OUR ARRIVAL

02 June 2012--  

As the wheels on our plane touched down in Maputo, Mozambique this afternoon, I felt a familiar warmth well up within me because I was returning to a country that I’ve thought about and missed every day since I left it almost a year ago.  I’m not completely sure whether I expected to be as overwhelmed by the conditions in this 3^rd-world nation as I was on my first trip; however, our 4-hour drive to Xai-Xai (where we will reside for the duration of our stay) allowed me the time to contemplate my surroundings without the initial sense of awe I experienced last June.

                Initially, I simply found myself thankful for the lingering smell of smoke that seemed to float upon the breeze from the farmers clearing their land.  During my time in the U.S. this past year, every time I’ve caught scent of a campfire or wood burning, my thoughts have felt as if they were being forcibly pulled back to the people here and I’ve ached to eat the food cooked over their fires and to hear their voices raised in song.  Part of me feels as if I’ve come back to where I’m supposed to be.

                Still, if living here were simple—if it wasn’t about life and death in many ways—we wouldn’t be here and the minute we left the airport gates, it became very apparent. 

                For starters, like most things in the world, life here seems to exist in groups of dichotomies.  As we passed into Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, which is a rough mix of jumbled tarp and cinderblock huts, tin roofs, and trash filled walks, touches of our Western influence seemed to jump off the page in the form of painted Coke and Huggies advertisements that have been broadcast along the crumbling walls of the ghetto.  While Coke is an extremely popular product here in Mozambique, I couldn’t help but find the irony in the fact that a product toting slogans such as, “Drink Life In” and “Enjoy,” should be scrawled along the dwellings of people who have never known what it feels like to sleep in a bed or even go to school.

                In addition, while less common in the vast rural areas outside the city, billboards show advertisements depicting either white, or extremely light-skinned men and women who are smiling and laughing, while the real life existing on the streets below them paints a picture of dirty, bare-footed children and young, pregnant mothers heading into the fields for the day. 

The paradox which exists within the fabric of their lives is perplexing yet, while it is easy to look at these people with pity, I can’t help but feel that, more important than sympathy, should be our ability to understand that they don’t necessarily feel sorry for themselves.  While we may have feelings about the hardships we see as the essence of their lives, we need to remember that they might not see it the same way.  Much like marveling at a school of fish or a flight of birds, perhaps there is a system to the chaos that our Western minds have yet to understand. 

With this, at one point towards the end of our drive, Aaron leaned forward to tell our driver, Andre, that he thought this was one of the most beautiful places he’d ever seen.  At first I assumed he was speaking about the vast, green plains dotted with palm trees and riverbeds, or even the blue sky marbled with rolling clouds along the horizon.  In my mind, as my eyes swept along the decrepit buildings and seemingly destitute people around us, I couldn’t imagine that he could be speaking of anything other than the lush nature in our periphery.  However, as he continued on to say, “I love these buildings, they’re so colorful and alive,” I started to think about the way we all choose what we want to focus on in life—the beauty or the squalor.  Clearly, I had missed something because at that moment, I was obviously failing to see the scope of this country as anything more than insolvent.  Aaron had picked up on a way of viewing things that many of us are incapable of realizing, even in our own lives; perhaps that the world around us is truly of our own making. 

With those thoughts, I sat through the end of our drive attempting to give some shape to our short day, and I found myself amazed at how quickly this country teaches us about ourselves.  It’s almost as if it opens spaces within us where we often keep our hearts and humility locked behind impenetrable walls.  If nothing else, it is a reminder to us that our opinions and our ethnocentric notions about what is normal, and even what is beautiful, should have no bearing on how we approach the people and our time here.  To us, they should never be numbers in an advertising campaign, faces next to a billboard, or even pawns on our journey to become more worldly individuals—they are our brothers, sisters and children, and our job this week, aside from bringing them hope, is to simply love them because of it.     

Posted By: Tanna Krewson