Thankful for my sisters.

My sisters call me a stranger stalker. If I remember correctly it wasn’t a complement, but a warning for me to stay on task and stop talking to innocent by-standers. Good thing my sisters are home minding their own business, because here my task requires some social stalking or rather people-pursuing. I am in a daily hunt to make friends, anyone is welcome into my troupe, and the only criterion is that they too have to be open to new behaviors.

Here in Mozambique, and specifically at my site, the people are warm hearted and welcoming. So far this has shown true across sexes, social status, educational level, and ages (except from 12-24 month -olds, many start to cry when they see me followed by an apology from the mother saying the baby is not used to my color).

My walk to and from work is a delightful “people-pursing” excursion. When I arrived In August it appeared that everyone was rubber-necking to look at me. When our eyes meet my hand would immediately go up in a wave and they would depict a real smile and a nod with a polite greeting. This continued for the first two months. Then in October I would start to hear my name or “Bom-dia, tia” ( Good morning, aunt) along with some advice like : “You need an umbrella”, “ You need to eat more”, “ I will find you a husband.” In December I found myself stopping to chat often and being asked medical questions. My answers always start with: “Humm, did you go to the hospital? Walk with me and we will talk to the nurse”. Sometimes I answer in a rather nagging tone when I hear that they have had a condition for months and have not look into it.

So now I am completing my sixth month residing in this small community; I have friendly neighbors, my name rings out, and people walk with me. Cars stop immediately when I hitch- hike, and it seems like I’ve started a popular response to the heat – “…it’s going to kill me”, followed by giggles.

This “people pursing” skill has dovetailed into the culture here, and the feedback is always pleasant. I’m not a new bird anymore so now I need to meet expectations; going to funerals, teaching English, visiting on the weekends, and answering questions like “Where did you disappeared to?” (I realized last week after going to the dentist, that I’m still a topic of conversation when someone I didn’t talk to asked me if my tooth was pulled out).

Privacy and time is the price that I have had to pay-back for wanted to assimilate as much as possible into this intriguing adventure. It has been worth every frown from my loving sisters, Rose and Joann, who still worry about me (or perhaps the people I talk to).