About posts, comments, link and photos.
Posts. If you follow my blog, you will know that I posted quite a bit of information recently. For some reason, the postings don't appear in the nice "1st, 2nd, 3rd..." order that I thought they would and rather than continue to mess with publishing again (the blogger help suggestion that I imagine annoys those of you who get emails when I publish) etc., I am sending this out to encourage you to view the latest positings in order. I particularly think the first three are better read in order. You can select from the menu on the left side of the page.
Comments. I love to get them. If you are among those who send comments - thanks! It is great to hear from you and I apologize if I don't get back to you immediately. Sometimes I don't know that you have sent something for a while.
Link and Photos. You are welcome to share my link (http://www.elk13.blogspot.com/) with anyone else. I have been asked that question. And that goes for the photos as well. If you use a photo for something else I just ask that you credit it back to me. My initials are fine. I post as 'elk' on photos but you are welcome to use my name, Biss Kuttner.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Tough Times (4th of 5 Five for Oct. posted in Nov)
Tough Times. For Zane. Who is persistent in telling me that he wants to know how I FEEL.
I have a good friend who did a great deal of research about going overseas to do development work as he is also working overseas. He would relay to me that after about two months many volunteers would get very homesick or depressed in their placement.
I haven’t found myself to be homesick. I miss my children very much. That is the hardest part of being in Mozambique. I miss the immediacy of contacting other family members and seeing my parents. I miss friends who, the longer I am away, the more I realize how large a part of my day to day life they were. But, honestly, I haven’t had trouble with being in Mozambique.
Some of being here is fantastic! I am not sure if my stay here will always be this full of new and interesting things but it is incredible. Most of the time I just tell people about the exciting things. The beautiful things. The amazing things. There are many. Many wonderful people. Many wonderful customs. Many beautiful places. As for the flip side – I guess I have felt it is too hard to relay the other stuff. Some things are just so overwhelming that I can't process it all, much less find a way to share it.
If you have read any of the blogs in this October set you know that I have spent three intensive weeks seeing terrible living conditions, and coming face to face with abject poverty, as well as people who struggle to survive day to day. The first ten days or so, I didn’t acknowledge my personal connection to what I saw. I was observing, being the messenger, trying to engage without being engaged. The third week into interviews and touring neighborhoods, I lost my shield. I could still professionally report and maintain objectivity but at the end of the day, my connection as a fellow human being allowed the bleakness of it all to flood in.
I haven’t shared about “how I feel” in my blog, although I get requests about that all the time. It has seemed too personal for such a public forum. But I am making an exception this time because if you are one of the people asking to understand what it is like here doing what I am doing, then it is as important to share the hard things as the rest of it all. And I think it is important, as other fellow human beings to allow yourselves to try to connect with the reality of “here,” to experience this world so foreign to my own and probably yours, because we are all part of the global “us.”
The places I’ve been and the people I’ve spoken to come from all walks of life. I’ve met the Prime Minister of the country. I interviewed the Minister of Youth and Sports. I have interviewed many people involved in development work from top management to front line work. But the most intense interviews, and the ones I actually feel the most privileged to be able to do, have been with those people for whom the study I’m working on is being done. Those identified as being among the most vulnerable in urban Mozambique.
I say “privilege” because it has been through great courage and unselfishness that people spoke to us and allowed us into their private lives. Consider your own life. How difficult it would be to allow a stranger to sit in your home and ask you to honestly share the difficulties you face, especially if sharing that information might harm your chances of job somewhere, or your status among the people in your neighborhood, or merely your own sense of pride. On top of that, I am a stranger – and they are trusting that I am coming to speak to them as a peer, a person interested in what they have to say, and that what they have to say is most critical to the work we are doing.
In my darkest moments, what I find myself thinking about is how vast the problems are. How monumental the task is to eradicate the sort of poverty that puts people on the brink of life and death on a daily basis. I think, “what is a ‘bad day’” for someone who lives in the conditions I see around me. And from there it is an easy slide into questions in my head about "what am I doing here" and "does it matter anyway." I fell small and ineffective, as though there is nothing I can possibly do that makes change happen. I described it to someone as feeling as though I am pushing peddles on a paddle boat, trying to push harder and harder, only to find that the paddles aren't reaching the water. Nothingness. No matter how hard I try, there will be nothing.
Some of the things I have been doing are so hard to handle that I expend a great deal of energy trying not to think about them. But they have to be thought about. It has been rough. People have let us into very personal aspects of their lives and their lives are awful in so many ways. It isn't that I am typically caught up in any one person’s personal life - or feel responsible to helping this person or that person. You can’t do this kind of work and do that. It is that the people we speak with are representative of thousands of people living here in horrible, horrible conditions. And, honestly, I do get to know some of the people we interview. I meet them on the street, or at their vending corner and I say hello, and get a big greeting and we chat. Just as though I were meeting a friend at home in the USA in the grocery store. But I know it isn’t the same at all because I know what they go home to my flat, they go home to a completely different landscape with incredible challenges.
People in these tough neighborhoods love their children and do their best to take care of them every day just like I have with my family. They look for ways to shelter, to feed and keep their children alive. I haven't had to think like that. I have had to think about feeding, sheltering, and educating my kids. When that last bit is the prevailing factor every day – not education, but how to stay alive or ahead of any singular negative impact that will spiral your family towards life and death - well, life looks completely different.
Other times when I’m lying in bed at night and all is quiet, I think about how much doesn't have to be the way it is - but it does just because it is that way. And it will be a long time for things to get better. I force optimistic slogans trying to override the futility I feel. I try to think that every day is a possible moment for people here to make changes. There is just so much work to do.
I have seen so much. And I have been told so much that is beyond my imagination. There are pictures I have flashing into my consciousness that I don’t want to think about. But they come unbidden.
For example, In the city I went to up north, I spoke with three different groups of young people who were taking about problems and challenges in their neighborhoods. One was a group of university students the same ages as my kids. They are part of an organization that does some very good things in the community including going and helping at an orphanage that has very little resources. They didn’t mention crime as being one of the problems, which I found interesting so I asked about it. They said petty crime is still a factor but very violent crime was down. When I asked what had made a difference, I expected some sort of community watch system, better policing, something along those lines. They said some word I didn’t know and moved on to another conversation. When I had them stop and explain the word they had said this is what they said. There was a time when violent crime was rampant in their neighborhoods. And criminals wouldn’t stay in jail when they were arrested; with bribe money and pressure from gangs of bodily harm, police would let them go. Finally the community got tired of criminals being let out of jail, particularly ones who then came back to hunt down people who turned them in. They grew frustrated knowing that their neighborhood wasn't important enough to protect from these guys. So they created their own justice. They catch these guys, put a tire filled with gasoline over them and light them on fire. As the guy burns to death in the street, kids will even run at them and hit them with long sticks. I’m told it happens about once a month in different areas of the city. It is called "linchamento." And, they said. This is the reason hard-core crime - murder, rape, etc – has drastically declined in their neighborhoods.
That is something I never want to see - a person being burned alive. I told Quim, the person I was with up there in Beira, not to turn on any streets where there was smoke. I can't even get my head around what I think about the moral implications and really - I don't believe in this context I am going to judge the community based on something like that. I imagine that were this situation talked about around a table in the USA there would be people screaming “human rights” and how wrong it is, while others would be saying vigilante justice has to take over when other more civilized ways break down to be nonexistent. What kicks in for me is on a more incidental level - I can't get the thought out of my head that kids are brought up seeing guys burning to death in tires and so on and so on.
I put something like this in context with the population who are made up of people who came out of a bloody and nonsensical civil war, a guerilla war, not even two decades ago where, by the end of the war, there was no ideology or political fight going on. By then, people were fighting to stay alive - fighting for food and fighting because if they didn't fight, they would be killed. In Beira, the city that this story is all about, the majority of "rebel" or guerrilla fighters and their families came to live. The war started after the Portuguese left in 1972. So the largest demographic (15 - 36) as well as any one older are the people who survived that experience and their families. They are the population of the country for whom life and death is being seen through a completely different lens. It still doesn't make sense exactly - but it doesn't seem so unthinkable if I were to imagine how people who lived through such circumstances might think about justice. And how I might feel if I felt that there was no option for protection for my family from my government.
I know that to be here I need to be constantly learning and I want to try and understand. I have to be vigilant. I have to be observant. And I have to keep asking ask questions. But even there - when I heard about the “linchamentos” – this sort of thing draws me up short. There are just going to be questions I don't even know to ask.
So, that is the sort of thing that I sometimes think about at night. Like I said in the beginning, I can feel so insignificant. I feel like crying – and I do. I feel confused. I feel angry. I feel frustrated. I feel frightened. I feel tired. Very tired.
Feelings aren’t something I can control. Being who I am, though, these feelings have to be harnessed and used to help me make sense of what I am doing here and what I have in front of me. In this country, there is an incredible resilience. People living these complicated, vulnerable lives talked to us because there is a belief that somehow, some day, things will be better. They see fellow countrymen and women who are successful and live well. It is possible. As long as there is hope, there is room for change. Who am I to doubt? I alone am not going to change the way things are here. But maybe as part of a larger picture there is a reason for me to be here. Most of the time, I feel enough hope to imagine what can be. That is why I am still here. Because I also feel challenged, responsible, imaginative, driven, creative, excited, and I feel hope.
In and Around Beira
The Grande Hotel, Beira
I have a good friend who did a great deal of research about going overseas to do development work as he is also working overseas. He would relay to me that after about two months many volunteers would get very homesick or depressed in their placement.
I haven’t found myself to be homesick. I miss my children very much. That is the hardest part of being in Mozambique. I miss the immediacy of contacting other family members and seeing my parents. I miss friends who, the longer I am away, the more I realize how large a part of my day to day life they were. But, honestly, I haven’t had trouble with being in Mozambique.
Some of being here is fantastic! I am not sure if my stay here will always be this full of new and interesting things but it is incredible. Most of the time I just tell people about the exciting things. The beautiful things. The amazing things. There are many. Many wonderful people. Many wonderful customs. Many beautiful places. As for the flip side – I guess I have felt it is too hard to relay the other stuff. Some things are just so overwhelming that I can't process it all, much less find a way to share it.
If you have read any of the blogs in this October set you know that I have spent three intensive weeks seeing terrible living conditions, and coming face to face with abject poverty, as well as people who struggle to survive day to day. The first ten days or so, I didn’t acknowledge my personal connection to what I saw. I was observing, being the messenger, trying to engage without being engaged. The third week into interviews and touring neighborhoods, I lost my shield. I could still professionally report and maintain objectivity but at the end of the day, my connection as a fellow human being allowed the bleakness of it all to flood in.
I haven’t shared about “how I feel” in my blog, although I get requests about that all the time. It has seemed too personal for such a public forum. But I am making an exception this time because if you are one of the people asking to understand what it is like here doing what I am doing, then it is as important to share the hard things as the rest of it all. And I think it is important, as other fellow human beings to allow yourselves to try to connect with the reality of “here,” to experience this world so foreign to my own and probably yours, because we are all part of the global “us.”
The places I’ve been and the people I’ve spoken to come from all walks of life. I’ve met the Prime Minister of the country. I interviewed the Minister of Youth and Sports. I have interviewed many people involved in development work from top management to front line work. But the most intense interviews, and the ones I actually feel the most privileged to be able to do, have been with those people for whom the study I’m working on is being done. Those identified as being among the most vulnerable in urban Mozambique.
I say “privilege” because it has been through great courage and unselfishness that people spoke to us and allowed us into their private lives. Consider your own life. How difficult it would be to allow a stranger to sit in your home and ask you to honestly share the difficulties you face, especially if sharing that information might harm your chances of job somewhere, or your status among the people in your neighborhood, or merely your own sense of pride. On top of that, I am a stranger – and they are trusting that I am coming to speak to them as a peer, a person interested in what they have to say, and that what they have to say is most critical to the work we are doing.
In my darkest moments, what I find myself thinking about is how vast the problems are. How monumental the task is to eradicate the sort of poverty that puts people on the brink of life and death on a daily basis. I think, “what is a ‘bad day’” for someone who lives in the conditions I see around me. And from there it is an easy slide into questions in my head about "what am I doing here" and "does it matter anyway." I fell small and ineffective, as though there is nothing I can possibly do that makes change happen. I described it to someone as feeling as though I am pushing peddles on a paddle boat, trying to push harder and harder, only to find that the paddles aren't reaching the water. Nothingness. No matter how hard I try, there will be nothing.
Some of the things I have been doing are so hard to handle that I expend a great deal of energy trying not to think about them. But they have to be thought about. It has been rough. People have let us into very personal aspects of their lives and their lives are awful in so many ways. It isn't that I am typically caught up in any one person’s personal life - or feel responsible to helping this person or that person. You can’t do this kind of work and do that. It is that the people we speak with are representative of thousands of people living here in horrible, horrible conditions. And, honestly, I do get to know some of the people we interview. I meet them on the street, or at their vending corner and I say hello, and get a big greeting and we chat. Just as though I were meeting a friend at home in the USA in the grocery store. But I know it isn’t the same at all because I know what they go home to my flat, they go home to a completely different landscape with incredible challenges.
People in these tough neighborhoods love their children and do their best to take care of them every day just like I have with my family. They look for ways to shelter, to feed and keep their children alive. I haven't had to think like that. I have had to think about feeding, sheltering, and educating my kids. When that last bit is the prevailing factor every day – not education, but how to stay alive or ahead of any singular negative impact that will spiral your family towards life and death - well, life looks completely different.
Other times when I’m lying in bed at night and all is quiet, I think about how much doesn't have to be the way it is - but it does just because it is that way. And it will be a long time for things to get better. I force optimistic slogans trying to override the futility I feel. I try to think that every day is a possible moment for people here to make changes. There is just so much work to do.
I have seen so much. And I have been told so much that is beyond my imagination. There are pictures I have flashing into my consciousness that I don’t want to think about. But they come unbidden.
For example, In the city I went to up north, I spoke with three different groups of young people who were taking about problems and challenges in their neighborhoods. One was a group of university students the same ages as my kids. They are part of an organization that does some very good things in the community including going and helping at an orphanage that has very little resources. They didn’t mention crime as being one of the problems, which I found interesting so I asked about it. They said petty crime is still a factor but very violent crime was down. When I asked what had made a difference, I expected some sort of community watch system, better policing, something along those lines. They said some word I didn’t know and moved on to another conversation. When I had them stop and explain the word they had said this is what they said. There was a time when violent crime was rampant in their neighborhoods. And criminals wouldn’t stay in jail when they were arrested; with bribe money and pressure from gangs of bodily harm, police would let them go. Finally the community got tired of criminals being let out of jail, particularly ones who then came back to hunt down people who turned them in. They grew frustrated knowing that their neighborhood wasn't important enough to protect from these guys. So they created their own justice. They catch these guys, put a tire filled with gasoline over them and light them on fire. As the guy burns to death in the street, kids will even run at them and hit them with long sticks. I’m told it happens about once a month in different areas of the city. It is called "linchamento." And, they said. This is the reason hard-core crime - murder, rape, etc – has drastically declined in their neighborhoods.
That is something I never want to see - a person being burned alive. I told Quim, the person I was with up there in Beira, not to turn on any streets where there was smoke. I can't even get my head around what I think about the moral implications and really - I don't believe in this context I am going to judge the community based on something like that. I imagine that were this situation talked about around a table in the USA there would be people screaming “human rights” and how wrong it is, while others would be saying vigilante justice has to take over when other more civilized ways break down to be nonexistent. What kicks in for me is on a more incidental level - I can't get the thought out of my head that kids are brought up seeing guys burning to death in tires and so on and so on.
I put something like this in context with the population who are made up of people who came out of a bloody and nonsensical civil war, a guerilla war, not even two decades ago where, by the end of the war, there was no ideology or political fight going on. By then, people were fighting to stay alive - fighting for food and fighting because if they didn't fight, they would be killed. In Beira, the city that this story is all about, the majority of "rebel" or guerrilla fighters and their families came to live. The war started after the Portuguese left in 1972. So the largest demographic (15 - 36) as well as any one older are the people who survived that experience and their families. They are the population of the country for whom life and death is being seen through a completely different lens. It still doesn't make sense exactly - but it doesn't seem so unthinkable if I were to imagine how people who lived through such circumstances might think about justice. And how I might feel if I felt that there was no option for protection for my family from my government.
I know that to be here I need to be constantly learning and I want to try and understand. I have to be vigilant. I have to be observant. And I have to keep asking ask questions. But even there - when I heard about the “linchamentos” – this sort of thing draws me up short. There are just going to be questions I don't even know to ask.
So, that is the sort of thing that I sometimes think about at night. Like I said in the beginning, I can feel so insignificant. I feel like crying – and I do. I feel confused. I feel angry. I feel frustrated. I feel frightened. I feel tired. Very tired.
Feelings aren’t something I can control. Being who I am, though, these feelings have to be harnessed and used to help me make sense of what I am doing here and what I have in front of me. In this country, there is an incredible resilience. People living these complicated, vulnerable lives talked to us because there is a belief that somehow, some day, things will be better. They see fellow countrymen and women who are successful and live well. It is possible. As long as there is hope, there is room for change. Who am I to doubt? I alone am not going to change the way things are here. But maybe as part of a larger picture there is a reason for me to be here. Most of the time, I feel enough hope to imagine what can be. That is why I am still here. Because I also feel challenged, responsible, imaginative, driven, creative, excited, and I feel hope.
In and Around Beira
The Grande Hotel, Beira
Visit to Nelspruitt, South Africa - (5th of 5 Five for Oct. posted in Nov)
Visit to Nelspruit, South Africa. A couple of weekends ago I took a trip to South Africa. I was going with a friend who had to renew her visa. If you don’t have something referred to as a DIRE and you are from certain countries (UK for example), and you are working for more than 30 or 60 days, you will often need to get your passport/visa stamped every thirty days at a border. The closest border is Swaziland, but we have both wanted to go to South Africa and so we did. We were going to take a bus early Saturday morning but I was asked to make a presentation at a conference. There is not a late bus so we ended up renting a car. We had a very zippy tiny red Kia. It looks like one of those toy cars you pull back to wind the wheels and then let go and it shoots out of your hands. In Africa, the driver sits on the right side of the car, drives on the left, and if you have a stick shift, you are shifting with your left hand. This was an entirely new experience for me. I have never driven “left.” The long distance driving was easy even though the highway is two lanes and there is a lot of passing going on, winding road, hilly terrain, and varying speed limits through towns. The driving in Maputo – as I have related before – is like nothing I have ever experienced, but I actually enjoyed the challenge, and I liked being the one in the car for a change instead of the person trying to cross the street.
Back to South Africa. We stayed in Nelspruit. This is a city by Kroger National Park. We didn’t go there – it is expensive and I am saving it for when I have more time. Our nature experience was to visit waterfalls and other natural wonders along the Blyde River Canyon.
I was surprised by the landscape as we drove into and through SA on the way to Nelspruit. There is mile after mile of pine forest and the trees are immaculately manicured. The mature trees haven’t got any branches until well over 20 feet up. The trees are planted in perfect rows. They cover valleys and hills, every ridge in site. It turns out that this area has the largest man made timber forest plantations in the world. I could see every phase of logging along the road from fledging trees, to mature forest to stripped land with occasional stumps to logging mills with massive mountains of timber. Planting a forest isn’t dropping seed along a furrow of earth – young trees are put in the ground one at a time. The labor involved is mind boggling. It was hard to capture in the photos but when you see rolling hills looking any shade of green, they are covered in pine.
I haven’t been to natural a waterfall of any magnitude before. The ones we visited were beautiful, and each one very unique. The most amazing place I visited, though, wasn’t exactly a waterfall; it is a place called Bourke’s Luck Potholes. There are amazing rock formations at the bottom of a twisting gorge and bridges and walkways have been constructed to allow you to walk over the gorge and look directly down. You will recognize it in the pictures.
The settlements along the highway looked more prosperous than any I see in Mozambique along highways. My guess is that the housing is typically subsidized by the logging companies. People were walking along the highway in many places. We would come upon them walking where there isn’t any house or building in site for miles.
I was looking at photos with my friend, Mohammed, from Kenya. There is a photo of a town built right up against a graveyard. I took the photo as we drove past because the scene stuck out for me but I didn’t know why and didn’t give it much thought. Mohammed immediately exclaimed “Why are the houses so close to the graveyard?!” He has no doubt that the people next door hear the ghosts talking at night. I relayed to him that, if it was anything like the graveyard in Georgetown in Washington DC where I grew up, the talking was kids behind gravestones drinking alcohol where they were sure they wouldn’t be disturbed. We haven’t sorted that one out yet.
We didn’t see wildlife – didn’t really expect to. Just monkeys at a sort of café at the trailhead to Bourke’s Luck Potholes. They were hissing and screaming for snacks. Oh – and also a beautiful tri-colored lizard I photographed leaping about some boulders.
All in all, the trip was relaxing and a welcome change from Maputo. The bed and breakfast was in a quiet neighborhood that made me realize how constant the noise is in my flat from the music and cars and car crashes and the people talking and so on and so on… The quiet was wonderful to hear.
I would like to have had at least another day on the trip. Just to relax at the bed and breakfast for a few hours would have been nice. I loved the driving. That was a treat in itself. I do miss my car!
My final observation is that there were a number of places that looked so much like Arizona mountains, it was uncanny. And comforting somehow. Two worlds in one place.
Select the photo below to see the photo album.
Back to South Africa. We stayed in Nelspruit. This is a city by Kroger National Park. We didn’t go there – it is expensive and I am saving it for when I have more time. Our nature experience was to visit waterfalls and other natural wonders along the Blyde River Canyon.
I was surprised by the landscape as we drove into and through SA on the way to Nelspruit. There is mile after mile of pine forest and the trees are immaculately manicured. The mature trees haven’t got any branches until well over 20 feet up. The trees are planted in perfect rows. They cover valleys and hills, every ridge in site. It turns out that this area has the largest man made timber forest plantations in the world. I could see every phase of logging along the road from fledging trees, to mature forest to stripped land with occasional stumps to logging mills with massive mountains of timber. Planting a forest isn’t dropping seed along a furrow of earth – young trees are put in the ground one at a time. The labor involved is mind boggling. It was hard to capture in the photos but when you see rolling hills looking any shade of green, they are covered in pine.
I haven’t been to natural a waterfall of any magnitude before. The ones we visited were beautiful, and each one very unique. The most amazing place I visited, though, wasn’t exactly a waterfall; it is a place called Bourke’s Luck Potholes. There are amazing rock formations at the bottom of a twisting gorge and bridges and walkways have been constructed to allow you to walk over the gorge and look directly down. You will recognize it in the pictures.
The settlements along the highway looked more prosperous than any I see in Mozambique along highways. My guess is that the housing is typically subsidized by the logging companies. People were walking along the highway in many places. We would come upon them walking where there isn’t any house or building in site for miles.
I was looking at photos with my friend, Mohammed, from Kenya. There is a photo of a town built right up against a graveyard. I took the photo as we drove past because the scene stuck out for me but I didn’t know why and didn’t give it much thought. Mohammed immediately exclaimed “Why are the houses so close to the graveyard?!” He has no doubt that the people next door hear the ghosts talking at night. I relayed to him that, if it was anything like the graveyard in Georgetown in Washington DC where I grew up, the talking was kids behind gravestones drinking alcohol where they were sure they wouldn’t be disturbed. We haven’t sorted that one out yet.
We didn’t see wildlife – didn’t really expect to. Just monkeys at a sort of café at the trailhead to Bourke’s Luck Potholes. They were hissing and screaming for snacks. Oh – and also a beautiful tri-colored lizard I photographed leaping about some boulders.
All in all, the trip was relaxing and a welcome change from Maputo. The bed and breakfast was in a quiet neighborhood that made me realize how constant the noise is in my flat from the music and cars and car crashes and the people talking and so on and so on… The quiet was wonderful to hear.
I would like to have had at least another day on the trip. Just to relax at the bed and breakfast for a few hours would have been nice. I loved the driving. That was a treat in itself. I do miss my car!
My final observation is that there were a number of places that looked so much like Arizona mountains, it was uncanny. And comforting somehow. Two worlds in one place.
Select the photo below to see the photo album.
| Trip to South Africa.Oct 23 - 25 |
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