short and sweet

In the past two weeks, my life has been filled with the incredible. First and foremost, I find it incredible that my mother, of all people, managed to not only decide to come visit me, but actually followed through and made it back and forth in one piece! My mom joined me for the final leg of my sabbatical/hiatus/migration in Beira. She was able to meet some MCCers, play with a bunny, eat some delicious meals and gaze lovingly at the ocean. I introduced her to the lovely and eclectic community of friends I have in Beira, and was delighted by their hospitality and welcoming of her. They’re pretty great people. A small collection of these friends joined us at Rio Savane, a beach “resort” north of Beira, where we witnessed the incredible beauty of crabs, stars, sunsets and tides. Daily, my mom distributed gifts from family and friends from home. I was blown away by the love from so many dear people so far away. Thank you for your incredible thoughtfulness for such gifts such as trashy magazines, candy, faux snow, coffee and cards!

Halfway through her trip, my mom and I made our way down to Maputo so she could see where I live and work, and so I could get settled back into where I live and work. The month and a half in Beira was great, but it has been nice transitioning back into the life of the capitol. My mom stayed with me the guest house where I’ll be living for the remainder of my time in Mozambique. I will be helping the two short and sweet ladies who run this missionary guest house with simple yet revolutionary tasks such as answering the door late at night, planning guest bookings and replying to text messages on their cell phones. In return for my few hours a week I’ll work for them, they will provide me with a place to stay and three meals a day all within walking distance of my CCM office. I feel so incredibly blessed to have a housing situation actually work out well within the city. So many prayers have been answered, and it’s quite incredible to see everything unfolding so seamlessly. I’m actually starting to feel like I have a home in the city in which I live, and it’s a great thing.

I also received a new perspective on Maputo through my mom’s visit. We decided to spend my mom’s last Saturday at another incredible beach: Inhaca Island. On the other side of Maputo Bay, Inhaca Island was a touristy three hour boat ride away from the city. Our stay was short and fairly sweet, despite my bout of a boat-induced migraine. The island was extremely pretty, and it was delightful to see the water of Maputo Bay with a shimmering turquoise gleam instead of the dismal and polluted grey I’m used to on the city side. Plus, seeing Maputo from the outside looking in made the city so appear so impressive and sterile!

My mother lady’s short and sweet trip ended with a trip to a short and sweet lady. Whenever I travel, one of my favorite places to go is a local market. I love the smells and the makeshift, low-hanging ceilings and the bartering and the noise and the produce. And at my favorite market in Maputo, I love my friend Ilena. Throughout the past few months, she has been a welcoming presence in the city as someone who is always excited to see me and someone who won’t make fun of my horrible Portuguese. Her kindness always spills over as she slips me a few extra bananas or throws in an extra orange for free. I wanted to introduce my mom to her first market and first Ilena experience. We went earlier in the week, but Ilena insisted that my mom come back to see her one last time before she left. So we did just that. On our way to the airport, our taxi made a quick stop at the market for a final farewell, but the sweet lady did not want to cut things too short. She sent my mom on her way with two incredibly large mangos and an apple and orange, as well as a wooden spoon and two purses she grabbed from a neighboring stall. She presented these parting gifts to my projectile weeping mother who was overcome by Ilena’s generosity as a woman who gives tremendously more than she herself has. I was struck with the profound simplicity of loving a virtual stranger in such a lavish way, and wondered why it would be so hard for me to do what Ilena did so freely. It was pretty incredible.

what hope means

Beira is in a constant state of death. I’ve been living here in the second-largest city in Mozambique for over a month now, and there’s constant death all around us. In the last month, I’ve been staying with my country representative, Melanie, and her daughters in order to work more hours than I’d like to count and on more projects than I’d like to remember. In some ways, it’s been a death to our social lives. We read in the paper about how many people throughout the country have been swept away in flooding from the super heavy rains of the last month. Our colleagues tell us of how they need to take more time off work for the tenth funeral we’ve heard of this month. The salty sea air and swampy marsh ground nibble away at all of Beira’s buildings so that every other structure looks as dilapidated and mournful as some of those who dwell within them. Trash rolling in the ocean waves never ceases to disgust me as the pollution keeps killing little pieces of the environment and of me. Rumor has it (since data is often faulty) that the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the Beira corridor—the transport vein that runs from Harare, Zimbabwe to the Indian Ocean—has jumped to 38 percent, dwarfing the national average of 14 percent that already was unacceptably high. Childhood and education die for the girls of one of our partner organizations as their parents view 14 years old to be a sufficient age for marriage and classroom discontinuation. Food prices continue to increase, thereby continually diminishing some Mozambicans’ dreams of diversified diets. I’ve had to put to death the paralyzing notion within myself that Mozambique’s issues are too overwhelming to even developmentally dent, so that I can still get out of bed in the morning and go about my small life praying that somehow someone benefit from my effort in some small way.

But this death doesn’t mean that people stop living. In fact, it’s quite the opposite in these parts. I have found more community, more love, more beauty and more friendships represented by Beira than in any other part of the country I’ve visited. I never stop feeling grateful for the cool evening breezes, enamored by the incredible clouds that sweep in from the sea to land and humbled by the generosity of friends from various countries. One night, a few weeks ago, I was dwelling on this agape kind of love I was feeling God draping over Beira while sitting outside admiring the stars, conversations and food of the evening. We were attending a braai (a South African barbeque) at Melanie’s daughters’ school which began with the intention of allowing space for parents and teachers to socially mingle and ended with South Africans bickering over whose steak was grilled better. I realized that I felt completely at peace and entirely filled with joy. Previous Mozambican moments had given me happiness, but this was a sense of pure joy of not wishing to be any other place or worried about anything.

When the braai began I was talking with our friend Ruth and her husband and son. Ruth is a sweet English woman who boosts my awareness of friendship and love in Beira. But she’s been struggling a lot these last few weeks. She has fiber myalgia that she says makes her “legs feel like they don’t belong” to her and chronic back pain that makes each movement excruciating as her medication wears off. But the worst pain of all of her is her inability to do her nursing work to her full potential. One of her projects is distributing powdered milk to infants whose mothers either are HIV+ or lack the nutrition to breastfeed. She told us of how her previous week had been just awful as the bridge to one of her milk recipient communities washed away, leaving no way to access the mothers and giving Ruth guilt that some babies would now die. Another of her endeavors is an orphanage of HIV+ children to whom she gives medicine and check-ups. Ruth began to break down as she explained the story of one girl with stage four AIDS who still had not received ARV treatment. When Ruth called the local government to demand distribution of the free medication to the orphanage, the officials on the other end of the line lackadaisically said they would be there by the end of the month. She knows these kids don’t have that long.

So there we sat. The joy, the tears, the heartbrokenness and the love all hovered there in the air around us, mixing together and getting hazy. But the weirdest thing was that it was totally okay. Pain held hands with beauty, and joy pulled up a chair next to sorrow. And there we all dwelled. I didn’t feel guilty for the laughter we had a few moments before her story, and the breaking of Ruth’s heart in no way diminished the love it still contained. I still knew that I was exactly where I should be, and despite all of the death around me, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. Around this same time, a dear friend from home shared with me a quote from a pastor of the church we used to attend:
“Ultimately our gift to the world around us is hope. Not blind hope that pretends everything is fine and refuses to acknowledge how things are. But the kind of hope that comes from staring pain and suffering right in the eyes and refusing to believe that this is all there is. It is what we need—hope that comes not from going around suffering but from going through it...It is in the flow of real life, in the places we live and move with the people we're on the journey with, that we are reminded it is God’s world and we’re going to be okay.”
And I think this is what hope means to me. Sure, babies still cry, funerals still occur and the water still inexplicably goes out in the middle of a dinner party. But the sun still rises every morning and joy is still available in the presence of utter destruction. And I think God stands in the messy middle between suffering and bliss and says “it’s alright. I got this.”

dirty stories

Some time ago, there was a guest speaker who came to the church that I used to attend back at home. I can't remember his name, home town or ethnic affiliation, but he was a Rwandan man who was interviewed by the pastor so that he might share his memories and observations from his life at home in 1994. All of us listeners were deeply struck by how patiently and quietly he told his gruesome and horrifying story of watching his loved ones be tortured to death and the place he grew up burned to the ground. The point of his tale wasn't to evoke pity or indignation, but to demonstrate how one man was able to find forgiveness and life lessons from this awful period of his life. His voice was sad and calm as he spoke of his past anger and his present peace, while all of us in the audience sat with gaping mouths and moist eyes. He explained that while we was (understandably) upset to say the least, he realized that as a survivor, he must not only honor the dead but also respect the living. Through his experience, he slowly began to forgive his enemies for what they did to his family, to forgive his kin for their hand in the violence, to forgive himself for not doing more to stop what happened, and most importantly to forgive God for letting it all unfold.

His profound story put me to shame. I thought of all of the insignificant ways I get easily angered, such as when my hurried time in a hectic schedule isn't acknowledged by others. And I remembered each of the times that I've struggled to forgive people, such as when I'm cut off in traffic or in front of in a long line at the supermarket. Needless to say, the burdens of my life pale in comparison to those of this Rwandan man. But I tucked this man's story into a little pocket of my heart and carried it with me to Mozambique. Upon my arrival here a few months ago, I was thinking of how this continent is filled with other stories like the guest speaker's that portray violence, marginalization, suffering and epic catastrophes. Mozambique alone has held its share of heartache with reoccurring droughts and famines, widespread extreme poverty and the decades-long civil war. Now, given the facts that I'm not 146 years old and have grown up in middle class America, I cannot share these manifestations of pain in the forms of civil war and hunger.

However, my life lessons here have given me my own crosses to bear. I have gotten livid when forced to pay more for bananas than the woman next to me because of my accent and skin color. I have been offended when my former host mother told me that I'm not a real woman because I'm American and don't have to work for anything. And I have had my little world turned upside down by a few wrong turns and a misunderstanding turned violent. I thought, oh no, I can't forgive because I'm too angry and far too offended and much too hurt.

Last week I was walking down the street on an exceptionally hot day, which made the odors from the dumpers I was passing particularly pungent. I started to wrinkle up my nose, my face involuntarily wore an expression of disdain and I sped up my stride to get past them quicker. But suddenly, the idea of honor the dead, respect the living popped into my head. Trash isn't exclusive to Mozambique. So therefore it shouldn't be defined by it. Sure, in this country death has come riding on the raindrops, as a result of feuding politics and through decaying diapers and mango rinds in garbage heaps. But while I acknowledge the death, there must be some drive to support the living. I realized that even if I hurried my walking to get past the uncomfortable situation faster, it doesn't fix the problem, or the fact that there might be something useful or teachable in all that smelly grossness. And if I really want my life to sing “This Is My Father's World” and believe that I'm spoken to everywhere, then God's domain needs to include these trash dump situations.

This leaves me in a tight tension of wanting to run through rustling grass and dwell on pretty things, while also recognizing that this world, this country, this street is laden with brokenness, pain and decay. It was somewhere in this tedious balance and the methane fumes from the littered sidewalk that I put down my sword and shield and forgave those who had done me wrong. The forgiveness process wasn't fun and it didn't feel good to be ripped apart in order to be built back up. But I can breathe a little bit easier, and now I don't take the smell of the fresh, nooma-living air for granted anymore. If true living means forgiveness, then I guess that's what it takes to bring some life to these dead, trashy situations of our world.

colors

It started with the “rainbow nation” and ended with a rainbow. In the beginning of December, my head was a disheveled mess of thoughts and my heart cluttered with emotions. By by the end of January, I feel like I'm in a much healthier place. I think much of this has to do with my time in South Africa. I spent the last three weeks of December retreating, vacationing, Christmasing and relaxing with MCC friends and colleagues around South Africa, which is often nicknamed the “rainbow nation” due to stated embracing of multiculturalism and multicolored people. While there, I was talking with one of my new good friends about my past experiences in Mozambique, and how sometimes I felt as though words couldn't even contain or describe some of the complex emotions of pain, regret and brokenness that I was feeling. She suggested that in the moments when words fail, other mediums, such as color meditation, can pick up the slack.

As it turns out, she was right. I began seeking out colors to intake new experiences and define what was already there. Being in a gorgeous country certainly helped. As did being surrounded by dear friends and colorful characters throughout my travels. I was able to find solace in the endless blue of the ocean waves, comfort in the fresh blue that came from my meditations on what peace means in a violent world, and joy in the perfect blue hues in my nieces' eyes over a Christmas Skype video call home. The green of tree covered mountains was refreshing and the green of wildebeest covered hills on our safari was incredible, while the green of internal growth blossomed into forgiveness.



This new perspective for perceptions continued as I transitioned back into the culture and pace of Maputo. Although, this time the colors took on different meanings. I traded in green of deciduous forests for the green of fabulous acacias strutting their stuff in clusters along the city streets. Thanks to the color coded chapa system, blue has been labeled by my transportation of late: the blue Museu—Xipamanine bus line, where joy comes from the little things of the cobrador whistling a showtune tribute to Andrew Lloyd Weber, and from the cobrador who screams “MUSEU! MUSEU!” outside the apartment window (which makes me wish that English-speaking transportation agents would also yell “MUSEUM!” to lure people on board). Among other things, brown in this city for me connotes the disgusting bodies of cockroaches who think they have made the apartment their domain, until they are met with my Chaco or Nadia's hardcover “My Happy Book” and my war cry of “Die! Die! WHY WON'T YOU DIE FOREVER?!” laced with eloquent profanity.

Last week, I was again remembering all of the unanswered questions that still linger around my life here. Questions such as: “when am I going to find a new host family?”, “what does my job look like in the upcoming months?”,'”why does God have to use such heinous situations in order for us to grow?”, and “what is that God-awful, puke-inducing smell in the stairwell?” still remain. But as I was taking a walk outside and dwelling on the uncertainties, a rainbow appeared. Not only that, but it was an awesome, full-fledged, massive arching double rainbow that seemed to span the city while also exactly centering Joél and Jenny's apartment building where I've been staying. It was as if God needed to remind me of his promises to take care of me, but in a way that I could actually comprehend. I didn't have to color analyze a thing or over think the meaning because it was right there, painted with an exceptional palate. The reds were THE perfect red and transitioned gradually yet accurately into the vibrant oranges and coy yellows and down the line. He has all transitions under control, not just in my stupid little life, but all throughout this broken city. And I take great comfort in this. Next week, I'm moving up to Beira for a month. But despite the new batch of hazy questions that arise in the scenery change, I'm blessed by a total sense of peace that whatever God has in store for February, it's bound to be colorful.

rainy season

I've grown up taking precipitation for granted. Spending the first 18 years of my life across the street from Lake Michigan, with its five month long ritual of lake effect snow, and the next five years in Grand Rapids, apparently the second rainiest city in the country, has not left me in want of moisture. But watching storm clouds tumble along the Indian Ocean coast, or seeing lightning bolts shock the Maputo cityscape with electric pink reminds me that I'm actually quite blessed.

In these past few months I've learned not only more about sustainable agriculture and water conservation techniques such as sand dams, but also about the stark reality of the needs behind these practices. I could easily throw out dozens of statistics that evoke pity, enlightenment and overwhelming helplessness at the magnitude of water deprivation issues in sub-Saharan Africa alone. But experiencing how tangible and sensual water problems puts lively flesh to the dry bones of statistics. People eat or starve by the rains, crops live or die by the rains, and roads are passable or soup by the rains. Walking across a sand pit that used to be a river, relishing in the taste of sun-baked water because the tap is untrustworthy, and smelling the electric nitrogen-laden air as we eagerly await the rain are all reminders that the start of the rainy season actually means something.

In my home culture, rain is often perceived as a soggy and depressing nuisance that inevitably interjects the sunny rest of life. This has also been my perception of the last few weeks here. A little over three weeks ago, the tension that was building during the dry season finally burst the dam of my host family. Lightning descended and the floods rose, and the life I had delicately constructed here began to dissolve. Trust has been lost, relationships have melted, memories now have scars, and I have often found myself drowning in a sea of emotions that this rainy season has brought upon us. My Mozambican social circle has been broken and almost everything has fallen apart.

But despite the magnitude of the suffering and sadness, I am waterproof. The puddles of muddied confusion have expanded exponentially, but still I know how to swim. And though this week the winds have risen and the temperatures dropped, I am still anchored in place by something firm, yet intangible. As much as I wish to escape the hurtful, the disgusting, the violating, and the regret, there's no use running away. I'm slowly realizing that God is present as much here as anywhere else. He's the air mattress on the living room floor when I'm homeless. He's the arm around the shoulder when I'm reading bad news. He's the peace that comes after my tears have drained all my energy. And he's that quiet farmer who's planting seeds with a smirk on his face and a head full of thoughts no one will ever know. Maybe when the rain stops pelting everything in my sight, something green will pop up out of the drenched ground. It's my only hope. For now, I'll find solace in remembering the words of the lovely poetess Luci Shaw in her eloquently simple poem “Forecast”:

planting seeds
inevitably
changes my feelings
about rain

bouncy hearts

A few weeks ago, while recovering from my foot incident, I attempted to catch up on the sermons that I've been missing from the church I've attended in the last few years. While I am still many weeks behind in the online sermon archive, I listened to a message from early September that felt just as real as if it was spoken just for me right then and there. Since then, the message has kinda been stalking me, and creeping into my mind throughout the emotional roller coaster of my past few weeks.

This particular sermon of interest was starting off a short series on the book of Ezekiel, which seeks to capture all of the joys and obscurities of this random prophetic Old Testament book. By the time the story reaches Ezekiel 11, the Israelites have been driven off of their promised land and are left displaced and posession-less in the territory of their oppressor. Up until this point, the book has been one bummer after another, and the Israelites are pretty much at the end of their luck. Then, all of a sudden, God bursts into the situation and says, “Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone...I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” [Ezekiel 11:16, 19].

I'm really struck by the inclusive language that God uses here. It's not just “I'm going to do stuff for you individually,” but instead, “you're all going to be in this together.” And he's not just like, “Well, have a a nice trip as I fling you to different corners of the world,” but instead, “hey, I'll be there too and make sure you have what you need.” When it comes to hearts of flesh instead of stone, God promises not to remove the hard, disappointing, gross, depressing or painful parts of our lives, but rather equip us with what we need to make it through. It seems counter-intuitive that something soft and cushy would be tougher than what's solid and hard. But my pastor pointed out that we need hearts that are rubbery and maliable, so that they'll bounce back after God throws us into challenging situations...like being scattered among the countries.

My pastor described that when God talks about giving his people an “undivided heart,” he really means creating a community with one unified vision. This struck me after all the work that my MCC team here is Mozambique has been doing lately. Much of our tangible work and energy has been spent on creating vision statements, articulating our mission and outlining what it will take to get ourselves and our partner organizations to where we want to be. But then I started thinking again about the earlier point of the need for fleshy hearts and flexible characters when it comes to all these new challenges. As I started thinking about the past two months, I'm realizing all of the ways that we've been emotionally and physically tossed around. Since this time in August, we've had MCC Moz team members with homesickness and stomach sickness, fevers and sunburns. There have been rolled ankles, broken fingers, bruises and cuts. We've shared clinic visits, emotional breakdowns, prayers and the worries following a nighttime fainting spell and a closed head injury. But at the same time, we're all miraculously still here. The canoes didn't tip over, the chapas didn't crash, the planes worked as they were supposed to and the cars got us home in one piece. And through it all, we're together, unified in the realization that this work isn't easy, that the food isn't always good, that we have more nagging questions than relieving answers and that we're all at various levels of emotional disarray. But at least it's not just my heart bouncing around or my solitary feeling of displacement. God's doing a lot of work here, and I have quite the sneaky suspicion that he's starting by making our hearts just a little more squishy.

add it to the list

It's been a crazy past few days. After doing much traveling in the past weeks, I was looking forward to getting back to my routine, host family and work. Friday morning began as any typical work day as I stood by the side of the main road waiting for a bus into the city, and then kept waiting as the bus I caught slowly made its way through the heinous Maputo morning traffic. I was lucky enough to be able to sit down during the ride, and although this meant sitting in the direct sunlight for two and a half hours, I was trying to stay upbeat. When I got closer to my bus stop in the city, I decided to climb over all the bags, seats, children and legs that were between me and the door so I would be ready when my stop came. What began as one big stride over some baggage ended with me crumpled on top of my twisted foot. Apparently the floor wasn't as stable as I thought. This now tops the list of Ways Katie Gets Hurt When She's Clumsy.

I hobbled my way to work, trying to maintain my composure amidst the pain and worry that I had further messed up my bad ankle. Once I arrived at CCM, Jenny, my MCC colleague, was there to hear of my accident, my awful morning, my frustrations and my general emotional havoc. As the morning went on and my pain worsened, we decided to make our way over to the private clinic to check out my foot and ankle situation. After five hours, four x-rays and three snack crackers, we ended up with two different doctors, diagnoses and disgruntled Americans. The first doctor looked at the x-rays and concluded that nothing was broken, but a bone was just displaced. However, she recommended that we wait for the opinion of the second doctor who would be there in 15 minutes. Two and a half hours later, the second doctor arrived, stating that it was merely a sprain, the bones were fine and a simple bandage cast would be fine. In the end, I was given a full plaster of Paris cast and felt much more discomfort with my cast and unanswered questions than feeling like the visit was worth all the trouble.


By the end of Friday, I had many new additions for my list of Frustrations. I was hungry, tired, annoyed, inconvenienced, sore and generally quite negative. I was frustrated that my host family didn't seem to care that I was hurt and that instead the burden of taking care of me unfairly fell upon Jenny. I was annoyed with how much money and resources it took for such a dumb thing as a twisted ankle and that we still needed to buy me a crutch as well. And I felt awful for taking up so much of Jenny and Joél's time as they were trying to prepare for leaving on vacation the next day.

But by the next morning, I realized that all of my negativity had been really short-sighted. With the morning light came a new perspective that things weren't as bad as I had made them out to be. I cast aside dwelling on my lists of angering and frustrating things, and instead chose to add to my lists of Things To Be Grateful For and New Experiences. To the latter list, I can now add the experiences of Mozambican health care, learning to coordinate walking with a crutch and creatively showering when only one foot can get wet. I'm truly grateful that the injury isn't worse, that I have incredible coworkers who go above and beyond the titles of colleagues and friends, that I have an amazing MCC team here who prays for me and sends me encouraging texts and emails, and that I can recuperate at Joél and Jenny's apartment instead of commuting from Matola. I'm thankful for the little things like a ride to Sunday night fellowship, the luxury of Skype-ing with family and for fresh air on the roof where I can watch the Maputo skyline. Yeah, it's a bummer that my foot is hurting, but at least I now that I will be just fine.

machanga skies

Priscila wasn't lying. Her repeated lure to get me to visit Machanga was that the night sky is incredible and unlike anywhere else. And as it turns out, she is absolutely right. After spending some time in Beira for our MCC team meetings, I decided to take Priscila, my Brazilian MCC colleague, up on her offer of spending a few days at the Machanga girls center where she works. In Machanga around 5:00 every afternoon, the scorching sun races to the horizon. But instead of making it the whole way, the sun sets a ways above the horizon, as if it's more tired than it's made everyone else during the day. Then 6:00 comes and rewards Machanga residents with the relief of cool breezes and a cloudless indigo sky. The stars begin to pour out from their hiding places as if God has been saving his best constellations for the southern hemisphere. Since Machanga is in fact in the middle of nowhere, no light pollution disrupts the show as the solstice moon and vivid Mars vie for the attention of the stargazer. When the conditions are perfect, the entire Milky Way lights up like a sea of hazy fireflies, so close one could almost touch them. And to see the Southern Cross—the pride of national flags and elusive to Northerners—behind the silhouette of coconut palms is amazing. The gorgeous night sky alone makes enduring the heat and exhaustion of Machanga worth it.



Life in Machanga is simple, but challenging. It's a life full of dust and charred grass, but lacking food diversity and widespread electricity. It's a life where a purchase totaling $4 USD means months of savings, and where getting to the closest paved road means two and a half hour bus ride. It's a life where bathrooms mean holes in the ground and raffia walls, and where kitchens mean smoky stoves and jerrycans of well water. But it's also a life where the continual bubbling of Ndau means friends are close by, and where celebrations of steady canoes and shrimp to eat means not taking common elements for granted.



The slow and relaxed pace of life allowed me time for reflection on how my present surroundings materializes my past eduction and future work of the next ten months. I found myself thinking of my International Development degree, and how it's really just a fancy title for something that offers more questions than answers. I remembered my final capstone paper where I praised my subject, Denis Goulet, for his definition of development as: “a process by which life is made more human in some meaningful way.” In May of 2009 when I completed the paper, I found this statement to be empowering as it encompassed granting people a more ethical existence through increasing their dignity, freedom, rights and opportunities. But in September of 2010, I am reinterpreting this statement as a shallow, incomplete and perhaps even a degrading way of labeling those who are impoverished as somehow less human than those who are more affluent. If I shower without a ceiling overhead and fear sunburn as I bathe, does that make me less human? Or if I work in a huge steel building in a office with air conditioning, fluorescent lights and no outside windows, does that make me more human?



Even though I stayed only briefly in Machanga, there was something very human about my experience. Being sick during my stay made me pay close attention to the needs of my body. Having limited conversation abilities made me rely more heavily on motions, gestures and facial expressions to get my point across. Sweating, eating, laughing and walking all seemed to be very human experiences, but still didn't seem to get me any closer to a better definition of development. While I attempt to sort everything out in my mind, I'll keep my eyes open and stay amazed at simple things like stargazing.

vision

The past month has been really challenging. Acclimating to a new language, culture, set of bacteria and cuisine has been more difficult than I expected. I've begun to read 2 Corinthians 4:8 in a whole new way. I may not be crushed, but I've certainly felt pressed as my four to five hour daily commute has literally jammed me in various forms of public Mozambican transportation. I was certainly perplexed and tempted by despair as riots in Maputo kept me in a confused state of house arrest for five days. Barriers of language, skin color and customs made me feel lonely, and sometimes I struggled to remember that I'm not abandoned. And after being bruised, bloodied, muddied, stubbed, and generally struck down (just in my walk to work alone), much of my patience and energy has been destroyed. But God has continued to remind me that my increasingly fracturing clay jar only leaves more room for him to fill in my ever-expanding weaknesses and inadequacies. Lately, I'm learning a lot about vision—not only in the act of seeing, but also in recalibrating my perspective.

Physically and tangibly, I've stopped taking many things for granted. Transportation, time, family, friends, running water, conversations, soap and vegetables all mean something different to me after being here. Health has also cut into my altering perspectives, as a few days of pink eye renewed my gratefulness for the ability to have vision. Additionally, stumbling back to my host family's house—a treacherous 12 minute walk from the paved main road—in the utter blackness of the bush after a long day in the city makes me super thankful for the sight aids of cell phones and mini flashlights.


Before I came to Mozambique, I had a vision for what my host family and living situation would be like. I live with my new mami, Dona Monica, and her four daughters. Our house is in Matola, a “suburb” of Maputo, located southwest of the city. The road we take into the city is the same that directs traffic into South Africa and/or Swaziland. The family's husband and father passed away last year, but people are never scarce in this house. Grandma, a nephew, friends and grandchildren keep the house bubbling with Portuguese discourse, Changari orders, and in-human shrieks, just for the sake of noise. The family is loud, welcoming and filthy rich. Wine bottles clutter the main sitting room, a china and gold laden table constantly remains set in the dining room, (at least) three kitchens create a maze when trying to locate anyone, and multiple cars crowd the long brick driveway. Needless to say, it turned out to be a bit different in reality than in my imagination. My vision did not include an upper class family, the luxury of having food but choosing not to eat or the daily passing of slums to arrive at a mansion in the middle of nowhere. But my new vision is slowly changing to incorporate the reality of class divide and the existence of affluent Mozambicans. As my MCC coworker Stephen said a few weeks back, “One day this will all seem normal, but today is not that day.” I'm still waiting for that day to come.


But despite the challenges of changing my perspectives, I've also experienced the excitement of gaining a new overarching vision. I've spent the last week in Beira with the entire MCC Mozambique team for a retreat. It took us Maputo residents 16 hours to get here, but I've greatly enjoyed learning more about the country, my coworkers and our joint vision for our MCC programs. Through our meetings, frustrations have been aired, joys have been shared, friendships have been solidified, many games have been played and serious strategic planning has taken place. In the last two weeks, my colleges in the sustainable agriculture and water (ASA) program of CCM have chartered our vision, mission and objectives for the next three years, as well as how they fit into MCC's work in Mozambique. Being the development geek that I am, I've been thrilled in discovering our collective mission, as well as my contribution toward it. Our team has articulated that MCC Mozambique seeks to follow the teachings of Jesus through healthy, sovereign partnerships to nurture just, abundant life in the areas of water, food security, education, peace and HIV/AIDS awareness. I'm so excited to be a part of a group that shares my passions, goals and drive, and I'm anxious to watch our Spirit-led vision unfold in our attempt to bring a little heaven to this corner of the earth. And I'm also glad to finally watch my preoccupied short-sightedness wither away in the light of a new vision.

bringin' the flavor

Maputo is a taste I can't put my finger on. It's like a flavor that I've experienced before, but yet at the same time is totally different. It's as awkward on the tongue as my infant-like Portuguese. It's as delicious as the food we're eating as we stay in a home for traveling missionaries. It's as suddenly spicy as the instant my life flashes before my eyes as a chapa speeds around a corner and misses me by inches. It's as sweet as the smiles from my CCM coworkers as they welcome me to my "second home." It's as flavorful as the salty air that bounces in over the fish markets along the banks of the ocean. But yet it's an unfamiliar taste like one that can only get better with time.

Priscila, Stephen and I have just completed our third day bumping around Maputo in a daze of excitement, exhaustion and wonder. I still feel a bit numb from our whirlwind weekend of traveling and all that lead up to our arrival. We flew on two overnight flights in a row to get us from orientation in Akron, to a long layover in London, to a short goodbye to Elise in Johannesburg, and finally to Maputo. But we have made it (even with all of our luggage!), and are staing safe and well-fed under the provision of Casa Koinonia staff.



I still have trouble realizing that I'm actually here. All of my planning and preparation is done, all of my farewells have been said and all of my fundraising is taken care of. Maputo is now my home. And in many ways, I feel that this is a homecoming rather than a new beginning. The headaches that plauged my head before I came have been replaced with the quiet and ever-present nudging that this is exactly where I need to be. The red dirt, the blue water, the green palm trees, the orange trash on the street, the white walls and the brown eyes all remind me of the aching in my heart ever since I left Ghana. This is certainly the beginning of this chapter, but it is not the beginning of the story.


My Portuguese is improving every day (thanks to the lessons from Brazilian Priscila), my jet lag is weaning, I'm more used to traffic coming in the opposite direction and I'm indeed feeling more and more at home. I've discovered bits and pieces about my host family, such as the facts that they were solidified the day before I got here, they have two daughters and they live an hour and a half from Maputo. I'm not thrilled about the three hour daily commute to work, but it will give me a chance to explore the city more and become proficient in the transportation system of chapas, or minibuses.


This afternoon, we spent some time in orientation and reflection at the home of Joel and Jenny, two MCC workers who have taken us under their wings. Jenny challenged us to spend our year seeking the ways that God is moving in Mozambique, even if "kingdom-bringing" looks quite different than what we're used to at home. It reminded me of the passage in Matthew 5 where Jesus talks about Christians' presence in the world, among other things. Don Davis, an occasional guest pastor at Mars Hill, calls us to be the light of the world and salt of the earth in terms of "get your shine on, and bring the flavor." I don't feel very shiny yet in Maputo, but I'm definantly feeling the flavor.