Kujilana Project Introduction

Have you ever had someone else explain your story...but it wasn't really your story? Have you ever felt the frustration of another person putting words in your mouth? Have you ever felt stereotyped unfairly? What if CNN, FOX and BBC were constantly roaming through your neighborhood looking for another story of tragedy? 

What if you had very few resources to tell your story? No blogs. No emails. No pen. No paper. No pocket digital camera. 

Ginger and I often struggle to describe what we see here...giving a voice to our neighbors. But every human wants speak on their own, in their own dialect, with their own perspective and tone.

In the past, I have been guilty of continuing the "dark Africa" myth that is rampant in the media and our global conscious. A major literary critic from Kenya, Binyavanga Wainaina,  has written about this tendency in a biting satirical essay called, "How to Write About Africa." I would suggest you follow the link for a read. Of course, I'm not suggesting we ignore the evil and tragedy we see in MZ, but I don't think western descriptions of gloom and doom should define Africa. Africans should define Africa. Mozambicans should define Mozambique. The Yao people should be given the opportunity to name what is truly Yao. To this end, let me introduce a unique project that represents a creative way for our neighbors to be empowered to tell their own story. 

Meet Tyler, Maribeth, Kelsey, and Nick. We had the opportunity to become friends with these folks back at Harding. They are wonderful people with keen eyes, sharp minds, and charitable hearts. They are spending a few weeks with us here at MGK in order initiate a project where some of our Nomba neighbors can learn how to use a video camera and tell their own story. The project is running like this:

1. Western film crew hands over the video camera to a chosen group of Nomba neighbors (Yao film crew)

2. Yao film crew practices with the cameras at the Day of Hope

3. Western film crew reviews footage of Yao film crew.

4. Western film crew provides a week of education about cameras, lighting, interviews and storytelling (we're going to visit a 'professional' Yao storyteller today for the Yao film crew to learn from)

5. Western film crew and Yao film crew work together to interview some major figures in the area (Santos, Nomba's chief, various women leaders, etc)

6. Yao film crew starts their own first video project: a story they want to tell.

7. Western film crew helps edit the project into a 5-10 minute short and each Yao film crew member shows it in Nomba village. 

8. Western film crew leaves MZ. Yao film crew keeps their video cameras. MGK remains to continue to help cultivate the interest and the project. 

So far the project is running well. One of the members said yesterday that he was the first in his family to have such an education. Our four friends hope to go back to the States and turn this project into a full-length professional documentary so please keep tabs on them. 

Besides this project, our friends are also getting footage for MGK in order to help piece a few video descriptions that we can post on a new website that is under construction. They also have been working with Santos this weekend on a few projects for Massukos and their sister non-profit organization, Estamos. 

There are many aspects of this project that deserve their own post...so stay tuned!!

Make sure you check out our friends' blog: http://kujilana.tumblr.com They have some great photos (which I have used on this post) on the blog and are keeping everyone up-to-date on what they are doing. 

Documentary Project

The Kujilana Project: Trailer from Kujilana on Vimeo.

I'll give more information next week. In the meantime check out their website: www.kujilana.com

Day of Hope Review

Wow, what a day!! I think over all we feel really good about how the festival went. It completely wore us out, but we are happy to have been apart of the project. This was really our first time partnering with other major organizations and we learned quite a bit.

It started around 5:30 in the morning making artemisia juice, transporting speakers out to the site and galvanizing our work force. We had a cooking team, a cashier team, a washing hands team, a busing/washing team, and a team covering our own MGK booth--not to mention the work of helping keep the program running as well as interfacing with other participating organizations. I have no idea how many people ended up coming. It was a massive amount, but probably not 5,000 people. 

We had a constant circulation of people visiting the various stalls where projects where on display while there was a program that started at 9:00 and ran until 4:00. The program consisted of skits about AIDS, sanitation, mini-concerts by local music groups, and even a Nomba team dance group. Rusty and I joined in the "stomp" with the Nomba group to show our support. The day ended with Massukos playing and everyone loved it! 

Throughout the festival we highlighted the indigenous plant, Moringa. I've written about this plant before in other reports. But if you don't remember, eating the leaves of Moringa is like eating a multi-vitamin with gram-for-gram more vitamin C than oranges, more potassium than bananas, more protein than yoghurt, and more vitamin A than carrots. The seeds of Moringa also purify water. Eating the plant has shown to increase lactation in nursing mothers by 30% and it has also been used as an organic fertilizer in crops. Anyway, a local organization created a skit about Moringa for us, we sang about Moringa (as well as Artemisia), we sold Moringa seedlings and we also offered Moringa to eat at the restaurant. 

Another cool moment was when Nomba's dance team was stomping the ground. The lead singers of the group sang about Artemisia (the plant that can heal people of Malaria) and how people could come to MGK and receive Artemisia medicine. Another surprise was that they decided to sing a song they had written on my behalf. Last year, we were reading through the story in Genesis when Adam first sees his partner Eve. He exclaims, "This is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh!" During our conversation, I had asked some of them to make a song out of this story so that I could sing it to my wife. Well, they sang that song as well! 

During the clean-up the following day, I was out taking down tents and the oldest religious leader in Nomba, Che Hajj, came up to visit. He profusely thanked us for the party. He was very impressed with all of the information and thought it ran smoothly. So even the old, bearded people in Nomba enjoyed the music, dancing and displays! 

Though we hit a few snags during the day, I think the festival was a hit. This has been so much work (especially for Rusty) that we have told ourselves this is the one and only time we will do this. However, after the festival the lead singer of Massukos, Feliciano dos Santos, came up to Rusty and said, "We have got to do this every year. Next year we will do it in the Stadium in Lichinga! Niassa will be know for this festival. What an honor it is for Nomba that it began here!!" Well......we'll see if there is another year:) However, for now--for today--we are happy. I think the people in Nomba who partied with us will not forget it.

Day of Hope

I still hope to look back over the last couple of months, but for now let's look ahead. This saturday is going to be a big day--July 4th. I'm sure you are thinking that I'm referring to a specific national holiday, but I'm actually referring to a big event in a small village. Saturday has been named the day of hope in Nomba. Rusty and Ann have been working for a few months for this day. It began almost a year ago when we imagined what it would be like for a local music group called Massukos to write a song about some of our projects like Artemisia or Moringa. (I'm going to write a post about Massukos later on...in the meantime check out their website and their music on iTunes) This original idea has blossomed into an area wide festival celebrating the convergence of human creativity, local resources and hope. 

Rusty originally met with the lead singer of Massukos (Feliciano dos Santos) and a few other interested people. This meeting grew into a provincial wide group of local initiatives, non-profit organizations, local bands and head governing officials. When local organizations were first part of the brainstorming all of them said, "If MGK is doing something, we want to be a part of it." How wonderful!! 

To make a long story short, on Saturday we are expecting over 30 organizations, the president of Parliament, the Niassa governor, the mayor, a few local music bands, the department of Health, and a local theater group. Many organizations will have stalls educating people about their projects including our own stall showing many of our initiatives. Many head officials will introduce the day, bands will be playing, theater groups will be acting our scripts teaching people about AIDS and sanitation, and there will be food (cooked from our own rocket stoves). We are expecting more than 5,000 people!!! During the month of June, we have had commercials running on TV and the radio. Due to this advertisement, folks all the way down in Maputo have heard about it and plan to attend!! 

So why are we doing this? Like many ideas, this has grown larger than we expected:) Clearly, this festival is proving to be a unique way to connect with our larger Mozambican community. However, this festival is fundamentally rooted in our love for Nomba and the importance of memory. We are doing this for Nomba. We want everyone in our village to remember this party day. Like many initiatives of MGK, we believe in today. We don't know what will come tomorrow. However, we have this moment with our neighbor. The memories of today can be resources for the future. In the same way countries remember moments of liberation, humans remember moments of hope. We'll let you know how it goes. 

Back In MZ

We plan to give a full update on how our time was in the US soon...I promise. However, we had a fun day today and I thought I would share something with you that tickled my funny bone. Now that we are back in our element expect to read more posts. Anyway, Ginger and I were unpacking and trying to get the house in order (a thatch house not lived in for 10 months is in desperate need of "spring" cleaning!) this morning when Rusty and Lucky came by. They had been out in CeKamet (this was one of the villages we frequented last year). The families out in CeKamet village had heard that we were back and had set up a party expecting we would be there. So, we dropped our dust rags and climbed into the truck. When we arrived at the small village we were met with blaring music. Someone had gone up to another larger village and rented a set of speakers and music equipment. In fact, the money they spent is more than many of them make in a month!! It was our welcome home party!! We greeted everyone, chatted and did a little dancing. The food we ate was awesome. We hadn't had corn meal mush in a long time. There was also meat...rabbit meat. Thanks to the continued work of Rusty and Lucky (and others) in this village, the people have continued to be energized and encouraged. How cool to eat food that was started in seed form (rabbits, corn, beans) with projects funded by the resource center. 

Ok, the video below is hilarious. This one guy thought he was Michael Jackson's Mozambican cousin...enjoy.

Kyle

Snow

Such an understandable word. Snow brings up images of a white blanket covering a rural landscape. Snow reminds us of the holidays. Even for some extreme southerners, snow is knowable and understandable. After all, my relatives in southern Georgia can travel to the north and have done so on numerous occasions. The noun 'snow' is embedded in our vocabulary. We experience the cold-numbing effects of snow. We hear it's crunch under our feet. We feel it slam into our face from a snowball. All of these experiences feed our idea of "snow" and it's deeper connections. Western conceptions of purity are tied to snow. You've heard the phrase, "White as snow?" Or even, "...though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow." (Isa. 1:18) Contrasting red and white to also signify dirty and purity depends on an understanding of what is snow.

Needless to say, much of our experience with snow is related either to the fact that we live in an eco-system that develops snow or we are part of the modern, mobile world where we have traveled and experienced snow, seen snow on TV and heard of other's Spring Break trips.

Imagine for a moment a place in another part of the world where the eco-system is tropical and snow never falls in those lands. Also imagine the people who exist in that region live, work, eat, marry, have children and die all within a radius of 50 kilometers. Linguistically speaking, you will not find a vocabulary word for snow. Due to the ecological condition of the people, the very basic way they understand purity will be changed. Purity will have a completely different aesthetic, cognitive value and behavioral production. Weird huh?

Over the Christmas break was an opportunity for our boys to experience a word that was in their vocabulary but was void of meaning. The first time Asher saw snow, he ran outside with a tupperware bowl and filled it with snow. Then he took it inside and put it in the freezer. I asked what he was doing and he replied, "I want to take this back to Mozambique and show Hallie and Omar!" After all, what is experience unless it is shared. The cold that came with the snow was a bit of a shock for Eli. He cried and cried after staying out in it for a few minutes. He told me there were "boo-boos" on his hands.

For those of us who live in a society built around mobility, it is easy to forget how tied we are to the land. How tied we are to various eco-systems. Unfortunately, in our modern society we have become parasites to other eco-systems that do not belong to us. At least in the food economy, The Wal-Mart Effect has made us dependent not on our own local land, but on the lands of people thousands of miles away. It's a noble and wonderful experience to have culture grown locally. I wonder if we were to pay more attention to the eco-systems we live within, if we might find better ways to be stewards of what we've been given as well as more personally connected to the cultural facets that come from the land and inform our perspectives. 

We can be sure of one thing. Though one culture may not have resources for communicating purity with words like "snow," we can hope that there exists other cultural resources from the land for communicating such values that are emanations from the Creator. 

For such further ruminations follow the thought of the poet Wendell Berry:

....Within things

there is peace, and at the end

of things. It is the mind

turned away from the world 

that turns against it.

("Window Poems 19")

Kiddos

In the last post, I didn't mention much about the kids and their transition to our school year here in the States. Even though Kyle and I have made a real home of Mozambique, I am still an American. I have spent 25 years living in the states and almost 6 years living outside its borders. While Mozambique has impacted me greatly, the way I see the world and function in it could still be considered fairly American. So, when people ask our family, "How does it feel to be home?" I respond by saying that many things are familiar, and some things feel a little foreign. For our children, the reverse is true. While they have American passports and even American parents, this country is not familiar. This place feels "huge and clean and full of streets and cars" (some of their observations).
Asher, our 6-year-old has adapted well- better than I expected to be honest. We made the decision to put him in school since we will be here a full school year. While sitting still and raising his hand to talk have been challenges (I mean- good grief he is a little boy!) he has enjoyed having lots of friends, singing fun songs, and learning all kinds of new material. He loves to draw and create things. There have been some things he didn't know that other kids did. (For example, I realized that he does not know how to tie shoes. Ooops, never taught that! In Moz, he doesn't even wear them!) He also knew nothing of American money. Last week, he wanted to take a baggie full of coins he has found on the ground and on grocery store floors for show-n-tell and didn't understand when I tried to tell him that less than two dollars in change may not be too exciting to most kids. (Don't worry, I let him take it.) He has come home with many questions like, "What is the tooth fairy?" and the latest, "Did you know that some kids make a list of all the things they want for Christmas?" He loved spending time with his cousins at Thanksgiving and has enjoyed getting spoiled by both sets of grandparents. However, yesterday he told me that while he liked America, he would be glad when it was time to go home to Moz because "even though they do not have McDonald's, life is just better there." (McDonald's--that is all the grandparents' fault!!)
Eli, our 3-year-old, is another story. The first few weeks we were here, all he wanted to do was sit on the front porch and watch trucks on the street drive by. He was constantly squealing, "Wow! What kind of truck is that?" However, the excitement has worn off. He begs to go home- every day. I just took this picture of his cars. He packs them every week. When we ask why he is getting baggies from the kitchen and putting all his cars in them, we always get the same reply. "I am packing to take them home." We explain that when we return to Moz, we promise we can take his cars, but that it is going to be a few more months so he may want to play with them until then. Then he replies, "No, I will just leave them packed. We're going soon." Then, Asher or Eden come along, open the bag, and we all play cars hoping to help him settle in, but a couple of days later, he packs them all up again in anticipation of our trip home. Yes, it breaks our hearts. He has also acted out a good deal. The other day he was being mean to Asher so I scooped him up and took him into the other room. When I asked him why he was talking so unkind, he burst into tears and said that he just wanted to go home. He has plenty of happy moments too, of course, but it is tough to watch him struggle to adjust to this new place. He does love the college students and has befriended a few of them who are so sweet to play with him and love on him.
Eden turned one in November. She is such a squishy, smily, delightful baby. She does not know a stranger and goes to new people more than the boys ever did as babies. She likes going to the grocery store (I wish I did...) and often waves and says "Hi!" to everyone we pass. I have had a blast introducing her to all our relatives and friends.
So, that is probably more detail than most people wanted to know about my children, but it is important to us for people to understand what our kids are experiencing and how they are processing it all.
(GH)