Moz -- Inane observations on dogs and kids
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Beira,
Mozambique
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
So, our neighborhood scavenger is a fine specimen. He trots around happily and lies at the top of our street garbage pile (which is somewhat smaller than those of other streets in the vicinity, probably because this little dude is efficient) and regards passerby with an affable dog smile (when he's not gnawing on something unspeakably disgusting). He reminds me of a Buddha, and I have christened him Winston, after Amelia's and Alex's maybe-dog (because it is a fine name and it cracks me up that they would end up with a dog named Winston... such divinity!). He may be a she; when (s)he trots along, (s)he has little nipples but they're not the calloused and droopy affairs of your Vietnamese or Thai street dog, so I don't know. Besides, I'm not one to make assumptions about gender.
Kids... well, I guess English kids all look the same but I wasn't really trying to draw a parallel between dogs, kids, and inbreeding (or make sweeping and vaguely racist generalizations), except that both canines and little people of stunted/undeveloped maturity make me happy. I was walking home from work today after a fierce tropical storm that flooded the streets (an earlier one last night apparently drowned a cat, which I saw laying dead on the drying sidewalk looking waterlogged and pathetic on my way to work). Though the rain had stopped, the air was wet, hot, and heavy (mind out of the gutter, ladies), and the streets were standing lakes of mud, garbage, and probably every kind of worm I could imagine. Schistosomiasis, anyone? I learned my lesson in Vietnam and now try to keep my feet pure of disease and weird third world creepy-crawlies, so I ended up walking along a narrow cement wall in front of an elementary school that had just let out. There were dozens of screaming kids jumping around (also all on this same narrow cement wall, with the lakes of disease below us, like something out of a bad Jim Henson acid trip) and every few seconds, I'd have to kind of hop/dance over the top of one. They were all giggling and crawling between my legs as I teetered there nervously. Luckily, they're nicer than I would have been and didn't push me off.
I'm sitting here typing this and Winston is down in the street freaking out at an interloper... happens to be a person encroaching on his pile. It would almost be funny if it weren't so fucking sad. Sometimes-not often-I'm genuinely surprised at something I'll see, just because it is so wholly unexpected. This short(ish) list includes barking mimes (they're not supposed to make any noise, let along bark), Pentecostal mass (disturbing and terrifying), and Moroccan henna assaults. Yesterday, I added another one to the list. I was walking along, inspecting a garbage pile I was passing (I always peer at them closely because Bill Bryson has me convinced that one day I will find a goat carcass somewhere completely bizarre, and I figure here is as good a chance as anywhere to see that.). This garbage pile had something I wouldn't have begun to fathom: a large bird's nest (think eagle-large) with a neat pile of human shit inside, like chocolate eggs. I had left my camera at home or I would have taken a picture of it to blow up and put in my office back in Seattle.
I did a lot of walking yesterday (and earned my very first Indian Ocean sunburn-Hallelujah!) through Beira and the slummy areas around it, down to the docks (yes, I always somehow end up at the docks... good thing I'm not a prostitute, eh?) and then back up along the beach, where there were men feverishly salvaging an old shipwrecked barge or something very large, metal, and skeletal out of the low-tide sand. I wondered whether they did this everyday, redigging it all out over and over again, like an exercise in Sisyphean futility. The white sand that I've fallen in love with is a bit farther up the shore and here, it's a sticky, slippery black mud. I pause briefly and realize that this might not be the best place for a white girl (quickly reddening, mind) in a dress and without much of a clue. I keep walking.
(Whoa! I just re-read that and have shocked myself with all the racial alliterations I managed to make... It's weird, you don't want to talk about race but it's hard to avoid the fact that my whiteness here is even more glaring than ever. I feel awkward and strangely apologetic for European colonialism-though the Irish never made it much further than bombs in baby carriages in Northern Ireland, which is, by all rights, their land, so.... Is it my fault, somehow, that I'm white and not poor, at least not by these standards? It feels like it but rationally, I know I'm reacting to an ingrained guilt over colonialism, neo-liberalism, and the persistent racial disparities that pick away at the social fabric of my own country, let alone Africa, which seems to me like one big, messy tragedy.)
Racial confusion aside, the shore is pretty cool. I walk though some slums, stick and wattle houses built on a swamp of standing water. I shudder to think about the hygienic nightmare that's occurring and rapidly calculate how many hours it's been since I took my last malaria pill. I feel a twinge of guilt (again! It must be my Catholic roots!) for being so... what? American? Truth is, I've been sick. I get sick, probably more than you're average hippie-dippy white kid, so I have no desire to return there. Besides, I ostensibly work in public health, and our hearts are supposed to bleed at such ostentatious displays of poverty.
Anyway, I keep meandering, pass through a market, smile at some kids who pause to say "Hola!" (kids! They're so fantastic!!) and then I'm back on that beach again. It stretches for what seems like miles, white sand and then the Indian Ocean, almost blue in the bright sunlight (remember, we're at the mouth of a delta here). There are fishermen out in wooden canoes that are made of hollowed-out tree trunks. Not the most sea-worthy of vessels but they're able to pull in piles of small fish that they lay out on the beach to dry. The stench is amazing. I wasn't born with a gag reflex but something happened and I think I puked a little in my mouth.
Right. Well, miraculously, I've so far managed to avoid anything more violently vomitous that a little hiccup of bile and I've totally escaped the plague of travelers navigating the alien foods of developing countries-explosive diarrhea-though I still laugh about Sarah's and my hellacious episodes in Northern Vietnam. Ha ha. (As you can tell, I am over being reflective and serious... anytime I act remotely more mature than a 14-year old boy, you can rest assured that it's a temporary and fleeting affliction. My boobs are there just to distract people and trick them into thinking I can act like an adult. On that note, I just had to add "vomitous" to my computer's dictionary... stupid thing tried to insist it wasn't a word.)
Sheesh. I'm prolific in my opinions and have barely been here four days, so I'll just send this totally offensive email off. (Sorry, I really don't like cats. Or standing water. Or worms because they make your butt itch. I think poverty is tragic and a form of violence in its own right but I still make weird comments about it. Race relations confuse me. I don't think I'm properly equipped to handle them, and that both frustrates and confuses me. I do like fish, especially dead fish that I can eat, but I have a hound dog nose and a delicate stomach-not the best combination. And I recognize that it's never appropriate to make jokes about bombs in baby carriages. I don't know what to say about the English...)
