16/05/10

Yesterday I was buying tomatoes in the market from a woman nursing her baby. As she handed me my change with her left hand she said “I’m sorry I am using my left hand, it’s only because I am holding my baby with my right arm.” Doing almost anything: eating, writing, waving, handing something to someone, or accepting something with the left hand is considered very rude in Mozambique. She was showing me respect in two ways, first by apologizing, and second for acknowledging that I knew enough to have been offended by her handing me something with her left hand, and I really appreciated that. Often people will be intentionally disrespectful or just disrespectful out of laziness to us foreigners because they assume that we don’t know enough to know they are disrespecting us.
One of the girls in 11th grade saw a picture of me and said, “you look pretty in this picture because it was taken before you had all of these,” referring to my freckles. I explained that these are freckles, people with Irish heritage tend to have them, and I have had them my whole life. “oh, they aren’t scars from the pimples you had during adolescents?” No, but thank you for telling me my face looks like it’s covered with acne scars.
I finally got my shelf today, after ordering one to be made well over a month ago. When I first ordered it, the man said it would take a week to make, but of course a week in Mozambican time is more than 7 days long. When the shelf was finished and he called I was out of town at the REDES conference, so I told him I would call when I returned. When I called he was out of town. When he returned he called to tell me that while he was out of town the people who work for him had mistakenly sold my shelf, so he would need to make a new one. But today it finally arrived at the mission and is standing in my room. When I first ordered it, I asked if he would be able to bring it out to the mission. “All the way out here?!” he asked and so I braced myself to charged an outrageous extra fee partly because I am white and overcharging us is the norm, but also because I do live a good 2+ miles out of town. “Well I suppose I can bring it out to you…if you buy me a soda.” I laughed and said I could manage that, assuming that he or a friend had a truck in which they would transport the shelf. Turns out that he and his younger brother walked, carrying the heavy wicker-with-iron-frame shelf the whole 2+ miles out to the mission. And in such a nice change from the usual, they refused my soda offer the first time around (though accepted the second offer), didn’t ask me for any extra money, and were incredibly grateful (rather than just feeling entitled) when I gave them a tip for going through the trouble to bring the shelf out to me.
Yesterday I was walking into town when a car ahead of me stopped and waved at me to come get in for a ride the rest of the way. They asked where I was going and I said to meet up with some of my (female) friends, “amigas.” One guy asked, “oh so you already have amigas? Do you have amigos (male friends)?” I smiled and told him that I have all sorts of friends. Then his friend driving turned around, giving me, I think, the creepiest smile I have ever gotten, and said “I think you’re very pretty, that’s why we stopped to give you the ride.” And I have gotten some pretty creepy smiles in my life.