comfort

The moment I stepped off the plane in Maputo, I was greeted with the shock of cool air. I stopped to take a deep breath. The heat was gone.

Jerry cans and gnarled sticks of wood atop women’s heads are replaced with baskets of nuts and colorful fruit to sell on corner stands. Piles of bright oranges and shiny apples line the sidewalks. I am eating my Sunday brunch of crepes with bananas and honey, a real cappuccino, and a tall glass of freshly squeezed fruit juice. I am back in the city life.

I am often pleasantly surprised when I travel alone – people surprise me with their kindness. As I waited in the Tete airport, a British couple came up to me and started talking. The gentleman was in his late 60s and lives in Harare. He is a boat builder. The woman owns a business up near the Cabora Bassa Dam and was awaiting visitors to pick from the airplane arriving from Maputo. The couple offered to buy me a soda in exchange for some conversation, curious as to why I sat in the Tete airport alone and what I was doing in Mozambique. We talked of the history of the Cabora Bassa Dam and the failing state of Zimbabwe. The “hardship” conditions living in southern Africa that are now a part of everyday life. J* never has water. He hasn’t for the past two years. A* carries her water by bucket and jerry can, just as the villagers do. It has become a necessity. It is not that there is a lack of water in these countries, but there is a lack of infrastructure, of piping to get the water to the people and to treat it against water borne diseases. And there is the lack of money, of course. J* talked of how the Zimbabwe currency is worth nothing; he remembers the days when he could buy a coffee with it. Those days are no more.

I noticed on this trip how devastatingly poor this country really is. I think there’s a time when a foreigner stops seeing things in the awe and excitement of the new and unfamiliar to maybe seeing something a little closer to reality. And what follows is a feeling of depressed hopelessness that no matter how much you could do, it will never be enough. There is not enough money to solve the problems that rise from this level of poverty. And you wonder what would it take? Will it ever improve? But then again – improve to what standards and by whose judgment? As a humanitarian you want to see the “improvement” of people not going hungry, of adequate shelter and access to safe water, equal opportunities for sustainable livelihoods. You want to see the basic needs being fulfilled. And as an individual coming from a western society, you still hope for the opportunities you have been given to be available to each of these individuals you meet. You want to see some development as per the world you are familiar and comfortable in - thinking that all people may find comfort in the same.

There was an elderly woman from the village awaiting my plane in Tete. She was traveling with her family – the daughter was dressed in jeans and designer sunglasses, her children sporting clean and new clothes labeled with soccer logos. They fussed around the grandmother making sure she was comfortable. She looked far from comfortable. She looked frightened. Her beautiful face was wrinkled with age from years of working in the sun, her back permanently bent over. She wore crisp new wraps over her tattered and torn clothes. Her two grandchildren held her on either side and guided her onto the airplane. Her life was going to change as she knew it. No doubt she was going to live more comfortably in the city with her daughter. Again, as with the many refugees I’ve helped resettle in the US, I wonder how comfortable this woman will feel so far from her home and her familiars.

I am back to the comforts of the city. But I am also back to the unfamiliar and must once again find my way around and a way to adjust to make myself comfortable. My struggle with the Portuguese language is back and therefore so is the challenge to communicate. I got frustrated tonight when I couldn't order my food. The hot bath and clean sheets will help…but I’m afraid my comforts may have changed.