Psikelekedana

One of my favorite art forms in Mozambique is called Psikelekedana. It is a form of sculpture using wood and paint. The artist may draw on their personal experiences, or use the medium to comment on society in general. For example, last weekend I saw a piece that commemorated the bombs that exploded in Maputo last March. It depicted people running in the bairro and an undetonated bomb half buried in the street.

Psikelekedana is a uniquely Mozambican art form that originated in 1977 among sculptures working with white wood. I thought I'd just to share some interesting ones I've taken pictures of over the past 8 months.

This veterinarian scene is unusual because small pet veterinarians are unusual. Maputo, the capital, has only one veterinary hospital within city limits.

This piece shows the fleeing of people over the borders during the civil war. In all the pieces I have seen, women and children go first. A Mozambicano explained that this is because the men follow behind for safety. Notice too the stuff people carry - staple foods like corn and rice, pilhos for pounding meal, clothes, water.

This is my Mozambican park. It goes with my village. I have seen a number of parks with wild animals. Only white people ever depicted in these parks as visitors or otherwise.

On the way to work

I was fiddling around with the moviemaker software on my laptop this afternoon and put this together. These are pictures I took on my way to and from work in the field over the past few months. The song that accompanies the video is by Brenda Fassie, a popular South African (Zulu) singer here in Mozambique and in South Africa. The song is Vulindlela.


The first time I visited Mozambique was in 2004, just after Brenda Fassie's death. Her songs were played almost non-stop on the radio for almost a week. My friend Jotamo liked playing them on the landrover's tape deck as we trundled across the coastal savanna of Matutuine District going from village to village to do interviews. Now I associate her music, and this song in particular, with the landscape here. It plays in my head as we bump along the sandy roads.

Interestingly, the name Vulindlela is also the name of a rural, coastal region in KwaZulu-Natal located just south of Durban. It is just a little too far south to be part of Maputaland though.

School in Madladlane

Children in Madladlane attend a primary school located by the community's meeting tree. There are two sessions per day so that all the children that are able have a chance to attend. None of the students wear uniforms, but each family must pay a fee at the beginning of the year. The money covers the teacher's salary and some of the classroom materials. The school has two teachers. Both are really good with the children - that's what the community tells me. :)

And the kids really seem to like them and follow their instruction. Children learn Portuguese, math, reading, and writing. I am unsure about formal science or social studies lessons. However, children learn much about the environment and how to draw subsistence from their surroundings from their grandparents, parents, and older siblings.

Children play in the schoolyard before school. They also have recess periods throughout the school day. Soccer (futebol), jumping rope, hopscotch, leap frog (see below), foot races, and giggling are very popular. The children line up each morning by height and sing before school starts. One of the older girls helps out the teacher - I watched her break up fights, keep children in line, organize games and activities, and help younger children learn. In this picture, she is leading the class in the Mozambican national anthem. Her assistance frees up the teacher's time to focus on teaching and lesson preparation.

All of the children are taught in one room. Half of the roof is open to provide light. However, this means that school gets canceled on rainy days. The teacher said that school is also canceled on windy days too because sand blows through the spaces on the reed walls and also blows all the papers around. In the past, during the rainy season, school was held at the reserve in a cement walled building. However, with roaming elephants, flooding rivers, unstable bridges, and the extra 2 kilometer distance parents felt it was too dangerous for little children to walk to the reserve main camp. Children walk to school on their own as parents are busy in the fields and around the homestead. There are currently plans to build a new school out of cement blocks. This structure would allow children to attend school all year regardless of weather. Gala has had this type of school for a couple of years now.

People recognize the value of education. In 2004, I discovered it cost $4 month/child for tuition, room, and board at a school in Ponto do Ouro. The woman I spoke to in Gala said that her family scraped this together every month because she wanted to give her son (her other 2 children were still infants) a choice of possibilities when he got older. Literacy opens up many doors.

Older children, if the family has money, must go to Bela Vista to attend secondary school. Bela Vista is the district capital and is over 25 km away. Students board at the school, so families pay both tuition and room/board. A number of children would be capable of continuing, but their families cannot afford it. Some older children are shipped off to relatives in South Africa to attend secondary school if the family has connections.

I officially visited the school my last day in Madladlane on my last trip. The children invited me. When I first arrived in Madladlane, they often would run away from me as I approached yelling "Mulungo! Mulungo!" This is the Rhonga word for white person or branca. After visiting most of their homes and probably being the hot topic of discussion for a couple of months, I am less an object of fear and more like someone just interesting enough to watch. At any rate, I was taking a GPS point at the reserve guard post across the dirt road from the school. I looked up and was surrounded by little children. All getting close, but still far enough that they could run if they wanted. It was a little startling since they were all supposed to be in school - across the road on the other side of the fence.

I pulled out my camera to take a picture of the GPS point. That was what they wanted to see. Immediately they started asking me to take their pictures. I said that I would but only if I could take a picture of them in school. They rushed back to the school. One little girl waited for me (she's the one with the crazy braids in the front row above). I apologized to the teachers for interrupting class, but they said that if the children wanted to use their recess to get a picture taken that was their decision. And that it would be a neat thing to look back on in the future. The children took their seats and the pictures you see are the result.

This was my last shot at the school that day. People rarely smile for photos. Not that they don't smile or laugh, but that photos are so rare one needs to look serious. I like this one a lot because it is so spontaneous.

I hope that Mr. Hansen's second grade class at Fowler Drive Elementary School (Athens, GA) likes the photos. If they have any questions about the school, please write and I will share your letters with the children here.

Terra dos Fumos

Fires are a significant disturbance in the coastal savanna landscape where I am conducting my research. Fire helps create and maintain savanna. Early European maps, dating from the 1500s, label the region as Terra dos Fumos - Land of Smokes. In my own experience, a column of smoke on the horizon is a daily occurrence. While a few fires might develop from lightning strikes, most are set by human hands deliberately or not.

In the final week of August in Madladlane, a large fire raged along the eastern side of the Rio Futi. No one stepped in to claim responsibility. The community has a fire ban. This fire could have been set by a cigarette butt, uncontrolled charcoal production, or children playing at fire building. It cleared grass and brush and revealed historic agricultural fields. I also discovered an old veterinary station for cattle while surveying the burned area.

Typically, farmers make raised beds to grow sweet potatoes in wetland machambas (fields). Serendipitously, I just had an interview where my informant talked about the machambas planted on the reserve side of the Rio Futi before the war. For Madladlane and Gala, in the far south of Mozambique, before the war means before 1986. So the sweet potato machambas are at least 21 years old. There are eucalyptus saplings growing in these plots. They were still alive - nothing seems to be able to really kill this alien species unfortunately.

Kindu - Phoenix reclinata - used to make sura, a palm wine.

Conono - Terminalia sericea - a useful tree for construction and medicine.
Many wild trees used for fruits, medicines, and beverage production survived the fire. Some of them quite large - older than 21 years and having old fire scars. This made me wonder about why people would deliberately set fires. I've had a few discussions with farmers about burning brush and savanna areas. I hope to pursue the topic in specialist and oral history interviews, as well as take measurements in the area that recently burned to see what grows back over the next 6 months.

New machamba next to the burned area. Farmers will likely expand into this newly cleared area.
Possible reasons for deliberate fire disturbance include:

1. clearing land for crops and homes
2. adding nutrients to the soil
3. discouraging wildlife - hippos, elephants, and bush pigs in particular. I did see some vervet monkeys in the burned areas looking for fruit
4. encouraging the growth of particular plants

Reserve staff were upset by the fires. I think because they were worried about the fire spreading into the reserve and because it is the middle of the dry (windy) season. Mozambique has no big Forest Fire crews like the US. When a fire starts, it burns until it runs out of fuel or comes up against a fire break like a road, river, or handmade break. This last shot was taken at 9pm. There were 2 guards on duty with shovels. The fire eventually died out on its own.

More views from the week in Gala

The road into Gala from the reserve gate.

Little boys spend hours building toy cars out of recycled materials.

Lagoa Ntiti Lodge is the a ecotourism project in Gala, started with help from HELVETAS

The trees and skies and landscape remind me of Jorge Garza's work. Hi Jorge!!

Traditional Rhonga home construction.

Masala (Strychnos spinosa and Macuacua Strychnos madagascariensis - two native delicious fruits. You eat the pulp and spit out the seeds. Masala tastes a little like apples, macuacua has a funny bitter aftertaste.

Eating masala in my apartment. I had chilled it and when I cracked open the rind all I could think of was chilled monkey brains. It is a monkey orange.

Interviewing Tatana Jobe. He and his brother Enoque share a homestead and farm. Jobe loves mangoes and had about 12 BIG trees in his yard that he had planted many years ago.

Interviewing Mamana Rhoda acknowledged by pretty much everyone in Gala to be an authority on local history. She was born and raised in Gala and is probably 85 years old or older. Her son is the current regulo (chief). She still works her machamba (field) and is sharp as a tack.

Inside Gala Primary school. There are 3 rooms.

A mural painted by the community graces the outside of the school.


5 meninas on their way to church.

Earning my anthropology stripes

As I'm preparing to head back to Madladlane for round 2 of community census interviews, I thought I'd catch everyone up on my time in Gala.

Gala is a small fishing-farming village located at the southern gate of the Maputo Special Reserve. There are 29 families. I completed interviews with 20 over the course of 8 days. Gala is very spread out over the dunes. Any given day, my translator, my student assistant, the regulo (chief), and myself walked 25-35 kilometers. Everyone walks in Gala.

Our water came from a hand dug well in the sand forest adjacent to the guard camp. After 4 days of bathing in the water Leocadia, my student assistant (here), and I developed borboulios. This is a rash caused by microparasites in the still, fresh water. You apparently need to boil water for bathing as well as drinking. The more one scratches, the more the rash spreads. My rash is fading now, but I had a band around my waist, on my neck, and on my hands. Not fun. This same well was used by a very noisy lone elephant one evening. We heard him drinking and breaking branches. We all stayed in the camp and hoped the elephant wouldn't join us. AK-47s don't do much except make elephants angrier. In the morning everyone in camp surveyed the damage alongside our neighboring troop of samango monkeys that live at the well.

The other big excitement was having to stay an extra day in the camp because our transport broke down. The wires on the battery and solenoid were messed up. Its fun having to arrange transport by cell in the savanna wilderness. You have to climb to the top of a nearby dune to get a signal.

The guards were calling all the buddies they could think of that owned a truck. In the end, we hitched a ride back the next morning to the main reserve camp in a truck full of Mozambican military. They were exhausted from a night of poacher patrol. One poor guy looked like he was going to fall out, but apparently he had his AK-47 jammed in such a way to brace himself and his grip on the ceiling struts was pretty strong.

I rode in the back with the guys and let Leocadia ride up front. They probably would have preferred a pretty girl to look at, but she was exhausted from a week of work and earned an easy ride back. She was great. No complaints except general exhaustion at the end of a day of walking. Plus, she got all her interviews about historic climate change in Gala finished!!!

Anyway, from there the driver got the car going and we headed back to Maputo. At the ferry in Catembe the front tire blew out. The driver started asking around for a jack so that he could change it. I finally blew my lid. "How could you fucking take a fucking car out on the fucking savanna without a fucking jack? What kind of fucking idiot is he? What the fuck was he fucking thinking? I have the fucking money. Why didn't he fucking tell me? I would fucking buy a fucking jack if we don't fucking have one!" It wasn't pretty and Leocadia (who speaks English) was laughing hysterically. The ferry was docking and here we were sitting in the line within view of Maputo with a bunch of equipment, a flat, and a day late getting home. I wanted to kill the driver. Then our driver returns empty handed. He stands there for 5 minutes just looking at me. Then he gets into the car, moves the back seat around and pulls out.... a jack! What the fuck was that all about? Apparently, he just didn't want to have to pull it out. We got the tire on, made the ferry boat, and got home in under 30 minutes. By that time, I was 6 days without bathing, covered in an itchy rash, grease from the tire change, dust from the road, and no food since the cup of coffee I slurped down really quickly on the bumpy military truck hitch. At this point, I am a bit hesitant to get in that car again, but I'm leaving tomorrow morning. At least there is a bus from Salamanga to Catembe. Epa!

E Mulungo

After a long process of setting up meetings and having them canceled, making arrangements for going to the field, buying equipment and supplies, etc. I finally started my interviews and mapping.


Sergio Julane (geography) and Angelo Francisco (ecology/botany) (L to R in photo), 2 undergrads at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, came out to Madladlane with me for a week of meeting with traditional leaders, community mapping, and interviews. Madladlane, is a small farming community, located along the banks of the Rio Futi, adjacent to the Reserva Especial de Maputo. We stayed at REM and walked across a footbridge everyday to meet and talk with community residents.

Community residents were surprised to see a branca (white woman) walking from home to home, field to field, and certainly from the reserve to the community. E mulungo is what the very smallest children shouted when they saw me, adults were far more circumspect. A mulungo is a foreigner, particularly a white person. I usually shouted it back, in a silly voice, causing all sorts of giggling from both children and adults. After all, I am now the official village idiot.

These little girls were giggling just a moment before the picture was taken. Their mom got 2 of the 3 sisters to change into their best dresses for the picture.

These are just a few of the images from my past week in the field.

Sunrise

Elephant feet or patas. They come from 2 older elephants that were harassing the community and had to be killed. The guards at the reserve had tried herding the animals back behind the fence several times, but the elephants kept escaping to eat crops and attack residents.

One of 2 main roads in Madladlane. The other is a hard dirt road that will probably be paved in the next few years.

Local primary school

A pretty barboleta (butterfly) that decided to hitchhike a ride on my arm. The IUCN is working with the local community to get ecotourists to visit to check out the high diversity of birds, butterflies, and plants.

Terminalia sericea, also known as Conono locally, is used for construction and charcoal production. It is a typical wooded savanna tree species.

Abandoned store in Salamanga, a nearby town.

Mamana Amelia was one of several women farmers I interviewed this past week. She got a kick out of me pronouncing local names for plants and learning a little isiZulu from her during our interview - probably because the new words involved clicking and hlth sounds. I also probably made some funny faces trying to twist my tongue around the new words.

Sr. Olesene, me, Sr. Daniel Mathe, Sergio Julane. Sr. Olesene is a reserve guard and farmer, and acted as our translator this past week. Sr. Mathe is a traditional leader in Madladlane and provided a great summary of the history of the community.