Nova Vida

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So for the past few weeks, I have been working with three friends: Jess, Emily, and Autumn on putting together a “palestra” (workshop) for Nova Vida, a small community based organization here in Namaacha. For our “Practicum,” each of the health trainees was grouped together and assigned to work with a different Namaacha-based organization.

At our first meeting, about eight members met with us to talk about their organization and its goals. After a lot of talk about their ambitious but well intentioned aspirations (that ranged from buying video recording equipment to holding weekly workshops for community members about agriculture), we were able to understand that Nova Vida is a theater group.

A group of all teenage students, Nova Vida performs community theater on a variety of different social issues including: HIV/AIDS, education (especially for girls), nutrition, and health.

Nova Vida was started a few years ago with money from the National Aids Network of Mozambique. Because of its funding, members of Nova Vida are expected to do home visits to families in Namaacha to discuss issues similar to those highlighted in their theater. In particular, these visits are to ensure people living with HIV/AIDS are taking their ARVs and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Unfortunately, home visits are an afterthought for many of the members of Nova Vida, who are much more excited about performing theater at the market on Saturdays than visiting and counseling their sick neighbors. As Eduardo, the group leader said, he is an actor first and an activista (health worker) second.

In Mozambique there is this phenomenon that I imagine will drive me crazy over the next two years, we call it chefe syndrome. The chefe, or the boss, shows how important he is by making you wait for him. The more important the person, the longer you will wait. After many hours of waiting and being stood up twice (after an hour of waiting we gave up each time), my group was able to meet with the head of the group. Eduardo was very patient with our Portuguese and helped us to understand how the group was started and what the members do on a daily basis. When Autumn asked him what he would want to happen if he had a Peace Corps Volunteer working with Nova Vida for two years, Eduardo explained he would want someone to help re-train the people who do home visits. We told him we would be happy to put something together for him, and after some brainstorming, we decided on four different options. Eduardo liked the idea of both a workshop on transmission of HIV and one about adherence to ARVs. Though the two subjects are related, we had to work a while on making them logically go together in one one-hour session.

We were all nervous about having to explain things like drug resistance and sexual networks in Portuguese, but we practiced all day on Tuesday under our lichi tree (the house where we have our health tech sessions has this great lichi tree under which we have most of our classes – it is our inspiration). Nova Vida was supposed to be there at 3:30, and knowing Eduardo, we expected that meant closer to 4:00. At 4:15 we called and he said he was on his way. Pessimistic that anyone was going to show up at all, I set out a couple of chairs. To our surprise, six members of Nova Vida showed up at 4:30. Not only did they show up, they all brought paper and pencils and were really excited to work with us.

After a couple of ice breakers, discussion started and we were really able to engage the group in conversation about information they should be bringing into the homes they visit. We did a true and false game about some of the myths surrounding HIV in Mozambique that really got some discussion going. We also played a game that demonstrates how HIV is spread and the ways to prevent it. The group seemed impressed with the creative ways we taught information and we helped the group learn how to do the games on their own, so they could use the games within the community.

As we went to thank them, Eduardo interrupted me and asked if we wanted to see some of their theater. World AIDS Day is December 1, and they have been practicing their piece to perform in the town square that day. Honored that they would perform for us, we rearranged the room, and watched the group perform. The play (or the parts that I understood, theater is apparently at regular Portuguese speed not “oh you are an American so I will talk extremely slowly and clearly” speed, which is the speech that I best understand) was about a man who is diagnosed with HIV and then not allowed to work at the bar where he works. The people in the bar and the bar-keeper discriminate against the man and eventually leave him all alone.

Discrimination can be a difficult thing to talk about, and we have discussed in our tech sessions about how to address these kinds of issues, and I never thought of theater as a venue. Addressing discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS is extremely important because home visits can be potentially very stigmatizing. We talked with the group about some of these issues and then celebrated the afternoon with some cookies and lots of pictures.

While we spent a lot of time waiting for Nova Vida, in the end I think the practicum was a total success.

Also, the group asked for us to be “extras” in the play, so on World AIDS Day, you can see me asking for a “refresco” in the bar in the play!

running in Namaacha.

When you run everyday in a town like Namaacha, people notice you. Namaacha has become somewhat accustomed to strange foreigners, like myself, who really love going for a run in the morning despite the muddy road, tremendous heat, and unsympathetic chapa drivers that like to run us off the road.

I have been running nearly everyday since I arrived (there was one day that I woke up and just walking to the latrine resulted in an embarrassing fall and a muddy mess and I decided it was just not worth it to run that day), and I have had some pretty great interactions during these runs. This post is dedicated to the children I high five at 6 am, the lady with the pink spandex, and the bread vendor.

Usually, I am the only person running for fun in the morning. Usually I will see a couple of people running after chapas (public buses about the size of the big, blue, 13 passenger van we had when I was little), but no one is running just to run. Last week, however, I was heading up one of the big hills in my neighborhood, and I saw four women, power walking up the hill. For a second I was displaced back to Roxbury, Massachusetts, where the four women in bright pink spandex, power walking up a hill in the morning, would have been somewhat common place. The barbed wire fence separating me from Swaziland reminded me that I was in fact still in Mozambique. As I got closer to the women, they turned around and giggled after all looking at me. When I passed them, one started running with me. Excited to have a local running partner, I quickly started a conversation with her. Our short-breathed conversation lasted all of five hundred yards when she told me she was going to join her friends again.

Younger kids on their way to school usually join me for short periods during my run, too. They run next to me and don’t speak at all, just smile. The kids that don’t run with me, high five me. Its like I am winning a race, every morning.

Often my “bom dias” are met with confused glances, chapas chicken fight me for space on the road, and the guards at the boarder say ridiculous things about me as a run by. I have grown to love the English that I get to hear on my run. Clearly a foreigner, Mozambicans take the opportunity to use all of the English they know when they see me, sometimes all strewn together into one word: “hellogoodmorninggoodafternoongood-night,” or “howareyouveryfinethankyou.”

I have gotten three marriage proposals during my morning runs. If anyone reading this has run with me and seen how very sweaty and unattractive I get by the end, you know that I should maybe take the suitors up on their proposal. Toward the end of a run on a particularly hot day, a man said, “I must marry you.” To which I replied, in Portuguese, that I couldn’t right now as I had to get home. He responded, in English, “I must marry you. I am a cup full of serious.”

Running has become a blessing to my host mother, who appreciates my willingness to stop by the paderia (bread shop) on my way home. People will like up at the paderia and buy hundreds of loaves of bread to then re-sell in their neighborhood. The first morning I went to get bread for the family, a girl in front of my in line asked how much bread I was buying. When I responded four loaves, she grabbed my hand and walked me to the front of the line. There the bread maker told me if you want less than ten loaves of bread, you don't have to wait. Now, every morning, he jokes with me about how sweaty I get and how strong I must be. I also notice that he always gives me the biggest loaves of bread, which I find both ironic and fitting.

While it isn't Blue Line coffee, running to the paderia makes me feel useful at home and a little more at home.