Mozambique...

Leah, Max, Kim and our new friend James

            The past three days have been a blur of new people, places, and experiences that are unlike anything any of the team encountered while in South Africa. The beginning of our adventure to Mozambique began with nine already exhausted teenagers being stuffed into a van with eleven humongous suitcases full of donations to the family we were staying with while we were in Mozambique, on top of our entire personal luggage. So just take a moment to image all nine of us in a van, fitting eight people in the back with luggage to the ceiling on a six and a half hour car trip to Mozambique. As you can image all of us were ready to jump out of the windows by the time we made it to the Terpstra’s house in the heart of Maputo. By bedtime all of us were exhausted and excited to finally have time to rest since the next day we were told we would have a “cultural experience” that none of us would forget.

James, Hannah, Mandi and Eric

Titos, Pearce, Ashley, Katie and Francesco

Trying to learn some new dance moves

            On Sunday the team was woken up so that we could go to church like any of us typically would on any normal week in the U.S. except for the fact that this service was spoken completely in Portuguese, the primary language in Mozambique. The language barrier at this church was so prominent to us since in South Africa all of us could communicate perfectly to the people there. From that moment on the team realized that talking with people here might be a little harder than expected due to the fact that no one in our group knows Portuguese. After church we headed back to the Terpstra’s to find ourselves being greeted by three of their close friends that are native to Mozambique. We then found out that this was going to be our cultural experience that was talked about yesterday by our host family. Our mission for this “cultural experience” was for all of the teens to be broken up into three teams and given one of their friends as our guides for the day. Our guides were to take us through the area in which they lived, and let us walk a typical day in their lives here in Mozambique.  The area in which our guides lived was considered a working class barrio, but by the our standards in the United States it looked way worse than the poorest parts of Denver. The barrio was a lot like my trip to the barrio of La Chureca in Nicaragua last year because this barrio was also located within a trash dump. As my group walked next to the massive trash dump, little children looked through the trash so that they could find plastic or tin to sell later, it broke my heart to see such small children sifting through trash so they could make maybe a couple cents per can. As we went on in our trip in this barrio my guide James took our group to his house.  James’s house was a small concrete building that fit his mother, father, grandma, brothers, and his sister; he also stated that if you wanted a room of your own in his family you could build a new concrete room on your own.  By the standards of America, James had next to nothing compared to all of the things we own, however his family actually had all of the necessities that one needs in life. They had food to feed their bellies every night, a room to sleep in, and they even had a small TV in the corner of their house; they were the perfect example that in the United States we have so much excess that we don’t need but they survive on just the necessities of life.  After walking through James’s barrio for another hour or so we weren’t quite done with our cultural experience yet! We had to ride a shappa back home, which is the equivalent of a taxi in the U.S. except for the fact about 15 people were shoved into an right person van, so personal space was not an option. At a shappa station change Mandi and I got to see first hand just how crazy Mozambique could actually be due to the fact that a drunken man followed us through the entire market on our way to the shappa. I was so glad to have the protection of James in this moment for his knowledge of Mozambique and his ability to remain calm despite the panic of my group. This moment made me realize just how different I really was in this country, and how most people in Mozambique aren’t used to seeing white people walking through their markets or using their tradition way of transportation. Seeing the way Mozambicans truly lived opened my eyes to just how neat and tidy the U.S. is, not just in the way of hygiene, but in the way Americans don’t typically live outside of their bubble and put themselves in sometimes trivial situations.

            The day ended with an amazing dinner made by our host family surrounded by all of our guides (aka our new best friends) and amazing stories of the other group’s “cultural experience”. While doing the dishes, our guides attempted to teach us how to dance in their own personal Mozambican way. As laughter of our failed dance attempts with our new friends erupted we continued the dance party for an entire hour. I don’t think I have ever met a group of people such as our guides who have so much love of life and laughter even though their life situation may not be ideal. Despite the fact they may lack the material objects people have in America, their lives are so much richer than ours in pure happiness for the little things that we American’s may not appreciate. The Mozambican way is truly different than our own and it took a true “cultural experience” for all of us to see just how different we really are. Our guides are amazing friends we will never forget and the day they let us experience was a perfect introduction to Mozambique.

Hannah