Monday, November 10, 2003

September 20, 2003 --- Chimoio, Mozambique

Lucky Bean of Life Game

Take one bean in the palm of your right hand. Clasp it lightly. Close your eyes. Imagine the things that you would like to come to pass in your life. Open your eyes and smile. Then, with a light touch, cast your bean upon the board. Take note of where it lands. If it lands in one of the areas indicated by an illustration – dreams, treasure, family, children, travel, love – you will have luck in that area. You have three casts of the bean. If all your casts land between the areas of good luck, don’t worry. It’s simply the same as ever – you have to go on making your own luck !! Good luck!


Mixed-Up Recipe Game

This game is ideal for any adult for whom the kitchen is a dangerous no man’s land. Find a recipe for something fairly simple. For example, it could be something as simple as pancakes, but you have to name it something else just in case someone has cooked this dish before. List the steps. Number them. Then scramble them. Print them in all their disordered glory on a recipe card. Then mix them up with ten other mixed-up recipes. Have the player draw a card. He or she must figure out how to make the item, and will be given an opportunity to show how accomplished he or she is as a chef (or as a cooking forensicist!). Give all the competitors the same amount of time, and the same setup. Let them try to cook what is on the recipe card. Advise them that they follow the steps at their own peril!!

After all the fun is over, gather up all the donated recipes, unscramble them, then publish them in a book. You may even wish to publish pictures of the “creations” made by the “winners.” (Be sure to get their permission first to avoid lawsuits or domestic disputes.) You may wish to keep the original names for them. For example, cakes containing vanilla could be “Vanilla Vibe,” cookies containing red and yellow food coloring could be “Sunny Side of Life.”


Dogs of Chimoio Business Risk Game


Puki, the happiest dog of Chimoio, wants to start up a little garden and marketing business. He’s not sure how to start, so he buys a package of paprika seeds, tomato plants, pepper plants, lettuce, and some packaging, boxes, and other items for selling them. He shares an orange Fanta at O Sitio with his best friends, Rui, Rauf, Rokcelo, and Marquitos. They like his idea and decide they want to do the same. So, they embark on their journey. Whoever ends the game with the most dinheiro and prize items is the winner of the game. You roll the dice and land on different places. The steps you land on can be either lucky or unlucky. You can win bones, free trips on a collective transport vehicle, fertilizer, weed-killer, pest-killer – or, you can have attacks of bugs, of plant disease, be robbed, or have your crop washed away. You can also have the opportunity to borrow money, then sell your crops.




Things that can befall the Dogs of Chimoio

--attacks of bugs
--plant disease
--robbery
--flood
--stray dog attack

Good luck and prosperity things that can come to pass

--bones
--free trip on collective transport vehicles
--if fertilizer purchased and applied you double your crop yield
--if weed-killer purchased and applied you may triple crop yield
--if pesticide purchased and applied you may double crop yield



September 19, 2003 --- Chimoio, Mozambique



Today’s the big day. It’s the grand opening of the Agricultural Fair. The fair grounds are looking nice – fresh coats of paint, flowers, landscaping. The fair officially opens at 2 pm. We should have something in place by noon. I’m wearing a skirt, nice black jacket, and will wear mock-croc pumps. I’ll give the impression of respect needed if the Minister or Governor tours our booth. I’m amazed at how long it takes to construct a couple of posters if you have to do so many things that it turns what should have been a 2-hour project into something taking three days.

--find the images in image libraries and process them
--find new ink cartridges
--build all original clip art, optimize them, then print them
--do everything in Portuguese
--print out all labels, then print them out
--buy scissors and glue sticks to be able to cut & stick to poster board
--buy special poster board

This is not to mention the first and foremost challenge, which is to try to figure out what on earth the posters are supposed to be about, and what the project itself is about. Lifting text from the annual report was inspired. Still, I’m trying to throw up as many smoke screens as possible to distract people, and keep them from looking too closely at the quality of the posters. How do you do a layout when you don’t have a flat surface, t-squares, ruler, triangles, Xacto knives… in essence, NOTHING that normal drafting offices would have (10 years ago). Ahhhh – the joy of challenges. “Hand-crafted” is what we can say about these posters.




Yesterday, we had three visiting association heads in the office. They were quickly put to work drawing smiley faces on white kidney beans. “Feijao da boa sorte” – feijao magicos … but I guess you can’t say that. I drew a few beans with fangs. They looked surprisingly menacing. Everyone wanted to throw a few of those into the mix, but it was overruled.

“Only happy, smiley faces!” Hey, I can do that. In fact, I can become a bean myself and keep smiley face affixed. It has become an existential condition. Grrrr.

I’m still not completely convinced that this will not be a complete disaster. The board onto which guys will throw the beans to see where they have good luck has the following categories –

--amor
--familia
--crianca
--prosperidade
--viagem
--sonho

Other stuff. So, all in all, we’ll have the following stuff to put up –

--posters
--flyers
--report
--beans and corn guessing game
--visitor’s book
--baskets
--cards
--Magic Bean Good Luck Game

Yeah. I feel like quite the wedding planner. I need some coffee.



September 14, 2003 -- Chimoio, Mozambique.


It’s cold and rainy. It’s 4:45 am and I’m wide awake – partially from time difference and jet lag, and partially because there are some roosters nearby that are crowing the dawn into being. It has been raining non-stop since around 5 pm yesterday afternoon. I suspect that by now, the dusty, clayey roads are thick with mud. I’m glad I brought clothes to jettison. I’m now wishing I had brought a few of the old sweatshirts I had put in the Habitat for Humanity donation box I put out on the front porch before I left. It’s surprisingly cold. It reminds me of Vermont in August, with the chill, damp breeze and surprisingly harsh sound of raindrops on tin, tile, or broad, flat leaves. I’m looking the clothes I brought with me. One jeans jacket. Lots of baggy, long-sleeved white cotton shirts I bought a few years ago at a sample shop. They are nice Nordstrom’s or Dillards-type brands, but they all have that late 90’s look that makes one appear instantly 20 pounds heavier. I can drape them over the baggy, fairly worn-out pants I brought with me, also suitable for jettisoning. Thankfully, there are no full-length mirrors in the immaculate bed and breakfast where I’m staying.

Dogs yelping and barking. Serious whining. Snake? They said the snakes stay away during the dry season. This is looking like the rainy season to me. It’s cold. Why are those dogs yelping? What is going on out there?