Polly Put the Kettle On

School doesn’t start now until Monday. We decided to delay it to give the students a week to get settled before starting something new. So I am still waiting. I am anxious for it to start. I can certainly fill my days with just doing life here, cooking, cleaning, going to town, buying food, attempting to write, returning emails, meetings, buying school supplies, arranging teachers and planning the curriculum. Yet, I am eager to get started. I want to do what I came here to do and am excited to spend time with these kids. I have been through a journey to get here and am ready to start creating something. 

And yes, I feel some pressure. My own pressure. I am task oriented. Mozambicans are not. They are event oriented. I read it in a book about cross-cultural relations. I took the test it had inside and confirmed that I am task and goal oriented. I like sticking to the plan and checking off the items I accomplish. I love setting my sights on something, doing it and marking it off. Sometimes I will write in things on my calendar, after I have done them, just so I can mark through them. Okay, not just sometimes, all the time. Mozambicans are all about just showing up for the party. They love the fellowship. The savor the moment and the time spent together. For them it is about fellowship and living in the moment, not about some time-oriented goal. I have a lot to learn. I say this to myself every day. 

I do know that I didn’t come here to suffer and have learned that giving your life to God and saying yes to His plans is the most rewarding decision I have made and I live a life of luxury as His child. He doesn’t give His child serpents and stones. He has blessed my socks off here. 

I know I reflect a lot about home and being home and what I had at home and what awaits me at home, but this is just me being real. It is me walking out the reality of this journey. It remains an honor and a pleasure to be here. I am still dreaming big about plans for businesses for the kids and setting them up with new opportunities. I know this can be done. It will take time and my goals and objectives may have to sit on the shelf from time to time as I build relationship with my new family here. Jesus is the perfect model for how to do relationship and in this too, I am learning. 

Some days I wonder if I can ever relate or befriend or find something in common with a culture so different than my own. I am always very aware of how different I am. I dress different. I eat different. I think different. I communicate different. This afternoon I sat on my crisply made day bed reading a paperback book while my cleaning lady hoisted a washing bin the size of the trunk of my car, that I used to  have, and put it on her head and walked home. And she doesn’t live next door. I could not have gotten that bin up off the floor. She is maybe 5 feet. Maybe 100lbs. And it was raining. Right now I don’t even want to go out on the scooter in the rain because it is muddy and there are frogs. That kind of different. I eat pickled beets for lunch and she looks at them and stares at me. But she is teaching me. She is so patient with my Portuguese and we laugh, but I am learning. She appears to have no interest in learning English but she will sing along to my music. I love hearing her. There is a Rita Springer song where they lyrics are “come in, come in, come in”, an invitation to God. Filomena sings this and giggles when I sing too. 

And then there is Edy. Edy is a boy who lives in the transitional village. He is the type of child we want to target. He is the one who wants to be a pilot. He is in the 10th grade. Now he wants to get his license to be a commercial driver. He needs 3,600 Mets ($130) to be able to go for one month and get certified. Absolutely I am tempted to just give him the money. But is this wisdom and is this the way to do it? I have read enough on dead aid and dependency to know that you cannot just throw money at the problem. And yes I have thought about letting him borrow it and pay me back. But he has no other plan, no job, no instruction in accountability with finances, no one to help him and oversee his spending, his studies. I want to just give him money, but I know I need to give him more than that and this part is not easy. I want to help him get it himself. But you should see his face. He is a good kid. I want to invest in him. But I want to invest in hundreds of others just like him. It’s complicated. I am learning. 

What else? Oh yes, I have been totally taken for a ride several times this week. And not in a good way. Once when I needed scooter repairs and was charged an arm and leg but totally at his mercy and once when I trusted the guy to count properly and he didn’t and I was charged double. Oh, and again when a boy offered to put gas in the scooter but took the money, put in a tiny bit of gas but pocketed the rest of the money. And he wasn’t a stranger, I thought he was my friend. All three times I trusted and then I got taken advantage of. It happens every day. It is frustrating that I lost money. But it is also frustrating that they are in a seemingly hopeless situation. Their poverty puts them in this place of desperation and I cannot say that if I were in it that I would behave any differently. I have never known their poverty and do not know their circumstances. They see me as an opportunity. I have to chose to forgive and love them in the place where they are, over and over and over. And even though Christ does it for me, over and over and over, it still isn’t easy. I hesitate even writing this because it isn’t pretty. But it is a glimmer into the reality of my life. Again, so much to learn.

But there was some pretty big excitement this week.  I bought the biggest wash tub money could buy, Made in China Bright Blue and bigger than the one Filomena carried on her head today. Bigger than a Volvo trunk. Or maybe as big. I paid 500 mets for it in the potato market and didn’t care or flinch. I plopped it down in my non functioning shower, filled it with four pitchers of freezing cold water that will take your breath away and make your heart stop for just a second or two and then patiently boiled 3 kettles of steaming hot water. I squeezed in some Aveeno something and ginger body wash and entered my first hot bath since October 3, 2011. It was at Carla’s house a few days before I left. I sat crossed legged in that tub and had to laugh out loud at how ridiculous I looked. I haven’t bathed in a wash tub since 1978. I got out feeling like I had had a “clean bath” as Granny McCarley says. I wished I had her robe and terry cloth slippers and could have had a bed time snack of a candy bar and a glass of milk and watched reruns of the Golden Girls with her. Instead, I made split pea soup to have later this week and then ate the last of the cookies Christine sent in her care package. They didn’t last a week. But I am kind of impressed they lasted that long. As for now, I am going to put the kettle on. It is 7pm and my washtub awaits.