.  And, by the way, knowledge can also include information directly from the notebook you have hidden in your pants, not just what you memorized.  So cheating during the tests is rampant.  When I taught secondary school biology here I used to administer tests and see if I could break my personal record for the number of cheat sheets I confiscated.  At one point a wall in my house was decorated with them.  It wasn’t that hard because since cheating was wildly accepted, students never had the need to develop clever or clandestine techniques.  In fact I believe my vigilance provoked the evolution of more creative cheating in my own classrooms.  Not to toot my own horn though.  For the most part a cheater would sit in their desk doing nothing but staring directly at you, the teacher, with huge eyes as if the wall behind you beheld the end of the world and they couldn’t help but watch.  This was sign numero uno.  All I would have to do is take my eyes of this student for a moment and then look back as he or she pulled out their cheat sheet.  Seriously, that’s all; like fish in a barrel.  They all knew it was ‘wrong’ but laughed when they got caught as if I just I performed a magic trick. 

            In secondary schools, the grade levels are organized into what is called ‘turmas’, which could be equated to homerooms in the American school system.  Depending on the secondary school these homerooms can range from 40 to 120 students in one classroom.  In Mozambique students stay in their homeroom all day and it is the teachers that switch classrooms after each period.  Since teachers do not have supplies, aside from maybe a textbook, there are no complaints about the moving rooms every hour and since the students do not switch classrooms between periods it cuts down on needed transition time.  However, the result is a class of students who have every class together everyday of every week of the entire year.  Any teacher in America would agree that this will often create discipline problems because the students get to know each too well.  Classroom management techniques here are carried with more of an iron fist, which I imagine keeps the kids in line out of fear.  With classes of up to 120 students the difficulties are easy to imagine.  Also, I have yet to see a classroom with this many desks.  Sometimes the room has desks for 40 and sometimes no desks at all.  Since each room houses the same students each day it is their responsibility to care for the desks they have, though desk ‘stealing’ does happen between turmas.  Notice that up to this point I have not really commented on the style or quality of teaching within these walls.  These physical conditions alone are sufficient for making an academic environment very challenging.

            Each time a teacher walks into a classroom all students, whether seated on the floor or in a desk, stand to greet the teacher: “Bom Dia, Senhor(a) Professor(a).”  The teacher responds and customarily asks how they are, and the class responds in unison: “Estamos bem, e Senhor(a) Professor(a), como está?” (‘We are fine, and Teacher, how are you?’)  At this point the students remain standing waiting for the teacher to give them permission to sit.  A current Peace Corps Volunteer recently told me that 15 minutes into one of her first lessons here she realized the students were all on their feet taking notes.  She had forgotten to tell them to sit and they had respectfully waited for her instructions to do so. 

            What follows is the daily roll call made quicker through the use of number assigned to each student.  The numbers are called and those that do not respond ‘present’ are noted as absent. Then the lesson proceeds.  I already mentioned that the teacher is often the only one to have the textbook.  From my experience this is true, but I imagine the situation is a little better in cities.  Rote memorization is a common study skill here and one reinforced by teachers.  However, it is a one-question, one-answer system.  I baffled many students by informing them that there were multiple correct answers to come questions and they should not be afraid to be wrong.  Though this is slowly changing for the better, the majority of the high school teachers have little more than a high school education themselves.  Secondary school teachers are now required to have what could loosely be compared to an Associates Degree or Teaching Credential, but this is quite new.  Becoming more common, and mandatory, are teacher training schools for all new teachers.  They are one or two-year programs covering teaching methodology and more in-depth subject-matter instruction.  However, they are not considered to be university-level.  Additionally you can get what is more or less a teaching credential in 2-years at a fully accredited university, or take 4-years to do a bachelors degree.  The biggest limiting factors in attending to university are  physical access (On average there is 1 university per province, which means about one school per 3 million citizens.), and price of tuition (There is 1 public university in the country that has opened some satellite branches, but is centralized in the national capital in the south.  Some years back I recall there being only 17 openings in the whole Biology department for incoming students.  All interested students in the whole country took a test to try to get one of those 17 spots.).  Some correspondence degrees have become available in the past couple years, which improves access to higher education though doesn’t obviously provide a rich academic environment.  Those that have obtained a higher educational degree of any sort see the difference in their paycheck.  The salary bump for a teacher with a high school education to one with a Bachelors Degree is about 300%.   This sounds like an excellent incentive for going to university despite the challenges, but there are few scholarships and no loans, so all tuition must be paid at the beginning of each semester.

            Even if  you were lucky enough to live in a city with a university and have the financial means to attend, studying and teaching would be a very difficult balance.  I have one close friend who is doing it.  Teaching secondary school from 7am to 12pm Monday through Friday and then working on his Bachelor’s in Philosophy from 12:30pm to 5:30pm each afternoon Monday through Friday.  He works in order to afford his studies and studies in order to one day provide more for his family.  To pull this off he needs to live in the provincial capital while his wife (who also works and has yet to receive her requested transfer) and kids live 3hrs away.  He rarely gets to see them. 

            The school day here is broken into 3 separate sessions and each session has a totally different group of students.  The morning goes from 7am to 12pm, the afternoon session from 12:30pm to 5:30pm and the evening session from 6pm to 11pm.  This maximizes the use of the school building, but also means some schools have thousands of students.  The secondary school in my town has over 6,000.  The morning and afternoon sessions consist of ‘regular-aged’ students, and by that I mean the students you would expect to see in 3^rd grade or 10^th grade (or a bit older).  However, night school exists for adults, older teens, and pregnant girls so that they all have the opportunity to study despite responsibilities at home.  Night school provides education to many that did not master it or that simply lived to far away from a secondary school and so missed out on the opportunity earlier in life, but unfortunately it often provides a very low quality education.

            Due to this session schedule, some teachers are assigned classes in two sessions per day.  On average a teacher works 24 classroom hours per week (for example 3 lessons to 8 turmas each week), but overtime is also an option.  Regardless, night school is often short-changed on good teachers and accountability.  Many of these teachers, much like the students, have day jobs so hours in the classroom at night does not bring with it much energy or creativity.  It is honestly hard to find positive things to say about night school.  Often it is an opportunity offered but not fulfilled.

            All of these conditions make passing any grade, regardless of age, grade, or session, difficult.  In my experience it is rare to find a student who has never failed at least one grade between 1^st and 12^th grades.  And if you consecutively failed a single grade 3 times in secondary school you are automatically transferred to night school, which I imagine significantly lowers your chance of passing that grade due to the lower quality education and greater chance for distractions and drop-outs.  Learning is tough here.  However, education is valued deeply as a means out of poverty and people will pursue a high school diploma for many many years as it is the benchmark of being considered an educated person. 

Perspective: Rain

            While taking a bath on a cold morning in my outdoor roofless bathroom is about the only time I curse the rain and do feel entitled to do so.  In a country in which only 5.3% of the 3.8 million farms are irrigated, rain rules all.  Talk of climate change has not yet seeped into every conversation here, but ask a farmer about the rain and you will learn that in the past generation the rainy season has just become unreliable.  Its not that it now starts later or ends sooner; you just don’t know what the year will bring.  Farmers cannot predict it. 

Above are 2 forecasts for the South/Central Regions of Mozambique, the first one published in July 2010 and the second in April 2011, both by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).  Notice that there are about 4 months of overlap between the two timelines (Jan-Apr 2011).  This is the general seasonal cycle for South/Central Mozambique.  You’ll notice that the Rainy Season (blue) coincides with summer in Mozambique which stretches from October to April.  This past season (’10-’11) it began raining in my town (northern central region) in late November and stopped in mid-April.  It was a good rain year considering the past few, though ideally rains begin in late October to facilitate seed sowing in mid-November and maximize time growing in the summer heat, which never comes late.  However, in the ’09-’10 season, the rains delayed until December and then dumped hard for just over one month, and then nothing.  This drought killed farm production yields in May 2010 when corn/maize is harvested.  The low yields then in turn meant less money in the farmers’ pockets or less reserve food at home.  Since this ‘1^st Harvest’ (green) is the primary harvest of the year it made the rest of the year tough.  That is why on the first timeline Oct ’10 – Feb ’11 is marked as the ‘Hunger Season’ (red).  During those months, just after the later and short vegetable season of August to October, the rains had just begun to fall and seeds were just barely in the ground.  That means there is little to eat since besides foraged leaves, stored dried beans, and dried cassava.  However those months are also busy; filled with the work of getting seeds planted and fields weeded.  All the time hoping that that first big rain will be followed by another big rain within a few days so that the newly germinated seeds will have water to access.  If they dry out, then the seed will be lost. 

I am thankful that I have a salary which affords me food imported to my town, and that I, in the one season I witnessed this, was not submissive to the rain’s rule.  But I felt the tension of those that were.  Eyes always skyward.  Talk always of the last time the rain fell and if it was good.  Prayers that during those first precious weeks illness or injury not fall upon a household.  Then a scurry to get the last fields sown only in time to fight the weeds in the first. 

What is or is not accomplished in the beginning of the rainy season influences how the next one will play out, but ultimately it is the rain that decides how the next year will fall.  This last year the rains fell good here, and dampened the end of the season.  People were relieved to be satisfied.  Because of this the rainy season, to begin later this year, will merely coincide with a ‘Lean Season’.

3.8 Million Farms in Mozambique

   The linked article below is not my perspective but the results of a recent study by the National Statistics Institute of Mozambique.  However, much like what I have been writing about, it gives an excellent quantitative glimpse into agriculture in Mozambique. 

    One of the most telling stats is that, "Mechanisation scarcely exists. Only 1.6 per cent of farms reported the use of tractors and 1.8 per cent the use of ploughs." That means that 96.6% of farms are worked completely by hand.   Also as a point of comparison, around 50% of the farms in the USA are larger than 250 acres (50 hectares), while in Mozambique 0.02% of the farms are larger than 250 acres.

For you Americans out there 1 hectare is equal to 2.47 acres.

 3.8 Million Farms in Mozambique

Perspective: Home Life, Cooking, & Food

HOME LIFE

Large families make for large family relations.  The term family here is taken to include uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, grandparents, etc and the end of a family is difficult to clarify.  It is almost as if one family just melts into the next.  No matter which of these family members find themselves under one roof, life is not convenient.  There is one head of the household.  Contrary to lack of women rights, there are some regions of the country that are more maternalistic in which the groom joins the family of the bride upon marriage.  In these areas women will also run the house, while men will be at work in the market.  All of the inhabitants of the house then follow the orders of the head.  Children here are not encouraged to ask questions, but are rather told what and what not to do (a norm that has incredibly deep ripples in a formal classroom setting or less formal field training).  There are endless daily chores including carrying water in 25 liter jugs (each weighing over 50lbs full) from the nearest well or river which is sometimes over an hour away.  Custom here is that you bath first thing in the morning and last thing before bed, so that’s even more water to be carried.  This may seem like a gross misuse of water, but these are regions without paved roads/paths, sewers, or easy access to medicines.  Keeping clean is an important cultural norm and has definite health benefits.   Also when taking a bucket bath the quantity of water you use is nothing compared to even the most conservative shower in the States. 

          Food has to be gathered from the farm since most homes do not have refrigeration (let alone often electricity).  Each meal has a main carbohydrate which, in areas without rain sufficient enough to cultivate rice, is in the form of a stiff porridge.  This porridge is made from a flour (either corn, cassava, or sorghum) and that flour is hand made, daily.  The farm must be attended to daily, which obviously includes a huge spectrum of tasks all of which are done by hand or with a simple hoe.  Even for the majority of families that live in rural areas their farms are not outside their back door surrounding the house as is often seen in the States.  Family members walk to a suitable piece of land where they grow the family’s food.  Small livestock, such a chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, pigs and goats, are kept close to home to care for them and guarantee their safety.  The children (and often adults) go to school during the morning or afternoon or evening (3 separate sessions of school per day) and of course you need to factor in the time they spend daily walking to and from school (hours) in sparsely populated rural areas.  Others must go out in search of cooking fuel, the most common of which is locally gathered wood.  Some also cook over charcoal, but in rural areas charcoal is more of a revenue source, since it makes little sense to gather wood, burn it into charcoal and then use it to cook when you could just use the wood you gathered in the first place.  Then of course there is the time it takes to actually cook; no just-add-water mixes, pre-washed and cut lettuce, instant rice, frozen meals, or delivery.  During all of this children are cared for (though in a more hands-off way they you would see in the States) and clothes are washed in the river and dried in the sun.  The end of the day comes (dusk) and there is little time for leisure; maybe a visit to a neighbor or walk around just to walk around.  Many have small AM/FM radios and pick up the one local or national radio station.  A family gathered around a radio seated on bamboo mats in the dark is a common site as children doze off before retreating to the dark interiors of windowless houses with bamboos mats laid as beds on the dirt floor.  The day will begin again at dawn.

COOKING

Imagine your stove is 3 stones slightly smaller than bowling balls arranged in a triangle and on which a large metal or ceramic pot balances filled with bubbling porridge.  You are outside but under a simple gazebo with maybe a few short walls to keep out too much wind.    As the cook you are simultaneously monitoring the food, stirring it, and stoking the fire below.  Each of the 3 avenues between the stones is filled wood, long pieces that are pushed further into the hearth as they burn down.  There are no hot pads or tongs, just your hands which move nimbly and sense little pain after years of this art.  A young child, much too young by American standards for carrying out such a task, appears to ask for ‘fire’.  You scoop out a few smaller pieces of burning wood in a coconut shell.  The little one hurries back home guarding the fire that will make dinner. I wonder who is the one that lit this fire, and how many days ago it was.

            Cooking, even for those living in town, is such a time consuming task that working and cooking is not a possibility.  Wealthier families have a paid housekeeper or maid who can be assigned to just about any task: cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, child care, yard work, etc.  Others have a young girl or boy that lives with them and receives room and board in exchange for working in the house.  Others have a wife, daughter, or son that just stays home all day and cooks.  The time needed to make everything from scratch means that once the breakfast dishes are done, you need to get going on lunch, and then dinner.  To save costs, much of the food is grown, so part of cooking might entail going to the field to pick food for dinner.

            Even for the wealthier families living in cities and towns, there is little other option.  Cooking is not made convenient beyond cans of tomato paste.  Convenient and quick cooking can free more family members for paid work, but convenient and quick foods are more expensive so first a family must work and earn the money, but how is that possible if a potential wage-earner must stay in the kitchen all day.  Not everyone builds a wood fire in their yard.  Many in slightly larger towns cook on heavy and shin-high iron stoves assembled and welded from scrap metal which burn locally produced charcoal.  There are also electric stoves (simple 2 burner hotplates) for those that can afford it and when gas tanks are available you’ll find some households cooking on natural gas stoves hooked to a tank.  A full range with oven is very rare, and even rarer if all the components work properly.

FOOD

If a trendy diet were to emerge based on Mozambican cuisine, it would be the all-carbs-all-the-time diet.  Every meal and snack has them. 

Breakfast – In general they are pretty light.  Some type of tea (traditional black or fresh lemon grass are most common) is a must with plenty of sugar, if available.  A white bread roll, boiled cassava, boiled ear of starchy corn, boiled sweet potatoes, or boiled green bananas accompany a piece of fruit.  Eggs are also available either boiled or fried in a lot of oil.  Sometimes a bit of very thin jam or margarine as well.  And, of course, there are always leftovers which do not hold for long without refrigeration.

Snack – The snack is still an all ages activity here, and mandatory if you have guests over.  Its always quite simple and plain usually a seasonally available boiled carbohydrate (cassava, corn, green bananas, sweet potatoes).  Sometimes fresh boiled peanuts or fresh sorghum are also options.  In rice growing regions they pick some of the rice before its fully dry, pound it until its flat and the shell comes off and then let it dry.  It’s the closest thing to Rice Crispies in country, but eaten hand-to-mouth dry.  There are also an limited assortment of plain crackers and semi-sweet cookies, if your budget allows.

Lunch & Dinner – These can be very similar in menu, however most people only either eat one or the other daily.  There is always a starch and what starch you eat usually reflects your socioeconomic status.  The most preferred is rice.  Its just got status.  Some areas receive enough rain to grow their own, but this is not the norm in the country. And even those that can grow it will sell a large part since it is a desired commodity.  The majority of the rice in Mozambique is imported.  Sometimes rice will be prepared with seasonings (oil, tomato, onion, and chicken stock) in it, but it depends on your preference.  The #2 choice is corn porridge.  The porridge here is stiff and almost always eaten with your hand.  It could be compared to Italy’s polenta, but even harder and made with white corn.  The corn flour is almost always prepared at home, though small flour mills are becoming more common in rural areas for a very affordable price per kilogram.  Lastly, there is cassava porridge.  Even those that eat it daily do not really care for it, but it is very often the only option.  First the cassava root is peeled and dried in the sun for several days.  Once dry it holds indefinitely, as opposed to fresh cassava which spoils within a day or two after being dug out of the ground.  Dry cassava is like a really hard piece of chalk and taste like it too with a hint of nut.  Making it into flour requires pounding it in a waist-high wooden mortar and pestle, then sifting out the fine dust-like flour, and repeating until all bits are pulverized.  Next it is cooked in boiling water, like corn flour would be, until it forms a thick sticky porridge.  Cassava porridge is much softer than corn, but its also as sticky as paste.  The consistency is similar to Play-doh.  However, this porridge will fill you up.  Some families will make a mix of corn and cassava porridge to make the corn go further.

            Almost always accompanying the starch is some sort of simple stew or sauce.  Local leaves (collards, pumpkin, bean, okra, cassava, sweet potato or amaranth leaves) are boiled with any combination of garlic, onions, tomato, chicken stock powder, and curry.  Sometimes coconut milk or peanut flour will be added to fortify it in nutrition and flavor.  Many of these leave stews are delicious, but when ingredients are sparse they are nothing more than leaves in water and salt sauce.  Beans also make common appearances due to their ease in storage and are also prepared with garlic, onions, tomato, chicken stock powder, and curry.  Sometimes a Brazilian-influenced feijaoda is made by adding in some meat to the cooking beans.  In some northern regions a mixture of beans, rice, and coconut is made in one dish. 

Stepping up the stews moves into the fish realm.  Though Mozambique had thousands of miles of coastline on the Indian Ocean, fishing, poor infrastructure, and lack of refrigeration makes fresh fish transportation almost non-existent.  The lucky ones live near the coasts where you can get fresh tiger prawns measuring about 10 inches long and as thick as sausages, whole king mackerels, grouper, tuna, red snapper, marlin, barracuda, clams, squid and more. Inland, the most common fish is of the dried type.  It’s a great way to preserve a good protein source but requires an acquired taste.  Prepared in a stew, the fish would most likely be cooked with an combination of, again, garlic, onions, tomato, chicken stock powder, and curry.  In southern regions, fish will be prepared in a thick peanut curry sauce that is almost Asian and fantastic.  Oddly, in most towns in Mozambique you can get one frozen fish, a small mackerel type locally called carapau.  What is most baffling about carapau is that it comes into the country frozen on ships from the Atlantic coast of Africa, the other side of the continent. 

The next step up is good old fashioned meat, always fresh.  Meat is the most expensive option for your wallet.  A kilogram of beef with bone runs about $8 (about $3.66/lb), a kilo of goat with bone about $3.90 or $1.75/lb, and a whole live chicken costs $4.80 for about one kilogram including feathers, bones, and guts.  In a country where 81% of the population lives on $1 per day, meat is a very pricey option.  Other meat options are pork, rabbits, guinea fowl, guinea pig, bush rat, termites, and grasshoppers depending on the season and region.  All and any of these would be stewed in, you guessed it, any combination of garlic, onions, tomato, chicken stock powder, and curry.  Oh yeah, sometimes potatoes are tossed in there as well.

Restaurants - The stew and starch combo is by far the standard fare and available at most restaurants, which are by far the most expensive eating option.  For special occasions, or about anytime at a restaurant, grilled chicken and fries are served.  This is equivalent to the US’s hamburger and fries.  All Mozambican restaurants offer this.  The remainder of the menu can also be quite predictable -- very simple sandwiches (bread + ingredient, no garnish or condiments) of fried egg, butter, cheese, ham, tomato, fried beef or any combination thereof, -- small frozen hambuger patties served “complete” with cheese and a fried egg, -- pan-fried thin beef steaks with a fried egg and fries, and -- simple omelets with fries.  That’s all to be expected.  At nicer places in the provincial capitals you’ll find wood-oven pizzas, good seafood, better steaks, the occasional goat ribs and pasta dishes. 

Perspective: Sex and Gender Relations

          It’s a time of globalization, of small-world antics, of international disasters reaching our homes from abroad, and the world’s laundry hanging out for all to ignore. Foreign aid is a sexy way to balance out armed conflicts and Africa receives the lot. Mozambique has about 50% more foreign aid coming in than it did in 2002, yet farm production levels have remained the same since 2002, and 81% of the population lives on $1 per day, also the same as in 2002. I am often told by NGOs and foreign aid funders that I am valuable because of my perspective. After living in rural Mozambican communities for 3 years my days spent here are almost worth more than my education. I know rural Mozambique and understand many of the real reasons why it has not caught up, or even is not catching up. There is no single answer to explain why this country is poor, but I feel that a perspective on life here helps immensely. My hope is that my perspective will help me find real solutions to some of the challenges this country faces, but also inform others of what life is actually like beyond media images and journalistic snapshots.
        Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be posting about this, topic by topic. Feel free to email me with requests or comments. And remember, these are my observations based on 3 years of experiences and discussions.


Sex:
        Its really popular here and the reason we’re all here, so why not start here. People have a lot of sex, and they start young (around 14yrs old). Now, sex here has a different motive, because its believed to be a man’s need, like a physical need. Consideration for a woman’s needs are not considered. So a married man has sex when he wants and those not married call on any girl they can to get some as well. Its almost as if they are starved for sex and always hording what they can get, when in reality there is no shortage. This then connects directly to gender equality and womens’ rights, because they have little say in sex and it is expected of them. Occasionally female friends stay at my house when they are traveling through town and unable to make a bus connection out of town. When my friends in town learn that a woman spent the night at my house they immediately want to give me high fives and make other insinuating physical gestures. When I remind them that the woman that stayed at my house was a friend, not a girlfriend and that it is physically possible to sleep in the same room as a woman and not have sex with her their response is often, “Yes you can, but why would you!” Men assume they have the right to always have sex and they believe that women do not have this right at all. This right that men have also often justifies infidelity.
      Condoms are common here. Most bars and stores sell them and hospitals and NGOs offer them for free. However, high availability does not imply high usage. Men and women in the States often use condoms as birth control as much as if not more than for disease prevention. In Mozambique the number of children you have is a sign of strength and fertility, and there is no stigma about having many children with many different women. Furthermore, the under 5yrs mortality rate for children in Mozambique is 14% (as opposed to an average of 9% in other developing countries and less than 1% in USA/Europe). It is very understandable that parents want large families because the odds are that all of their children will not see their 6th birthday; this is fact. To complicate this further, the average citizen does not have any form of IRA, pension, investments, retirement fund, etc. The old are supported by the young. In a country in which 70% of the population’s primary economic activity is rural agriculture (99% of all farms are in the smallholder sector), it makes sense to have a family of 8 to: 1) support you in your old age, and 2) work the family farm. Having a lot of kids, even from a young age, is a point of pride, and to a certain extent having children all around the province, or even around the country, further augments one’s stature. There is no shortage of education about HIV and other STDs, but stigmas surrounding even discussing them makes not using a condom easy. To a certain extent using a condom is a sign that you have a disease to give. Furthermore, I suspect that a woman has little say regarding a man’s decision to use a condom or not.



Gender Relations:
         Gender equality programs, awareness, and measures exist in quantity here. April 7th is Mozambican Womens’ day and is a nationally recognized holiday. There exists a national womens’ organization. NGO monthly, trimester and annual reports always ask for participant data in terms of the number of male and female participants. Additionally, Peace Corps Volunteers in the country have started a network of girls’ youth groups throughout the country which are aimed at empowering the girls through different activities.
         All of these efforts and projects and recognitions are extremely important. However, sometimes numbers of women participating or public ceremonies of recognition for women are interpreted as grand measures of success in womens’ rights. In the States first women fought for their own rights and then they were publically recognized often decades late and posthumously. I am not implying that women do not deserve right until they fight for them, however, recognizing women for their everyday actions doesn’t always have the same empowerment effects. Women here have not struggled here for their own rights as they did in the States, but more often were told they had rights; grassroots versus top-down. This has made its adoption into the moral cultural fabric slower by both genders. I know women who are strong, out-spoken, and amazing, who will still concede to the word of a man just out of what appears to be instinct. I also know men who are in positions of power, who speak out for the need for women to be included and their equality promoted who then discriminate in the workplace and in social scenes against women. However, if you just look at the numbers of female participants this inconsistency is very hard to see. In my experience, when visitors from our funders come to see our field work they often ask about the number of women active in the project and are certainly pleased to the point of asking no further questions if they learn that more females than males are involved in the project. Getting women and girls to participate is easy. The challenge is finding a way for both sides to value the contributions, words, thoughts, presence, and strength that woman have. This is done by means of all the aforementioned programs and ceremonies, but these numbers need not be the end itself.
         It is so hard to combat the mentality that men and women are just different and that these differences are immutable. Both sides will laugh at comments contrary to this. When describing the Masters degree that my wife is earning in the States I always point out that in little time she will be more educated than me. This very often causes mouths to drop and the “Well we, Africans…..” comments to roll (more on those later).