Chicken feet and Mendellian genetics....

Arlindo is a medical student who I am working with in the clinic. He is acting as my translator/Portuguese tutor while I see patients in the clinic. He failed a class last semester (more on that later) and, since he is waiting around for two months until he can resume classes, he was hired to work with me. It works out well: I blunder through taking a medical history in Portuguese, when the patient looks at me as if I´m from another planet, he tells them what I thought I was saying, and then corrects my grammar. In return, I like to think I impart a little teaching. There are certainly some things that I can teach him, but he has taught me a lot too, about tropical diseases, Mozambique culture, etc. He is smart, and has excellent communication skills, and has been fun to work with.

He invited me to join him tonight, first to meet his wife, Joaquina, and young son, and see where he lives, and after, to join him at the night school class that he teaches. He teaches 3 high school classes, 4 evenings a week. Inn one class he is covering Mendelian genetics. There is an albino in the class, and he asked if I would mind talking about the genetics of albinism(in Portuguese!). He apparently is not aware that it has been 23 years since I studied the subject, and must have a higher opinion of my ability to communicate in Portuguese than I do. Sensing a trap, of course I said yes.

In turns out that, In addition to being a full time, fifth year medical student (a six year program), he is married, has an 8 month old son, is the minister of his own church, teaches high school in the evenings, and, in his spare time, is building a new “house”. So, hard to understand how he could fail a class.

After clinic, he took me to see the new “house” he is building. He purchased a tiny postage stamp of a lot (pretty much someone´s driveway), and is putting up a small, two room concrete structure, probably about 200 square feet. The real purpose of the evening, I suspect, is to solicit a donation so he can complete the project. He needs another $100 or so, and has to finish before the end of the month when he will be displaced from the church (where he is living now) by several missionaries who are coming from Brazil.

Then he walked me through the ghetto to the church, where I met his wife and young son (photo). We had “cha”, which is tea and included a snack. The snack was left over rice, and a 2 Tupperware containers of “stuff” to put on top. The first container had a few small pieces of fish with sauce, but he said, no , there wasn´t enough, so he opened the second container. To my delight, this was stuffed to the brim with fried, many-fingered objects that, on closer inspection, looked suspiciously like chicken feet. I back-pedaled as fast as I could, so as to avoid falling off that precipice, and insisted that I really wasn´t all that hungry after all, and a little bit of fish would be plenty for me. The sound of Arlindo crunching through a pile of chicken feet (yes, that is what they were, and he ate them bones and all!) is one I shall not soon forget.

Peter had offered me use of his car to get to the class, since he wants me to learn to drive it (more on THAT in a later post), so the next challenge: driving in a wrong handed car, in the dark, during rush hour, while dodging thousands of people walking in all directions, including drunks, people in wheel chairs and even one guy with a hemiparesis walking down the middle of the street with a cane, all the while playing bumper cars with the other drivers. (Peter says that if the cop stops me, a “fine” of about 200 meticals would help lubricate the wheels of justice.) When we got there, I couldn´t figure out how to get the keys out of the ignition, and with the alarm blaring and lights flashing (in the school yard, students all around), I had to call Peter for instructions.

Class started (WHAT am I doing here?). The preacher in Arlindo came out as he started things rolling (He has a geat presence in front of a crowd). My turn came, and I stood in front of a sea of African faces, (and one albino), and dutifully gave what I shall pretend was an erudite discourse on Mendelian genetics and albinism. In what I hope was Portuguese. (as an aside, there has been a rash of murders of albino´s recently in neighboring Tanzania, and their body parts sold for their presumed magic properties). One thing I learned at Harvard was that if you stand up in front of a crowd and act like you know what you are talking about, then many people will think that you do. I did my best. Afterwards, I was asked a many questions, among them, “do albinos really die?- I heard that they just disappear”, and “if a black person and a white person had children, would they be albino?”. (I mentioned Barack Obama). Either I fooled them, or they were being polite, but I got a standing ovation at the end.

Another school yard car alarm-flashing lights fiasco (phone call to Peter again!), and a run around the bumper car circuit, and here I am.

I think I will make a donation for Arlindo´s and Joaquina´s new house.