oh goodness, i don't know if i'm ready for this. ok, here's what happened in july:
i went to the city of Chimoio for a weekend for the JOMA transfer meeting. JOMA is the youth organization, run by peace corps volunteers, whose conference i went to in april with some of the youths i work with. this meeting was for outgoing PCVs who ran the conferences last year to impart their wisdom to this my group of PCVs. the prospect of being handed this huge project was more than a little overwhelming, but it all went ok. there were about 10 of us "newbies" there who had participated in the 3 siumltaneous conferences (northern, central and southern regions). we chose new positions/jobs (i'm going to be working on improving the content of the curriculum, especially the gender aspects), and talked about some changes to the conference and program structure. JOMA is still a relatively young program and every year the new group of volunteers has made some significant changes. for instance, it started out as a boys only program (the point being that there are lots of groups working to empower women, but unless you get the guys on board it's going to be difficult if not impossible to achieve real widespread change), about 2 years ago they decided to let girls be invovled in the school clubs, and this year was the first year they allowed girls to come to the conferences. it has also varied year to year the number of conferences, locations, and timing. but the main changes we talked about, in addition to vastly improving the curriculum, were downscaling the conferences a bit. they're a lot of fun for the kids, but they're a lot of work, and older volunteers have attested that the vast majority of their time, energy and budget went into a 5 day conference, meaning that activities for the rest of the school year weren't well supported or organized. we decided to have smaller, more local, more frequent conferences, and have separate ones for gender/sexuality and communications areas (theater, journalism, etc). the smaller conferences mean more kids will be able to participate (i could only bring 4 from a group of almost 20) and they'll be easier for volunteers to plan because they'll be more local (a lot of on the ground planning for the past conferences has fallen on whoever happens to live in or nearest the city it's held in, whether or not they were the person best suited or most interested). there were a lot of LONG discussions because of course everyone has had different experiences at the conferences and in their groups, but by the end i felt ok about the decisions we made. still a little freaked out about the huge responsibilities of the new undertaking, but i figure if the last groups managed it, we can!
about a week after i got back from the JOMA meeting, alison and i ran a couple of trainings for our peer educators, both supported by icap. the first was a 2-day permaculture training. i did most of the planning, using the information from the training i'd participated in, and planned a similar training, with the mornings doing theoretical work talking about the ideas and the advantages of permaculture, and in the afternoons putting the ideas into practice. i was a little stressed out going into it, but it went really well. instead of me giving the training, it was mostly run by the peer educator who i'd brought to nampula and another mozambican who had participated in the peace corps training. this was a huge advantage, not only for my stress level, but because they are much more fluent in portuguese farm-language than i am, they both speak the local language fluently, and i think that pretty much any information is received better when it's being given by a peer and not an outsider. so these two guys ran the training, i tried to keep them on track with the program and jumped in when i had a point i thought was important to emphasize or whatever, and alison helped with the logistics, things like making sure the food showed up on time and we had copies of the documents we needed, etc. the land we dug up was a short walk from the classroom site, in the backyard of one of the icap doctors. unfortunately the doctor left recently so no one will be there to see if our garden is growing, which is a shame because it came out beautifully! it was sometimes a bit chaotic having 20 people digging, weeding, seeding, whatever at the same time, but they all seemed really excited about the new techniques. i was actually pretty surprised, because they all have machambas (gardens or small farms) so i figured they would know a lot about gardening, but it seemed like a lot of people just do what they see other people doing and had never really talked about techniques, or the reasons why their gardens did or didn't produce well. so not only did it go well logistically, but i actually felt like people got even more out of it than i had originally thought they might. only time will tell how many of them will actually use and benefit from the techniques (unfortunately it was alreay in the middle of a growing season so most things people couldn't start right away even if they wanted to), but the materials i prepared (power points, handouts, schedule, etc) can be used by other volunteers, one group of peer educators has asked to start a garden at their hospital, and another icap volunteer in a neighboring district has asked alison and me to do a training for his peer educators, so this was definitely an overall positive experience.
the other training alison and i ran was on project design and management (PDM), or how to come up with a strong project idea and write a grant proposal to be able to realize it. this one alison did most of the planning and i just helped with logistics and stuff, but it also went well. we invited peer educators who are also part of other legalized organizations, because in order to apply for most grants you have to be part of a legalized organization. the process can be really hard conceptually, because you have to evaluate ideas on multiple levels, not just what's the most exciting or interesting, and because there are a lot of detailed steps to the process, which are really important in terms of securing funds, but can seem kind of silly otherwise. but they got through that training as well, going through all the steps in a big group to design a fictitious project, and some of the peer educators who participated recently asked me if we could work together to prepare a proposal for a similar project for real, so i mark that another success.
my last big event for the month was another training in nampula put on by peace corps. the topic this time was behavior change communication, or BCC. the theory is that many programs seek to solve problems by giving people information, but when the solution to the problem requires some major changes in people's behavior, this isn't always enough. there are myriad cases here of people who can talk the talk, they can answer questions all day long about how to prevent HIV transmission, how to use a condom, why to use a condom, how to take their medication, etc. but then go home and do all the "wrong" things. obviously having correct information is hugely important, but information education communication (IEC) alone doesn't solve problems. so the hope is that BCC will. the conference, while put on by peace corps, was led by people from an organization called global health communication (GHC). over the week they taught us 2 techniques. the first was a game called pathways to change, which looks a lot like chutes and ladders. you would play the game with a group, and you start out with a specific case or question. it can be imaginary (jose is 15 years old and having unprotected sex and....) or real (our group wants to achieve x). and as you move along the paths you land on either facilitators or barriers to the goal, which can be personal, societal, or environmental. the goal is to look at the big picture, to help people understand all the factors that influence their situation, both positively and negatively, so that the ultimate outcome is more logical than just reactionary to certain factors. it was an interesting exercise, and took shockingly long for a board game. my favorite element of it was that you present people with a problem (be it real or imaginary, at least applicable to their life) but then instead of telling them how to solve it, you open up a discussion around it. the goal can still be to solve the problem, but i think most people probably react negatively to just being told what to do and not being told why, especially if it's coming from an outsider or someone they feel doesn't understand their situation, and the purpose of this game was to create a situation in which people could come up with their own solutions which are within their own frame of reference. i haven't yet tried the game with any of my groups, although i have explained the concept to some peer educators. my idea was that they could sometimes use a variation of it, instead of their morning palestras (talks) at the hospitals they could just present a situation and start a discussion. the second technique that we learned was a process for sitting down with a group, talking about a problem or a goal, brainstorming factors that influence that problem, dually prioritizing those factors in terms of importance and feasability of change, then coming up with a final proiority and designing a project that reflects that. i think it's a very valid process, but one that closely resembles several things we've learned in peace corps (among them the PDM curriculum alison and i used in our recent training), so i found this aspect of the conference a little less useful and captivating. but overall, i definitely agree with the idea that people need to be allowed to evaluate their own circumstances and come up with their own ideas for how to do things. and there were many representatives from icap at the conference, 4 volunteers, 3 peer educators, a psychiatrist and a pscychologist, so we had a really interesting array of opinions and ideas on how to use the new techniques. we haven't yet had the chance to sit down and discuss ways we might want to implement them formally, but i think many of us are already using the ideas informally.
ok, that's that month. i realize that another month is just about over that i haven't even touched on, but these posts are so long, they tire me out, they probably tire you out as well. i'm going to put up some links with JOMA info. and i've put up some more pictures at a new site, that i'll add the link to. my computer died recently, and i'm daily realizing things that were on there that i've lost - most importantly some work documents and MANY of my pictures (tho not all) so even tho it's going to take 1000 years, i'm going to start trying to upload all of my pictures instead of a select few so they'll be more secure. i hope everyone reading this (are there any of you out there anymore, or did you get tired of waiting?) is doing well. i'm doing fine, although getting a little burnt out, but i'm taking some vacation next month which should help cure that! i'll try to update about my august before i leave. beijos:)
24 August 2009
17 August 2009
JUNE (subtitle: 4 ways to be married)
ok, i'm probably going to have to do this in installments cuz it's been FOREVER since i've posted. i know. i'm sorry. i suck. ok...
in JUNE i helped run a training of about 45 new peer educators for quelimane. it was run by 3 of the newly trained trainers from way back in my last post, one of whom is one of my favorite peer educators, and i was really impressed with how well it went. there were some snags of course, because the 3 trainers had never run any sort of training before, let alone with the specific material, so at times it was frustrating to think "this could be going better," but they got through all the material, no catastrophes, and i think in the long run that was much more important than it going "perfectly," because the whole point was to make the program more sustainable and not need icap or other ngos or ex-pats to run a training, and all that icap really did was the logistical stuff (materials, food, etc), none of the training. so it was pretty cool. i had to do a lot less work so even tho i was busy every day, it was a lot less stressful than some previous trainings i've mentioned!
towards the end of june i took my first real vacation here (i know i travel quite a bit, but if you look back every other travel experience has been work related, either icap or peace corps)! my pcv friend luke is dating a mozambican woman named dinha. they work together, and several of us zambezia pcvs have become friends with her (she's awesome) and she invited us to go to her brother's wedding in inhambane (city, capital of the province of the same name, south). so her family rented a chapa (just as uncomfortable on your butt as any chapa, but at least way less crowded, and full of friendly faces) and we drove down. it took about 18 hours. yeah, exhausting. but i got see even more of mozambique (i crossed the Zambezi river!), and got to have some hilarious times with my friends and dinha's aunts drinking whisky and singing and joking basically the whole car ride down. when we FINALLY got to inhambane, we all stayed at the house of the the groom's "padrinhos" or god-parents. it's the same word as god-parent in a baptism, but in the case of a wedding they are people who almost stand in for your parents, have to make vows (legal and religious) to help the couple, and help out financially with the actual wedding. so i spent 5 days surrounded by a CRAZY conglomeration of various family members and almost 24-7 food production, and had basically a 5-day slumber party with several of my best friends. as for the actual wedding stuff, it was pretty complicated. i've only been to one wedding in the states and it was VERY low-key (just my style) so the only US weddings i have to compare this to are the ones in movies. there is a lot of variety in weddings in the us, to be sure, but to me the most common usually involves a legal contract along with some sort of ceremony. well, as i discovered, in mozambique there are 4 different ways to be married.
so...the day before the wedding was the lobolo, a traditional ceremony usually translated as "bride price." everyone from the groom's side of the family (except the parents) goes to the bride's house with a car laden full of stuff to give to the bride's family. we got there about 1 minute late, and in punishment the bride's family made the groom's family dance and sing outside the gate to the courtyard and they had to pay a fee (everyone emptied small change from their pockets) in order to be let in. when we finally got in, the padrinhos of the groom went and had a long pow-wow with the bride's family in another room, while most of us sat around in the living room and waited. at one point we got shushed, cuz the bride's family said they'd charge another "fine" if we made too much noise! after awhile the groom showed up, and he was greeted at the gate by all the old women in the bride's family, and the tiniest (and one of the oldest) grandmas picked him up and carried him into the house on her back! i never got the significance of that explained to me, but it was hilarious. a little while later we all got invited out to the courtyard where the bride's family was. the two families sat on opposite sides of the space, and they were very specific that men had to sit in chairs and women had to sit on the esteiras (straw mats). there were 2 exceptions: the bride and groom were both in chairs, and in the middle of the circle the oldest male representative from each family sat on the esteira facing each other. (one of my favorite observations of the day was that the grandfather on the groom's side looked very sharp in a suit, but if you looked closely you realized his shoes were brown, his pants were grey, and his jacket was navy blue. but they both took their shoes off (custom when sitting on the esteira) and the other grandfather, also dressed nicely, had on holey socks with giraffes on them.)
what followed was a LONG ceremony, mostly conducted in dialect so i couldn't follow everything (and it wasn't an appropriate space to ask someone to translate for me) but it was clear that there were very set rules for every action. there was a pre-made list of items that the bride's family had asked for, and representatives from each family had a copy. they went through one by one, with the grandfather from the bride's family asking for a thing, and the grandfather from the groom's family presenting it carefully, then the bride's grandfather verified that it was the right thing, or good quality, or whatever, and then everyone clapped and they went on. there was a large sum of money handed over, painstakingly counted out bill by bill. there were capulanas and kerchiefs for many of the older aunts in the bride's family. there were a lot of food items, enough for a feast for the entire wedding party: rice, oil, vegetables, some other stuff, and a live chicken and live goat (who had ridden all the way down with us from zambezia, poor thing)! towards the end of the ceremony the groom's padrinhos presented a full new outfit to each of the bride's parents. and my friend dinha, as the sister of the groom, took the bride out of the room and dressed her up in a new outfit and brought her back, and then had to place a ring, earrings, and necklace on her, each symbolizing her being handed over from her own family to the new family, and to encourage her to be a good wife. when the ceremony was over, everyone got up and sang and danced (even the goat!).
seeing the lobolo was really interesting. it's a "traditional" ceremony, so it's easy to think of it as something that perhaps more modern/educated families (as both of these are) wouldn't do. traditionally, the lobolo is the most important part of a wedding. if the groom's family doesn't pay up, or the bride's doesn't accept what they offer, that can cancel the whole thing right there. i asked around, and everyone sort of said "no, it's not that serious, it's just tradition....but it's VERY important." i'm not sure anyone was ever really concerned that the wedding wouldn't happen, but everyone was VERY concerned that every little detail happen right. after the lobolo we ate (for some reason the families were separated again for this part), and then there was a sermon, which i wasn't a fan of because the preacher kept on repeating and repeating that a woman's job was to obey her husband in EVERYTHING, and that she shouldn't have opinions of her own but should have her husband's opinions. apparently the bride's family is significantly more religious than the groom's, because dinha had just as hard a time listening to the sermon as i did! so after that night, the couple was already married traditionally (way to be married #1), and i guess in a lot of cases that would be the end of it. but not for these families.
the next day was "the big day" of the "official" wedding, which had two more parts. first thing in the morning everyone went to some government office (mayor's office, town hall, what have you) to sign the legal contracts. hearing about it i figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal, just signing contracts, right? but the whole wedding party and all the guests went, everyone was decked out in their finest, bride and groom already in white gown and tux, there was singing and festivising. the official gave a short speech about legal obligations, and then the couple and their padrinhos had to swear to abide by these obligations, and all had to sign a register book. then the wedding party filed outside and all the guests greeted them/congratulated them in a receiving line. and now they were legally married (way to be married #2).
after that we piled into a parade of cars and wound around town to the church (methodist), which to my surprise was a small church in an outer neighborhood of the city, where apparently the bride's family used to live. it was a small, simple church, with wide open doors, plain wooden benches, and the only decorations were paper chains. there didn't seem to be any ceremony about where people sat, so we all just piled in. the padrinhos sat up front, and the bride and groom both walked in, down 2 separate isles. there was a relatively brief sermon (thankfully without a reprise of the "women are inferior" theme), the bride and groom said vows pretty similar to the vows we've all heard 1000 times in movies, and the padrinhos had to promise again to help out the couple. then they all had to sign the church book to prove they were married, and there was a special song for the signing, as one by one they danced across the room waving a bic pen in the air. and now they were religiously married (way to be married #3).
after the church wedding the entire party returned to their vehicles for a parade around town, which stopped in places of the bride and groom's choosing (a park, along the waterfront, etc.) for them to take pretty pictures. when that was all over everyone went to a big banquet hall for the reception, which was about what you'd expect. lots of food, festive atmosphere, a ceremonial giving of gifts (but not from the immediate family, we had a separate gift-giving party the next day), dancing. at the end of the evening the bride threw the bouquet and the groom threw one of his socks (yeah, ew?). the next day, as i said, the groom's family gathered at the house we were at and we gave our presents. we ate some yummy zambezian food (i'd been missing it for several days!), and late that night we headed back north. the groom came with us, they didn't even have time for a honeymoon.
and way to be married #4? that would be just living together and having children. obviously this is a living option for couples in the us, but i don't know of people who cohabitate but refer to each other as husband and wife. and especially having children "out of wedlock" is still at least something to comment on. but here it's totally common. as you can imagine, those other 3 weddings cost quite a bit of money, and not everyone can afford that, and who wants to wait to have children? so, for instance, my friend and neighbor gina, who lives with her husband and 4 children and is building a second house, has informed me that she and her husband are hoping to be able to get married next year.
ok, i don't think i have the energy to write more right now....until later!
in JUNE i helped run a training of about 45 new peer educators for quelimane. it was run by 3 of the newly trained trainers from way back in my last post, one of whom is one of my favorite peer educators, and i was really impressed with how well it went. there were some snags of course, because the 3 trainers had never run any sort of training before, let alone with the specific material, so at times it was frustrating to think "this could be going better," but they got through all the material, no catastrophes, and i think in the long run that was much more important than it going "perfectly," because the whole point was to make the program more sustainable and not need icap or other ngos or ex-pats to run a training, and all that icap really did was the logistical stuff (materials, food, etc), none of the training. so it was pretty cool. i had to do a lot less work so even tho i was busy every day, it was a lot less stressful than some previous trainings i've mentioned!
towards the end of june i took my first real vacation here (i know i travel quite a bit, but if you look back every other travel experience has been work related, either icap or peace corps)! my pcv friend luke is dating a mozambican woman named dinha. they work together, and several of us zambezia pcvs have become friends with her (she's awesome) and she invited us to go to her brother's wedding in inhambane (city, capital of the province of the same name, south). so her family rented a chapa (just as uncomfortable on your butt as any chapa, but at least way less crowded, and full of friendly faces) and we drove down. it took about 18 hours. yeah, exhausting. but i got see even more of mozambique (i crossed the Zambezi river!), and got to have some hilarious times with my friends and dinha's aunts drinking whisky and singing and joking basically the whole car ride down. when we FINALLY got to inhambane, we all stayed at the house of the the groom's "padrinhos" or god-parents. it's the same word as god-parent in a baptism, but in the case of a wedding they are people who almost stand in for your parents, have to make vows (legal and religious) to help the couple, and help out financially with the actual wedding. so i spent 5 days surrounded by a CRAZY conglomeration of various family members and almost 24-7 food production, and had basically a 5-day slumber party with several of my best friends. as for the actual wedding stuff, it was pretty complicated. i've only been to one wedding in the states and it was VERY low-key (just my style) so the only US weddings i have to compare this to are the ones in movies. there is a lot of variety in weddings in the us, to be sure, but to me the most common usually involves a legal contract along with some sort of ceremony. well, as i discovered, in mozambique there are 4 different ways to be married.
so...the day before the wedding was the lobolo, a traditional ceremony usually translated as "bride price." everyone from the groom's side of the family (except the parents) goes to the bride's house with a car laden full of stuff to give to the bride's family. we got there about 1 minute late, and in punishment the bride's family made the groom's family dance and sing outside the gate to the courtyard and they had to pay a fee (everyone emptied small change from their pockets) in order to be let in. when we finally got in, the padrinhos of the groom went and had a long pow-wow with the bride's family in another room, while most of us sat around in the living room and waited. at one point we got shushed, cuz the bride's family said they'd charge another "fine" if we made too much noise! after awhile the groom showed up, and he was greeted at the gate by all the old women in the bride's family, and the tiniest (and one of the oldest) grandmas picked him up and carried him into the house on her back! i never got the significance of that explained to me, but it was hilarious. a little while later we all got invited out to the courtyard where the bride's family was. the two families sat on opposite sides of the space, and they were very specific that men had to sit in chairs and women had to sit on the esteiras (straw mats). there were 2 exceptions: the bride and groom were both in chairs, and in the middle of the circle the oldest male representative from each family sat on the esteira facing each other. (one of my favorite observations of the day was that the grandfather on the groom's side looked very sharp in a suit, but if you looked closely you realized his shoes were brown, his pants were grey, and his jacket was navy blue. but they both took their shoes off (custom when sitting on the esteira) and the other grandfather, also dressed nicely, had on holey socks with giraffes on them.)
what followed was a LONG ceremony, mostly conducted in dialect so i couldn't follow everything (and it wasn't an appropriate space to ask someone to translate for me) but it was clear that there were very set rules for every action. there was a pre-made list of items that the bride's family had asked for, and representatives from each family had a copy. they went through one by one, with the grandfather from the bride's family asking for a thing, and the grandfather from the groom's family presenting it carefully, then the bride's grandfather verified that it was the right thing, or good quality, or whatever, and then everyone clapped and they went on. there was a large sum of money handed over, painstakingly counted out bill by bill. there were capulanas and kerchiefs for many of the older aunts in the bride's family. there were a lot of food items, enough for a feast for the entire wedding party: rice, oil, vegetables, some other stuff, and a live chicken and live goat (who had ridden all the way down with us from zambezia, poor thing)! towards the end of the ceremony the groom's padrinhos presented a full new outfit to each of the bride's parents. and my friend dinha, as the sister of the groom, took the bride out of the room and dressed her up in a new outfit and brought her back, and then had to place a ring, earrings, and necklace on her, each symbolizing her being handed over from her own family to the new family, and to encourage her to be a good wife. when the ceremony was over, everyone got up and sang and danced (even the goat!).
seeing the lobolo was really interesting. it's a "traditional" ceremony, so it's easy to think of it as something that perhaps more modern/educated families (as both of these are) wouldn't do. traditionally, the lobolo is the most important part of a wedding. if the groom's family doesn't pay up, or the bride's doesn't accept what they offer, that can cancel the whole thing right there. i asked around, and everyone sort of said "no, it's not that serious, it's just tradition....but it's VERY important." i'm not sure anyone was ever really concerned that the wedding wouldn't happen, but everyone was VERY concerned that every little detail happen right. after the lobolo we ate (for some reason the families were separated again for this part), and then there was a sermon, which i wasn't a fan of because the preacher kept on repeating and repeating that a woman's job was to obey her husband in EVERYTHING, and that she shouldn't have opinions of her own but should have her husband's opinions. apparently the bride's family is significantly more religious than the groom's, because dinha had just as hard a time listening to the sermon as i did! so after that night, the couple was already married traditionally (way to be married #1), and i guess in a lot of cases that would be the end of it. but not for these families.
the next day was "the big day" of the "official" wedding, which had two more parts. first thing in the morning everyone went to some government office (mayor's office, town hall, what have you) to sign the legal contracts. hearing about it i figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal, just signing contracts, right? but the whole wedding party and all the guests went, everyone was decked out in their finest, bride and groom already in white gown and tux, there was singing and festivising. the official gave a short speech about legal obligations, and then the couple and their padrinhos had to swear to abide by these obligations, and all had to sign a register book. then the wedding party filed outside and all the guests greeted them/congratulated them in a receiving line. and now they were legally married (way to be married #2).
after that we piled into a parade of cars and wound around town to the church (methodist), which to my surprise was a small church in an outer neighborhood of the city, where apparently the bride's family used to live. it was a small, simple church, with wide open doors, plain wooden benches, and the only decorations were paper chains. there didn't seem to be any ceremony about where people sat, so we all just piled in. the padrinhos sat up front, and the bride and groom both walked in, down 2 separate isles. there was a relatively brief sermon (thankfully without a reprise of the "women are inferior" theme), the bride and groom said vows pretty similar to the vows we've all heard 1000 times in movies, and the padrinhos had to promise again to help out the couple. then they all had to sign the church book to prove they were married, and there was a special song for the signing, as one by one they danced across the room waving a bic pen in the air. and now they were religiously married (way to be married #3).
after the church wedding the entire party returned to their vehicles for a parade around town, which stopped in places of the bride and groom's choosing (a park, along the waterfront, etc.) for them to take pretty pictures. when that was all over everyone went to a big banquet hall for the reception, which was about what you'd expect. lots of food, festive atmosphere, a ceremonial giving of gifts (but not from the immediate family, we had a separate gift-giving party the next day), dancing. at the end of the evening the bride threw the bouquet and the groom threw one of his socks (yeah, ew?). the next day, as i said, the groom's family gathered at the house we were at and we gave our presents. we ate some yummy zambezian food (i'd been missing it for several days!), and late that night we headed back north. the groom came with us, they didn't even have time for a honeymoon.
and way to be married #4? that would be just living together and having children. obviously this is a living option for couples in the us, but i don't know of people who cohabitate but refer to each other as husband and wife. and especially having children "out of wedlock" is still at least something to comment on. but here it's totally common. as you can imagine, those other 3 weddings cost quite a bit of money, and not everyone can afford that, and who wants to wait to have children? so, for instance, my friend and neighbor gina, who lives with her husband and 4 children and is building a second house, has informed me that she and her husband are hoping to be able to get married next year.
ok, i don't think i have the energy to write more right now....until later!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
