December
·Christmas: Went to a beach called Linga Linga with 15 other volunteers. We basically had our own private tropical beach with a view of both the ocean and the bay. We cooked all of our meals over an open flame. We did a secret Santa present swap and generally we just hung out and enjoyed each others company
January
·New years was cool. I went to tofo beach with some friends, we hung out on the beach yet some more (I got two painful sun burns over the Christmas- new yeas period). On new years eve itself we went out to the beach with a huge crowd of people and listened to the typical Mozambique house music blasting from big speakers. Then when it hit midnight lots of people started to set off their own fire works all over the beach. It was really pretty but it also felt like a war zone because you never knew when one was going to go off right in front of your face. A lot of people were setting them off at low angles so they would explode only 3 feet above most people's heads. That was a little scary. In general it was a good way to kick off the new year. Life was good, everything in my life was more or less taken care of and going well. God hates it when that happens.
·The rest of january pretty much sucked. I got a really bad fever of 102.75 for almost a week. My brother ended up in the hospital after falling 4 stories, there was a hurricane that hit northern Mozambique. There was also a bunch of other random crap that cumulatively made me feel like the rug had been pulled out from under me. This was definitely the hardest time for me to be living by myself out in the middle of nowhere. What got me through was my other Moz 16 friends who really had my back.
Febuary
·I went to Mapuo to take the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) to see what it was like and how I would do. I got a better idea of what to study for in preparing for this test. I did not pass but I came very very close and I did not do any studying. So I will take it again in a year and if (fingers crossed) I pass that time , then I will be able to take the oral exam in DC right when I get out of Peace corps in 2013.
·Also, a good friend from Training came to my town for a weekend. Myself and the other volunteer at my site showed him around and had a good time having drinks on the bay as we watched the sun set followed by eating a plate of two T-bone steaks, salad and fries for less than 5 USD.
March
-Early March started off with “Bro Summit.” There are not many guys in peace corps. I thinkin Mozambique about a forth or a third is male. So we had big weekend for all the dudes to hang out with each other, talk shit, play video games, at pizza, involve ourselves in any number of competitions. Also we went swimming at night in a spot that had a bunch of bio luminescence. When I ran through the water it looked like I was a super hero :)
-My real birtday: I basically just ran around town with a few friends listening to music, drinking J&B on the rocks and eating all the nice Tourist food and I normally don't waste my money on (like a steak and blue cheese sandwich)
-My birthday Party was a big cook out in the sandy area outside my house. I invited 10 friends over and we all grille everything and ate over a table we pulled outside. I had a metal worker create a large rectangular grill. I dug a pit and had it rest over two cinder blocks and threw a bunch of charcole in the pit. I went to the Market and bought a large fish that had been caught that day. They gutted it and cut it up for me right there and I took the pieces back to my house in plastic bags. It was cooked in a butter, garlic, rosemarry,lemon sauce. We made potatoes and vegtables and all of it ened up getting cooked in the same sauce. It was great, real butter it difficult to get a hold of so it was a real treat. Everyone brought stuff and pitched in and it was a lot of fun. Also an expat friend brought over arugala and Sees candy and ice cream. That was pretty awesome..
-project design and management conference: All the Moz 16 volunteers who live in Southern Mozambique had our PDM conferencye at the end of the Month. It was really great to see some volunteers I had not seen in a while and for everyone to be together but in general the conference kinda sucked. It was really hot those days. The conference room had no AC, the water and power kept going in and out. My org sent me with a guy that does not consistently work with the org. He was great and he came up with a great idea for a project my org could do, but I did not know him very well and I have not really seen him since in order to follow up with his project idea. Honestly, most of what I have been doing has been helping some of the people in the office learn how to write up reports and forms using Word and Excel. I also got one person to write up a monthly schedule for the HIV home care project that is currently going on. She has consistently been writing up these monthly schedules for the past 5 months and it had really helped out around the office and helped the people doing the ome care visits. So, I feel really proud of myself for helping to initiate this new practice, but now there is not anything more for me to do because she has totally taken over 9which is the best posible outcome)
April
I went to a town called Panda in Southern Mozambique. It was really cool. It was a beautiful ride in with lots of wild flowers and a view of rolling hills on one side and a vast plain on the other. The area was hard hit by the war for independence and the civil war. One woman told me how one side durring the civil war would raid Panda. They burned down her school so then she learned how to shoot an AK47 and through grenades so the town could defend itself from the following raids. The town had electricity and running water befor independence but building the town back up had been long coming. Electricity should finally return back to the town within the next few months. There are a lot of old torn up colonial buildings. For some reason it is really beautiful to see some of these old bombed out colonial buildings all over grown with plants. The main road has some of these run down buildings and a growing number of new government buildings that have recently been put up in the past 5 years. Really, the current town center is now off of the main road where there is a large maze of market stores made of cement block buildings and reed shacks. People sell everything there and it is where the one restaurant is and a few simple bars. Somehow they are able to run refrigerators off of gas tanks, no electricity. I don't get it.
I guess my plans now are just to focus on trying to get something back at square one with my org and trying to get some project started. I am going to try and stay at my site more and get to know some of my neighbors better. But honestly, I am probably going to break down and head up to central or northern Mozambique within the next couple months. The unknown areas, towns and cities are, for lack of a better phrase, calling to me. I also think I am going to take some more trips to the beach close by just to chill out every once and a while. The strange thing is that it is very stressful to not be doing much when you really do want to be doing and accomplishing something.
