A soapdish is more common

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So here is what I have seen in my short time working in the 'Bique. Mozambique is one the poorest nations in the entire world. When independence was finally won from the Portuguese in the mid-1970s, Mozambicans could not agree on who would lead the country, which resulted in a 20 year civil war, one of the bloodiest in world history, a war that was also actually financed in part of the the South African and U.S. government. Anyway, as long as Mozambicans were fighting amongst each other and being used by foreign governments, no international funding to speak of was entering the country. With the end of the civil war in the early '90s came the international money Mozambique so desperately needed. Mozambique has been receiving almost more money that it knows what to do with, highlighted by the PEPFAR (Presidents Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) funds that began to arrive in 2003. For those who don't know, PEPFAR is the largest commitment ever by any nation for an international health initiative dedicated to a single disease, to the tune of $15 billion to be spread between 15 nations over 5 years, including Mozambique. This is all just to say, there is a lot of money coming into this country, and a lot of it is showing up in the form of NGOs and their projects.

The culture of NGOs here is very interesting. While NGOs in the United States are often unseen and largely unnoticed by some groups of people, they are a very present force here, in many different ways. Because most of the NGOs here are based out of America or Europe, the people heading these organizations in Mozambique are being paid in American salaries, which is an important fact if you bear in mind the current conversation rate of the Mozambican currency to the dollar, which is 24/1. In almost every provincial capital I have been to in Mozambique, which is now 5, the private wealth of the city can be found in the homes of the people working for these NGOs. The biggest houses, nicest cars, most well stocked firdges, etc. Not that this is bad, but this is what it is. You don't hear many people in the States saying, "yeah, I want to make a ton of money one day, I think I'll get involved with my favorite NGO". Also, all these organizations are competing for the funding that is flooding into this country. They do this by putting on a good show. One common practice here is for one NGO to begin collaborating with another NGO with a stated common goal in mind, but to later try to do what the other NGO already does, but better, so that they can begin receiving the funding that was previously going to the other NGO. Americans here refer to this as "cooper-tition" (think cooperation and competition). A group of people came to my town a couple months ago who were a monitoring and evaluation group for the PEPFAR funds that organizations were using in my town. Each organzation was given about an hour to present all the great things they were doing in my province. One man who is heading a non-profit in my province called me on the phone the day before this happened to ask if I would be present for his presentation so that he could talk about how my organization and his organization were collaborating and working together. I recall us having two conversations in my life, a 10 minute one where we mentioned the possibility of a future collaboration, and another where he was asking me if I had any girlfriends in Mozambique (I don't).

Organizations here sometimes get so much money, they really just do not know what to do with it. Pretty hats and t-shirts and tote bags and other leading AIDS fighting tools are given out to people in all the communities in which these organizations work. Some organizations employ activistas, who are essentially people from the community who are paid to go around giving presentations on AIDS, finding sick people and bringing them to the hospital, and whatever else the organization deems productive. Also this use of money is much more understandable than the random distribution of shirts, hats, and bags, working is this manner is now being seen as a form of employment for poor people in the community. You don't need any kind of an education, and no real identifiable skills; you just need to be willing to do the work that is given to you. Some people are giving up on more traditional jobs like farming and selling of products in the market, so that they can hopefully be identified one day by a giant international NGO as an activista. And some of these people, though not all, are only waiting around because it is an easy way to make a salary. Now, I do not claim to be some kind of an expert on nation developement, but it scares me when I see people taking jobs for these reasons, at the loss of other jobs, like farming, that really can contribute to building a stronger national infrastructure. When you put on a week long training for prospective activistas, the expectations are that they will be paid for going to the training, the will be given t-shirts and certificates in the end, and everyday of training will consist of 3 quality meals, along with snacks after breakfast and after lunch. There is a standard being set here, and it is getting to the point where no one wants to work below it. I do not see "volunteerism" existing here, not now, and especially not in the future.

So how does this look on the ground? My group is a great example. The group I currently work with was formed in September of last year. They were trained to be activistas, except that they would not be receiving a salary, or other incentives other activistas are receiving. Until I arrived in January, they were largely unsupervised, working without any constant contact with anyone from my organization. During that time, I cannot help but conclude that they saw other groups in the community who were doing the same work as them, but that they were receiving money and clothes for it. When they saw me in January, I think they thought that I was their ticket, I was going to be the guy to advocate for them to get money and clothes. I wasn't that guy. I didn't understand why they were dragging their feet to do their work, why it was that the only thing they wanted to talk about was how I could get them money or food. I was frustrated, and I was not on the same page as my Mozambican counterpart, who also felt like we should be concentrating on their needs, and not so much how to improve the quality of their work.

It all became clear to me at a conference I went to a few weeks ago in Maputo. All the head people from all the provinces that we work were there, and all were Brazilian except my counterpart, who came in place of, you guessed it, my Brazilian province supervisor. Also at the meetings were the 3 or 4 person team of each supervisor, a team of people who were all Mozambican. Anyway, the 4 days of meetings were dominated by the voices of the Brazilians and the Mozambicans really never got a chance to talk. One day the topic of incentives came up, and I heard the Brazilians suggesting things like photographs of our activistas, or basically pats on the back, and for the first time I realized how ridiculous it all sounded. These people who are our activistas are extremely poor typically. To work harder, they don't need to get a their photograph on the wall, the need food to gain strength, they need a bicycle to make it the 10 kilometres between their house and the hospital. I also saw something else. While applying for Peace Corps, my biggest fear was that I would become a white foreigner giving orders to black Africans, telling them that we were going to do things my way. Listening to the Brazilians talk, I realized that I had become just that. I wasn't listening to what my group of activistas were saying, and I was trying to do projects that they didn't really want to do. I had become that! It hit me pretty hard. I sucked up my pride and went to my Mozambican counterpart and told her that I had been wrong, and that I was finally ready to listen.

Now at my job, I am helping my group come up with two income generation projects that will hopefully succeed and improve their quality of life. That is my only goal for this year. Next year I feel like we can start talking about improving the quality of their work, but first, I want to get this done, but in their way. It took getting broken down to come to this realization. If my Peace Corps experience ended today and I came home, that breakthrough alone would have made the whole thing worth it.

Moving on....

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