So today is Drew’s
Birthday, he would have been 26.
The thing is I’ve started and
stopped this piece a few dozen times now trying to get it to what I thought
would be perfect. To make sure I was
doing something absolute to honor my fellow volunteer, roommate, and friend
Andrew Jennings Farr. But as I tried to
approach the story of how we met, found out we were going to be living with
each other, got to know each other in 6 months to the point I am only familiar
with a few good friends the post just kept getting erased by me because it just didn't feel right to be writing this at all. Our
crossing of paths wasn’t something epic, awe inspiring, or even that comical. We
were put together and being the easy going guys we both were, we started to
make the best of it. Also helped that we
shared many of the same interests, hobbies, thoughts, hopes, and doubts that we
came to know about each other during the many porch side talks we shared at our
little blue house in the dessert. So the
next few paragraphs are just about the man I got to know and a couple events we
got to share. How I am so fortunate to have
gotten to know him the way I did and why I’ll miss my buddy Drew dearly.
I can’t
exactly remember the first meeting Drew and I had, can almost guarantee that it
was over a frothy local brew of 2M and possibly during a city wide blackout in
our training town; which is a good possibility why I can’t conjure up the exact
mental image. Though after I found out
we’d be living together on site placement day the previous expectations of mine in not wanting a roommate did not come back, and our fellow trainees just kept
agreeing that we seemed like a solid pairing and would have a good time in each
other’s company while all the way up there in Tete. True it was too. After getting up to our 2 year home we
discovered both of us had sort of wished for the same thing in a site. Some place not flat with a sweet backdrop and
just enough mato (African bush) in the surrounding area to explore and get lost
in. We both had good backgrounds in the
outdoor sector and were looking to
taking advantage of that as much as possible while here in the uncharted area
that our PC Director described to us as the ‘Wild West’ of PC Moz sites. Drew was an Eagle Scout and he had me hooked a
few times with some stories about backpacking around the desert highlands of
northern New Mexico. Hiking around our
house and going for trail runs was something we both liked to do often and found
a lot of solace in them. They were something
awesome that we would look forward to at the end of a work week or day and we
knew was very unique to our site and made the place that much cooler to
us. We came up with ideas of trying to
map out all the cattle trails and footpaths zig-zagging the mato near our house
sort of like trail guides and maybe getting other volunteers up to our site for
backpacking expeditions. Even threw around
the idea of starting a Mozambican Boy Scouts a bunch, though we sort of came to
the conclusion that the novelty of roughing it would be lost on people who
already cook on charcoal and fire every day and could probably out last us in
the wilderness. But that was a big part
of our bonding, the outdoors. Both of us
were always up for roughing it just to go the extra distance and see what we
could find the cheapest and easiest way.
We were making plans to try and camp all over this country. And from the couple trips we made, we were a
pretty good team.
Drew
had this awesome laugh that used to KILL me anytime we found ourselves in an
awkward situation whether it was somewhere lost in communication with a friend
or colleague. Realizing we were being
hit on rather bluntly by a lady of the night and our Portuguese was less than stellar
enough to smoothly back our way out.
Catching each other with that ‘WTF did I just watch’ look on our faces
after a crazy event or a buddy showing us the latest and greatest video that
was being passed around by the citizens of Chitima. The laugh always cut the awkward tension at
just the right moment, where we were both coming to the realization of what was
going on but others around us hadn’t quite yet or weren’t going to ever
understand what we both thought about what was going on. It’d always come up slowly like a cork about
to pop and I could hear the low chuckling start as the grin quickly spread his
mustache as far as it could go across his face, then the chuckles would get
louder, faster, and deeper as it turned into a full on laugh where I most
definitely could never resist the urge to join in. Depending on the situation we could get pretty
loud at times. The first dinner we had
in Chitima our first night and with our first friend, Salvador, who called us
off the street coming back with some beers from the village market and he fed
us right there and then. Sitting across
from each other at the table outside, a lady who had eaten with us, and drank a
little too much apparently, began being extra friendly with me and told me she
liked what she saw and for me to give her a compliment immediately (my
Portuguese is terrible at this moment in time) with an absolute dead stare of
seriousness after she had said it. I
just looked at Drew and asked him if I was hearing her right in English? She
than snapped in my face for looking to Drew and repeated what she had said. At that moment the laugh came bursting out of
Drew and I couldn’t keep it in after that as well. She didn’t find it very funny and just kept
the death stare the whole time. Or the
crazy adventure and oddity of how we got our chicken Rio; you all read that
post. We couldn’t stop laughing our
asses off when we got home with our own galo in the house and debriefing the
whole afternoon we were both there for to each other.
(Our First Friend Salvador)
Porch
talks, they’re something I always bring up when I’m talking about Drew. Often the center point on how I can say he
became a good friend in such sort time.
How we were making it through the ups, downs, boredoms and excitements
of the 2 month limbo after training for us education volunteers, and during the
game changer that was the start of school.
It was exactly just that in the simplest form. Just two guys shooting the breeze over a
couple beers and smoke with no one around at the end of a day. We hit all the major topics: family, up
bringings, past relationships, hobbies, first times and lasts, school,
politics, the outside world, hopes, ideas, and crazy dreams. Literally crazy dreams sometimes cause of the
vivid and crazy ones we often got with our anti-malaria meds. They were good talks and we built trust and
respect for each other off them I believe.
They are a lot of what I’ll always remember him by aside from the good
times we shared here in Chitima. Here
are a couple of my favorite things I learned about my guy while we were
throwing back a few on our dusty porch.
Drew had some awesome tattoos, one of which was his family motto
‘Without Stain,’ in Latin I believe, to which he pointed out was ironically
funny because it was a tattoo. Drew was
an AWESOME musician, dude could jam on the guitar which I was always an added
porch talk bonus when he busted it out.
He even tried to help my helpless ass play the harmonica, I think we
sounded pretty good but I’m musically inept.
He was in Band Corp. during his college years at the Citadel in
Charleston and was the lead trumpeter in his later years. Which lead to one of his other tattoos, he
had the beginning to Taps across his collar bone turning into a heartbeat. While living in Charleston he claimed to once
be the biggest habanero pepper dealer in city as he had a solid harvest one
season out of his backyard garden and was selling them for $20 a baggie to
locals stopping by his front door from a craigslist ad he put up. One time he said he fell in love with a
Mozambican woman on the dance floor he had had the pleasure of dancing with to a
song or two with while we were in the neighboring town of Songo. As we were leaving he told me to wait, and he
turned around ran back up on the dance floor and laid the biggest loudest
smooch on this woman’s check leaving her slightly embarrassed and quite stunned
I’m sure. His fantastic laugh followed
shortly thereafter when he returned and I just stared at him baffled and on the
verge of cracking up myself. It was
reminiscing with Drew about the times here, then, and way back when along with
our own projections for the future which we picked each other brains and busted
the others balls over the less than occasional out there idea that I know I’ll
most certainly look back on when my service is over as some of the better
simple moments.
It’s
actually really hard for me not to remember Drew each day. Completely beside the fact that I’m back here
in Chitima in the same house. Which if you have read any of this post or any of my others involving him and our times together I’d hope you could see why I
couldn’t just let this place go to the wayside and become a memory with such an
abrupt and terrible ending. This place
was the starting of too good of a story and time in my life for me to not come
back and try to keep the great stuff that we set in motion going. But because of those short 6 months I was
with Drew I can hear and feel his presence a lot. From the music I jam out to all day
constantly here. He definitely showed me
a thing or two about the art, upgraded my collection a bit too; Interpol has
become one of my go-tos now and I got no one but him to thank. Can’t help but laugh hysterically when a three
6 Mafia song finds its way on too, the unofficial band of Chitima’s
shenanigans. The food I cook here is
exponentially better because of his inside knowledge and experience, plus the
friendly unspoken competition I think we had going when we traded off cooking
dinners helped. So while our time in
each other’s lives was cut terribly short, his presence in mine won’t be over
anytime soon or even long after my time here in Mozambique comes to a
close.
Estamos Juntos
R.I.P. 25-3-16
