Student Presentations: Anthropology and Geography

Linda Manjate is an anthropology student at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. She is interested in the connections between environmental, community, and personal health. Her research will look at how the Reserva Especial de Maputo affects the health of Gala's and Madjadjane's residents, the status/abundance of medicinal plants within reserve boundaries, and whether differences exist between medicinal plants harvested for personal use and market sale. lmanjate at yahoo dot com dot br


Vânia Pedro is an anthropology student at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. She is interested in traditional wild plant knowledge and how people acquire this knowledge. Her research is looking at how plant knowledge is transmitted and the relationship between types of knowledge transmission and plant management practices. vania.pedro at nambu dot uem dot mz


Sergio Julane is a geography student at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. He is interested in the socio-economic and physical environment factors that influence where people choose to live and build their homes. His research will assess the spatial distribution of homesteads in Gala and Madjadjane; looking at the influence of factors such as water supply, soil fertility, and livelihood. sejojulane at yahoo dot com dot br

Student Presentations: Biology

Ângelo M.M. Francisco is a biology student at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. He is interested in how ecological factors influence people's decisions about using space, locating their homes and agricultural fields, and choice of resource harvest locations. a.fra2006 at yahoo dot com dot br


Márcia Langa is a biology student at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. Her research will assess firewood harvest in Madjadjane and Gala. She is interested in the types of firewood people harvest, local management practices of firewood harvest, and potential damage to vegetation caused by over-harvesting or poor management practices. marcia_langa at yahoo dot com dot br


Leocadia Naiene is a biology student at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. She will be collecting climate data from Mozambique's National Meteorological Institute, as well as conducting oral history interviews with older residents of Madjadjane and Gala about climate and vegetation changes and storm events. By comparing data from both sources, Leocadia will build a picture of the area's environment and changes to such over the past 50 years (at least). leoangy at hotmail dot com

Research Preparations & Presentations

From L to R: me, Vania Pedro, Linda Manjate, Angelo Francisco, Márcia Langa, Leocadia Naene, and Sergio Julane

My research group finally got to present publicly today. Even if the public that turned out consisted of 4 professors and a geography student. I was very disappointed. We originally planned to present our research proposals last week, and I had sent out emails early last week in anticipation. About an hour after I got out the last email, I got a call from Cornélio requesting that we move the presentation to this week because people at the Dept. of Natural Area Conservation (Ministry of Tourism) wanted to attend. He wanted to give the students an extra week to polish up their presentations since they would be presenting to more than just the department. Okay. That sounded good. DNAC is a potentially good connection for students who are looking for work or internships after they graduate. So, I emailed everyone again. Unfortunately, two of the people that would have definitely attended were in the field today.

Students got their titles to me by Monday. I forwarded the flyer to Cornelio for posting in the biology department. I came in Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to help polish the presentations as best I could, but some of the language stuff still flys over my head. Late Wednesday, I received 2 flyers for posting in Geography and Anthropology. Angelo and I walked them over to the other departments and posted them, but I didn't have a good feeling about it.

Anticipating that people would be a few minutes late, we used our extra time to upload everyone's slide shows and correct last minute typos. I learned that attention to detail surpasses national boundaries. Mozambican biology, anthropology, and geography students are just as picky as their US counterparts when it comes to making presentations look good. They might even be more detail oriented. Angelo spent 10 minutes making sure all his fonts matched and were large enough for easy viewing. Linda and Vania (picture) looked over their presentations to anticipate potential questions - which they then proceeded to ask one another.

Angelina Martins, a botany professora that I am working with, showed up about 20 minutes before we were to start. Cornélio had asked her to introduce our group, and make sure we had a projector set up. Already done (that was me being anal retentive). A colleague of Sergio's from geography showed up a few minutes before 2PM to see what we were planning and to support Sergio who was pretty nervous about presenting. (He did a fantastic job BTW.) Then Esmeralda Marianas, an anthropology professora, arrived a little late but she had just gotten out of a meeting and rushed over. Esmeralda is going to be teaching ecological anthropology next term and co-supervises Vania and Linda with me. Cornélio Ntumi and Eunice Ribeiro, both biology professors, arrived an hour into the presentations, but they had warned me that they might be late because they had to attend a thesis defense for another student.

That was our audience. I can't tell you how disappointed I was - pissed off might be a better term. The students worked very hard to improve their presentations - practicing, rewording slides, reformatting to make them clearer, etc. We presented to ourselves and our audience of one. I am not counting the professors because we've been working with the students all this time already. Well perhaps Esmeralda counts since she didn't know too much about the biology projects in advance. But no DNAC, no other professors or students from biology, no professors from agronomy (they were invited). Remember, I didn't have a good feeling about posting the flyer so late in geography or anthropology. One can always hope, but the pragmatic part of me did prepare to be disappointed from that direction.

I can post their work here and reach a huge audience. Over the next couple of days I will be posting a description of the projects (and linking to presentations if I can figure out how to do this). I will post a picture of each member of our Maputaland Landscape and Culture Research Group (the link goes to a separate but related project), with the title of their research, a brief description of the project, and contact information (they requested the last part). If you are interested please comment.

Africa/Afrika - video test

I wanted to test out the video posting capability of my blog. Occasionally, I find video clips of Mozambique (and may be making small ones with my camera) I'd like to post, but there always seem to be glitches.

Sometimes the covers are way better than the original. I really enjoy Tukuleur's cover Afrika (Toto sang the original). Tukuleur are 2 brothers from Senegal who rap in French. The song is on their album Njibinaami (2000).



I hope you enjoy this cover too. It is a little different. The guitarist is good IMHO.

A nonTraditional Hash Wedding

Every Saturday that I am in Maputo and not sick, I run with the Maputa Hash House Harriers. It is a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon and Hashers are drinkers with a running problem. get out to see places that I might not go on my own. After the run, we go back to the Maputo Aeroclube (where we're based) for a drink. Hashers like to think of themselves as drinkers with a running problem. Most people have a beer. Sometimes I go for a beer, sometimes a Fanta. Mozambicans bottle beer in 40 oz. bottles so I only drink if I can find someone to split it. 40 oz. is way too much (for me anyway).

On Saturday last, after the run, we had an impromptu and nontraditional Hash wedding. The wedding party were all Hashers and the 50% of the guests hashed. The other 50% were either relatives of the bride and groom or locals who just laughed and shook their heads at our craziness. Wonder Woman and Hotzenplotz were married in an official ceremony a few weeks earlier in Europe. This one was just part of a party to celebrate with their friends here in Mozambique.


The couple had an Irish "pope" (Big Gun) preside over their nuptials which included promising to love, keep each over inebriated, and overlook the occasional sheep shagging (bride promised) or milkman (groom promised). An acappella Hash version of "Amazing Grace" ensured that the musical bases were covered. The locals sang the real words to the hymn in Changaan.


Before kissing one another, the bride and groom had to drink a down-down (i.e. a beer). That made some of the older local men and women looking on chuckle. Afterwards everyone shouted, ululated, yipped, howled, laughed, and expressed their happiness at yet another couple being committed.

Parabens Wonder Woman and Hotzenplotz!

Rare Species Discovered

A rare species of tree grows in Mozambique - the boy tree. These boys were trying to get a good view of the Hash mock wedding ceremony I attended Saturday afternoon - more on that later.

I will keep my eye out for a girl tree.

Do you have children?

"Do you have children?"

Inevitably, this question comes up in every extended conversation I have with native Africans of all nationalities, genders, ages, and cultures. To say that children are very important to Africans is an understatement. Children represent so many things - future, fertility, wealth, adulthood...

So how do I respond? I am sorely tempted to lie. People, especially older women, always give me these pitying looks like I might as well be dead because I have certainly proven my uselessness as a woman. There is also a slightly scornful cast to their pity, because without children I am not a grown woman. But I don't lie. "No, no children yet." I always add that yet part, because if I don't they will ask why. This is just as bad as the pitying scorn. The why is so very complicated. And who knows? The women in my family often have children late. I have some time.

Today, I explained a little bit of my complicated personal reasons to the anthropology student who asked. "If you are a woman and want to be a scientist in the United States and to advance, it is pretty difficult to do so and have children." Linda started nodding. "Yes, it is the same here. Women are seen as just factories for making children."

The situation is more complicated in Mozambique, but Linda and I didn't really need to get into the unstated understood. For instance, more than 70% of agriculture, especially subsistence agriculture, is done by Mozambicanas. So women are food factories too. Mozambique is also ranked first in the world for Female Economic Activity (82.8%). The US ranks 58th, with 58.8% in case you were wondering. Let's just say that Mozambicanas have a pretty difficult life.



I'm not sure how many Americans would publicly state or agree with the baby factory comment. However, the sentiment that a woman's role is to take care of children still permeates US culture. Obviously, not everyone believes this. I've met single dads, stay-at-home dads, and dads that share childcare equally with their spouses.

I've also experienced the pitying looks and "You'll regret not having children later" type comments in the United States. Again, mainly from other women. I don't know; maybe I will and maybe I won't. I do know for certain that I am tired of having people, sometimes complete strangers, constantly harp on my lack of children to me. Why am I so much more patient about answering this question when someone outside my own culture asks?

Do men even get asked these kind of questions?