Hey Mikey, I think he likes it!

There is a difference between being broke and being 
poor, and I hadn’t thought about exactly what that was until a recent conversation with a fellow volunteer.  For starters, here’s what my dictionary has to say about the matter: broke-having completely run out of money; poor-lacking sufficient money to live at a standard considered comfortable or normal in society.  Let’s just say I agree with those…in part.  Even in those moments back home mulling over a bite of Life cereal, I never considered the difference between the definition of poor between different countries.  Before moving to Mozambique I was wholly ignorant to the world outside of the United States.  This was my biggest goal leaving the US, to learn about the world from a different perspective; to open my eyes shielded by naiveté.  I have not had any drastic revelations to make my eyes wide open; right now I’d say I’m more at a sunlit squint.

Well, here’s my input on the situation now, in a nicely packaged nutshell: A person who is broke, doesn’t have money but has other value in their life.  For example, recent college graduates in the US.  They do not have any money, they have piles of loans to pay off, but they do have their education, they do have a computer, a cell phone, and clothes on their back.  These people that are broke do not have any money, but they do have the means to get money, by using their education.  On the other side, people who are poor, don’t have money, but they also don’t have the means to make it either.  In the US, even those who didn’t complete college, or even high school can walk to their local library, read books or use the internet (for free) and self educate.  We are so fortunate for these possibilities in the United States.   I’m not saying the US is anywhere near perfect, but I appreciate it much much more after living in Moz for 6 months.  Books are far and few between to come by here, and when you do, they are priced exorbitantly; there are no local library’s, it is rare that a school has a library.  There are more computers here than I thought (but I do live in a neighborhood of the upper class, so my sample population is slightly skewed), but students do not have access to free Internet.  Let’s have a quick sidebar. 

I have been shocked at the lack of critical thinking here in Mozambique.  Coming in I knew that they predominantly used rote education; I just didn’t know how drastic it was.  For example, Daniel, Hannah’s and my empregado, is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he definitely tries.  One day he came over to ask for homework help, and on principal, I never give the student the answer.  I help them think about what they learned in class, I’ll point them to the right page in their notebooks, I’ll do endless similar examples, but I will not flat out give a student an answer.  So we were sitting in my living room and he had worked the problem down to be x + 2 = 0.  For the life of him he was not able to figure out x.  He can do x² + 4x – 8 where x = 5, but he can’t find what the value of x in the equation x + 2 = 0.  I tried everything, similar examples getting it down to x – 4 = 0 and showing him how to move the -4 to the other side, I tried explaining that in order to find x, we wanted to get x by itself, that means moving everything else to the other side of the equation.  So how do we move that +2 to the other side?  He had no idea, literally, there were no connections being made.  The gaps in the education are so surprising sometimes, and I can’t believe they can do the high level of math that they can without many of the simple, rudimentary level math being forgotten about, or just not taught. 

What I’m trying to say is that in the United States, we have access to free books and free internet, so that even if hypothetically we didn’t have a government issued documentation that allowed a person to go to school, that person could still receive an education, by reading, and reading, and reading.  Here in Mozambique, and I’d have to assume (which can be dangerous), many other third world countries don’t have access to books and internet, or even if they did, transportation to the areas with these privileges. 

            Poor is relative to where you are.  Poor in a first world country I would like to safely say is a little different than poor in a third world country.  The reason I say this is that in a first world country people still have access to free knowledge, and have a greater possibility to leave the poor bracket behind.  In a third world country it’s much harder to do that.  I’m going to use Mozambique as my example for obvious reasons.  Here, a government documentation means that you are able to receive an education, but there are the lucky few that have enough means to pay some people off to get into the system without one, or even to buy one later in life.  The problem is, is that the families that tend to have children born outside of hospitals (and therefore no government stamp of approval that this child exists) also tend to be the families that don’t have the money to pay people off to get their child educated.  The parents aren’t educated, they are barely scraping by as it is, and then they have their children who aren’t able to go to school, and it’s just a bad cycle that continues to repeat over and over again.   Another thing is that Mozambicans have to pay to go to school.  Each year the government doesn’t give money to the schools so that the students go for ‘free’, it’s more similar to a boarding school or a university where you have to pay to attend.  There are no scholarships for primary and secondary school, and there are barely any for university. 

            What is to be done here, or any other places in the same problem.  Should education be the first thing to be solved, or health care?  Should money be pumped in from the top down or the bottom up?  Mozambique has the means to develop rapidly, but there is just too much corruption happening for it to go anything but at a snail’s pace, and sometimes development is going backwards.  So my question is what is to be done and in what order?  How can I personally help the poor get out of this cycle and how can I help Mozambique develop more?   I would love for everyone to take a few minutes while eating their nice bowl of life cereal with cold milk tomorrow morning and think over about what to do.  I would dearly love your thoughts on this matter.  My next post will be about my thoughts on this matter as well, but I wanted to give you all a few days to think about your thoughts before I put my thoughts on this matter into your head. 

All in all, I want to help change this country for the better, but I know that my position in Mozambique is pretty small in the grand scheme of things.  What I can do those is help those students in my community, teach them about self education, teach them life lessons, and try to help my community in any way possible. 

As always, a few random gems:

I had midterms this week, apparently one of my students has some thoughts they would like to share with me.

I went hiking last weekend and found this little guy

I'm starting to experiment with my shutter speed. I'm learning! 

For those of you without other internet entertainment, this is a new one of me with Kainda.  She's quite the lazy dog at times, I had to carry her down the mountain...she was fine going up.  Also, that's the new length of my hair with 6 inches off.