And Then There Were Four...

What at it’s peak was a communal crash pad for 4 brasilian guys, a girl from Portugal, a pregnant Mozambican, and moi, is now being slowly reduced to what looks like, from the outside at least, a normal household. Over the past few months, the baby was born and she and her mother moved to an apartment down the street, and one of the brasilian guys completed his volunteer assignment and went home. We found out today that our housemate Gemelli got an IT job in Tete, the province just to the north of us here in Manica, and will be moving there on Sunday to start a 1-year contract. So that leaves four of us…

Ricardo and I have been talking for some time now about the possibility of moving to Maputo and working from there. For business reasons alone, it makes sense. Agrolink’s main business is doing fundraising for projects, for which we have to establish good relationships with the donor community, banks, investment funds, and other people that influence how money is distributed in Mozambique. All of these people and entities are in Maputo, the capital. Right now we are constantly on the road between Chimoio and Maputo to meet with clients and find potential funding sources for our projects, and it is tiring and expensive.

Beyond the business reasons, living in Chimoio – for me at least – is simply not sustainable for much longer. Living in a small, underdeveloped town with no people other than my housemates that I can relate to makes me feel horribly desperate. Desperate for friends, for intelligent conversation outside work, for museums, live music, shops, and the kind of environment where I look around and recognize my values and interests in the people and places that surround me.

Here I walk out of the house and am stared at by people on the street in a way that makes me sick with Western guilt. I feel foreign here in the most ample sense of the word. I have not connected with Chimoio, nor with any Chimoioans since I arrived here nearly 9 months ago. I’ve found it horribly complicated to establish relationships with people here in Mozambique, even though everyone is friendly and open on the surface. The problems here are so deeply rooted in history, so complex and painful to confront, that they end up influencing all interactions in a way that makes me very, very uncomfortable.

Instead, I have retreated into this isolated world of work and communal living where a whole new set of problems come up. Learning to live with other people has proved to be excruciatingly difficult for me, drawing all the worst aspects of my personality to the surface. I feel completely powerless in this environment, and my way of coping isn’t always the most pleasant to say the least. But for all my compulsively organized and bossy moments, I can definitely say I’ve learned a hell of a lot about myself and what it takes to live and work in peace with other people. Chimoio has been an overwhelming experience, mostly positive in the end, but I am soooooooooo ready to leave it behind.

So with the exit of several housemates and business picking up, Ricardo and I are starting to form a concrete plan for moving to Maputo. It no longer makes sense, both financially and emotionally, for us to stay in Chimoio much longer. We are going to Maputo on Friday to present the final timber proposal to potential investors, and are going to take advantage of our time in the capital to start apartment-hunting. Ideally, we would move to Maputo in April but the timeline is still a bit uncertain…

Ah, on a somewhat unrelated note, we finished the timber proposal this morning at 2:30am. The Executive Summary kicks ass.