Rage Against the Bique

In Mozambique, everything breaks at the same time. Fuseka. 

That is Changana for fuck you.

Well I just feel like a naïve little Peace Corps trainee again, arriving in flusterville, Mozambique.

It all started in the Poot, which is my semi-endeering name for the capital of Mozambique, more widely known as Maputo. Then again, my father also uses the nickname in reference to farts. “Who pooted?”

Maybe not such a coincidence? I mean the Poot has been known to be quite noxious. 

Anyway, I was arriving in Maputo one Friday morning, happy to be skipping school (because I am a horrible teacher) and to be arriving in “civilization” also known as the land of ice cream and electricity that doesn’t go out every  time the wind blows, fighting through the hordes of people as I tried to catch a chapa from the bus terminal to the city (literally, you have to throw elbows if you want to get a seat), when someone stuck their  hand in the front, right pocket of my pants.

And that is when I snapped and entered my current emotional phase:  rage against the bique.

Upon feeling the subtle insertion into my pocket, and the gross violation of my personal space, I fiercely slapped my hand down, smacking my leg/my pocket/the intruders hand with the conviction of a woman scorned, causing the foreign fingers to jet out and leaving a slight bruise on my upper thigh. Worth it. The fucker didn’t get my phone or the 50 meticais I had stashed in the jeans pocket. I also got a seat on the chapa, and spent the rest of the ride eyeing all the other passengers accusingly, trying to deduce which one had gone groping for my goods.

A few days later in Xai-Xai, a drunken man got on my chapa. Not a real surprise, it happens. But then, after spending a few minutes sitting next to a woman up front, groping her breast and stealing her peanuts, Mr. Drunky decided to come sit next to me. It started with my shoulder. He just kept touching my should and trying to put his arm around me. Of course, every time he touched me I smacked him in the face. It was actually quite entertaining and even therapeutic. Touch – smack! Touch – smack! The other passengers watched the show in animated awe. Thankfully, this was quite a joyous and good natured man, because most drunkies would have belligerently beaten me to a pulp after being smacked in the face.  He just laughed and kept on trying to get at me, as if receiving my palm in his face was a form of sensuous flirtation.

But then it was time for me to get off. He blocked my exit, made me climb over him, and double palmed my ass as I tried to maneuver my way over him. That is, until I told him I was going to grab his balls and squeeze them until they fell off. Well that must have scared him, because he quickly let loose the thigh lock he had on me, and removed his hands from my ass.

Back in Chidenguele, the rage continued.

Oh my roommate. After about a month of tense cold shoulders – verbal contact. I told her I had paid the electricity bill, and would be needing her half when she could. And then she flounced in with a calculator and sassily shoved it in my face as she calculated one third of the bill, and then handed me this amount in change. “But you can keep the extra 1 metical that you would owe me in change.”

She refused to pay her half of the electricity bill because she says Iraque uses too much electricity. Well I immediately got on my high and mighty horse and handed her her dirty dirty change right back. “When you have your half you can pay me, until then I don’t want your money.” Of course she will never pay me, but I don’t plan on paying the bill next month… but I plan on using a lot of electricity.

Then again, I am trying to use electricity, but Mozambique is smiting my vengefulness, and during the last 2 weeks, the electricity has literally gone out every day for at least  1 if not all 24 hours. Right now it is doing the lovely surge on and off every minute, as if Hortencia has literally spoken with the lord of lights and is trying to burn my electric items so they never work again.

In other news, my chickidees are growing well and will be ready to sell in a few days, but we are out of food and there is no money to buy more. So my community counterpart wants ME to pay for it. Sorry, I don’t have 12000 meticais lying around, and if I did I wouldn’t use it to feed chickens.

Then he asked me to lend him 100 meticais and I layed the smack down… to an excessive degree.

And today? The copy machine at the school as broken two days before I am supposed to give my final exam. How am I supposed to evaluate this little bitches if I can’t multiply the exam? You might say, “Caitlin, just go to a copy shop in town.”  Well, even if there was a place to make copies in town, I wouldn’t be able to afford to multiply the test for all my students.

The useless question: Why?

 “Don’t try to rationalize it Caitlin. You will just drive yourself crazy. It just doesn’t make sense.”

My mom was talking about my roommate. But I think it sort of refers to the multitude of things which appear to be crumbling around me, in addition to other Mozambique traditions suck as 4 hour meetings where nothing gets accomplished and excessive and repetitive paperwork that has to be hand written in appropriately color coded, perfect penmanship.

Iraque just keeps telling me to calm down, and refuses to talk to me until I actually do. I must say I am not a fan of tough love… though I am sure I deserve it. He gets kudos for craziness tolerance.

However, despite my rage against the bique, the fact that I hate my job more than I hated working at Subway as a 16 year old when all the other employees would go out back to smoke weed and leave me to tend to feisty customers who got all riled up about the fact that we didn’t have swiss cheese, and the fact that my roommate has caused me to run around like a neurotic crazy pants lady afraid of being bitch slapped at any moment, and to actually repeatedly have the same nightmare that the roommie in question thievishly breaks into my locked bedroom and pours dirty dish water all over my bed, unlike during my naïve newbie days (see 10 things I hate about Mozambique) where I was miserable on the verge of leaving, now  I am honestly happy as a (slightly anxious and often angry) clam. I mean, the sun is shining, the chickens are growing, the AIDS orphans are being fed, and the beach is beautiful.