Well hey there amigo, I humbly want to say thanks for stoppin by and takin interest in what this girl is doing! While you read, Keep in mind that the ideas and thoughts expressed in this thing are mine and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Peace Corps or the United States government...blah blah blah...go read!

Monday, May 24, 2010

ant balls and banana rats

I don't get Mozambique sometimes. There are just many things that I think I will never fully understand or never be any less annoyed about. This goes for Mozambican critters too.

I don't get Mozambican pests. Take one particular Mozambican breed of ants who constantly attack our water supply. One day I left a half-finished sucker on our kitchen table overnight (I got distracted before I finished it evidently) and in the morning was awe-struck to find a herd of ants swarming not the half-eaten delicious sugary sucker, but instead a glass of water also left on the table.
What???
The same ants also crawl into our water filters by the cagillions and rather than sipping water from their position on the walls of the container like normal animals, they dive right into the water. And they don't swim alone or give eachother space while they splash around. The idiots congregate in big floating ant-balls. So weird. When I open the filters, I find these almost perfectly spherical balls of ant bodies. To get to the bottom of this weirdness, I decided to dissect an ant ball one day to see if there was some sort of food particle that they all were trying to get to, but when I got to the center, I only found dead ant bodies. Why?!?! What does this accomplish? What does the ant ball do for you? If you are thirsty, why do you jump completely in the water? And why do you crawl all over eachother? Is the ant ball worth it? Are you at least happy before you die in this bizzare and retarded suicidal terrorist attack on my drinking water? Epa! Getting mad just typing this.
On to the rats. We have this a-hole rat in our house now who we named after a slime-ball guy in town who annoys the crap out of every white girl who steps foot in Angoche. Fitting right? Anyway, the first time I saw him (the rat not the guy), he was crawling up the outside of my bedroom window screen. So he was contained between the pane and the screen. It dawned on me as I was running into the other room yelling out death-threat warnings to our new furry friend while trying to find a suitable weapon, that he really must have done something tricky to get into the space between my screen and my window. And by the time I came back, weapon in hand, he was gone. Unfortunately, the light in my bedroom is not working, so I had that against me during the hunt that ensued. Lil fart knew exactly what he was doing! The next morning when I had light, I carefully examined my windows, frames, and screens. No holes. And outside the windows, there is a 3 story drop-off. The walls inside and out are made of solid extremely smooth cement. How did he do it? He got in and out without holes!

Magical a-hole rat.

These guys do stuff I don't understand just to make me angry. Thats not all though.
We have a lot of food laying around in our house--a wonderful buffet full of selections any rat would love. We have nuts, left-overs, candy, chocolate cake, an array of grains, peanut butter, etc--and no way to lock it all up from furry thieves. So what does he go after???


Bananas.


Bananas??? Really? And the guy doesn't even finish a banana he starts. He takes a few bites and then leaves it!

Wasteful, magical a-hole rat.

The bananas are really small, he could at least finish what he starts. Come on.

Maybe I shouldn't have said any of this. My mom is coming to visit very soon. Just kidding Mom. None of this is true.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Poverty and the Environment

Mussa is the average local Angochean. Mussa has a pretty big family and his family gets hungry, so he needs to feed them. He is a fisherman, but he is a pretty poor fisherman, so he doesn't have the money to buy a fishing net (in more agrivating scenarios Mussa had enough money but spent it on something stupid like a widescrean TV for his hut). So Mussa, being resourceful, uses what he already has--for example, a mosquito net--to fish. Many of Mussa's fisherman friends, in the same situation, do the same thing. The mosquito net he and his buddies are using has really small holes and doesn't allow much of anything to remain in the ocean but water. So they all get a lot of good eating fish, a lot of baby fish, fish eggs, some smaller sea critters, and plants and other vegetative goodies everytime they cast or drag their nets in the nearby Indian Ocean. Mussa and the gang do this for a while. Soon, they notice that there really aren't many animals in their nets anymore, so they move fishing spots and continue. Soon their new fishing spot is fishless, so they move again and again until the sea is fished dry near Angoche. Now everyone is getting really hungry.
Welcome to Angoche and many other places in the world where poverty and beautiful ecosystems clash. Often in places like this, poor people and natural reasources are in quite a vicious cycle in which both sides suffer. If people are not educated on how to use reasources properly, they will be destroyed or depleated, leaving locals even more devestated.
In Angoche, 2 organizations WWF (environmental) and CARE (people-oriented) combined to create a project called Primeiras e Segundas which focuses on protecting local wildlife and terrain in order to boost productivity of the soils and ocean (not to mention protecting some beautiful species just to keep them around to marvel at) so that the local people can survive and even thrive. Their website is accessable on the right side of my blog for you nerds and hippies who want to know more. So anyway, they've been here for a while now trying to teach people how to do all this preservation stuff and have mainly been working with the older folks. We recently collaborated with them to involve some young people.
Alex and I rounded up a group of students who gathered in the Primeiras e Segundas office to learn about environmental issues and then do a beach clean up last Saturday. Our students were impressively interested in what the project officers were teaching about and are even talking about getting a student group started up! It's been exciting to see them have opportunities to apply what they've been learning in biology to their lives in such a vital way.

Here's Cremildo, the Marine bio officer teaching some students about the structure of sand dunes.
Cardoso and trash. Good work dude.
The guys teaching the kiddos. I'm so impressed with them. So well educated. So qualified to do their jobs. Actually show up to meetings on time. Interact well with students. And so passionate about what they're doing. It's been refreshing collaborating with them!
Stay posted! More to come about Primeiras e Segundas. We will be taking a smaller group of students in a week or two to the far chain of islands between Angoche and the open ocean to learn more first hand about mangrove importance/preservation. We even get to camp out there!!! And I hear there are dugongs, whales, dolphins, and all sorts of beautiful critters. So excited.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Conversation part 2

Tuesday morning I walked into the post office. Fabiao is the post master, a good friend.


Me: Good morning Fabiao
Fabiao: Good morning my daughter. I heard you had diarrhea.


No sense in asking how he knew that


Me: Yeah I didn't go to school yesterday.
Fabiao: Did you go to the hospital? Are you taking medication?
Me: No
Fabiao: Why not?
Me: Because it was something bad I ate.
Fabiao: Why aren't you at home? Where are you going?
Me: Welllll, I'm actually just going to buy bananas and toilet paper and then going home.
Fabiao: (giggling) You use toilet paper???
Me: Yeah, I do.
Fabiao: You should wash yourself instead, my daughter.
Me: Well, in my culture, we use toilet paper.
Fabiao: I tried toilet paper for awhile, then I switched back to washing. You're in Mozambique. You should wash.
Me: I'll stick to the toilet paper, thanks.
Fabiao: My daughter, its easy. You just...


Squats down right there and proceeds into a lenthy demonstration with overly detailed commentary on how one washes himself after a no 2.


Me: Papa! I don't need to know this!
Fabiao: But if you keep using toilet paper, you'll stain all your underwear. Its so easy to miss a spot!
Me: Alrighty! This conversation is over. Bye Papa!
Fabiao: giggling Hope you feel better soon!

never thought I would discuss skid marks in another language

Beach babies

Danish, our friends oldest kiddo
Danish
Danish
Aunt Alexi and Danish
Tonisha
Andrew, Alexi, Danish, David
Danish and Alexi
Praia Nova
sand dunes at Praia Nova