The Bandit

O Escondidinho

Taryn and I went to Ilha De Mozambique because everybody says its awesome. It was briefly the capital of Portuguese East Africa and, as you do when you're conquering foreign lands, you build a big-ass fort. The fort on Ilha de Mozambique is appropriately named the Fortaleza, which I translate to mean, The Big-Ass Fort. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which in my mind means that it has been recognized as of such significant cultural importance to the world that the United Nations will step in and insure that it will be here for our grandchildren to see. Apparently that is not the case and a lot of people I talked to on the island indicated that it might lose its designation. They didn't really seem to care as UNESCO hadn't really done anything to help the island.

The island is quite the dichotomy of cultures. The north is composed of stone houses built by the Portuguese and is appropriately named Stone Town (you have to like a town with a no bullshit naming convention). The southern half of the island is made up of a town of locals. Some of whom fish, but most of whom just hang out for the day in relative poverty.

But what a place to be poor. The beaches are beautiful, the weather is pretty darn nice because of the sea breeze, and there is a fair amount of tasty quality seafood. Apparently, this high-life of the do-nothingness has attracted quite a few people to the island (or convinced nobody to ever leave). The unsustainable overpopulation has lead to some bad outcomes, such as the inability of the island to support the amount of waste its inhabitants produce. Most of the locals grab a squat in the ocean, so it's not exactly a swimming beach. I kind of think having the gentle waves lapping at your feet during your morning movement sounds refreshing...until I realize your movement will also soon be lapping at your feet.

That said, Taryn and I stayed at an idyllic restored Portuguese house in Stone Town named O Escondidinho, which means the bandit. It was nice and peaceful and had one heck of a restaurant where we ate bolo chocolate (the best brownie in the country) and had a Lobster that was better than anything I've eaten in Maine.

We hit up the Palace, or governor’s residence, which is still decorated with colonial style furniture and gives you a pretty good idea of how everyone lived circa 1500. Apparently it was still in use around 1970 when the president sat on an antique bench and broke it. He declared on the spot that the place was becoming a museum.

In addition to the palace there was also a maritime museum that wasn't half bad. It had all of the regular stuff: cannons, swords, anchors and the like. But it also had a ton of Ming dynasty porcelain. Apparently a shipwreck nearby the island was carrying porcelain and in 2002 a Dutch archeologist team found the largest collection of porcelain ever. I thought that they did a pretty good job of donating some back to the island for the museum but according to the locals, they didn't do enough. I always think that unless the shipwreck contains something that's of "significant" cultural importance (like the lost crown of Botswana or some such) then finders, keepers.

The Fortelasia was also a huge slave trading port. They would put slaves in small boats and string them together forming a daisy chain of rowboats filled with slaves. I'm sure that a bit of the explanation was lost in translation but you essentially picked up a few slaves on your way out of the harbor and then set sail for Indonesia or some other little spice island. The guard also seemed to be quite proud of the execution site. I guess that's the part of the tour that elicits the most reaction, and on a sleepy little island town, about as much excitement as the guard expects.





Another strange happening on the island is the complete lack of fresh water wells. You would think that before you declare a place a capital you would at least get past Maslow's base level, but instead the Portuguese built all of the buildings to channel water into basement systems that are still used today (though the majority of water is piped in from the mainland).

On the way to the airport we passed a little village that was next to what use to be one of the largest soap manufacturers in Southern Africa. During the war it fell into disuse and disrepair and the locals put the scrap metal to good use, making it into roofing tiles.

When we were in the airport I came upon this wonderful window into the Mozambique psyche. For those of you who do not read Portuguese, the note says, "Be advised, Do not use this urinal"...it's difficult to read because someone pissed on it.

A Day on the Job

I love my office. Right now, I'm talking physical space. And that's right - I said office, not cube. Who knows the next time I’ll get an office, because goodness knows I don’t have one back in the wonderful world of Washington. And even here I better appreciate it while I can – these digs are temporary. Please see Exhibit A. One whole wall is basically a window, and I get a nice glimpse of the ocean - when the sun starts to set (and yes, I'm here when it does that since it sets so early), I can see it reflecting in the glass that separates my office from the rest of the room. Absolutely fabulous. See Exhibit B. Now, yes, the people. Even better than my view. I had the pleasure of meeting several of them when they flew into DC for the Worldwide Program Officer Conference I helped organize back in February. They were friendly then and just as much so now, checking on me throughout the day, showing me where to eat around the office, providing tips on how the heck to fit exercise in my schedule (given time and safety and transportation constraints), suggesting where to go on the weekends ... the list goes on.

Maybe more than anything what I like – oddly, I guess? – about my colleagues is how much some of them know about my personal life and how much I know about theirs. Basically as soon as I got here I had bacon on a Sunday morning with my boss and watched as her son stabbed his French toast and her daughter pranced around in her princess nightgown. I sat in the living room with another colleague and his wife and discussed their “naughty room” (it’s not what you think!) It’s a totally different scenario than what I have in Washington, and I love it.

Right, now so what do I actually do? At the risk of boring you all, I’ll give some of the details. And I’ll start by saying I really like it. Sure, I’m still doing some of the stuff no one really wants to do, like putting together the weekly bullets to send in to Washington, but I also get to do stuff that challenges me and exposes me to aspects of development in areas I knew little about. I’ve designed a water and sanitation activity and am now writing up a Request for Applications. I’m working with the Education Team to develop our brand new education portfolio. I’m writing scopes of work and hiring people. I’m consulting with implementing partners on their performance monitoring plans. I’m doing branding assessments and writing public relations pieces and, of course, I’m editing everything under the sun. I’m learning all the time.

What does this all mean? Maybe I was cut out for the Foreign Service after all. Really, though, I have really enjoyed my work here and exploring a new country – it’s just too darn far from home to make this a permanent situation. P.S. Sigh, although …. even the ride to work every morning is like being on vacation. See Exhibit C. ;)

Gorongosa

Hunkering down day in and day out in a cubicle in Washington generates a certain amount of separation from the reason you’re there, from the people you got into development to help. So in my MOU I’d negotiated one of my duties/responsibilities to be a site visit, where I could go to see for myself what USAID is doing. Honest to goodness, that’s all I wanted to see... Okay, with plans to tack on a trip at the end. A personal trip never happened, but what I got instead, and I am NOT complaining, was a USAID-funded trip to a national park. And for anyone concerned about their tax dollars, I promise I did work. No. Really.

Gorongosa has a pretty wild history. It’s Mozambique’s big success story, and everyone loves the place because of what its restoration means for how far the country has come since war. After Mozambique achieved independence and the Portuguese jumped ship, the party claiming power (FRELIMO – and they’re still in power) established itself as a communist government. This freaked out the surrounding countries, who started supporting the opposition group, RENAMO. RENAMO camped out anywhere they could, eventually attacking the park’s camp, kidnapping a couple of the staff. From that point on, the park closed and transformed into a battleground – you can still see where the shells gutted the camp’s dormitories and offices.

Needless to say, this didn’t bode well for the wildlife. Besides becoming casualties of combat, the animals were hunted for their goods, which were sold in exchange for weapons, and for meat to feed both the soldiers and surrounding villagers, who the rebels kept from making a living or feeding themselves any other way. The zebras were completely wiped out. So were the lions. The buffalos, the elephants, the hippos.

Cue Greg Carr, a Michigan man. From what I understand, he made all his money as the creator of voice mail (not answering machines), and maybe SMS. He started the Greg Carr Foundation and invested heavily in the park, so much so that the foundation and the Gorongosa Restoration Project became one in the same. They’ve built a wildlife sanctuary, have reintroduced elephants from Kruger (see pic from a press release) and may have zebras from Zimbabwe in their future. They have invested in the surrounding community as well, which is key since though the war is long gone, there is still lots of poaching that goes on, not to mention cutting for timber and slashing and burning to clear land for cultivation.

While I was there I was checking up on their branding and marking, making sure the USAID brand was visible (we have a big issue with no one knowing who we are since we give the money but never get out there and actually implement the activities); helping them improve their monitoring and evaluation plan; and collecting information for “success stories,” which continually heightened my opinion of the work they’re accomplishing there. They are doing some pretty innovative stuff with waste management, including fashioning stylish sandals out of tire treads. And some of the community members are really getting on board, like this dude who grows saplings and donates them to schools for planting. Overall, awesome learning experience.

I stayed in a sweet little grass-roof chalet - sweet because it had hot running water, a comfy bed, open windows and cool, still nights. And it looked authentic. I met Andy, a TDYer in from Washington, who was ensuring proper inclusion of biodiversity into the reforestation project. I also got to meet Greg. He’s a pretty cool dude. Friendly, definitely ambitious, and clearly knows what he wants done and how. When he comes to the park he’s got lots of business to do and some bigwigs along for the trip, so they bring in a helicopter. They had it then, and I was promised a ride if they could fit me, which sadly never came to pass. Very admirable that they’re responsible with their funds, but I admit I was jumping up and down a little bit when I thought I was getting on.
The park is different from what you imagine an African safari park to be. It’s got a lot of brush and is a little more temperate than most, rain-forest like at times. Amazing bird life. I never thought I’d be into birds but these lilac-breasted rollers were brilliant. We saw some crocodiles, about nine kinds of antelope, baboons, monkeys, and a ton of warthogs. Not surprisingly given the numbers, no elephants and no lions, but I’m counting on those at Kruger. I asked about going running in the camp, and they recommended the nearby dilapidated football field for laps … followed by a warning that they’d discovered fresh lion tracks. Um, no thanks. I want to stay alive more than I want to stay in shape.

KFC

As for what I do here, I work with chicken. I guess after working with Louis Dreyfus it makes sense that I'd come full circle and work with chickens again. Instead of a giant conglomerate like Tyson or Pilgrim's-Pride I work with the small guys. Most big farmers don't grow all of the chickens themselves. They sell chicks and feed to small farmers, the farmers raise the chicks, and then they sell them back to the big guys for slaughtering and packaging. So I work with the small guys and a few of the big consolidators to improve the competitiveness of the sector as a whole.