Surveys, Interviews, and Focus Groups

 

Our task while here in Mozambique is to provide a detailed report on how the community of Mungassa has changed (for better or for worse) while partnered with Care For Life over the past three years.  Four days a week we walk the 35 minutes to the community of Mungassa to conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups with the families.  There are 235 families in the community and although we have already met over 200 of them, we still have much to do on the surveys, interviews and focus groups. 

We find new, unique personalities every day.   For example, today we met the man in the picture below:

His name is Viegas Bango and he is a Zone Leader in the community of Mungassa.  Viegas has the best looking latrine in the whole community (pictured above).  It has a tiled floor, a lock on the door, windows and even a toilet paper holder! 

Viegas has built his latrine with the rewards of Care For Life.  Each family in the community has made 10 individual goals with CFL Field Officers that vary from having a family garden to treating their water with chlorine, to keeping their yard clean.  If these goals are met within 6 months, CFL rewards these families with building materials for their homes or chairs for inside their homes.  Viegas chose cement and zinc roof panels as his rewards and he used them to build his latrine, a large kitchen…(see below)

a bath house (see below)

and a zinc roof. (see below)

Viegas has been a Pastor for his church for many years and it was so interesting to hear his story.  He and his wife had 12 kids, but only 5 are still alive.  He lost one child in 1980 to malaria, because nobody in the area knew what malaria was at that time and they only found out how to treat it after he had passed away.   Four of his other children were still-born and the other two only lived a week or two.  He lost a lot of his children during Mozambique’s Civil War (which ended about 15 years ago and I am currently working on a blog post about that war and the general history of Mozambique).  During that time of civil war, all the members of the community of Mungassa had to sleep away from their homes because Mungassa was in a war zone.  This difficult living situation caused much unrest in the community and is the main reason that so many of Viegas children died.  Mozambique has been through many difficult times in the last 30 years and we could see the pain from the civil war in his eyes.

It is difficult to walk around the community on some days because there are so many sad scenes and stories.  People die on a regular basis (mostly because of AIDS) and it is difficult to see women and children who are alone because their families have died or been killed by war, AIDS, Cholera, Malaria, Tuberculosis, and many other causes.  Yesterday one of the Field Officers of Care For Life had his baby daughter pass away of Jaundice, which is something that we have heard is treatable in most developed countries.  Last week an older man in Mungassa died, the week before a young girl from our church passed away unexpectedly.   These things sometimes weigh us down, but at the same time we see many more stories of the good things that are happening here.  Because of CFL we see healthy infants that get bathed every day, we see healthy children running around, we see men that have hope in their eyes because Mungassa is becoming a community that now has a road and will soon have electricity. 

It is so interesting to interview these people and learn how their lives have changed with CFL.  Below is a picture of Anita interviewing a man that was telling her about how many things CFL has taught him:

Most of the time we arrive at a family’s home and ask them if they have about 20 minutes to talk.  They bring a few chairs out of their home and set them under a tree and we start to talk.  The below picture is of a typical interview scene:

After the interview above, the woman in the purple (Jorgina) decided she would give something to Anita.  We walked past her house later in the day and the pictures tell the rest of the story…

This lady had a very unique story because she has lived away from Mungassa for the past four years and was able to see the “before and after” effect of Care For Life.  She told us that the road in front of her house used to be full of trash and was literally the community latrine.  She said it used to stink at her house because of the amount of people that used the latrine along the road.  She then explained that now all that has changed and that the road is now clean because everyone has their own latrine and the garbage is gone as well. 

The above picture is the road that has improved so much while CFL has been here.

At times these surveys can be a bit tedious, because it is hard to get an honest answer out of them. Not because they are not honest people, but because they are in some way used to figuring out what type of answers organizations are looking for and that is the answer they will give. We eventually figured that out and were not satisfied with those types of answers, because they don’t tell us the real picture and that is what we are here for. So we usually dig around with more open ended questions until they open up and we are able to get to the bottom of who they are, what the community is all about and what their true feelings are about the work with CFL. And that is when it gets so interesting and rewarding. Because it is during those moments that we see how we are all the same – that we have the same frustrations, desires and needs, even though our worlds (literally and figuratively) are so far apart.

And so during those interviews we have formed closer relationships with some of the community members and today we felt the effects of that. Just to give you a little background…usually Talmadge and I head to Mungassa separately from the CFL group, but today we went there together as they are during their follow up work in Mungassa every two weeks. And as we sat there at the meeting and looked over the crowd of leaders from the community, we felt connected to them. We have met with them, we have heard their stories, we are aware of some of their strengths and weaknesses and we could tell that our emotional attachment was definitely different than a month ago when we had just arrived here. And that was beautiful and that is when we realize that 2 months at Mungassa is nothing -we are just scratching the surface and we are just getting to know them. There is so much more to learn and we’ll keep talking about it with you in this blog.

A day in the life of A and T

Our typical day is as follows: 

6:30am Wake

Get ready for the day, eat breakfast, prepare a sack lunch, etc.

8:15am – Walk about 35 minutes to Mungassa  – the community we are working with

8:50-Noon – Interviews, surveys, get to know each family in the community.  We are going to finish visiting all 10 zones (235 families) some time next week.

Noon- 12:30pm - We eat our prepared sandwiches with bananas in the village pavilion that was made for the use of Care For Life.

12:30 to 3 or 4pm – Interviews, Surveys, and Focus Groups.

Evening – Compile notes, survey results, and videos/pictures from the day.  Dinner is usually at about 7pm.

Here are some pictures to give you an idea of where we walk and what we see during a typical day:

In the mornings, we walk out of the white door and head to Mungassa.  Out of respect for the locals,  Anita has started wearing the traditional clothes of the women here.  The skirt she has on is called a “capulana” and 98% of the women wear them here in the Beira area. This is now Anita writing - we get stopped every now and then by women commenting on how happy they are to see me wearing a capulana. The other day somebody mentioned to me that it was okay for me to wear the capulana because I work here every day and therefore, I am almost a Mozambican! I was glad to hear I am not just a white girl trying to look African…

We then walk right next to a paved street (as seen above on the right hand side of the picture).  The two young women pictured above are headed to school in their uniforms.

We walk past our favorite bakery on the left…Both breakfast and lunch come from this bakery. Unfortunately the only thing they have is white bread… we are really longing for some fiber.

We walk past our church on the right (only 5 minutes from our house)…

We then go off onto a dirt road where there are many little shops like the ones pictured above. Here you see the clothes hung up, but every so often they are just put on the dirt floor affixed by some rocks. Not the way I used to shop at Prada and Donna Karan!!

This area, where the shops are located, is usually very crowded with people. We stand out just a tad, not only because we are white and pretty much the only white people in site, but they have never seen a tall basketball player like Talmadge. We get stares and “hellos” all the way from home to the community.

These pictures were shot from the hip… This is Anita – picture this…we were walking down this dirt road today and Talmadge very inconspicuously held his camera at the hip and kept shooting. When I asked him a question he said, sorry I can’t answer right now, I am taking pictures… Maybe I am the only one that thought that to be very funny. You let me know in your comments.

Then we get to a smaller dirt road that usually has big puddles. We are a bit worried about the rainy season that is about to start. This puddle is only after one night of rain. We cannot imagine what it looks like after days of rain. Certain areas supposedly are completely covered and unable to be passed once the rainy season starts.

This is the biggest puddle of them all… It should really be called a small pond.  We have to jump from wood stump to wood stump to cross on the right hand side.  At times, this proves difficult for Anita and her capulana! And the last thing we want to have happen is to step into that water where all kinds of worms and diseases await us. A funny story about this place today was when the guy who lives right next to this small pond thought (and was very serious about it) that it would be a great business idea to charge people to cross…hmm…

We then walk through a small community and today we saw this man fetching water from the community well.

We stopped at a small vegetable/fruit stand and before we knew it, we were surrounded by children looking at us. This is not an unusual occurrence as children often flock around us and giggle. Some of them simply call us “Mozunga” – which means “white people” in their native tongue Sena. I guess that is the easiest way to identify us – the white people.

We are not only watched by children, pretty much all adults know our exact whereabouts. The other day we ran into a lady we know from the community and she said, “I saw you yesterday wearing the capulana as well, but it was a different one than the one you are wearing today”. So nothing we do goes unnoticed.

We walk on…

We cross this paved road…

And enter the community Mungassa.  These women stopped today to say hello.  We see women carrying loads like these on their heads all the time.  It is very impressive how they can balance so much weight without dropping their load.  We noticed as well that we rarely see men using this technique (which deserves another blog entry about men vs. women in this society).  It’s very backwards and very hard to see. Especially as a woman – I cannot imagine life the way these women have to live it…being considered second class.

Behind one member of the Mungassa community, David, you see the pavilion or “machessa” that the community built at the beginning of their three year agreement to work with Care For Life.  They use this machessa for community meetings and it is also the place that Anita and I take our break to eat lunch every day.  You will also notice a well (to the right) that was built by our church independent of the work of Care For Life.

Here is a closer view of the well mentioned above.

Part of the work that Care For Life is doing, is instructing the community members to build a latrine at their home. Up until the arrival of Care For Life, the community was not accustomed to using a latrine. They instead would relieve themselves pretty much anywhere. This was a major health hazard (aside from the unbearable stench everywhere) and made living in these communities very hard. The introduction of latrines has improved their health immensely. They started out building temporary latrines and are now working on these improved latrines, built with cement blocks that will last much longer (up to 10 years). Above you see the base of an improved latrine. Part of our work is to look at the development of these latrines that are expected to be finished to this point by next week.

This family was preparing potatoes for storage during the rainy season (which starts at the end of November).

Many are starting to prepare land for their rice crops, which will grow during the rainy season.

There were some guys playing cards with NBA players on them (which is much better than the white bikini babes that are on most playing cards in these villages).  I found some of the cards incorrect which was really funny to me.  One card had a picture of Tony Parker and below the picture it said, Vince Carter.  I love that kind of stuff! At least they got Karl Malone right.

Then we head back to the Care For Life office (which is also our home).

There are many more pictures from today and from other days that we have taken, but this will hopefully give you an idea of a typical day here in Mozambique.

How houses are built in Mungassa

I found it interesting to see how houses are built in Mungassa. I find the houses interesting here because each one is very unique and has a lot of character.  Here is the process on how they are made:

They start by making a skeleton with wood and bamboo and then fill it with rocks.

  

Once the walls are full with rocks, they usually put a roof on the house.  The roof is usually made of straw (thatched) but I’d say that about 30% of the roofs are now made with zinc, which lasts longer and doesn’t leak as much as thatched roofs.

 

 

Here is another example of a zinc roof.

This is the thatched roof.

To finalize the house, one must mix mud (or if fortunate, cement) and throw it against the house until it is all covered.  Then they make it smooth as shown in the picture of the mud finish above.

This builder is throwing cement on the house that he is building.  It will last much longer this way.

Many people are now turning to the use of cement blocks to build their houses in Mungassa. This way of construction is preferred but more expensive so only some have this luxury.

Pure Joy

I have found pure joy here in Mozambique…and its the children and their beautiful laughter that brings it. I feel that the joy of the people of Mozambique is summed up in its children.

In each community we are greeted by children – first they start out observing us from a distance until they get more confident or until we smile/wave at them. Then they start jumping up and down of joy and begin giggling. Then the following starts – some of them follow us for an hour or two never getting tired of staring at us and finding us terribly interesting. The interest and staring is actually mutual because they are beautiful, happy, innocent, some shy, some daring, some confident, some curious etc. Personalities come through fairly quickly and it’s fantastic to interact with them. Most of them don’t speak any Portuguese, (they speak the local language called Zena), but that does not seem to stop them or us from interacting. The best is when we pull the camera out. First they don’t know what’s happening to them, but then we show them the pictures we just took of them (thanks to digital cameras) and they start giggling, jumping around, teasing each other about what they look like on the picture and then they start lining up for more pictures – it’s like free candy. I have never felt like such a good entertainer – all I need to do is take a picture and I am the star of the show (or better yet, they are, but I am making it happen for them). I think only with children is it that easy to make somebody that happy that easily. So we are surrounded by laughter and giggling all day long and it is as I said – Pure Joy!!

As you can see from some of the shots I took the other day the children are incredibly beautiful. Some have tremendous smiles (though they rarely show them on pictures) or beautiful eyes or well done hair (though that’s mostly reserved for the more grown ups). All in all they are the cutest things ever…

Even after the picture was taken she was not quite sure what to think. She was shy and quiet, but curious as she kept studying our every move.

How can you say no to that smile?!

She was born in June – look at those lips…

Little Jaime – the youngest son of one of the leaders in the community

The older children seem to be a little more reserved than the very young ones. So they are usually quietly curious, as this one was.

He was one of them that could not stop giggling whenever we took a picture.

He and his friend (see below) followed us, I think, for an hour. They kept on laughing and jumping around and trying to get our attention and of course have us take more pictures of them.

He was wonderfully confident and though he was a little older than the rest of them, he was equally amused by all the pictures.

And that’s the friend I mentioned above. There are no words for a smile like that!

We were watching a community lesson and this girl was looking up at Talmadge.

Here are the two boys together that followed us all morning…and the famous camera that brings all that joy into theirs and our lives.

Our First impressions of Care For Life

 

This is Tal...
We are learning so much these days and each day we feel like the learning curve gets steeper!  We've decided that we are just going to just write the little that we know about Care For Life and then as we get more understanding, we will add more understanding in future posts.

Before Care For Life: Organizations would come into communities and give food and provisions to try to help the people of Mozambique. This would help people for a few weeks and then the people would look for the next truck full of food or provisions. It was all about GIVE, GIVE, GIVE.
Care For Life's approach is different. They work with families and not for people. They believe that the families (and individuals) need to take charge of their lives and their future. They believe that people need to work in order to better their situation. Each family works for rewards instead of receiving a hand out.

Family Preservation Program:
The core program of Care For Life is the Family Preservation Program.  It is my understanding that the Family Preservation Program (or FPP) is exactly what it says it is… all about the preservation of the family. Joao (the program director) was telling me last night that the problem with aid in Africa is that many people are focusing on the wrong things. Organizations try valiantly to fix the results of broken families (orphans, vulnerable children, etc) and some have good results while others don't get anywhere. It's my understanding that Care For Life and the FPP is more about the offense (working with and teaching families how to strengthen) rather than the defense (working to fix the problems caused by broken families).
Care For Life started the FPP program about 4 years ago. It is basically a program where Care For Life is a partner (not a provider) to a community (they are currently working with 8 communities). CFL works with communities for 3 years and during that time the families in the community focus on self reliance and sustainability in all aspects of their lives.
When I first heard this, I thought well, that sounds nice, but I bet it is really hard to get people to change the things that they are used to doing. People like to receive handouts and don't want to have to work. Well, so far I am seeing that I was wrong. I have seen over the last few days that this approach is working. I know it has only been a few days and we are already seeing that there are lots of hitches and difficulties, but overall I have seen that this program really is working.

What does CFL want Tal and Anita to do?
One of the communities is now finishing its third and final year in the FPP. We have been asked to really dig into the community of Mungassa and find the good and bad outcomes of this program.  We will do focus groups, conduct in depth surveys, and really ask the tough questions of how things went over the last three years.  We are also interested in finding out if the families will now continue to practice the principals learned over the last three years.
I am excited to say that we had the chance to see "our" community of Mungassa for the first time today. It is a beautiful, verdant place where people take good care of their land.  It has nice dirt paths between hand made houses and gardens. It has palm trees and banana trees everywhere and kids follow us wherever we go. The people all wave at us and are very familiar with Care For Life.
One of our tasks while here is to collect at least 130 surveys from individual families in the Mungassa community. We had the chance to do our first two surveys today with two different families.
After asking a bunch of questions, here is what our first interviewee,  Dique, said about Care For Life and their involvement in his life and the life of his family:

"This work is for us to do... not for Care For Life. It is for us to do ourselves. The cleanliness, the building of latrines, the washing of hands, taking baths... These things are for us and for the good of our bodies... We, in Mungassa are very happy. Before [CFL] we didn't have very many houses, now we have houses. Before we didn't have bricks, now we have bricks. Mungassa is clean! This cleanliness will continue. Now that this has been taught, we won't stop and we will teach our children."

I know, it sounds rehearsed and like a perfect answer, but this shows the kind of impact Care For Life is having on at least one family.  We are excited to really dig in and find out what has worked well and what really needs to be done better next time. 

Below is a picture of Dique (the man who gave the quote) with his son