“Estamos Juntos”

All PCVs in Mozambique will be familiar with the expression “Estamos juntos.”  It is Portuguese (and Spanish), literally meaning “We are together” but it functions as a way to take leave or say goodbye.  Saying estamos juntos seems as common, if not more so, as saying “Farewell” (Fica bem) or “See ya’ later” (Até logo).  I first encountered the expression in Namaacha during Pre-Service Training, but I hear it now almost every day here in Cuamba.

The possibilities of interpretations for estamos juntos are fun to play around with.  The expression could be read as:  “We are joined together;” “We are united;” “We are in partnership;” “We’re linked;” “You and I are one;” “I’m leaving but I’ll still be with you, and you with me;” “Parting is such sweet sorrow, so let's keep in touch. . .”

Playfulness aside, what’s most interesting for me is the formal Tagalog translation, because one must decide between two interpretations—Estamos juntos, in Tagalog, could be interpreted as: 1. Magkasama tayo, or 2. Magkasama kami.  What’s crucial here is the first-person plural “We” which Tagalog splits in two, first as “tayo” (we-inclusive) and second, as “kami” (we-exclusive).  So, the we-inclusive number 1. of “We are together” in Tagalog could be interpreted as “We, you and I both, are together” (Magkasama tayo).  However, the we-exclusive number 2. would be “We, and others like me, but unlike you, are together.”

Perhaps a situational example can clarify.  Say for example you are a PCV in Cape Verde and, having served there for over a year, Peace Corps transfers you to another country and asks you to undergo “Pre-Service Training” again.  Naturally, you and others like you, would occasionally say during parts of this second training that, “We have done this already.”  In Tagalog your “we” must be “kami,” (I and other Cape Verde transfers, we) excluding the other trainees who are participating in PST for the first time.  Thus, “kami” excludes your listener(s), while “tayo” includes them. 

English and Portuguese (and perhaps all Indo-European languages) use only one word for “we” (nos in Portuguese, nosotros in Spanish, nous in French).  “Estamos juntos” is therefore ambiguous, obfuscating who “we” are.  In fact, you don’t even see nos in the expression; it’s omitted but is fused in the verb estamos.  Another way to look at it is that it doesn’t obscure “we,” but carries the double-entendre of “You and I—the both of us are together” (inclusive), and “We, Mozambicans, are united, but not with you, foreigner” (exclusive).

Generally speaking, I think Mozambicans mean the former when they use “estamos juntos,” but plenty of times I get the feeling they are actually saying the latter, acting as if they are only out for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world.  Let me list some examples that contradict “estamos juntos,” examples illustrating how disconnected “we” are:

• ·       Cutting in line at the ATM and at the padaria (bakery) and at the loja (store).
• ·       Next door neighbors throwing their trash in our backyard.
• ·       We’re told not to use an electric stove so that we do not hike up the electric bill of the school—but our next door neighbor has just installed an AC unit, and another neighbor just bought a commercial deep freezer (we found out because he showed us the English instructional manual for us to translate into Portuguese).
• ·       We’re told to use the gas stove provided by the school, but this stove is broken.
• ·       We’re told to buy gas tanks in town, but the town is 6 kilometers away, and we have no means of transporting gas tanks. . . and no one in town sells gas tanks anyway because most use carvão (charcoal).
• ·       We’re told that we have a meeting at 8am, but the meeting does not actually start till 9:15am
• ·       The facilitator of the meeting announces the names of colleagues who are either late or are absent, as a way of reprimanding their lack of punctuality and unprofessional behavior.
• ·       During the meeting, facilitators are sending or reading SMS messages on their cellphones.  One even answered the phone right in the middle of his announcements, and had a 5 minute conversation in front of his audience.

Our next door neighbors, as another example, also use our backyard to hang dry their clothes.  Is this what they mean by “estamos juntos”—that what’s yours is mine, and mine yours?  In our case, I think our back yard is seen as "theirs" because there is no reciprocity, no sharing between our two houses.  They share their garbage with us, but not much else.  They put up their clothesline in our backyard because, I think, they don’t want it blocking their own backdoor, and they want the extra space to hang the clothes of the two families living in their house.

I don’t mean to present too negative a view of Mozambique here.  Saying one thing and meaning or doing another is not at all particular to Mozambique, to be sure.  Certainly I saw the same “dog-eat-dog” world in Cape Verde, in the U.S., and in the Philippines.  It’s safe to say that hypocrisy is universal, that what varies is the degree of hypocrisy from country to country, culture to culture.  Perhaps what’s important, whether in a developing or a “developed” country, is to put up a mirror to that hypocrisy, to show reflections of the self from the other’s perspective, because things like “estamos juntos” only smokescreens the truth.

            So what is the “truth” behind “estamos juntos?”  Maybe it’s not a smokescreen at all, but more a sign of an aspiration, an expression of the Mozamibican dream of being united after the country’s civil war (1975-1992).  This aspiration we can see in their national anthem, in "Povo unido do Rovuma ao Maputo (People united from Rovuma [in the north] to Maputo [in the southern region]).  I know my experience is based only in Cuamba, Niassa; however, the disparity in levels of development between north and south seems to me very real.  So maybe “we” should not be read as “we Mozambicans,” or “we men,” or “we the elite, the ones in charge and in power (who are mostly men).”  I’m no expert on Mozambican history, but I can see that we are together in that we are all just working with and working through the postcolonial inheritance of rigid social hierarchies and inequities.  Taking this more historical perspective makes the challenges of living and working in Mozambique a little easier to take, or at least more understandable. 

The sign outside our school reads: "Mozambique--One and Indivisible"

Then again, is the “truth” we want really for everyone to be “juntos?”  Wouldn’t it be suffocating, maybe even repressive, to be lumped together in one big, monolithic “we?”  Wouldn’t we lose our independence, our autonomy, and our privacy?    

I don’t know.  Right now, what seems clear to me is the divisions, the separation, the isolation.  What seems clear is the everyday work of bridging the gap not just between utterance and meaning, between the word and the world, not just between writer and reader, but also between PCVs and host-country nationals (HCNs).  We really just need to keep talking to and keep interacting with our neighbors and with other HCNs.  Keep integrating.  There’s nothing else to be done.  Of course, it's easier said than done.

On another personal level, “estamos juntos” sounds like some wicked joke, now that I’m so far apart, so disconnected from most of you in the U.S., from those I met in Cape Verde, from the folks I got close to in PST 2.0.  I hate to always bring these blog posts to my own personal sodade, but maybe if I get more emails, calls or text messages, I’ll finally stop my griping.  Just drop me a line, for heaven’s sake!  Bridge the gap between our shared past and our present separation.  This gap between you and me.  
Estamos juntos.