Cornmeal mush patties, re-visited

Because they are such a big part of my life, they merit a second post.

Based on Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Do you like cornmeal mush patties?

I do not like them, Stephanie.
I do not like cornmeal mush patties.

Would you like them inside or out?

I would not like them inside or out.
I would not like them, without a doubt.
I do not like cornmeal mush patties.
I do not like them, Stephanie.

Would you like them with okra stew?
Would you like them at the school?

I do not like them with okra stew.
I do not like them at the school.
I do not like them inside or out.
I do not like them, without a doubt.
I do not like cornmeal mush patties.
I do not like them, Stephanie.

Would you eat them on a straw mat?
Would you eat them with a rat?

Not on a straw mat.
Not with a rat.
Not with okra stew.
Not at the school.
I would not eat them inside or out.
I would not eat them, without a doubt.
I would not eat cornmeal mush patties.
I do not like them, Stephanie.

Would you? Could you? Under the stars?
Eat them! Eat them! Here they are.
You may like them by the light of the moon.
You may like them with a spoon.

Not with a spoon.
I would not, could not with a spoon.
Not under the stars, by the light of the moon.
I do not like them on a straw mat.
I do not like them with a rat
I do not like them with okra stew
I do not like them at the school
I do not like them inside or out.
I do not like them, without a doubt.
I do not like cornmeal mush patties.
I do not like them, Stephanie.

Leftover! Cold!
Could you, would you
leftover and cold?
Say!
With your hands?
Would you, could you, with your hands?
Would you, could you, one day old?

I would not, could not, one day old.
Not with my hands. Not leftover and cold,

Not with a spoon,
Not under the stars, by the light of the moon.
Not with okra stew. Not on a straw mat.
Not at the school. Not with a rat.
I will not eat them inside or out.
I do not like them without a doubt!

Could you, would you, with salty dried fish?
Would you, could you, in a dish?

I could not, would not, in a dish.
I will not, will not, with salty dried fish.
I will not eat them one day old.
I will not eat them leftover and cold.
Not with my hands! Not with a spoon!
Not under the stars, by the light of the moon!
I do not like them on a straw mat.
I do not like them with a rat.
I will not eat them with okra stew.
I do not like them at the school.
I do not like them inside or out.
I do not like them WITHOUT A DOUBT!

You do not like them.
SO you say.
Try them! Try them!
And you may.
Try them and you may I say.

Steph! If you will let me be,
I will try them. You will see.

Say!
I like cornmeal mush patties!
I do! I like them, Stephanie!
And I would eat them in a dish!
And I would eat them with salty dried fish.
And I will eat them one day old.
And with my hands. And leftover and cold.
And under the stars. And with a spoon.
They are so good so good you see!

So I will eat them on a straw mat.
And I will eat them with a rat.
And I will eat them with okra stew.
And I will eat them at the school.
And I will eat them inside or out.
Say! I will eat them WITHOUT A DOUBT!

I do so like
cornmeal mush patties!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Stephanie

Does it quack?

I spent last week walking to students' houses and meeting their families: tough-footed grannies, smiling ti-tias and gaggles of toddling mini-neighbors gushed over me, prepared lunch for me, and insisted that I take home corn, tomatoes, rice, bananas, cassava, beans, peanuts, eggs, a chicken and a duck.

Egas and his mother and brother
("wait, did the food get in the picture?")

Antonieta, above, and her grandmother and niece, right

Sergio and his dad and other assorted family members

Elsa (above) and many, many children (below)

Belito (not that Belito), his parents and sister

Marcia and her grandparents

Marcia, just a normal walk to school...for 2 hours, across
multiple rivers.

Veronica and her aunties

Franco and his adult caretaker (not sure what
the exact family relation is), near the house
he just built for himself and his little brother.

I walked and walked and walked and talked and walked and ate and walked and walked and missed some meetings and practices because these kids have to walk so far to get to school. But it was worth it.

And, alas, I now have a duck. I have yet to hear it quack.

Would you rather have antlers or tusks?

I haven't popped the Antlers Or Tusks question yet, but here are the six that I used in a survey of 150 ninth graders this past week.

We'll use our imaginations to deduce what that last animal is. Apparently, it's one person's favorite.

Slightly skewed, since I'm their English teacher and they probably felt some pressure to please.

I guess I didn't specify that their favorite food choice had to be edible.

Not American football, that is.
I myself like to funny sometimes. Cheers.

This question provoked a lot of laughs and some interesting spellings.

That's not a mouth in the pacman colorwheel, it's another color.

Yet to release its first album, the band...eggs?

Imagine this Reality

Imagine if in every college classroom in the US, 10 out of 50 students were dying. If in your intimate group of friends, at least one or two people had only a few years or months to live. In your company of 200 people, 40 are terminally ill. Imagine if almost one-fifth of the country had a chronic, fatal disease. Someone in every household. Imagine if thousands of people were dying, almost all young adults. What would happen to our infrastructure? Our mentality? Morale?

That is what AIDs looks like in Mozambique.

Is it big enough to be called an epidemic? Stephanie Nolen, author of 28: Stories of AIDs in Africa explains that "anything above one percent is considered a 'general epidemic,' indicating that a disease is spreading in the population as a whole and is difficult to control." If, of every 100 people, one person has a disease, it’s an epidemic. Like this:

In this example disease above, one out of 100 people is infected. The disease is out of control and would be considered an epidemic.

In Mozambique, seventeen out of 100 people are infected with HIV. Like this:

Yes, it’s an epidemic…seventeen-fold. What do we even call that? What do we do? How much worse does it have to get before it will get better? What does the future of this population look like?

Of the hundreds of people I’ve met in Mozambique, I can think of 5 who are openly seropositive (infected with HIV). I met four of them because they go around educating people about being HIV-positive. All five are activists. There is still a huge stigma around AIDS. It’s the plague of the present. In some places, AIDs victims have basically the same status as lepers. Here’s a story that I heard a student telling her friend, while they sat braiding each other’s hair one day:

“My mom did an HIV test, and the hospital told her she was positive. They gave her a medication and told her it was to treat HIV. But they actually lied that she had HIV in the first place, then gave her drugs that would give her AIDs.”

There are so many misconceptions like this one surrounding HIV and AIDs. Here are some of them:

•           You can get AIDs by touching an infected person
•           Condoms give you AIDs
•           The government is spreading AIDs on purpose
•           AIDs doesn’t exist, the media invented it
•           ARVs (drugs used to treat AIDs) are what actually make you sick (they can have bad side effects, but it’s better than leaving AIDs untreated, and dying)
•           HIV is spread by mosquitoes
•           If you have sex with a virgin, you will be cured
•           If you get HIV, your life is basically over

 Before I began Peace Corps, I didn’t know the difference between HIV and AIDs. Here’s a crash comic on how HIV works: 

In a healthy person, the immune system protects the body by fighting off diseases.

HIV blocks the immune system from fighting off diseases, so the diseases attack the body more fiercely.

AIDs is the state of having an immune system so weak that it can no longer fight off any disease, and the person dies – not directly from HIV or AIDs, but from other diseases that took advantage of the weakened immune system.

When a person starts taking ARVs (antiretroviral drugs), the drugs prohibit HIV from holding back the immune system. The HIV is still there, but its destruction is put on hold. It’s a treatment, not a cure – but people have been known to bounce back, inches from death, when they started taking ARVs.

Lack of information kills people. And a combination of other factors make it difficult to fight this particular enemy. How do you stop a virus that is spread by sex, something that nearly all adults do, but have difficulty talking honestly about? What do you do when you invest in training people in a skilled profession, and so many of them die before they utilize their skills? How do we talk about these issues openly and educate ourselves, when some families will disown an HIV-positive family member?

We have to be careful which messages we send out. We don’t want people to engage in risky behavior that can expose them to the virus, so we say, WATCH OUT! PROTECT YOURSELF! AIDS KILLS! But, how will a child feel when she hears this message, a little girl whose older sister, parents, aunts and uncles all are infected? What about the 28 million people in Africa who already have AIDs? Is that the message we want them to internalize? It’s a delicate balance between positively supporting people who already have HIV, yet not downplaying it as to make a teenager think there’s no harm in taking risks.

There is also a huge socioeconomic factor in the disease. Poor countries have difficulty spreading awareness to prevent HIV, and treating those who are sick. The book I mentioned above shares this quote from a victim of this system: “I have friends, married couples, who both have HIV and they can afford ARVs for only one of them…so they’re trying to figure out which one will take the drugs. Will their kids keep a mother or a father? What kind of choice is that?” The already difficult situation of having HIV is exacerbated in places where people don’t have the means to eat nutritious food and have access to treatment drugs. The drugs are expensive. People can’t afford them. So they die.

In the US, it feels far away, another world, another time period. Here, I’m living inside the portrait that Stephanie Nolen paints. When I read this book, the back of my eyeballs feel dizzy. It gets harder to breathe every time I turn the page, knowing that these stories are not imaginary, they’re happening all around me. I get scared every time I hear that someone is sick. When someone is sick, all their family members and friends go visit them. My students’ mother. My colleague’s friend. My friend’s brother. One of The Girls’ sisters. Too often, it’s the last visit.

There’s an enormous microscopic killer raging through Mozambique. It’s not killing slowly and stealthily. It’s killing brutally and painfully. People are dying unnecessarily, because the country doesn’t have the money, infrastructure, and staff to care for millions of victims. This is not a scare, or a seasonal virus.

This is an emergency.

Mozambican Spotlight: Meet The Girls

Each day at site would not be complete if I didn't spend some time with The Girls. Three 13-year-olds and one 18-year-old entertain me with conversations that twist and turn and overlap with four simultaneous voices. Last week I asked them some questions group-interview style, and scribbled to write down all the answers of their dynamic 4-way conversation. I wish I could capture here the way they talk all at the same time, each telling their own story, each singing for attention, chiming in to each others' tales, interrupting each other, shouting with laughter and answering each others' riddles.

Lena, Whitney, Mafalda, Telma

1.       What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a nurse.

I want to be a doctor.

I—

I—

You  go.

No, you go.

My dream is to be a nurse.

My dream is to be a police officer. If not…

2.       What do you like to eat?

Lena

Wow! Mandioca xima with amejua [a type of shellfish].

Stop interrupting me!

What I like is bread pudding.

What?!

What’s that?

I never ate that.

Teacher, do you have raisins at home?

Yesterday it was my first time eating raisins.

Get some for us when you go to Maputo!

Can you bring back fresh grapes for us?

3.       If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Mafalda

I would go to the US.

Me? Brazil!

Maputo.

US, Brazil, Maputo.

You would go to the US before going to Maputo?

Whenever the president goes somewhere, everyone watches him and sees what he does.

Today a plane passed and Flora [a friend] said, “hey, my dad is in that plane!” and then Teacher Steph looked up and yelled hello!

Was it a helicopter?

What if you owned your own helicopter?

I think the president has his own helicopter.

Once I walked up the steps of a plane. But I didn’t fly.

I’ve never flown on a plane.

Yeah, you’ve never been on a plane.

I have!

Nope. You really haven’t.

4.       What do you like to do in your free time?

Write, write, write!

Go to the beach, sunbathe.

You never even went to the beach.

Lena, what do you like to do?

Write!

Eh, I don’t like to write, I like to play cheia.

Telma

5.       What do you think about Nauela?

Wow, Nauela is spectacular!

Some people say it’s not good because it has no electricity.

During the day it’s fun, but at night it’s really calm, you feel lonely.

It’s really good to live here.

What's the next question?

6.       If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?

Bird.

Bear, I like bears.

Bird!

You would be a mataquenha [fleas that burrow in the toes] wouldn’t you!

No! I hate them!

I hate dogs. Lions even more.

Telma doesn’t like any animals.

One day I know they’ll come to teach me to fly – I’ll fly and float!

Pigeon.

Lena would be a cat.

What, no! I’d like to be…what? Which animal? An ant. I would eat people’s mangoes.

I’d like to be a lion. Lions and dogs aren’t friends.

They’ll fight! I bet the dog would win.

7.       Would you rather have three arms or three legs?

Whitney

Three arms.

Me too. Three arms.

Everyone wants to have three arms.

For me, three legs.

Everyone has to explain why!

One arm would wash dishes, another could cook, and the last could hold something else.

If I had three legs, I’d be able to do things really fast.

If someone told me to get a bucket and a pan and a spoon, I could get them all at the same time.

I would be the fastest, the first to arrive to the market.

8.       What do you want to say to your friends in the US?

That I’d like to go there in the US, and talk to people, even though I don’t know them! It would be a pleasure!

I’d want to talk to a girl. No boys! Only the girls, even if she’s just a little kid.

I want to talk to Teacher Steph’s parents.

And siblings!

How many siblings do you have?

How old are they?

What do they do?




Sometimes, I just can't keep up. All I can do is sit back and listen, and enjoy the show.