When life cannot merit an “ha de passar” because the chapa
is just too slow or the laundry wont dry because it’s rainy season and now your
clothes are moldy or you are just too convinced that malaria is coming to do
some major battle with you, “é a vida” becomes much more pertinent than “ha de
passar.” E a vida means “It’s life” and it
has insidiously invaded my vocabulary until it unintentionally became my
trademark and one of my only jokes in Portuguese (for some reason, Mozambicans
think it is SO FUNNY when I say this. It
gets them every single time). For
everything, from an early morning meeting starting 2 hours late and then
lasting 3 (or more, because really, who counts after it hits the 3 hour mark)
hours to a time where I have yet again proven just how exactly foreign and
awkward I am, I can now just shrug and say “é a vida.”
When I originally thought of the topic for this post, I was
at a point in Peace Corps where I thought “What an easy going culture, this is
definitely a helpful attitude for me as well.”
But in the past few months, the cliché of Peace Corps (the fact that we
sit in our houses and stare at walls a lot and thus think about life) has
caught up to me and I have realized that “E a vida” is much more than a simple
acceptance. There’s a fine line between
acceptance of things we cannot change and things that we can. And as many before me have learned, it takes
talent to discern the difference. And I
don’t know how to do that yet.
On one side, it’s good.
There are so many frustrations and injustices in life – many already mentioned here. Why spend what is generally life getting all
stressed out about things that are considered, as bad as they are, so
normal? Because for many here, it’s a
choice between worrying about the injustices in the school system and feeding a
family. So really, it could mean that
Mozambicans have their priorities straight.
“E a vida” represents what could
be argued as a necessary apathy, a symbol of a disenchanted fraction of
Mozambican society who look at all the obstacles to maintaining a human life
with dignity and say “We do what we can.”
On the other hand, this “necessary apathy” could be
considered just as insidious as “E a vida” has been in my vocabulary. An easy thing to say that, whether it means
to or not, maintains a problematic status quo.
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| We went to the beach last weekend, and there were lines of men and boys pulling in shrimp from the ocean. (and the shrimp was really good). |
Good morning how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Mozambique? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Mozambique in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez