It was a dark and stormy night. The rain falls. The termites rise. The streets are empty except for thieves about to begin their nightly rounds. We were taught at Kenya Safari that the key to survival in Africa is contingency planning. Contingency planning means imagining all the really awful things that could happen to you in Africa and then taking steps to ensure that these things don’t happen to you. One problem with this method is that there are really a lot of bad things that can happen to you. A snake can bite you. You can be raped. You can be robbed or chopped up with machetes. You can have a car accident and everyone but you can die. You can eat some restaurant food just crawling with parasites and get an intestinal disease and spend all night barfing and then slowly waste away and die. Your children can get kidnapped. Your spouse can go crazy. Your whole family can get malaria and waste away and die. A dog can bite you. Someone who wants your house can get you kicked out of the country. If you look the wrong way at a government official they can revoke your papers and give you 24 hours to get out of the country. You can go native. Your kids can go native. Natives can attack your kids on the way home from school. Your kids can attack natives. Your supporters back home will decide that you’re a bad investment and send you into a freefall of poverty. You can partner with the wrong Mozambican and get ostracized by all the others. You can step on a nail. You can be ensnared by pornography. Or by a prostitute. Or a maid. Or by not reading your Bible every day. You can accidentally build your house on the grave of a really nasty spirit and cut yourself with a knife. You can get robbed at the market. And robbed at the border. And robbed in your home. And robbed in your yard. You can drop your passport. You can lose your residency papers. You can fill out a form incorrectly. You can have a broken tail light. You can drive your car in an unsafe manner.

The opportunities for contingency planning are endless. Our early years in Mozambique I ran things like a military insertion behind enemy lines. I knew what to do. My wife knew what to do. Sometimes I literally made the kids fall in and stand at attention. They were forbidden to play hide and seek. We had a first aid kit the size of suitcase. We carried important papers and spare cash, and 20 liters of extra fuel at all times, and a spare pair of underwear just in case. There was no detail to small to be considered in protecting ourselves from Mozambique and Mozambicans.

Fast forward ten years. A young couple fresh from Georgia is getting settled in Tete. We don’t warn them about anything. We send them out into the bush to get to know Mozambicans because in ten years we have never been mistreated. We’ve never felt unsafe. We’ve been treated curiously but courteously. Whatever you do, don’t do contingency planning. Take each day as it comes. Discover each path as it appears before your feet. Relax in the knowledge that Mozambicans are wonderful people. Even the rascally ones. Which in Tete means most of them. The people of Tete are straight-talkers and confrontational get in your face and tell you what they think. Contingency planning is for the Marines. But walk-by-faith, seat-of-your-pants kind of folks like missionaries need to spend more time praying and less time planning. They need to spend less time thinking about what bad guys can do to them and more time thinking about what nice things they can do for the good guys. Ask An African. Spend time with Africans. But don’t do the Mother Theresa thing and hang out with the dredges of society. Spend your time with the princes and the queens. Get to know the big shots and the high rollers. To do that you need to put your kids in the most expensive school in town and just socialize with all the moms and dads waiting for their kids outside the gate.

Don’t get me wrong. I like poor people. Some of my best friends are poor people. In fact when I travel to the US I am a poor people. But in Mozambique I am an elite. Middle class people don’t know what to do with me. They’re happy to chat and they certainly don’t feel inferior to me. But azungus are azungus. We have special needs. We see the world in a different way from the average uneducated farmer and his wife. For better or worse we have a certain amount of sophistication that makes hanging out with country bumpkins awkward for everyone involved.

The only thing contingency planning is good for is giving yourself a stomach ulcer. Or pre-judging every person you meet based on whether they look like a thief or a corrupt official. For all our “fellowship of man” rhetoric we really do live in a world of us and them. But the dividing line is not between blacks and whites. In Mozambique the dividing line is social and economic. The most satisfying relationships I have with Mozambicans are based on equality. If you compared our bank accounts there might not be much equality but for all intents and purposes in this society we are equals. In my case this includes educators and government officials. This also includes pastors and church leaders at the provincial or national level. In 2004, I began to realize that I was a bigshot. At least in Mozambique. In the US I’m completely anonymous (and I love that. Really.) But in Africa where the layers of society are clearly demarcated, I can pat myself on the back for being countercultural and being all chummy with domestic workers and lowly public servants. But that kind of behavior just confuses Mozambicans and undermines the relationships I should be cultivating at the highest level of society. There’s no such thing as grassroots in Mozambique. Everything dies at the roots. But if you can influence someone at the top, everyone underneath them will fall over themselves trying to agree with you as well.

Our relationships with Mozambicans really started to flourish. At some point we got tired of waiting for people to ask us over and we just asked them. Granted in the early days of our life in Tete we had invited people over to our house for dinner. But we never made the Mozambican food to their liking. For one thing, Mozambicans like a grotesque amount of salt on their food. They will literally shake a salt shaker for five or ten seconds over their meal until it must take like a salt lick. They also use a shocking amount of sugar in their tea.  What’s the deal with that? I think it partly has to do with ntsima. Mozambicans eat ntsima right out of the pot. Imagine grabbing scalding hot bread dough that sticks to your fingers and you have to suck it off to keep your fingers from getting blisters. In some cases this can cause malnourishment among small children since the adults can consume everything before it’s cool enough for a child to touch. That is the exception. The master of the house will always keep an eye on the children as they eat and make sure no one is taking more than their share. When people put scalding hot ntsima in their mouths it sears their taste buds. After years of eating this scalding goo they can’t taste anything unless they’ve coated it thickly in salt.

Another reason they use so much salt in Mozambique is because it’s there. I need to ask an anthropologist why, but Mozambicans always consume everything. They never save. They never consider dieting. If there is enough food on the table for ten people and only two people to eat it then the two will eat it all. Even so, I’ve seldom met a fat Mozambican. They try to get fat. Fat is beautiful. When Hilary and I come back from the US with an embarrassing amount of extra poundage, everyone compliments us on how good we look. Someone would come over and say something to Hilary and then I’d hear her in the other room saying, “American women do not like to be called fat.” For Africans, being fat is the best insurance policy. Skinny people are either starving or dying from AIDS. So nobody wants to look skinny. It’s always shocking to us when we go back to the US and see how fat everyone is. And they diet continuously. And talk obsessively about their weight. The worst is fat pastors. My church denomination has probably had to reinforce the chairs on the platforms of their churches to support the weight of all those reverends. If they really wanted to reduce the size of their rever-ends they could come over to Africa for six months. Here the food is healthy (when you can find it). And you spend a lot of time walking and carrying water and other activities that sedentary Americans would find amusing for about five minutes. If you are a pastor and you’re fat I apologize if I’ve offended you. Come to Africa and everyone will tell you how beautiful you are.