When Sharks Attack

There are a lot of good stories to be told in Mozambique.  It is a developing country, and with development comes a lot of bumps.  I look forward to sharing the incredible things happening in Mabalane over the next two years, but sadly today wasn’t one of them.

I learned a valuable lesson on my trips to Guatemala City with Beyond the Walls.  Those trips taught me that when working in a developing country if I expect everything to go right, I am going to be in for some serious disappointment.  I love my school, and despite my rocky first week, I know it is only going to go up from here.  My schedule has been changed several times, and I’m currently only sitting on four fourty-five minute lectures until my new schedule gets finalized.  Yet, even though the one class I have taught in three days was the wrong group of 9^th graders, it went phenomenal.  The students loved the L’Oreal products I brought, the girls want me to teach them how to make lipstick from crayons and coconut oil (now I need to buy some coconut oil…), and some of the kids seemed pretty interested in learning how to make soap.  For the 50% of the students who attended I was really impressed with how much math they know how to do.  I took away three cellphones in 45 minutes and still had the kids smiling as they walked out the door.

Then around noon today, two extremely well dressed, smooth talking men slinked onto our campus.  Living around New York City has taught me to be wary of anyone giving brochures.  I then noticed the men had expensive watches and designer clothes. As they were wooing in the other teachers with jokes and pleasantries I was handed a brochure.  I immediately knew what was going on.  These men were salesmen for the Mozambican division of the South African Bank Bayport offering “short-term” loans and cash in less than 48 hours.  Loan Sharks had descended upon my school and all of my frustrations ignited into a blaze.  It is a long time that I have been so mad and disgusted.  I got so angry I could barely speak Portuguese, which only made me more frustrated.  They refused to disclose their interest rates, and seemed to avoid me after I asked.  Then our vice-principal allowed them to present their “information” during the interval between morning and afternoon classes to all of the teachers present.  After talking for a few minutes about how easy it is to get money, one of the teachers inquired how much it would cost to get $300 for a six month loan.  I reversed the math on my phone and figured out the interest rate was 100%.  I was fuming.  Later I figured out the interest rate on their five year loan was still about 40%.  I finally spoke up in the meeting, but was so angry my Portuguese was awful.  I managed to get my point across, but the salesmen discredited me for getting the “American” rate, saying that things are “different” here in Mozambique.  I tried countering with finances are the same no matter where you live, but sadly, a lot of my colleagues agreed with the loan sharks.

I get frustrated at inefficiency, bureaucracy, poverty, etc. but these are things expected in a developing country.  Mozambicans taking advantage of Mozambicans who don’t know any better, that is something I can’t handle.  On the bright side, now I have a lot more motivation to keep studying Portuguese.