I'm an Alien, I'm a Legal Alien, I'm a Hungarian in MachavaThis ’visit’ or I can say 'living experience' in Mozambique has been absolutely amazing, inspiring, saddening, heart-wrenching and humbling all at the same time. It’s hard to describe these experiences, but I’m going to try my best.
Once upon a time there was a girl who decided that a second Mother Teresa will save the world and advocate for the poor and helpless people… if my story would be a fairy tale it could start like this, but it’s a true story from the country of happiness- Mozambique.
So where do I start?
My first impression happened with Mozambique on the plane. The way was a little bit shaky and scary, but when the flight assistant told us that just two more minutes and we start to landing, i almost jumped on the window and looking forward the first meeting with my dream country. And we landed, in the middle of the corn table and my best six months got start.
Along my journey from the airport to my new home I saw a number of things, all of them interesting, some of them sad, some of them thought-provoking and others just typical images of the daily life in Mozambique:
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The little boys who walk the streets with a goat.
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The 'Mamas' who carrying huge kettles of water on their heads.
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The children who eating food out of the rubbish bean on the side of the road.
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People who dancing and singing near the road.
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Children without leg or arm begging for money.
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Elderly women who carrying huge loads of branches on thier back.
After this exciting trip i finally arrived to my fabled home that is riddled with eucaliptus, the local people just called it Savanna, the island of the peaceful, but this was far-far away from the truth J - the house was full of Brazilians, Portuguese and Spanish people, can you imagine six months with latinos?! The life is simply never boring with them: loud dinners, lot of fun and jollity.
My time had come - the first day in the HOPE Centre in Machava. I stepped across the gate with a little skip of excitement. After a few hours with my colleagues every doubts disappeared. My work was mainly mobilizing people for HIV tests, making presentations from the different diseases, improving the knowledge of the local people about malaria, cholera, HIV/AIDS and STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases).
I started my work at 7:30, meaning I had to wake up at minimum 6:30 and I left the house at 7:00. I crawled out every morning to neighbour (my talkative mama’s place). There, I got my bread with my bagia – this is something from beansJ- news about the last day and of course the actual gossip from the day, this was our morning ritual. After waking up properly, I continued my morning process, during my journey to my work place I met with a minimum of 10 people and we had the same chat: how we are, how was the night, etc, so these were my little by-passes J
I arrived at 7:30, sometimes a little bit later, but there is never a problem. After the breakfast and a fast meeting we went to the fields (communities) and the craziness get started !!! The mulungu (’white person’ in the local language) is coming. During my first field visits, you could find around me crying children, laughing adults, crabby old people or children who just tried to touch my skin in every possible moment. Of course, these experiences reminded me of the song by Sting - ’The Englishman in New York’, but in this case, the correct title would be ’The Hungarian Woman in Machava’.
After a while I asked my colleagues why and how I created these feelings in the people and I got a well detailed explanation:
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children are crying because the only time when they see a white person inside the community is when the doctor’s coming to give them their vaccination;
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the adults are laughing because of my dress, my skin (that was red as a boiled lobster), my accent and my extremely big mosquito bites;
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the old people are angry with me, because of my color, they still remember what the ’big’- white people did with them; and the reason why the children try to touch my skin was that they still couldn’t belive that the feeling is the same when they touch their skin.
But let’s continue with the real topic, what I did there. So we went to the community, we talked with people, we tried to estimate their knowledge from the HIV & AIDS epidemic and what kind of information they need. We went to schools and youth clubs where we gave lessons from different topics, we did HIV tests and condom presentations as well. And of course during these times I could feel and experience the real Africa, I tasted different foods – sometimes I didn’t know what I was eating J-, hopefully I didn’t eat a rat. I had nice chats with the papas from the war, the life, their feelings, the mamas showed me how to make xima or cornflour, which I had never tried in europe.
Of course close to the great and amazing experiences I also had to face with the sad reality, with the huge HIV problem, the poverty, the malnutrition and everything that we see in the news, but in this case I couldn’t change the channel. But all in all Mozambique is the happiest nation I have seen in my entire life. They are always smiling, enjoy the day, try to look for the good things in their lives and not seeing just the bad. I wish the european countries could have the same spirit as the Africans have.
There’s so much more that i could write, but i will save some of these memories for my grandchildren…J
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