Yogurt Monkey

We just made a trip to South Africa, a financially intelligent decision as the US dollar is gaining strength in almost every place in the whole world but Mozambique.  Matias and I are not known for our financially intelligent decisions, but this was a good one.  It takes almost $100 USD to fill up our car in Mozambique, but only cost $67 in South Africa. 
The Mozambican government has been fixing our currency, the metical (plural is meticais), for too long, making it artifically strong.  Everything Mozambique costs about 35% more now than it did when we arrived a year ago...  all because of the devaluation of the dollar.  Woe is me, but things here are dang expensive. 
So, instead of wallowing in the few meticais our dollars earn, we drive to South Africa and make a side trip to Kruger Park. 
We stop at Outdoor Warehouse, the South African equivalent of REI, but with special South African touches.  There are small clothes dressers made out of aluminum and mesh that you can set up in your tent.  There are enormous rechargable coolers.  There are portable braais (barbeques) that you can set up in the bush.  To South Africans, owning a braai is tantamount to having a microwave or dishwasher in the U.S.  It is essential.  And at Outdoor Warehouse, there is every kind of water container you can imagine.  No, a Nalgene bottle here would be for lightweights. These are car moutable water containers fit for driving through the Kalahari.  Nalia and Elio were thrilled to be back in a land of consumerism and were taking every free moment to hit Matias and I up to buy water guns, butterfly nets, snorkels... 
Matias and I were so caught up in fending off the rapid fire of requests from both of them that we didn't notice much else going on. 
Then, one of the workers in the store approached Matias... and started speaking Zulu.  When we are in South Africa, everyone approaches Matias in Zulu and in Swaziland, Swati.  When the guy switched to English, we found out that there was someone in the store watching us.  Apparently some malevolent South Africans in and around Nelspruit have figured out a new way to rob Mozambicans.  Mozambicans are easily identified by the license plates on their cars, and are particularly good targets because they come to Nelspruit loaded with cash to buy up.  The store employee informed us that these malandros (or bad guys in Portuguese)  will follow Mozambicans.  Then, when they go out to their cars and are driving away, the bad guys will wave at the driver, pretending like something is wrong with the car.  You, the driver, then slow down, and they rob you of everything you have, including your car. 
Luckily, we were pre-informed by a very benevolent store employee. 
Because there is so much crime in South Africa, this has changed the way people live and interact.  Most shopping is done in shopping malls, patrolled by guards.  Many people live in gated houses or neighborhoods studded with barbed wire, electrified fences, etc.  Of course, these people are the ones who have money.  There are many poor people in South Africa and they do not live like this. 
The next day, we went to Kruger Park to drive through and look at the animals.  For safety reasons, you are not allowed to leave your car while at Kruger.  When you do get to the camps, where there are places to stay for the night and restaurants, these areas are also surrounded by electrified fences to keep big game out. 
Monkeys, however, find a way to get in and target picknicking tourists.  I took out yogurts for Elio's lunch (Elio only eats 4 things, one of which is yogurt), and in a split second, a fiesty and fast vervet monkey jumped on the table and scampered away with the yogurt.  He knew exactly how to open the foil top and began to dig in.  He had perpetrated this crime before.  Elio was a wreck, crying, and all the tourists were laughing and taking pictures of the mokey eating Nutriday yogurt. 
It struck me then that in South Africa, people live behind fences, behind walls, when they are in or out of the wild areas of the national parks. 
But it doesn't stop the yogurt monkeys. 

Shark Dreams

We went to the beach last weekend, in Inhambane province, about seven hours from Maputo.  The beach, called Tofo, is known for its white sands and clear water...  and it is just that.  The water is so clear that you can be up to your neck and look down and see your toes!  Nalia and I went on a whale shark ocean safari on the first day.  Whale sharks are really sharks, but they are totally harmless.  They can be up to 25 ft. long, and there are only 1,000 in the whole world-- 300 of them are found in the waters off the coast of Mozambique. 
We didn't end up seeing any whale sharks, but saw lots of dolphins playing in the water near our boat.  We also got to travel for a quite awhile with a beautiful aqua green sea turtle next to our boat... it was as big as our kitchen table.
Fortunately these animals were alive.  On the second day, we saw fishermen bringing in their catches as usual, though one had something so large it wouldn't fit in the boat.  It was a gigantic manta ray.  When we went to see it, it was still alive, but on its last leg.  It was turned upside down, so we could see its beautiful white underbelly, smooth as silk.  When the fishermen began to butcher it they turned it over revealing a striking leopard print, same color as the sand it swam over.  The kids watched intently as the fishermen went to work.  They said they were going to eat the ray.  They were going to use its tail (stinger) as a whip.
An hour later, they brought in a hammerhead shark.  I couldn't bear to watch them cut it up.  But when I went into the water after the fishermen were gone, the only thing left were the two hammers, blue as the sky.  I didn't know sharks were so colorful.   Elio didn't watch what happened to the shark, but all of this affected him.
He woke up that night with a horrible nightmare, insisting there was a shark on top of his mosquito net... he's such a sensitive guy, and cries when when prune the acacia trees on our street in Maputo.  Nalia convinced him that there was no shark on top of his mosquito net because sharks need water to live.  Seeing the ray and hearing about the shark had just been too much, and really, he's right, it is too much.  It shouldn't be happening, but with the influx of Chinese in Mozambique, the demand for shark fins and meat has gone through the roof.  Also, the fishermen are poor and really do eat rays and sharks. 
There is a foundation, Marine Mega Fauna Foundation, that has been set up to protect sharks and rays in Mozambique.  Please visit their website at http://www.marinemegafauna.org/ and you can adopt your own shark or ray. 
Our camera broke on the first day we were at the beach, so I don't have many photos...



We've been having thunderstorm after thunderstorm... after thunderstorm.  Always at night.  For three nights, Matias and I woke up what sounded like 20 gigantic gongs being clanged at once right next to your ear.  The doors and windows rattled. This was followed by children running in our room crying and then the dog started wailing and barking like a banshee...this went on for about half and hour.  None of us slept much, so when I got up at 5am, I thought I would go on line and do some Christmas shopping... get ahead of the game.  At this time of year, I always get up around 5 or 5:30 because the sun comes up so early here. But when I went to turn on the computer, there was nothing.  I then looked at the modem and there was nothing. Black.  The electricity going out is a pretty common event here, but when I checked around, the rest of the house had electricity.  So I waited until Matias got up.  He would be able to figure it out. 

It turned out that along with all that thunder, there was of course, lightening, and the lightening just happened to completely fry the outlet where our computer was plugged in.  So no more computer, no more internet, for awhile.  This was pretty amazing to me, because I'd heard about this happening, but never known anyone who it happened to...  so the lesson (to self and to others) is to unplug all those important things when there's a big lightening storm. 
For now, we have no computer and no internet at home.  And yesterday we discovered that the cable box is also fried, so no TV either.  In a way, it's almost a relief. 

Below, some photos from my recent trip to Nampula in Northern Mozambique

Mother and baby at health post



Health Post

Nampula, Nalia's first home

Church in Nampula

Church in Nampula

Sunset...

Advising a family whose child had chicken pox

Elio's World

As Elio turns from baby to boy, his personality seems to become more apparent every day. And when he thinks something is true or right, he's emphatic.  There is no negotiation.  Wonder where he gets that from?  Matias says it's not from him. 

So, here are a few Elio-isms for a laugh or two:

For a couple of days, he kept telling me he needed an eye patch.  I was confused because his eyes are fine, but he kept insisting and we couldn't come to a mutual understanding about exactly what this eye patch was.  Then, I finally asked him what this eye patch is used for.  He told me that he needed it for watching movies, taking pictures, talking on the phone (to who, I have no idea), and 'using it for the same things Nalia wants to use it for.'
Of course, an iPad.  iPatch, iPad, same thing.
And because Elio is who he is, he's still calling it an eye patch.

While we were returning from the U.S., we had to spend another night at the transit hotel in Johannesburg.  The curtains made the room very dark, and because we were all jet lagged, we woke up at strange hours throughout the night.  Elio bolted upright in the bed at about 4am.  It was blacker than black in the room.  'Mommy, my eyes are open, but they're not turned on!!'  He was so worried... 'It's very dark,' I told him.  'Your eyes are fine.' 
'Turn them on Mommy!!' 
Lights on.

Some picture below of the last couple of months...

Elio's first dentist appointment... Stevie Wonder?

Nalia, self portrait

Nalia's Bainbridge Birthday Party

Elio and Grandpa reading

Grandma and Olin

Rafting on the Elwha

Good friends at Rehoboth

I can't turn this picture..

Tired travellers during the layover in Dakar.  Yes, that is Nalia's foot on Elio's head.

Getting to Our Vacation

3 nights in airport hotels (Erica and kids)

2 nights spent in airports (Matias)

2 arrivals in unplanned cities (Matias: Philadelphia, PA and Greenville, SC)

1 long letter to South African Airways Customer Care

24 days of pure vacation bliss in Seattle, sweet with family and friends and many many blackberries

2 trips down the Alpine Slide near Mt. Hood

5+  trips to the swimming pool

1.5 days at Rehoboth Beach full of sun-baked smiles, heartily laughs and reunions with best friends

3 boardwalk rides

Our trip home was like the best sandwich you’ve ever had on bad bread.  The flights in and out were grueling (just imagine something going wrong on every leg of every trip), but everything in between all a vacation should be… family, friends and pure recuperation.  So I’ll throw away the bread and keep the rest of the sandwich. 

We started out with Elio and a fever.  He got it the day before we left Maputo.  When we get to the airport in Maputo, the flight leaves a half hour late.  This is passable.  I’m not even worried when we arrive at the transit lounge at Johannesburg airport because we are there 1 hour 15 minutes before the flight to JFK leaves.  The thing that is worrying me is Elio’s fever.  I have some Tylenol that I brought on the plane, so I’m trying to negotiate with this very rude lady from South African Airways and give Elio the Tylenol at the same time.  He can barely wake up, so I end up just forking over the bottle to Nalia and telling her to sit down and see if she can get him to take it. 

The lady at the counter is inhumane and unapologetic.  “I can’t get you on the flight.”  That’s it.  She tries nothing else.  She doesn’t try to rebook us.  She just says she can’t and that’s it.  We (3 of us) and 7 others are supposed to wait for an Air Mozambique agent to save us.  But it's late in the transit lounge.  We ask the South African agent to contact Air Mozambique.  She says she doesn’t know the number.  Another passenger finds the number on her iPhone and asks to use the airport phone.  The SAA agent says she has no phone! 

I start crying because Elio is blazing hot and I am imaging spending the night in the transit lounge…. this happens at the Johannesburg airport, and as other seasoned Africa travelers will attest, NO ONE at South Africa Airways cares.  There is no food in the transit lounge, no phone, no pharmacy, and no stores.  I start crying to one of the gate agents… “I need to get my child to a pharmacy.”  He tells me not to cry and walks away. 

Our group of weary passengers, lost, stuck in the airport ‘border’ zone- the no man’s land of the transit lounge, where without a reservation or a ticket, you are a citizen or nowhere with no rights….we decide to walk to immigration and just sit there until we can get one of the people there to help us.  They have people at immigration all night, after all.  We cannot leave immigration and officially go into South Africa because we would have no tickets or reservations to get back in the airport.  Tara, the British girl, with the iPhone, stays upstairs, looking for anyone who will help us…Elio perks up after his overdose of Tylenol. 

Finally, someone comes form Air Mozamibque at 11pm.  We have been camping in front of immigration for 2 hours, me and 2 Zimbabweans, 1 Swiss guy, and the kids.  She issues us vouchers for the transit hotel and tells us to come back tomorrow.  It’s finally 1am when we get into our room at the transit hotel.  No dinner and no diapers.  Tara, our British angel with an iPhone, makes it a mission and goes down to the duty free to look for food and diapers.  No diapers to be found in the Joburg airport. 

I try to make Elio sleep on a towel, but his fever is back and he’s NOT nice. He’s in his African dictator mood… so he throws the towel on the floor.  At this point, I don’t care if he pees in the bed or even on me… at least someone else has to clean up the former and the latter can shower herself off. 

27 hours after arrival in Joburg, we are on our way to JFK.  We arrive a full 4 hours early for our flight to Seattle.  The kids are happy to ride on the SmarteCarte as we walk outside to the JetBlue terminal.  When we get outside, as we walk under the airport underpass, Nalia exclaims, “It’s so beautiful!” 

“What makes you think it’s beautiful?” I ask. 

“The grass is so green and soft looking and the cement is smooth.” 

I remember noticing these little things-- nuances yet indelible differences-- when I came back to the U.S. after my first overseas trips.   They were comforting surprises because I had forgotten they were differences at all while I'd been away, like the light switches in the U.S. or how much lighter U.S. coins felt after handling Mozambican ones for 8 months, or the sound of the phone ringing in the U.S.  I liked it because it always made coming back home a little more interesting and exciting, and feel like home.  It doesn’t happen much anymore, but I can experience it through the kids.

We get to the JetBlue counter and the lady tells me she has no record of our reservation.  No ticket number.  She tells me I have to call South African to straighten it out.  I have been travelling almost 48 hours now.  Elio still has a fever and has not eaten in 3 days.  So what else can I do—I break down.  Right there.  I have no cell phone that works in the U.S., my kid is sick.  And I know South African will NOT help me because I had already asked them to. 

So here I find another saint in NYC.  Anissa, that’s her name.  I won’t forget.  She walks me out to an airport phone and calls South African herself. South Africa puts her on hold.  She hands the phone to me, assures me it will be ok, and I wait on hold for SAA to fix things.

 Elio has been quiet, only uttering a disagreeable word once in awhile.  All of a sudden, he shrieks, “I have to pee NOW.”  I cannot hang up this phone.  If I don’t get on a flight to Seattle, we will have to wait 9 more hours for the next JetBlue flight there.  If I make Elio wait, he will pee his pants… I have already used his spares during the Joburg ordeal.  We are at one of the busiest airport in the US at one of the busiest times… but this is what I do.  I give the phone to Nalia, look her straight in the eyes, about 2 inches from her face and tell her, “When the music stops and a real person comes on, tell him that your mommy had to take your brother to the bathroom and she’ll be back.  Tell him you’re at JFK airport and you need his help.”

I run to the bathroom with Elio.  Elio doesn’t even remember the U.S.  He gets more happy and perky than I’ve seen in 3 days when he notices the water in the toilet.  “MOMMY, there’s a LOT of water in here!”  Right.  No toilets in the world have more water than in the U.S.  Let’s pee and add more!  I run back and sure enough, Nalia is the phone with the SAA guy.  She is there.  We make it to the gate 25 minutes before the flight leaves, and 5 hours later, Grandma is waiting for us in Seattle.  Never has a reunion been sweeter.

Why I'm No Soule Mama

I have a friend who enjoys reading a blog by this woman who calls herself Soule Mama.  I went on the site once a couple years ago and went away feeling totally inadequate, so didn't go back until a couple of months ago.  Soule Mama lives in Maine.  She has five children, and does things like take artistic pictures of herself snowshoeing (pregnant) with her other 4 children.  Then, they go back home and paint the floor of their ironic Maine farmhouse white, and then she knits an afghan for her children and then they plant organic seeds in preparation for spring gardening.

I have been working like a crazy woman for the last three months, juggling like I never thought I could juggle.  Until last week, I was putting the kids to bed and then working again until I'd start falling asleep.  One night I came home from work and the kids were eating Doublestuff Oreos for dinner (thanks to Matias and  trip to South Africa).  Nalia told me that I should "just resign at Save the Children"... I didn't even know that she knew that word.  One day Matias and the kids came to pick me up at the office where I have been working (I left the Save the Children office for a few months to work on this project at another NGO).  So, Elio walks in, looks around, checks out the bathroom, the kitchen, does the full inspection, and asks very directly and intensely, "So, now you live here?" 

But, here's the thing.  I'm no Soule Mama, and I'm not knocking Soule Mama, but I am who I am... "This above all: to thine own self be true" says Shakespeare.  Since May, I have been writing the manuals for the community health workers in Mozambique, together with two other women, one from Brazil and the other from here.  I don't think I've ever worked this hard, but out of it, the community health workers here in Mozambique can now treat and save children from malaria, pneumonia and other diseases, and that's what makes me tick.  And on a personal level, I made two new friends who will be in my life for awhile, and I also learned quite a bit.  I had to write the manuals in Portuguese, and I learned how to treat just about any bug the kids could get here in Mozambique, from scabies to conjuntivitis to plain old diarreia. 

I like my life, and I think Matias and the kids do too.  I am not perfect.  My house is cluttered...  sometimes my kids don't eat vegetables every day.  Sometimes they have dessert before dinner.  Sometimes we watch TV and don't read a book.  There are two boxes still unpacked from moving here last year.  But it's ok.  Because really those things don't matter.  My kids know that mommy is writing the manuals because there are some kids who cannot get to doctors when they get sick, so we have to help bring medicines to people in their communities.  Nalia has gone to see the community health workers in their huts, with dirt floors, walls made of sticks an mud.  She saw a 4 year old so listless from malaria she could barely wake up, but then Nalia saw the community health worker treat the sick child.  Sure, she complained about the bumpy car ride and the heat and asked if she could watch Hannah Montana when we got back to town, but she will remember what she saw and think about it... and maybe, just maybe, these experiences will shape the person she is and the decisions she makes. 

Elio as Spider Man, Homem Aranha in Portuguese!

Nalia and Kingdom Barbie

Community Health Worker on the right

Communith Health Worker standing in front of her hut

Nalia.  I love this picture. 

At the Orport

Sorry for the long long hiatus!!  They say successful bloggers must write regularly, but I cannot juggle it all!  In the next post, hopefully this week, I will divulge the not-very-exciting reason I have not been able to blog in the past month.

We were talking with my mom on Skype last week and Elio burst into tears… ‘I want to go to the or-port… I want to go to the or-port.’  Orport is airport.  We have tried to correct him, but in true Elio style, he refuses to accept the correct version and stays with the Elio version.  I sunk back in my chair.  This was happening because of me…because I have been counting the days until I get to go home for a real vacation.  I have been counting since day 89.

‘Don’t you think you’re building this up a little too much?’ my mom commented.  My mother is the world record holder for number of diplomatic understatements in a lifetime.  Yes, she was totally right and I needed to stop.  Nalia and Elio, especially Elio, are going to be disappointed when they arrive in the U.S. and find out it’s not a wonderland with chocolate rivers and candy cane trees everywhere. 

But I guess, to my own credit, it’s easy to forget sometimes how our own behavior affects our kids.  I remember when I was driving down University Blvd once in Silver Spring.  Nalia was 3.  This guy in another car cut me off.  Nalia sat up in her car seat, and said so sweetly, ´He’s a jerk, isn’t he mommy?’

I have been counting and counting because I really do need a break.  Work has been non-stop, so the counting is what keeps me going.  But I’m trying to keep it more to myself.  And I know that I’m building it up because when I get to the airport in Johannesburg and hear and see my first wiffs of Americana, it’s always a little bittersweet.  I mean, I love my country and am proud to be an American, but when you’re away for a long time, some things become so apparent. 

So this is how it goes at the Johannesburg airport… as you approach the gate for the flight to JFK or Atlanta, you first know you’re close because of the noise.  It’s not the cacophony of all the voices talking at once like Italians, but it’s several LOUD voices wanting to be heard.  And our accent is distinct.  Nalia and I were in the grocery store the other day and there were some Peace Corps volunteers there.  We walked into the Super Mohammed, and even before these girls opened their mouths, I knew they were Americans.  When you live overseas, you learn to spot your own people without words, at a distance.  It’s like an instinct we’re born with.  Matias could spot people from Southern Africa a mile away when we lived in Maryland.  So the PC volunteers start talking, and then Nalia says, ‘Where are they from?  That accent is really annoying?’  This shocked me a bit because, a) they could understand exactly what she was saying (English has become our secret language!), and b) because she couldn’t hear the similarities between their accents and mine or hers.  We don’t socialize with many Americans though, so other than me, she doesn’t hear an American accent on a daily basis.

But back to the gate at the Joburg airport.  After you hear the loud voices and distinct accents, you go around the corner and there is the gate.  Then you KNOW you are at the flight to the U.S.  The cues switch from auditory to visual.  You notice the girth.  I have to say it because it’s true.  Every time I go back to the U.S., I can’t help but notice how many of my countrymen are overweight.  And then you notice the shorts or zip-off pants and white sneakers.  We love these things more than anyone else in the whole world.  And then you notice people carrying what look like trees trunks covered in bubble wrap, bobbing like buoys in a sea of people.  These are all the wooden giraffes that our fellow passengers have purchased on their expeditions to Africa, safely encapsulated in bubble wrap for the trip back to Minnesota or wherever.  This is when I go sit with the kids in an unpopulated corner and take a deep breath. 

So when I finally get on the plane and settle in, someone will usually start a conversation.  I don’t think this happens much on domestic flights anymore, but on the flights from Africa, people are curious.  We are usually in the middle of the plane, and the conversation starts like this.  The lady next to us is a baby boomer from middle-America wearing a polo shirt that says something like Glendale Bible Church 2011 Mission Trip, Zambia.  She smiles sweetly and asks, ‘So, was this your first time?’  The first time someone asked me this, it seemed totally normal, because it WAS my first or second time in Africa.  But now, after ten years of it, and coming from the ladies that usually sit next me, I almost always burst out laughing.  She is asking if this is my first time in Africa.  No, I politely tell her.  This is not our first time… and then I give her an abbreviated version of the story.