Its been an awful long time since my last blog update and a lot has happened since then. The full version is largely unimportant, uninteresting and nothing at all to do with the practice of social business in rural Northern Mozambique. Well, it could be said that nothing that my former employer did was anything to do with social business in rural Northern Mozambique. I am not going to dedicate this blog post to dragging the name of Teran Foundation through the mud as I do not wish to appear like that classic former-employee who is bitter at no longer working for an organisation. All I will say is that, for the people who know me, know how I work and know how much I had been looking forward to working in Mozambique, the fact that I have left and want nothing more to do with the organisation must speak volumes.
Now me and Celisse are in Swaziland, volunteering at our former school Waterford. We asked to come back here so we could be of some use for a while as we worked out what our next move was. It wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to go back to Shetland or even just back to the UK. The reality is however that there is more chance of me securing a full-time, relatively well-paid job that is in line with my experience and qualifications in Southern Africa than there is in the West. And the quality of life here is arguably far superior. So the job search continues in relative comfort compared to our previous accommodation. Here we have hot food, hot showers, manageable heat (and more often, manageable cold), a language we can understand and people who appreciate our presence and our work. We may not be in the position to make the ground-breaking difference which we could have made to a poor rural community in Mozambique but here we still have the ability to be part of an excellent school, a global movement and a country which is governed by one of the most fascinating political structures I have ever come across. Not a bad place to be for a recent politics graduate.
Our departure from Mossuril and our travel down from Nampula to Maputo were difficult, long and frustrating. Two nights in Nampula city, a 40-hour bus and tempers as short as the money we had made our arrival in Maputo all the better. We were staying with Alicia, a former classmate from Waterford and very useful stop-off point for us both this year and last year. The hot showers, excellent food and sympathetic company was much appreciated and it was a happy, relaxed few days before we came to Swaziland was almost unimaginable luxury. I've never gotten used to being at houses which employ a maid. I never know whether to clear the table or not and the maid almost seemed offended when I offered to iron my shirt. I resorted to simply smiling, shrugging, apologising in Portuguese and leaving her to it.
The aforementioned shirt's use was as my only nice looking clothes to attend an interview with World Vision. A friend of a friend of a friend set up the interview with the regional director who was desperately looking for staff who were willing to work outside Maputo. World Vision is a huge NGO with a Christian ethos and outlook which does a lot of good around the world. However it suffers from the same issues which plague any organisation employing foreigners in a developing country, social life. Regardless of the amount of good work people do between the hours of 9am and 5pm, at 5.01pm they want to leave the office, drive back to their nice house in their big car, via their clean supermarket to buy European beer, to later share with their other middle-class friends while watching English football on their satellite TV. Ok, so thats a massive generalisation but it is a fact of life that, if given the choice, skilled, experienced NGO staff would rather be around their friends, their home comforts and their kids' international school than be out in the bush. That was how we created the demand for ourselves, we had been working out there and were willing to continue.
There were two issues which scuppered that plan, the first is largely unavoidable. This global-debt-crisis-greed-banking-downturn-PIIGS issue has meant that nobody has money. If people in the West don't have money then they cut down on their expenditures. The first thing to go from these expenditures is the money they give to charity. This is true of individuals, households, businesses and governments alike. World Vision was willing to take us on as unpaid volunteers but couldn't afford to give us salaries and job titles. Although money has never been the primary reason for me being in this region, the simple fact is that I can't afford to continue being here and not being paid, so that was difficult. The other reason was kind of academic after the money issue but very important nonetheless. The Mozambican government, in its wisdom, has instated a rule whereby every organisation or business in the country must employ ten Mozambicans for every non-Mozambican employed. The thinking behind this is simple enough- there is money coming into the country, there are lots of people coming into the country to exploit this money, they want to avoid another colonial-type situation whereby people make money in Mozambique and don't pass any benefits onto Mozambicans themselves. In reality however, the sitiuation they are creating is one where small foreign-owned businesses are going bust due to the colossal wage bills incurred by having to employ at least eleven people in a small enterprise. I can see both sides of the issue but from my own point of view, it meant that I couldn't get a job. So, onto Swaziland.
Swaziland's political situation has always been interesting. The last full monarchy in Africa, a former British colony where the royal family was handed back power in the 60s when the British left. A polygamous king with a penchant for BMWs and a half-elected, half-appointed parliament of representatives elected in traditional tribal ways. The illegal pro-democracy group PUDEMO with its respective youth, international and paramilitary wings is ever present and its bizarre juxtaposition of clean, expensive shopping malls and bars in the cities with extreme poverty in the rural areas makes Swaziland an interesting place to be. What is more interesting about this particular time is that the country is broke and economic change seems to be very much in the pipeline, whether political change will follow is impossible to know. If it is possible to stay in this fascinating place to witness such changes I would very much appreciate the opportunity.
Our welcome at school was fantastic. We were here briefly last year for the World Cup-inspired reunion but we never really managed to look around much. Its been 5 years since we graduated from school here and its refreshing to see that there has been much progress but not too much of the ethos and charm has been lost. The response from the teachers, students, kitchen and maintenance staff has been as if we never left.
We've been working in various parts of the school but by far the most entertaining so far has been covering P.E. classes. The reason I say 'covering' is that 'teaching' is stretching it a bit far. I'm not saying that P.E. teachers don't teach, just that I don't teach when I take P.E., I just shout. The first class I took was 32 boys between the ages of 12 and 14. I asked them if they had ever seen the film 'Coach Carter', some of them nodded, I introduced myself as a younger, whiter version of Coach Carter. Then I made them do 'suicides'. Although my teaching methods were questioned by the students themselves, I was commended by the teachers with the line that 'Anything which tires out those boys is hugely beneficial to the functioning of the school'.
Anyway, thats beside the point. The point, I think, is that we have both been offered a position working in the development office of the school. This work includes alumni relations, digitalisation of school publications since the 1960s and playing a part in organising the 50th anniversary of the school which is to take place in February 2013. Everything seems to have fallen back into place after a brief period of uncertainty. We have jobs, a place to stay, money coming in, massive possibilities to move forward from here in the professional world. This may not be what I came to Africa to do, it may not be the sector I ever thought I would be working in. I think it will be good for me though and from February 2013 I can make a plan for what comes next.
If I do anything as interesting as what I was doing in Mozambique I might write another blog. But for now I'm not so this is the last one. Thanks for reading, I'm away.
