How Can We Be Lovers?

July 22, 2010 (Yeah I know it's September 7, I'm not much of blogger)

So yesterday was such a great day. The park is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week so a lot of dignitaries and other big wigs are coming in for the ceremony on Friday. But, we, the forestry department, had the duty of delivering invitations to the five local kings that live north and west of the park. Our journey would take us the full circumstance of the mountain. For the first time we would get to see the mountain from all sides and see just how deforested the mountain was on the far side. So yesterday morning around 8am we set out to hand delivery these invitation. There were six of us packed into a Land Cruiser pickup, three up front and three in the bed. It was one of those perfect days; the sun was out, a few clouds in the sky, arm hangout the window, farmer tan in full effect.

Now just to kind of set up the task given to us I have to explain that these kingdoms are rather large and the kings do not exactly live on the main road. No, rather these guys live about as deep in their respective territories as you possible can. To say we were going deep into the bush would be a pretty good understatement. We were going in many cases as far as the road went and in a few cases were the road did not really go but we went anyway. There was a bit of hurry to get from one point to the next and get back to Vila Gorongosa before dark, right now around 6pm. So there we are barreling down this dirt road in the middle of nowhere no more than 20 minutes into our journey when a baby goat runs in front of us and bam, we hit it. Oh shit, I thought it was a dog at first. We pull over and Muagura (My Mozambican boss) is looking in the review mirror and says we have to turn around and talk to its owner. I thought for sure it was dead or very close to dead. Mona (Peace Corp Colleague) and me were covering our eyes; no way we wanted to see dog parts all over the side of the road. We get back down there and I see it is a goat and am relieved. It hasn’t been a dismembered, but hurt bad enough I’m pretty sure it was dinner that night. So Muagura gets out and the starts talking to owner and asks how much the goat is worth. The owner gives some astronomical figure, probably like $50 at which point Thomas (Forestry Manager) starts yelling at the guy. Total shit show, but great entertainment. Mean while Mona and I are sitting in the truck and another guy comes over with a newborn baby no more than a week old. We ask is she just come home from the hospital, nope, born in the bush, wow!

Back to the goat. So the owner is now claiming that the goat is his god and that we own him not only money for the goat but money for a replacement goat. Muagura forces 1000 Mets ($35) into his hand and off we go. Back to barreling down the road. Everything is great, windows open, listening to Oliver Kutzy when we notice that the tape (yes we have a tape deck) has begun to repeat. So we start looking for a new tape when Muagura says “I thing there is a Michael Bolton tape, can you put that in?” Absolutely! I tell you, there is nothing like being deep in the bush with the radio blasting “How can we be lovers” to make you stop and ask, “Where the f am I?”
Anyhow, we make it to the first King (Regalo in Portuguese). He has a pretty nice set up; about six huts spread about a piece of land the size of a football field with a Mozambican flag in the middle. When I say hut, I mean hut in the classic sense of the word. Well we get there and the King is gone doing who knows what. We leave the invitation with this son. I ask the very pointed question of exactly how is the King going to get from his house to the park. He obviously has no vehicle of his own. Muagura looks me straight in the face and says the King has a bicycle. Then he starts cracking up and we all have a good laugh. No, instead we will have to make this same trip the very next day to pick up all the Kings and bring them to the park, then the day after bring them back to the bush. So back in the truck we go.

We are driving down the road, Mona and I are translating Michael Bolton into Portuguese for Muagura, when we see some kid with huge pieces of meat hangs off sticks on the side of the road. Thomas says that it is bush meat, which gives us some concern considering we are driving around the perimeter of a national park. Turns out we were about 5 miles from the park’s border, so “fair game.” I guess that is where that term came from. We go deliver an invitation and turn around back the way we came. This time I insist we stop to look at the bush meat. Thomas is happy that I have made this suggestion. I can clearly see that he has also been thinking about some succulent roasted warthog for the past hour. We stop and two hooves on sticks are shoved into my face. Money is exchanged, meat in hand, we wave to some little kids and off we go. We stop up the road to buy some cokes and make some bush meat sandwiches for lunch.

Now warthog or wild boar, I’m not sure what it was, doesn’t have the same flavor as pork, it’s a bit redder. Perhaps because the meat was not aged or unseasoned it was not what I expected. I am use to eating chicarrones (fried pork skins), which this meat looked very similar to, but the flavor just was not there. Don’t get me wrong it was good, just not what you or I would expect.

By this time its 2pm, our butts hurt from riding down bumpy dirt roads, my left arm is burnt from hang out the window and we still have three invitations. Rolling down the road we now get to see the northern side of the mountain range and its highest peak from the savanna. The closer you get the more it becomes it becomes evident of the level of deforestation we are dealing with on this northwest side, the side the faces the park and feeds it’s rivers and estuaries.

We make it to King Canda’s around 3pm, he’s not home either. By the time we make to the last king, which is the King Tambarada, the region that I live in, it’s close to 5:30. He’s pissed that we are coming so late in the day. He kind of looked at Mona and me like “who are guys?” I was told a little later that he was drunk. Apparently he likes to drink. I think he was upset to be the last king we visited and not the first. Six o’clock roles around and we role into town. Mona and I head to the only real decent restaurant in town for some omelets and salad, and we finish the great day off with Mozambique’s finest dark lager, Laurentina Preta.

Welcome to Gorongosa

July 16, 2010

So I’ve been here in Vila Gorongosa a week now. I cannot say I was utterly impressed with the town when I first arrived. Granted it was rainy and muddy when I arrived. Peace Corps was pretty typical in not giving us a great deal of information before our arrival. We were told the day before we arrived that we would be staying at the local posada (hotel) for a while, due to a lack of housing in the town. But luckily my Peace Corps companion, Mona, and myself both found good housing. I found a house at the catholic mission just a about a half mile from town. The mission has a high school for both boys and girls, many of whom board here because their families live a great distance away. I have yet to meet the priest that runs the place, but I have been assured that he is a very nice fellow. I have however met the seminarian the runs the day-to-day operations. I think we will get along just fine. He studied in Rome and speaks seven or so languages, but I told him we could only speak Portuguese for the first couple of months. I am very happy with my now house and I think I will be very happy living here for the year. The house itself is very simple, but definitely a step up from my wood shack in the Dominican Republic. I have been trying to get things arranged to make it livable. Day to day tasked like fetching water from the well give me great pleasure because it gives me the opportunity to interact with the students who live here. But, I am a bit unprepared to feed myself. Getting food and cooking it in the developing world is work in and of itself. I was spoiled in the DR with a great host family that pretty much shielded me from the daily tasks it took to just keep the body running. But I’m sure I will find someone to cook and clean for me. I am over the idea that I should do everything for myself, and besides someone needs the employment.

The food here is fantastic. There are many farms in the area that provide fresh fruits, vegetables and meats. The fish even makes the 100-mile plus journey from the sea to the market. I am usually as weary of fish in these types of situations, but so far it has been excellent. I have also taken to eating meat again, it would just be too difficult to be a vegetarian and get enough protein in the diet. The chicken here is absolutely splendid. I don’t yet know how they prepare it but it tastes great. But by far the biggest perk in regards to food is the fruit. I think I have eaten more bananas, tangerines, and pineapples in the last week than I did in a whole year in the US. Everywhere you turn someone is selling fruit. Most of the people here are semi-subsistent farmers, growing food for both consumption and for the market. I haven’t even really ventured into the local produce market as a consumer, but I feel I am going to be pleased by the variety. And yes it has been confirmed that there is yucca.

Besides finding a place to live and getting to know the town we as well began work for Gorongosa National Park. The park itself is roughly the size of Delaware with only a small portion even open to the public for safari. The rest is simply not even truly accessible. Vila Gorongosa, the town just outside the park sits on the western edge of the park. And Mount Gorongosa is west of the town. The region as you might have guessed is called Gorongosa, and lies within the Solafa Province, located in the center of Mozambique. I have been told that this region is neither the poorest, nor the richest part of the country. But the shear size of the region is a little over whelming. The can only equate it to working in Yellow Stone in regards to the size of the region we are talking about. While the region encompassing the park is protected the ecosystem as a whole in question begins on Mount Gorongosa, travels through the park and then 100 or so miles to the Indian Ocean. As far as I know the park in their efforts to protect this ecosystem have not even put any resources east of the park. The park and the mountain are enough for right now. Just to give some reference to the difficulty of traveling in the region, on Wednesday we traveled to the main camp in the park, called Chitengo. It is located about 60 km from town, but took us about 90 minutes to reach, and these were on good roads. Chitengo is the main camping and management area for the park.

My main focus will be with the conservation and reforestation of the mountain. While the park itself has a human population it has not had as severe an impact as the population that lives around and on Mount Gorongosa. The mountain itself is actually three mountains. I have yet to master their individual names but collectively they are referred to as Serra da Gorongosa, or the Gorongosa Range. It takes about 45 minutes to get to the base of the range from town. One must travel on the main highway for about 15 minutes and then on dirt for the remainder. And this only gets you to the closest point of the range. While not a massive range by any measure the shear idea of simply getting around make dealing with the mountain a large task. From a far the mountain looks lush and green, it is only up close that you can clearly see the deforestation that has taken place. We traveled to the mountain on Monday for the first time and it was like going back in time a couple of hundred years from our modern society. It was fascinating to see people who live so close to the land, but sad to know that their effort to simply survive and feed their families was destroying the very ecosystem that they needed. Just spending a few hours with these great people puts into perspective of the level of effort that will be needed to conserve what forest still exists. People are for the most part cutting forest to make room for farmland. As I understood before I came, there are 30,000 people living on the range. I was informed however that may not be correct. There may in fact be 30,000 families, but this does not make sense to me just yet. Either way there are a lot of people on this range. Just to give a perspective of the stress put in the mountain each year. If there are indeed 30,000 people each living at a level of $1 per day then the mountain has to produce about $12 million worth of resources each year. Now try to imagine if people want to live on $5 per day. Needless to say the pressures are immense.

But I’m having good fun. Thank all, Marty