International Perambulator

Once in NYC I was walking home after purchasing a large bag of dog food for my brother’s dog. Of course, he didn’t tell me that the bag weighed a million tons, so as I was sherping up the block to his apartment building I was hoping for an act of chivalry: as I was wearing heels, had a 30lb laptop on one shoulder and of course my oversized-NYC-everything bag on the other shoulder---instead of offers of carrying the bag for me I was told in various ways by different men: “I sure wish I was that bag and you were carrying me home”. I have found that walking in the developing world also carries with it all sorts of commentary and adventures.

I’ve learned that there is a certain way to walk that is particular to a place. In Latin America I was told that I, and most American women, we walk like men. It appears that we American women walk very straight, quickly and with a very determined look on our face, somewhat soldier-like. While Latin American women walk more slowly, appear to be in no particular rush, and they are better at using their hips and shaking their behinds as they sashay rather than, like us gringas, “stomp” down the street. Here in Mozambique, where roads are not cemented but really are just narrow lanes of sand, there is a practical reason of adopting the way Mozambicans walk: your shoes will become filled with sand or they will become quite dusty looking if you don’t lift your foot the right way. When you walk, you must not just lift your foot, but also your leg, as if you were to bend your knee to your chest and then kick out to step down--so think of the way a giraffe walks and that is about right. It is another thing that I wonder if my boyfriend is telling me to do for his own entertainment—as he always starts to grin widely as I place all my focus in doing my giraffe walk.
It is best that you wear socks at all times or else your foot will become quite dry and cracked at the heels due to all of the sun and heat exposure. It also keeps your feet clean looking and less ashy. I learned this the hard way—as my feet started to look like a pavement dweller: in other words that homeless person that sits next to you on the subway and you can’t tell if he is wearing black socks or not.

Also, you must be protective and territorial of your sidewalk space, as there is not much of it here in Mozambique, or many other parts of the developing world. Where in the U.S. pedestrians have the right of way—here cars have the right of way—not legally of course, but if a driver hits you, s/he will haul their ass out of there like a bat out of hell. Here in Maputo, cars have been known to crash into people’s homes and once the dust clears that driver is long gone. I’m super protective of my sidewalk space as it is my feminist roar, not just here but in NYC as well. If you are a woman, please make the following observation: when walking down the street or sitting in the movie theater with your male companion (BF, brother, etc.), observe whether you must move to accommodate the on-coming man walking towards you on the sidewalk or for him to enter into the aisle of the theater. You will see that you must always move out of the fleckin way. This really irks me. And it irks me even more here in Africa, as it is just not men it is women too who make me move out of the way. Why? Because if a woman is walking towards us on the sidewalk she will move out of the way for my boyfriend thereby pushing me off to the side so I can accommodate her accommodating him! My friend Tessa who was living and working in a rural area in Malawi, who is all of 5 feet and 90lbs, would actually body slam herself into men to let them know that she would not side step off the sidewalk for them. I’ve done that only once here in Mozambique and only because B was with me and I knew he would back me up if I had to rip my earrings off to begin a tussle.

A reason why I do end up hitting into people--- but more often than not, ignoring acquaintances and neighbors---here in Maputo is because I look down when I walk—and there is a very good reason for that. One day while living in my rural town of Zobue, after sitting in a minibus for ten minutes and waiting for it to begin our journey, B. my boyfriend, starts mumbling that he smells some baby poo. I didn’t really pay attention as I couldn’t smell anything. But as we traveled, I too started smelling it—so I’m looking around, and B is turning around and staring people down thinking that someone was farting and not saying “perdao”. But then he says, no, it is here by us, and he looks at me “Jeeesuss, Aishia, don’t you smell that shit on your foot?!” And I look down, and I see a load of excrement seeping out from under my foot. B bends closer and says—“That is not animal shit that is from a person.” I must of stepped in it as I was getting into the minibus, as I remember a small mound by the side of the road that I thought was a mud pile. So basically someone in my town said “I’m gonna pull down my pants, right here on this high trafficked road and take a big ‘ol dump.” Who does that?!?!? Needless to say, I’ve been traumatized and very, very careful where I walk.

I also get my fair share of comments while walking abroad. In Costa Rica and Venezuela it was “Gringa!” or “Gorda!”.In Botswana, because of my coloring and my Sikh tattoo on the back of my neck, I was literally chased down the road by an Indian Sikh—he wanted to know if I was single and if not, if I would marry him. In Malawi and Zobue it was “Uzungo,” (white or foreign person) or “Why is that white person walking?”I get a lot of stares from the Indian/Middle Eastern population both in Malawi and Mozambique. In Malawi, I was living in the servants’ quarters of a house rather than the big house itself, to save on rent. I felt strongly that my Indian neighbors thought that I must have done something to anger my family to be living in such a house as well as to be riding my bike and walking about town rather than driving a car. But that too had a reason, there was a gas crisis and I refused to pay those exorbitant amounts for gas just to drive my car down the road to the supermarket and back. My feelings were confirmed when my black boyfriend showed up and as we walked hand in hand cars filled with the whole 10-20 member Indian family would roll down their windows and do a slow drive by of us and stare with evident concern, dismay and once, one older man just shook his head --“no”-- at us. I clearly was a bad Indian girl that had been disowned for dating outside of her race.Here in Maputo, comments are mostly about being part of a handsome couple: ”Que bonito casal!” or questions thrown to B on how he “ Got one of those”—evidently if you go to your local Shoprite you can a find a whitey next to the milk and a Chinese or an Indian in the ethnic foods aisle. Who knew?

I’ve also gotten my fair share of touching while walking down the street, waiting on line or sitting on a bus. My first time to be touched due to my skin color and hair texture was when I was living and traveling in the UK. Once, I told this man in Ireland as he was massaging my arm to the point that I was getting carpet burn, “You know that it doesn’t ruboff?!” Also at that time my hair was quite curly, and for some reason people thought that it was ok to just walk up to me in the supermarket and exclaim “I love your curls!” as they would tangle my hair with their fingers. So when children started to stroke my hair and skin here in Maputo as I sit on a bus or wait on line at the bakery—I’m a lot calmer and understanding about it. And because I’ve lived in Latin culture (as Mozambique is a unique blend of African and Portuguese culture), I’m better about the random acts of touching: in Costa Rica neighbors or colleagues would pop a zit on my back or pick a dried bugger from my nose. Here, when I’m working out, men who think they are professional trainers see nothing wrong with slapping my legs as a way to “instruct” me to stretch better or run faster. I’ve also had a woman who was trying to sell me a bra on the street squeeze my breast to see if I was the right size, “Aepa, mami, nao, voce e grandeparaesste!” (No mami you are too big for this one) I think she just wanted to cop a feel on my boobies.

In the rural area I walk because there wasn’t much of an option not to—it is just how you get around. But in Maputo, I avoid it when I can because getting on the chapa, unlike other places I’ve lived, is a contact sport: there is a lot of pushing and elbows to the head all to end up in a spot where you are standing pressed up on the buttocks of some person and crouched over with your head and back pressed up on the roof of the minibus.

But I have to say that although walking in the developing world can really be slightly dangerous, hot and sweaty and at times annoying the NYC girl in me still really likes it---I learn so much more about my community, and for pretty obvious reasons where there are such vast differences in wealth and wealth is associated with lighter skin color—it is nice to hear people say that I’m not so different than themlike they thought. As one Mozambican told me after B and me walked and chatted with a man for about 30 minutes to get to the nearest “bus stop” and then sat for a harrowing ride on the back of a pick-up truck: “ It is good. It is good you travel like us. To be like us. Now you are a Mozambican!”

Battle of the Stereo MCs

I’ve lived in all types of neighborhoods: middle class, wealthy and poor ones. A key feature of the less well-off neighborhoods has been the number of households that are owners of stereo systems that can emit music strong enough to push your heart out of your chest. My first introduction to this kind of music--was of course-- my own family.
My parents---working class Caribbean immigrants living in Brooklyn, NY during the 1970s and early 1980s---were party goers as well as party givers. My first memories of holidays are of tables ladled with my favorite Caribbean foods, my beautiful statuesque mother, always dressed like the women in her fashion mags, and of course, those large speakers pumping music so that the whole neighborhood could hear it. We would attend these parties in basements with very little ventilation, cemented floors and light was emitted by one bulb overhead, either red or blue. The space really was only meant for, at most, 5-10 people but it managed to accommodate the swaying, pulsating and grinding of about 20 slightly and completely drunk adult adults, and about 5 kids zipping in and out of firmly glued gyrating couples. When we moved to Long Island, and we now hosted our parties in our house instead of an apartment, everything remained the same except that we had carpet, more space (but that just meant more people showed up),and no red/blue bulb. Instead, the lights were turned off with only one lamp in some distant corner turned on.

So once I started traveling, I never thought twice about homes blasting music at all times of the day from large speakers. My father was a musician, and my mother a lover of music—so even when we were not hosting parties we played music from all genres, at all times of the day, of course, at full blast. When I lived in Botswana and Malawi, it was actually what I noted was missing from the general scheme of things. In most of the neighborhoods I lived in, whether well off or not, there was a general lack of music being pumped from large speakers at all times of the day. In the case of Malawi, the assumption I made was that because most of our days were marked by blackouts so people couldn’t play their stereos—because for me there was no doubt that they owned one. It was when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica that I learned that this phenomenon was not the norm in other communities, or cultures. Well, it was mostly white people who brought it up: “I don’t understand it. They don’t have electricity but they have that huge stereo and when they get a car battery they rather play that stereo then hook up a fridge or stove. I don’t get it.” And inevitably as the olive skinned, ambiguous race girl, there was a silent hope that I could provide an answer: “We just like our music,” was usually my glib response. But really I wanted to say was: I don’t think it is a race or culture thing my friend. I’m sure if you go into some poorer white neighborhoods in the U.S. they are doing the same kind of things.

I was reminded about this difference in expressing music appreciation, because just about every day, we have a battle of the stereos in the neighborhood. Most people where we live don’t have a fridge or stove or even what most of us would think of as a full structured house, but what they do have are stereo systems. My boyfriend, B, and I were outside early the other morning, and he was noting the same thing. “We don’t have jobs or food. But we have our stereos---so we can hum a beat to our grumbling bellies.” And it literally was a battle. The first house started playing a Mozambican love song. B looked at me and said, “Wait, wait…and here it begins.” About 10 seconds later, another neighbor turned on his stereo, slightly louder than Love Song, playing house music from South Africa. Then Love Song turned up his stereo. Two minutes later, another neighbor about three houses away, started to play an American pop song. So House Music turned its stereo even louder: and it when on like that for about 30 minutes until finally, House Music won out—he could play his stereo the loudest and the longest without breaking his speaker.

This morning when we woke up---and in homage to my Caribbean peeps’ house parties----I decided we would start the battle---so far we are winning. Bom Dia Maputo!

Saude e o que interessa, o resto nao tem pressa!

Watching the shutdown of the U.S. federal government over a healthcare law that will give people an opportunity to purchase insurance that will finally give them access to quality preventive healthcare has been just as painful for me abroad as it is for friends and family in the U.S. For years and years, I have been struggling with managing my costs being an under-employed or unemployed worker. I once paid up to $900 for medication when a cough worsened and eventually developed into bronchitis. And I paid that “little” because I went to my pediatrician with my financial woes and he was kind enough not to charge me for his consultation.

I’ve now lived in welfare states that offer “free” healthcare to its citizens for some time. Of course, these welfare states are not those of Nordic nations or Europe. These public health systems are failing miserably. Right wing conservatives seem to be using these examples from the developing world as to why we shouldn’t have a government sponsored healthcare system.But their failure is not due to the existence of free health care or a welfare state—but because of neglect and lack of money which is intimately linked to the degree of corruption within that country.

When I was living in rural Mozambique we had one hospital. And I was very surprised and generally impressed with the facility. It had an intake room that could fit about 3 people at a time, a dispensary, a maternal ward and a maternity intake space which was painfully small and always overcrowded. They were in the process of expanding the hospital when I was living there. But what was more discouraging was the patient care at the hands of the staff. I’ve seen government worker ennui in the U.S. and even in other developing nations. But I have to say Mozambique is the first place that I’ve lived abroad that I have a general fear of placing myself in their care beyond the most simple of procedures.

I became familiar with staff treatment because I volunteered as a birthing doula in our hospital. So first off, I have to say that the hospital in this area is doing remarkably well with the scarce resources they have. They have exactly one doctor to serve a far lying area—and she would have to participate in the mobile care unit for those individuals who could not walk themselves to the hospital (which is how most people get anywhere in the rural area). There was one registered nurse, and the other staff members were like me, basically trained in some aspect of medical service provision. Before the maternal ward was built, only 6 months before I got there, women were giving birth on the ground under the hot boiling sun---usually naked, in front of all other patients. When B told me this, my heart ached painfully and thus my motivation to volunteer there increased.

Once I did, I was disheartened as I could see that even though the facility was improving, the staff care would not change anytime soon unless there was some intense patient care training administered—preferably by people who wanted to be doctors and nurses and did not see their job as just a paycheck. During one of my births, a woman was screamed at, slapped to push and insulted repeatedly, as this patient was giving birth to her fifth child and it was deemed that she shouldn’t be taking so long to birth her baby. I was encouraging her to push and I put myself in the support position so she could push more easily as I could see that she was just tired. But the doctor and the midwife told me that I was being soft—this woman should know and do better. When I was alone with her, and she was lying down resting, I asked her in my most clear and deliberate Portuguese, as she only spoke her tribal language, “Do you want to have this baby?” She looked at me intently for a moment and then closed her eyes and turned her head.. But I know she understood me. Really, there was nothing physically that indicated that she couldn’t deliver her baby. I believed she had a mental block-that she in fact did not want another baby to feed, cloth, and generally care for. Unfortunately in rural areas in Africa, women are socially, culturally and economically forced to have babies at an early age and have many of them during their reproductive life cycles.

In the end, the woman I assisted in the hospital was in labor much too long and the life of the baby was truly in jeopardy. Unlike in the U.S., doctors here do not have the equipment or drugs to rush into conducting C-Sections—the doctor had to send her to Malawi, about a 15 minute drive to the nearest hospital.Her family, who was not permitted to enter during labor (thus most women labor alone as the limited staff attend other patients), and whose husband was somewhere drinking beer in celebration of birthing another child, were brought in to clean up the blood off of the patient, the bed and the floor. When you are admitted into hospitals here you have to bring your own sheets and provide your own food. I do not know what happened to this mother, I had to leave my town before I could find out, but I do know that her family had no money to pay a taxi to the hospital in Malawi—they mostly likely walked.

I would say there is a general contempt for anyone walking into a hospital door as it means more time and work for the attending provider. I saw this every day when I was not birthing women. My tasks were to divide the women who needed to get their ARVs and other HIV meds to prevent intrauterine transmission and those waiting for their prenatal care. After separating women I would measure women’s bellies and check for babies’ heartbeats. I was grateful for this training they gave me—as it went beyond my doula duties and into the realm of midwifery. But I was not appreciative of the derogatory remarks they would make about how the women looked, smelled and that they were uneducated.

The contempt that is felt does not necessarily disappear when you have money, it just dissipates and you are attended to in a more expeditious manner. I found this out when B had a health problem of his own and we went to a public health facility for care. We got the run around for a week but when we explained that we were leaving the country and that we really wanted to receive care before leaving, magically there was something called the “Special Consultation” where we paid six times what we would normally have paid, and again, magically, the doctor could see us that very day! Yet, all the other weeks we were told how extremely busy he is and that he could not receive walk-ins. As we waited for our doctor, an elderly couple was sitting waiting as well, and shortly thereafter, a nurse told them to come back in a month. She turned to me and started speaking in Changana on the verge of tears. B translated later to say that they had already been coming back 3 months in a row—being sung the same old song. They didn’t have any money, so no one was going to attend to them until the condition got to life threatening or her husband died.

Private care, of course, is even better. I have recently been diagnosed with a viral infection in my left eye that is causing an ulcer. At first I thought that I just had some really dry eyes, which happened to me in Botswana--it being a desert it is very dry and dusty. At the moment, it is very dry and dusty here in Maputo. I feel like I went to every drug store in the city to find the goopy eye drops I used in Bots, but only $20 contact lens eye drops could be sold to me. These drops did not work. So B told me to dip my head in a bucket of ice cold water and open my eyes. My brother asked me if that is a real traditional cure or if B wanted to watch me do that for his own entertainment. I think it may have been a little of both. I paid $80 in total for the visit and the medication. That’s awesome for us with dollars or a super high salary. But for most Mozambicans that is all they make in a month, if that much, so they are forced to use the public healthcare system where they have to wait months and months to be seen. We decided that eyes are important so we would spend the money rather than let my eyes be damaged or totally lost at the hands of an incompetent or----because hospital workers are on strike for an increase in salary--- an uninterested or disgruntled hospital worker.

The public health system would be better if the government did not allow for private hospitals---as those with money would be using the same services as everyone else and thus demand improved delivery of services. These private hospitals must get permission, and I’m sure pay something to the government, in order to be authorized to operate. But from where I’m standing, the money from allowing these private hospitals doesn’t seem to be injected into improving services within the public health care system.

So the best I, and all of us on tight budgets,can do is to continue to eat healthy foods, get my Zs, exercise, and laugh heartily and plentifully—my time in Africa has taught me, once again, how important my health is when your options for care are limited.

Modern Conveniences

I’ve been in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique for about 2 months now. And in that time I have been blessed with the modern conveniences that most of us at home take for granted: water from a pipe and a freezer. The other 11 months I lived mostly in a rural area, Zobue, Mozambique, located on the border of Malawi. I’ve never lived in a purely rural area before. So it is fair to say that theoretically I knew what I was getting into but in practical terms I had not a bloody clue. The biggest hurdle for me to get over was not having indoor plumbing and electricity and thusno refrigeration.

My days in Zobue usually started around 5am. The chickens wake you. The dogs wake you. And at times the man next door fermenting traditional beer (chubuku) would wake the whole neighborhood.Evidently when you make home brew with 120% alcohol content you need two colossal sized speakers that blast the same song for a 20 hour period. Well, at least I thought most everyone got up at 5 am like me. Most women in my immediate vicinity got up about 2 am to place a tin cup, a coffee cup, anything basically, to identify their spot in the line to pump water from the nearer well at the school. But my day would start at 5am with me lugging three20 liter containers to the farther placed well, at the church , a five minute walk with an empty container and then a ten minute walk when lugging them, one by one, perched on my shoulder (alternately), back home. The process took about a hour each day. I was usually stared at---uzungos (white people/foreigners) are deemed not able bodied enough to fetch our own water, that must be the reason why we pay Africans to fetch it for us. Ummm. No, we just have more money and we are lazy. I was not so great at first learning how to use just 60 liters of water to meet all my personal and household needs: bathing, cleaning the house, washing laundry, cleaning dishes, watering our vegetable garden, cooking, and of course, drinking it. But I learned. I also learned to buy food every single day and cook just enough for that day. And I learned to not use electricity to cook—as there were so many blackouts that it was a necessity to use a one pot charcoal fogao (stove). At first it would take me 30-60 minutes to light it. I ended up losing weight because I just couldn’t bear the thought of lighting that thing more than once a day to cook so I ended up eating a lot of bananas and mangoes from my tree out back, especially when my boyfriend was off doing his work in another site.

So I repeat, we didn’t have refrigeration. But you know who else didn’t have it? Meat vendors.I oncebought day old meat in Zobue. Day old meat in Africa.In the hottest and dustiest region of Mozmbique.ReallyAishia? But we hadn’t eaten meat in a long time and I really wanted it.Our primary choices were pork or goat meat and occasionally beef but you had to run like Carl Lewis to get that as it only happened about once a month, and if you didn’t’ sprint and form the line by 6:30am—all the meat was gone by 7am—or you could fight the strays for the entrails Yum. So, they slaughter the pig or goat and then put chunks of it on a bamboo like table and swat the flies away with either a stick with strips of cloth, or plastic strips from old rice sacks or just a rag. I don’t know where that rag has been but it’s always dirty looking. So on the day I’m buying this meat, I look at it and I see the flies and the slightly crusty, congealed blood. Me: “That’s old meat” Bored looking vendor: “Nao, senhora, we killed it today.” I look at him, and then I look at the meat. He looks at me, swatting, swatting away, and then looks at the meat. Me: “Ok, 1kilo.” Yeah, it was old…. and my boyfriend sure took to it—I ended up giving him my portion as I could taste the rottenness of it. Evidently it is some kind of delicacy here to chow on rotten meat. Another lesson learned: Flies, congealed crustiness = no buy. So with that said life is easier with better access to electricity---in that we now buy meat in bulk and store it in our freezer. But I have to say we are still living the same way in that I cook one big meal a day and for the most part I will go to market to get my veggies on a daily basis—the energy still cuts off and so I’m stuck with my fogao (we source the energy to other countries in the region, but we the actual residents don’t get good service. I will never get it—no matter how many times an economist explains it to me.). As for water in Maputo, amazingly enough, there are still many households in this big city that don’t have indoor plumbing, or if they do, the infrastructure was so neglected during two wars (one for independence and another 30 year civil war) that it really doesn’t function all that well. So we finally dug our own ditch and placed the pipe for water—and we have fresh water anytime we want—except when the government shuts it off between 5-8pm, usually 3-4 times a week.

But not having indoor plumbing is not the most horrible thing in the world, terribly inconvenient and frustrating at times, yes, but not horrible. I got caught once in a downpour on the way back from the market one day in Zobue. And as I was crossing the Catholic churchyard to the road to my house, I saw a group of children laughing, jumping and just having all around kid fun in the rain. But when I looked closer through the giant raindrops, I realized that they were having fun but at the same time they were completely naked because they were bathing themselves from the runoff of the church roof—like their own personal shower. They froze and stared at me. And I stopped and stared at them. Then I raised my hand, smiled and waved. They all started to play again, laughing and chanting some song with uzungo in it. On that day….it was the most beautiful part of not having indoor plumbing.

Vermin

I think most of you who know me, know that wherever I have lived I have had my battles with vermin. In Washington DC, they grow as big as cats and they run in packs in the small alleyways behind houses, duplexes and apartment buildings. Once, while studying while seated on my rug, one came strolling out of the wall vent, stopped, looked at me, and kept creeping along the wall, until I started chasing it with a wooden clog and it disappeared into the bathroom. I then shut my mind to the possibility that it escaped down the toilet because that would have brought to life a dreaded urban myth of it coming back out of the toilet while I was seated on it. In NYC, rats have no boundaries as well. I’ve seen them on subway trains and platforms and I’ve even had one run across my foot as I was walking.

Once in a new place, I go into full combat mode. I make a series of heated and strongly worded phone calls to the building management about their schedule for exterminating the filthy creatures and I grab my one size too big yellow rubber gloves and get to cleaning. I clean the whole apartment as well as place white bicarbonate soda along the edge of the whole apartment for roaches, including outside my apt door (very voo doo like, ne?). But I’ve learned, especially in DC, that both roaches and rats actually eat cleaning detergent---it’s like dessert or something. So all that cleaning was for naught. But I still do it. Even when abroad.

When I was living with afamily in Costa Rica as a Peace Corps volunteer, I went into full cleaning mode on the day I moved in and one of my family members just stared at me, and laughed while eating a plate of rice and beans in front of me. Without a shirt, grossly overweight and sweating—dropping grains of riceat my door.Lovely. He laughed because he knew what I didn’t know at the time. His sister would leave her unfinished plates of food under her bed while watching her telenovelas. So the rats would dine in her room and then come into my room to exercise and frolic in my nice clean room, with their teeny, tiny dirty feet--well into the next day. It was the first time I really saw them scale walls, and jump, very, very high, from the floor to my closet, onto my clothes.

I didn’t use poison when I was in Costa Rica. I wanted them to die, not to suffer by burning from the inside out.I only had a shoe, a broom, traps or that awful sticky paper.The Sister refused to get a cat as cats could prevent her from having children. But she had a child. A child she didn’t plan and didn’t know she was pregnant with until the 7th month because she too was grossly overweight and evidently didn’t know she had had sex to conceive her (What? Really?). And she hated the child’s father and most other men walking the planet as evidenced by the scowl and sharp words she gave to every man that crossed her path. Yet, she was scared her chances of getting pregnant would be in danger. Yes, made perfect sense. I left that house with a slight nervous tick as I would be awaken with a start every night as they would jump and scamper around my room with their teeny, tiny dirty feet. (Some rats get really fat, as well as their tails, yet their feet stay so teeny, tiny--that irks me, so I repeat this fact often.)

So, you would think here in Mozambique I would have learned some lessons about these critters. No, not really. I went straight into cleaning mode once we returned to Maputo from the US in July. And finally, at around 2AM, I allowed my boyfriend to go to sleep, secure that we brought no food into the house and the room was clean—so why would any rat want to come in here? Ummm.Umf.

Well, yes, of course they came because they are not really rats they are humans in rat form. Yes, of course…wait, what? So a twist here in Mozambique (and maybe other parts of Africa), is that many animals are actually hungry witches that take on human form so they can eat what they can’t get for themselves or be given as humans during the day. I tell my boyfriend this is nonsense. He tells me I am rejecting African culture. I tell him that I reject that part of African culture. He ends with, “one day you will believe.” I try to get the last word, “No, I will never believe.” “Yes, you will,” he screams as he runs out the door with the last word. (I hate not getting the last word.)

These dirty animals played romp a room all night. Jumping all over the place, and stopping to look at me in my bed to see if I was awake. I didn’t know that they could tell that our eyes were open. I felt safe that I was high up on the bed until B tells me they climb up on the bed if they need to get to one side of the room to the other. “Como?!?! I thought you said they wouldn’t do that.” “No, I said that they wouldn’t bite you if they climb up on the bed.” Biting or no biting, they are on the bed dude that is enough. So we sleep with a mosquito net every night although it is winter and there are no mosquitos and most particularly because rats can’t bite through a sheer mesh net and thus I will be protected under my blue mosquito net force field.

In Zobue, we didn’t have a rat problem as they were eaten by my cat as well by the people in my neighborhood (that is another blog altogether about food). But my cat died while I was away and I can’t think of getting another cat just yet. But here in Mozzie, they have very powerful rat poisoning. Evidently if the poison falls on my skin it will start to bubble up with blisters and cause extreme agony. Perfect—to hell with animal cruelty and possible self-disfigurement. I need to sleep at night; as well as not spend each day re-washing all my personal belongings. The thought of teeny, tiny rat feet impressions on my things gives me the creepy crawlys.

We put the poison on bread and then placed pieces of the bread throughout the room. That night as I layin my bed I could hear them chomping on the bread. Yes, my dirty friends, eat your little rat hearts out. The next day every single piece of bread was eaten. That night I thought we would do the same. But no, my boyfriend asks, “Don’t you know how smart rats are?” “ No,” I answer, “I just know they are dirty.” “No, they got sick or died from the bread—so they, if they didn’t die,or the others,are not going to eat the bread again.” We take leftovers from our dinner and place it into egg carton scraps and mix it with poison. That night their teeny, tiny dirty nails scratched away at those cartons, gormandizing themselves. One week later no more rats and I am sleeping soundly and safely.
I had to travel all the way to Africa to figure out how to definitively get rid of these suckers: I just had to put poison in all the foods I actually eat that way they will never go near that food again. I guess they aresmart--smarter than me anyway.

(I’m still sleeping under my blue force field every night. You never know.)