tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61459065763434733602024-03-13T22:33:33.408-07:00Vivo em Moçambique.This blog will chronicle my 27 month Peace Corps Service in Mozambique. Beginning June 2011 and ending September 2013.Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-89845666427249164652013-07-15T06:38:00.000-07:002013-07-15T06:38:04.345-07:00My last 7 months<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Play by Play, My last 7 months in Peace Corps</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I arrive in Maputo from Tanzania and met up with
my uncle I took him to my site and then we hung out in Tofo for a few days with
an Australian photographer. It was a good time.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Man Weekend: Invited all the peace Corps Guys in
Southern Moz to come to my house for the weekend. We did a pub crawl in the
poor outskirts of town, just hopping from one small cement bar to the next
until we got back to my place. The next day we killed a goat and grilled it all
up. It was an excellent man weekend.</div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I took the Foreign Service Officer Test. I
passed <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">J</span></span>,
but eventually did not get invited to the interview in DC <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">L</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I started teaching the health workers at my org
how to make fruit jam and jar it properly to preserve it. (in addition to
continuing my normal work of supporting scheduling, monitoring and evaluation
of the come care program) </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Went camping out in the bush with a big group of
other volunteers near the town of Panda. It so happened to be on Valentines Day
so it was called Panda Love weekend. Renting outa minibus to drive you and your
friends out into the African bush=Awesome.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>My birthday is the same day as another volunteer
so we held a joint Birthday Party. We went to a Lagoon spot called Bilene. It
was low season so they said that we could just pay about 10 USA per person per
night and we could take as many cottages as wee needed. Some people rent a
beach house for their birthday weekend. We rented out 7! That was the most
pimped out Birthday ever. My friends even dropped balloons on me from the
balcony and put sparklers in my cake.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Helped coordinate a project proposal for Moringa
propagation (it’s a multi purpose plant, look it up), and soap production in
the community. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Had an American style cook out at my house and
went to the small beach close to my house along the bay.</div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Ran a pub quiz round about America during the
2013 Beach Beer Olympics for Moz Peace Corps Volunteers. It was not as
ridiculous as you may think. It was just some competitive drinking games
between the different regions and a lot of hanging out on the beach.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Then several of my friends all had birthdays in
early May, so they had a joint party at Tofo. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I immediately went to my Close of Service
conference that Sunday. I saw everyone from the group I entered Peace Corps
with and it was a really nice time (I forgot how good it was to sleep in a nice
bed, in a room with air conditioning and watch cable TV). But it was only 3
days and then everyone had to say goodbye and go their separate ways to finish
off our last 3 months at site. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Went to my friends site and I killed a duck and
we cleaned it and made a Vietnamise dish out of it. It was really good.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Went to Swaziland for a music festival called
Bushfire. I went with a big group of friends and it was a wonderful time. A
great atmosphere with a lot of art all around. Even though most the bands were
kind of bad, it was a great time and place to celebrate my second anniversary
of arriving in Africa. There was even a very small English pub with Guinness on
tap, a huge rarity in my life.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Went to my friend’s house in another site with a
musical friend of mine and we recorded a few random songs that we have been
improvising and improving over the past year.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I have been learning how to surf and now I can
pretty consistently stand up. Its awesome.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Went to a town called Fidel Castro to hold a
second Man’s weekend. Bars were crawled, pool was played, and the next day we
killed and cooked two ducks. I did not do the killing this time but I lent my
expertise and did most of the butchering. Then I made a duck liver pate as an
order and we stewed the meat with vegetables and spices for over two hours. It
was real good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I had some visitors from the incoming group of
volunteers that will start working when my group leaves. Another volunteer and
showed them around town and showed them our work. I also taught them how to
make tangerine marmalade as it is tangerine season right now and it is one of
the things I am teaching the health workers how to make and preserve. Now they
will go back to training for the next few weeks and prepare to enter site. I
will spend the next couple weeks preparing to exit my site, Mozambique, Africa,
and The Peace Corps.</div>
Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-50810724548119896912013-07-15T06:37:00.000-07:002013-07-15T06:37:25.146-07:00African Adventure Part 3, Play by Play <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Play by play, the last leg of my adventure.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Went to Ibo Island. A beautiful, old, slightly
abandoned colonial port.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Explored the ruins at night under a full moon.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Found where the locals eat despite everyone
telling me that the only places to eat were really expensive tourist hotels.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Discovered that there was no market in town as
it was not worth the cost to transport fruit and veg onto the island. So people
mostly just eat seafood with tomato paste and onion broth.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Explored some old Portuguese forts and a Hindu
crematorium. One of the forts has stacks and stacks of old colonial documents
just sitting around in disarray for anyone to look at.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Saw the wares of the silver smiths that continue
to work in one of the forts and make amazing jewelry.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>There are pieces of broken china all over the
island. I picked up a few choice pieces and had one wrapped in silver and
turned into a necklace. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Went on a Kayaking trip with my buddy.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The water we were in was the most striking blue
color I have ever seen in water. It was both deep blue and extremely bright.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>We were told to go out away from the island as
the waves would push us towards the stone cliffs on one of the points. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>We successfully avoided that point and
continued. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>We then decided that instead of going around
that point again (a lot of work the first time) we would just circle the Island
as we were almost half way around anyways.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>We continued for a bit before some strong waves
pushed us into a shallow rocky area and got our Kayaks stuck. We tried to
physically move them for a time with little success.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>We moved the kayaks as close to shore as
possible. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>It was decided that my fried would stay behind
with the kayaks and I would go get help.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I was to walk along the coast of the island
until I got to the town. On themap it did not look that far.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The map did not show that the section of the
Island I was entering was covered in Mangroves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I thought I was walking the coast of the Island.
In actuality, I was walking south along the Mngroves.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>It was all mud and sharp Mangrove sprouts, and
sharp coral rocks. The mud made it so I had to take off my sandals as they were
just getting stuck in the mud. So I hadto walk barefood<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and occasionally cut my feet and legs on
coral rock. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>At one point I was half swimming along the mangroves
and all the branches were covered in sharp mollusks that cut y hands. Holding
onto the branches to keep my balance was like sticking my arm in tangled razor
wire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I remember at this point thinking
“A year from now when I am working a desk job, I will look back on this as some
crazy shit, real adventurer stuff. But right now is really sucks.” </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Eventually I came across as small fishing
village. I talked with some people and discovered that I had followed the
mangroves all the way down to the next island.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>A family gave me some food and water.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Some people said the spirits had brought<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>me there.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I tried to see if we could get a boat to go get
my friend, but it was getting dark so instead I asked for a phone to call the
hotel we were staying at.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The people said that I had to meet with the head
of the neighborhood first. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I sat down with him and explained who I was and
the situation I was in. He called the hotel and I told them where my buddy was.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I needed a place to stay. No one would let me
stay at their house. I am a rich white tourist in their, even when stranded on
a desert island. The guy that ran the only guest hose on the island insisted
that I had to stay at his hotel and no one would rob him of this opportunity to
charge the white guy. I did not have any money so I had to promise to pay him
once I got back to Ibo.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The next day I woke up really early to see if I
could get back. The tide was really low so there were no boats going out. Some people
told me that they could show me the way to walk back to the town on Ibo at low
tide but I had to pay them 200 MTZ. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
Me: That is a lot of money. I need help. I
need to help my friend. I don’t have money with me. I am lost.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
Them: Yes, but all the white people pay 200
for guided walks through the Mangroves. So you have to pay the same price. You
can pay when we get to the town. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
Me: I am not doing this for fun. Right now
I am not a tourist, I am a person with a big problem and I need help. I can pay
you a little bit of money but 200 is way too much.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
Them: You are a tourist and the price for
anyone to show you the way is 200.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I left them because they were being ass holes
and had no sense of helping an individual in need.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I went back to sleep for an hour or two.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The tide had risen a bit and there were a few guys
with small boats out that they were pushing with long bamboo polls.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I flagged one down, he was going to take some
people and things to Ibo and he said he would take me with him. I still had to
pay 100 MTZ but at least it was the same price the Mozambicans were paying.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>It was a really cool ride through the channels
for the mangroves. Like the Wild African version on Venice. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>We got to the edge of the island but still had
to walk a bunch through the mangroves and the mud and the coral. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>I finally made it back to the town and the
Hotel. My friend was there and safe. They had found him sleeping on the beach
at 6 in the morning.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Then we just relaxed that day and ate a really
nice meal at the Hotel. Nothing like celebrating being alive and ok like a
plate of Lobster Pasta in Cream Sauce.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The next day my friend and I traveled down to
Pemba to celebrate Christmas with everyone from the group of volunteers we
entered Moz with. It took two car rides that both tried to charge us more than
they charged the Mozambicans sitting right next to us (we eventually got the
fair prices).</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>One of the drivers was talking to us about how
he admired white people and Chinese people because the “get things done” and
how he does not like the way black people act because they “don’t want to
work.” That’s right , a Black African, racist against other Black Africans.
It’s not that rare. On several occasions I have heard one person disapproving
of another person’s actions in some way by saying “Estas Negros!” (These Black
People)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>After several houses in a hot car with my big
bag on my lap we arrived I Pemba. Then We had to walk two kilometers to the
hostle everyone was staying at. All of that combines gave me heat exhaustion.
(This was the middle of the African summer.) So I said hi to everyone, drank a
bunch of water, ate a pizza, and went to sleep early when everyone else went
out to party.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>For the next couple days I just spent some solid
time with my friends and celebrated christmass. It was good and relaxing time.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Then My travel buddy and I flew to Dar es Salam,
Tanzania to begin our trip to Zanzibar. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Dar is a cool city. More developed than Maputo
(though they had not had energy for a week when I was there so everything was
run off of generators) and a mix of European, African, Indian, and Arab
cultures and races. All the Arabic women were in very elaborate garm. They were
fully covered or had only the face showing. They were in black and purple with
silver designs. Their hair was wrapped in cloth, in a tight, thick tube
sticking out from the back of their heads. This gave their heads an elongated
look. They almost looked like characters from a sci-fi movie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Ironic, the whole reason the Koran gives
women the option to veil themselves is to cover ornamentation, yet they do
everything they can to add ornamentation to the veils.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>One group of teenage girls had the words “Va
Husain”(or maybe Ya Husain)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>stitched
into the front of their forehead veil. The text was red and made to look as if
it were dripping blood. What ever the message (for or against Sadam Husain), I
thought it strange for a group of pretty teenage girls in elaborate space age
garb to be projecting such a violent message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Dar has a street filled with Big Hindu temples
and a bunch of Indian restaurants. Given my affinity for Indian food and
Hanuman, I hung outthere.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The next day we took the boat to Zanzibar. It
was air conditioned and I had a nice comfortable seat, and a Jacky Chan movie
was playing. It was possibly the best travel experience of the past two years. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The next few days were spent in stone town (the whole
reason I had come to Zanzibar). Simply, it was great. Layer of history, amazing
food, beautiful buildings, a Medieval Arabic Fort, views of the ocean A maze of
homes and shops, Masai warriors, Arabs, Indians, European tourists, the most
beautiful Muslim call to prayer I have ever heard (I did not even mind getting
waken up at sunrise). I could write about it for ever. So instead I will just
say: Look it up. (The one down side, the average person in Tanzania speaks very
little English. The average Mozambican speaks much better Portuguese.
Thankfully one of the guys that worked at our guest house had lived in
Mozambique for three years so we could ask him for advice in Portuguese whenever
we needed help with something. Winning.)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The rest of my time in Zanzibar was at Nungwe
and Jambiani. Both were beach side spots. Nungwe was the beach with lots of
stuff to do and a few big resorts. That was a lot of fun. There was a full moon
party on the beach and then New Years was two nights later. It was an excellent
time. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Jambiani was way quieter and ironically more
expensive as it was essentially a tourist trap. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Spent one more day in Stone Town. Hung out on
the second floor of an Indian restaurant overlooking the town and the ocean.
Also spent some time at a Bar called “Livingston’s.” it was about the last
place the English explorer Alexander Livingston was seen before disappearing
into the African Interior. About a hundred years ago this was a watering hole
for traders, explorers, and general adventurers. It was where men drank whiskey
and smoked cigars before risking everything on glorious quests… I was a little
disappointed when I walked inside to find that the whole thing had been gutted
and now looked like a Starbucks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
was no old time colonial authenticity left. So I snuck upstairs where they were
planning some construction work and found a back room area and some old wooden
stairs with elaborate carvings. In that spot I could see a little peek of what
this place used to be. That was good. That was what I came for. Then I
scrounged up some gin (cheap gin that is sold in plastic bags) and tonic water
with my buddy and some friends we made. It was night so most the places were
closed. It is a Muslim island so it is tough to just pick up some alcohol at
the corner store. We were able to find someone, who took us to his friends
house (a hole in the wall in the maze of stone town), who had some of this
cheap gin he was willing to sell us. I felt a little bad about waking up the
baby. So then we all were:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>myself, my Peace
Corps Moz travel buddy, a young English businessman on vacation, his English
friend who works in Uganda, a girl from Peace Corps Botswana, A friend of hers
who was visiting from the US, and a Korean guy who was riding his bike from
Cape Town to Nairobi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We sat down on the
beach in front of Stone Town at night and drank our gin and tonic. My African
Adventure was over.</div>
Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-16552498037190798952013-04-11T05:58:00.001-07:002013-04-11T05:58:49.511-07:00African Adventure Part 2<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 18pt;">Day 6, The worst travel day</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Our goal was to get to Gurue. My friend and I left Sena at 7:30 and got to Caia (an important crossroads town right before you cross the Zambezi river into the Provence of Zambezia) by 9. We got some really tasty goat curry with xima (boiled white corn meal) for breakfast. It would turn out to be the only thing we would eat for 12 hours. We tried hitch hiking and a really really nice car stopped for us. It was a big Range Rover SUV. It was air conditioned and really comfortable, and the guy driving it was supper nice. He even offered us some soda from his cooler he had in the car, though we declined. He and his wife were from Beira and traveling to Quilimane to start up a business. He dropped us off at Nicuidala and told us that if in two hours we had not got a ride he would be continuing up a little further north and drop us off at the crossroads for Gurue.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We walked towards the edge of town to try and hitch a ride. We ended up passing a military checkpoint. The soldiers asked to see our passports. (we don't actually have to have our pass ports on us at all times but law enforcement says we do so they can try to scare us and try and get bribes. So it is just a good idea to carry it to avoid long arguments.) After they realized we had all the right documentation they said, “It's really hot out today. Buy us some sodas.” Now, in Mozambique a soda (refresco) is slang for a bribe. So to this day I am not quite sure if they actually wanted us to buy them some sodas because it actually was a hot day, or if they were trying to just blatantly ask for a bribe even though there was nothing for us to bribe them to do. I just smiled and said no. They persisted for about a min but then just gave us our passports back.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> After about an hour of getting dropped off we got a ride with a group of guys going to Macuba. Macuba is a really pretty town set amongst rolling hills and small mountains that stick up out of nowhere. It is also a town with surprisingly good looking infrastructure compared with a lot of other towns in the area.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We were thinking of continuing to hitchhike towards our destination, but we spied a chapa that was going directly to our destination. A chapa is a privately owned minibus that acts like public transportation. It is supposed to fit 10 people, they usually fit between 20 and 25 inside one. It stops a lot, they are almost always in poor condition and in general very slow. You also have to pay a good amount of money for long trips. Which is why hitchhiking is in many ways a preferred method of transportation. But Chapas have one distinct advantage. If you get on one, you are likely to end up where it says it is going. It may take a long time, but it is likely that you will get there the day you get on the chapa. So, my friend and I made the calculated decision that it would be better to take the chapa that is going to our destination rather than continue to try our luck with hitchhiking for the day. After all, the chapa ride was only 3 to 4 hours, at least that was what it was supposed to be.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We paied our ticket and got on at about one in the afternoon. The bus did not end up leaving until about 3 because it was waiting for more people to jam inside . Two hours into out journey we arrived at a town where the vast majority of people got out. There were only five or so people left in the chapa. So the driver wandered around for about an hour trying to see if he could get more people into the chapa. After an hour of no luck, he decided it was not worth it for him economically to only take 5 people the rest of the way. So he called a friend of his that lived in this town. His friend had a car that was slightly larger than an SUV but smaller than a minivan. The five of us hopped in with our new car and new driver. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now the problem was that it was Friday (known in Mozambique as Man's Day) and our new driver had been hanging out with some friends. The driver seemed sober but one of his friends was tipsy and the other one was sloppy drunk. The driver wanted to take care of a couple things around town first so he further delayed our trip by about another half an hour. During this time some of the other passengers were complaining about his procrastinating. He sloppy drunk friend told us that we needed to stop complaining because they were doing us a favor by taking us the rest of the way. I told him that if they were doing us a favor, then they should give us our money back but if they are keeping our money then it is not a favor and we have the right to complain. That won me some laughs and the admiration of my fellow passengers but no real progress.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">And we were off! Dashing through winding mountain roads. Dodging people walking on the road. Honking the horn every 3 seconds. And then a sudden stop at a small store! The driver and his two buddies got out. His friends got some beers, talked with the store owner a bit and then hopped back inside. We were off again. Now I was worried because it was starting to get dark and the driver was still pushing 120 kilometers an hour. Then they stopped at another store. The scene repeated, but there were more people there. The friends started dancing to the music a bit. The driver bought a road beer. So my friend and I looked at each and expressed our worries to each other. It was getting dark, the guy was a fast driver on a mountain road, his friends are a distraction to say the least, now he is starting to drink. On the other hand it was getting dark and we were kind of in the middle of nowhere with no other real option for transport. We decided to keep going but keep a close eye on the situation. Thankfully, the driver started to slow down as it got dark and he nursed the one beer for the entirety of the trip. But he still was driving fast and he kept on stopping every 15 min so his friends could get more beer, dance, and yell at random people. Finally, at about 7:30 at night we arrived. Thank God! We would live to see the the next morning. The drunk guys invited us to go dancing with them at the nightclub latter on. My initial reaction was, hell no I am spending any more time around these guys. But later I ended up at the nightclub with cool people. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We were met by a Peace Corps volunteer once we got into town. She took us to the house of a friend of hers for us to spend the night. We arrived at the friend's house. He was a white Zimbabwean who is working in Mozambique. Really nice guy. We were not the only travelers that were crashing there. There were 4 young German volunteers who were friends of the Peace Corps volunteers in Gaza provence. So after our long day of travel we sat down and had a beer or two with everyone and ate dinner. Then it was decided that we should all go out to see the town on a Friday night. At first I was tired and apprehensive but seeing as I had just cheated death, going out seemed like the right thing to do. So we went into town and hit up a few bars and then went to the nightclub. Everyone got along really well and it was an awesome time.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 18pt;">Day 7, The Most Beautiful Spot in Mozambique</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I woke up in Gurue to some of the most beautiful mountains I have seen in Mozambique and some of the most unique formations I had ever seen period. The mountains were not particularly big, but they jutted strait up in big rocky formations, with rich green plants growing over them. Most of these plants were tea plantations. My travel buddy and I made the walk to the waterfall. It was about a 2 and a half hour walk. We passed through town and then made our accent up the mountain. We passed by many tea fields and a few old colonial Portuguese buildings. As we walked, any Mozambican we passed asked us for our plastic water bottles. It was strange because in most parts of Mozambique a person could find an empty plastic bottle in just about any trash pit. But for whatever reason they were highly prized. At one point an elderly man stopped me and practically started begging for my water bottle. I would have given it to him but I needed the water that was inside of it for my trek up and down. Also, in most parts of Mozambique it is fairly common for children to randomly ask a white person for some money. In Gurue it was common for grown adults to get your attention and then they would not so much ask for money as they would demand it. A woman, sitting outside her house, at one point just shouted “Money!” and looked me seriously in the eyes and shouted it again. Now you may be thinking that this means that this is just a really impoverished area. The fact is that it is slightly more economically developed than a lot of other areas in Mozambique because there is so much large scale agriculture in the area that provides food and jobs for the local population. So I do not know what the deal is. But I digress.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So My friend and I made our way up the mountain until we made it to the top of the waterfall. We sat down on a big rock just before the ledge of the fall. From this spot we could see for miles around. It was absolutely gorgeous. I will try and post a picture. So we sat on top of the waterfall and ate our lunch, some chicken samosas we had brought up, and took a nap. Then it started to drizzle a bit so we decided it was time to head back. The fine drizzle continued for much of our walk back through the tea plantation. The fields had large jacaranda type trees growing all over the place that created some shade at a few points. There were a few small structures along the path, they were for the farm workers to hang out in when it rained and so they would have a place to make and drink tea. There was no work the day we were there because it was on a Sunday. It was only goats hanging out in these shacks this day.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We got back to the house we were crashing at, met up with the others, and rested a bit. We all went to a restaurant/bar to get some dinner. We ordered our food and then played with something like a do it yourself marry go round. It was a wheal that was parallel with the ground. It had maybe 6 spokes and at the end of each spoke was a chair. So we sat on the chairs and had one of the German guys spin us around as all the Mozambicans stared at the grown foreigners acting like children.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now there were 8 of us and we ordered 7 chicken plates and one beef plate, but 15 min later someone from the restaurant came out and told us they had no more beef and if it was ok if we all took chicken plates. We said that that would be fine. So we waited for out food. And then we waited some more. Then once it had been an hour and a half after the reconfirmation we decided to check in with them (it usually takes an African restaurant about an hour and a half to cook food for a group). The lady behind the counter told us that they did not have enough chicken for all of us so they did not make our food. Classic Mozambique. They did not think it would be polite to come over and tell us the bad news that they could not cook diner for us, so they decided to do nothing. At this point it was almost 9 and we were all really hungry. The restaurant recommended that we go to another restaurant but the Gurue volunteer said that this other place was notoriously slow and that we would possibly not eat until midnight. So, we went to this one snack bar hoping that we could get some sandwiches and samosas. But when we got there we spoke to the owner and he agreed to make us plates of chicken, rice and salad. Success. They made it in a timely fashion and we were just happy to finally have food in our bellies. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 18pt;">Day 8, To Nampula</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">My friend and I made an early start to get to our next destinations. My friend was going to Alto Molocue. I was continuing all the way to Nampula. We took a chapa from Gurue to the intersection with the main highway. As I was on the chapa I was siting in the front row with my bag on my lap. The conductor of the chapa came up to me and asked if he could place my bag in the back and put another person between me and the driver seat. I said ok. Normal Moz rules are that if you ask for your bag to be placed in the back then you pay a little extra. But if the conductor decides to put your bag in the back so he can make room for another person or thing, then you do not have to pay extra because it was the conductor's decision, not yours. Follow? So, when he put my bag in the back he did not state any price whatsoever.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So we got underway and about an hour in we got stopped by police.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The police saw two white guys in the chapa so they made us get out, show them our passports and then take every last thing out of our luggage for them to inspect. My friend and I were both thinking at the time how illegal it would be in the States for a police officer to grab a random person on a bus and begin searching the luggage of the random individual. But that was just normal operating procedure in Mozambique for policemen that wanted to get bribes. I suspect they were hoping that they could find some pot in our bags, take it, and then get us to bribe them not to arrest us. No such luck for the police. My friend and I were clean so then we had to hurriedly repack our bags as everyone in the bus waited on us.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">A little latter an elderly woman got off the bus. She had also been asked to move her bag to the back by the conductor. The conductor asked her for 35 MTZ. She laughed at him because that was not normal procedure and told him she had no money. He left her alone without a second word. A bit latter my friend and I got off at the crossroads. We stepped out right in front of the market area of the very very small town. The conductor asked me for 50 MTZ for my bag. I told him (smiling) that I was not going to pay him because it was his decision to place the bag in the back, that I had started off willing to carry the bag on my lap. I told him that he could not place someones bag in the back without mentioning a charge and then charge them at the end of the journey. He persisted and took hold of one of the straps on my bag and told me that I could not take the bag until I pay him.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">That is when the discussion became a bit heated. I told him that he was a thief and that he was robing me. I repeated my argument that he had not rite to charge me. Everyone on the bus agreed with me. That heartened me. I told him that he had no right to hold on to my bag and I told him to let go of me. He let go of my bag. He said that I was robing him and that he would get the police. I said OK, go get the police. Then he said, “Pay me the 50 MTZ and then get back in the van and I will take you to the police and then they can decide.” Fuck that. I told him that if I am robing him then he has to bring the police to me.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Then he took a solid hold of the side of my bag. He said that he was not going to let the bag go until I paid him the money. At that point something snapped in me. It was a little different when he was holding on to one of the straps, but now he was essentially grabbing onto me and refusing to let me go until I paid him. I got real mad. We started shouting at each other. I refused to even argue with him on the issue of the money and just started shouting at him to let go of me and that he had no right to hold onto me. My friend was backing me up but also speaking in a more soothing tone in hopes of calming things down. My friend later told me that he thought I was going to hit the guy. I had thought about it. It was the first time in a long time I had the genuine desire to physically harm another person. At that point in time it would have felt good to hit that guy. That is a very strange sensation that I rarely experience. But even in my elevated state I would never have hit him unless he struck me first. Eventually the people on the bus got really tired of waiting and started yelling at the conductor to get back in the bus so they could get going. He said that he would only do it if the people on the bus payed the 50MTZ extra he was trying to get out of me. A few of the men in the bus said they would. So he got back on the bus and let me be. I hope that the guys were just saying they would pay the extra so they could get back on their way and that they did not actually mean it. That would be fairly typical Mozambican behavior. If they did pay that 50MTZ I do feel guilty but I do not regret having refused the man what he asked of me. The guy was trying to take advantage of other people. Also, I feel confident in saying that he pushed the issue with me because I am white. Finally he physically grabbed onto me which was completely inappropriate.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So then my friend and I decided that people in northern Mozambique are a lot more rude than Southern Mozambicans. Also, we decided that chapas really really really suck. SO we decided to try and hitchhike again. After not too long an air conditioned minivan pulled up and we got a ride the whole way. The people in the van consisted of a girl that was about 13, a boy that was about 20 and A mixed race woman of about 40. I never really got how they knew each other. But they dropped my friend off at Alto Molocue and took me all the rest of the way to Nampula, as that was also their destination. They even went into the neighborhood I needed to get to and dropped me off a couple blocks from the Peace Corps office there.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I called my next travel buddy (also named Jack) and he gave me directions for getting to the Peace Corps Office there. Got to the office, met a few staff I had not met before, and went to the volunteer lounge ( a couple couches and a couple computers with good internet). I found a couple other volunteers there (one who had already finished his service so was not really supposed to be there and one who I had not met before because his site is in the north). I checked my e-mail and found out that it was time for me to fill out the registration form for the Foreign Service Officer Test. So I threw it together as quickly as I could because it was a lot of work and I did not want my new travel buddy, the Other Jack, to wait on me very long. I did not know the next time I would have internet access so getting this done was very important.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">After all that was done, myself, Other Jack, and the two other volunteers all went out for dinner. Other Jack had to do some work in Nampula earlier that day so the organization he works with put him up in a hotel room for the night. So the volunteer I had never met before and myself crashed with him in the hotel room. We had hot showers, air conditioning, and we watched some of the newest episodes of How I Met Your Mother. A relaxing way to end the day.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 18pt;">Day 9, To Pemba, with Jesus</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So my friend Jack and I took a chapa to the outskirts of Nampula where we were going to hitch hike. As I was walking along the main road I tripped. I was wearing flip flops so the skin on the tip of my right big toe got half torn off. It was bleeding quite a bit. But just as I was getting the bandage on, my buddy was able to get a car to stop for us. So I hobbled over as quickly as I could and finished bandaging my toe in the back of his nice car, making sure not to get blood on anything. Then he started driving. We were going over 180 KM/hour. That is about 112 miles per hour. We were flying and dashing through the traffic. There was another car in front of us that was going even faster, so my friend pointed that car out and told out driver “That guy over there is crazy.” Trying to hint that we were also going too fast. Our driver replied, “Yes, I am crazy too. I like to go fast.” So in 30 min, we reached our destination (some crossroads town) when in normally should have taken and hour and thirty. Then we got a semi to drive us to a town about half the way towards Pemba. It was slow and long, but it was a free ride. We also got held up at a police checkpoint for a while because they were hassling my travel buddy essentially for being ethnically Asian. But he is good at talking to the police and he speaks some of the local language so they ended up liking him. We got going again but the truck driver had to drop off his materials about a third a mile outside of town, so we had to walk with our bags the rest of the way into town.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">When we got there we stopped at a small store to buy some egg sandwiches. A couple large trucks packed with white people pulled up. We went over to see what the situation was, we assumed that they were a group of tourists and we wanted to see if we could buy in on their transportation to Pemba. When we started talking to them, they all had American accents! WTF, two trucks full of young Americans in a middle of nowhere town in Cabo Delgado Provence, Mozambique?! Well as it turned out they were all volunteering as missionaries for 3 months and working at a mission/school in Pemba. They were on their way back to Pemba after spending a couple weeks out in small villages showing a movie about Jesus, having conversations about it, and praying for stuff. The odd thing I found about this was that they were operating in possibly the most Muslim part of the country. Almost everyone is Muslim in northern Mozambique.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So being nice Christians they gave us a free ride into Pemba. We made friends with them on the ride. They were nice people, though a little on the “believer” side for me to really relate to them. But they really liked us and jack told me that they had invited us to go out to dinner with them. They were going out to dinner to say good bye to some people that were heading back home. As we drove into town they started singing Kumbaya My Lord and some song about Jesus. Once in Pemba, jack and I went to the house of the Peace Corps volunteer in Pema, dropped off our stuff and talked with her for a bit. She warned us that the organization that runs the mission we were introduced to has a reputation around town for being on the crazy side. They are really into going out and recruiting people to the faith. They are constantly flying in groups of young people (18-28) from the states and a few other countries (england, australia, sweeden, china), they send them out to convert people and in the process they also put the volunteers through a process of, let us say, strengthening their religious convictions and aligning them with the philosophy of the organization (Extremism Light). Also, the volunteers have a tendency to just run around giving presents to poor people, so all the Mozambicans in the area expect all white people to just give them stuff. Apparently one girl gave an iPhone to a poor old woman one time in a restaurant.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So I was hesitant to go to dinner with them, but jack really wanted to go and be social. There were some pretty cute girls in the group, but maybe that was just because I had spent the past year and a half surrounded by unhygienic and rugged Mozambican women. So hanging out with some clean, English speaking, educated, pampered American girls seemed like a pretty nice idea (Peace Corps goggles). Jack was raised in a church environment, so even though he did not still share the faith, he felt pretty comfortable around them. He also told me that they were expecting us to come, even though I had not recalled getting invited in the first place. (Later I realized that the only person that invited us was a Mozambican guy that was in the truck who does random work for the mission. He was the only guy expecting us.) But the lynch pin was the fact that it was an Indian restaurant and that there was a decent chance that they would buy our meals. But I still felt awkward about the whole thing.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So we showed up at the mission and we found the Mozambican guy who invited us. We asked him again if it was cool if we come to the diner. He said he did not know and that he would ask the person organizing everything. So he talked to a woman who then came over and told us that we could tag along but that we would have to pay for our own meals. Fair enough. We mingled for a bit before hopping in the back of the truck with the people we had ridden up with and started driving to the restaurant. As we were in the back, all the volunteers started chanting upbeat Jesus chants, stomping on the ground, and getting up and dancing. They do not drink, so it was like they were working themselves up into an intoxicated state. One chant was just them saying “We are the best team in the world!” over and over again.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So we ate diner with them. I got some brianni and my friend and I split a piece of chocolate cake. I had to make sure a did not swear the whole time. That was hard. One thing that was strange was that almost no one said grace before eating. I thought that that was like “a thing” with Christians. Oh well. I was sitting next to a guy who was from Hong Kong and had traveled all the way to Moz, just for this mission trip. He was a bit of an eccentric. I liked him. He asked me if I believed in Jesus. I told him that my spiritual beliefs are complicated. He told me that he still liked me and considered me a good friend. Aside from him and a Swedish girl that thought that everyone was amazingly wonderful, the meal was a little on the boring side. I just don't know how to have a conversation with really religious people. After dinner the lady that was running everything came up to us and told us that they had decided that they wanted to pay for our meals. Score.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We drove back to the mission complex and said our goodbyes. Jack and I thanked them again for giving us the ride into town and buying us dinner. This one guy that was one of the leaders told us that “The Lord provides.” I found that almost offensively ignorant seeing as we were standing in one of the poorest countries in the world. They told us that they were happy to have met us, that it was meant to happen and that God had wanted us to all meet up. Jack Newman, Heaven Sent!</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-82153078520087830332013-02-27T03:44:00.001-08:002013-02-27T03:44:13.135-08:00The Great African Adventure. Part 1<div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.29626344178837194" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Prologue</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I went to the a market area on the edge of town to pick up some pants I left with a tailor. The pockets of two of my favorite pants had totally disintegrated from where. I needed to have them fixed before I went off on my big adventure. When I got there the tailor had not arrived yet but the vender in the stall next to his told me that he would be there in about an hour. It was a hot day in early December (African summer) so I popped into a store to buy a cold drink. The store mostly sold rice. I walked in and the owner was finalizing a deal, selling several sacks of rice to someone in preparation for the upcoming holidays. The owner was a stout woman with a warm smile and a friendly attitude. She was going over the quantities of rice and the logistics of delivering them in a very methodical and deliberate way. She was an intelligent woman and obviously successful in her business.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I had some time to kill so I decided to start up a conversation with them. Ordering my soda Guitonga (the local language) was a big crowd pleaser. I talked to them about the store and the upcoming holidays and how hot it was. They asked me about being a health volunteer. When the client left the owner started asking me question about my work with HIV positive people. This led to a really good discussion about the virus, how it is most commonly spread (multiple concurrent relationships) and some misconceptions that she had. Another customer came in and he joined in on the conversation for a bit. He thought that some condoms contained the HIV virus and that you could get it by putting on some condoms. That conversation was my last act as a health volunteer in 2012. I had done my duty and now it was time to sign out. I picked up my travel ready pants. It was about time for an adventure.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Day One, Inhambane</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I woke up early on my first day of travel I threw on my backpack and took a few photos of myself before I embarked on my journey. The plan :Overland travel to historical Ibo Island in Northern Mozambique,then to Pemba to celebrate Christmas with over 20 other friends (who were apart of the group I entered into the Peace Corps with). Then take a flight to Dar Es Salam, Tanzania and a boat to Zanzibar, hang out in Stone Town and spend New Years on the Beach. Then fly back down to Maputo, pick up my uncle, show him around my town and site, and finally hold a two day party for all the male volunteers within 4 hours of my site, aptly named “Man Weekend.” (I left my house on December 11</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and Man Weekend ended January 13</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I took a bus up to a town in Northern Inhambane Provence called Pembara. On the way up there were butterflies everywhere. I decided that was a good sign. From there I hoped to hitch hike a little more north. One guy stoped but wanted me to pay him a lot of money to give me a lift to Chimoio. I ad a friend in Chimoio (central Mozambique) but I thought I should hold out for a better ride. Two hours later in the baking hot sun I was ready to take anything that came along. Then a bus apeared that was going to a town, where I had a friend. This town was not as far north as chimoio but it was significantly more north than where I was. I decided to take this bus to this town on the Save River. From there I would have a good jumpping off point to get to Chimoio the next day. My strategy for not wearing myself out on this trip was not to spend more than six hours on the road per day. Unfortunatly this bus was really really packed and I was jammed in a corner with my leg occasionally getting burned on a piece of metal close to the engine. It took longer than it should have because one guy needed some stuff on the roof to be dropped off at his house which was significantly more off the main road then he led everyone to believe. But eventually I got there, met op with the volunteer, took a bath, and cooked some dinner. The volunteer I was staying with was friends with the owner of a close by store. She called him up and had him deliver some beers to us as we ate dinner (delivery beer...nice).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Day Two and three, Chimoio</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I Got a free hitchhike all the way to Chimoio on a freight Truck the next day. It was not very fast but I got on it early on, it was comfortable, and it was free. The driver was Zimbabwean so he spoke English. He listened to a lot of good Reage and recordings of some Rasta teacher who talks about how to escape the modern day servitude system created by “The White Man.” I asked him about where he had left from this morning and where he was going. He told me that He had started off in Johannesburg but was held up in Maputo for 10 days. “Why were you held up there for so long?” I asked. “Because of my cargo. Its used to make bombs. So there was a lot of paperwork.” he replied. “So, are you carrying some sort of chemical?” I asked for clarification. “Ya, its a chemical. Its fertilizer but it could be used to make a bomb.” he clarified. “So, how much are you carrying?” “Over one ton.” So there I was, riding off on a 6 hour journey in the front of one ton of weapons grade fertilizer.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The strech of land that I was crossing this day is possibly the most sparsely populated area along the main road. Therefore, there is very sporadic transportation. Any ride is a good ride. So I just chilled out in the comphy chair in the big rig, crussing by the african bush , high enough to see for quite a distance. The landscape eventually changed from flat, dry bush to Bright Green Mountains. As we got closer to Chimoio I saw some of the most beautiful and lush mountain landscaped I had seen in Mozambique.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I got to Chimoio in the late afternoon and met up with my friend at a Fancy western Style supermarket (ah the joys of the big city). I also met up with a new education volunteer. This new batch of education volunteers had all arrived tat their sites only a few days prior. It was cool to welcome her to her first few days at site and hang out with both of them. In general I really like Chimoio. I can’t really explain why. The crime is bad. Its a bit of a small city. None of the really pretty mountains are visible from the city center. But there is something charming about it. Possibly it is all the art deco buildings left over and half dilapidated from the 60s. There are also some good restaurants. On the first day I ate at a really good and really cheap indian restaurant with my friend and the new volunteer. The next day a couple more friends of mine showed up in Chimoio as well. There were also on their way up to Pemba. The four of us went to a Lebanese restaurant in Chimoio. I got to eat a Chicken shawarma, hummus, and babaganoush. It was amazing!!!!! Amazing!!!! Then we shared a hookah. I felt so decadent. I also smoked too much and ended up feeling a little sick. Then I passed out on my sleeping pad at my friends house and fell into a blissful sleep.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Day 4 and 5, Zambezi River Valley</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My Chimoio buddy decided to accompany me on my way up north for a few days. So we Planned our next stop at a town along the Zambezi River where another good volunteer friend lived. As we were leafing Chimoio there was a big uproar on the bus because there was a man traveling with a young baby and he started being accused of trying to steal his child from its mother. Eventually he got off and some local woman said that she knew the mother and that he was taking the child to her. Who knows what the real situation ever was. Its always interesting to see people arguing about baby trafficking. My backpack was tied to the top of the bus. It got heavily rained on. The last part of the journey we had to take in the back of a pickup truck. Oh the joy of getting rained on in the back of a pickup for over an hour. Our friend was on he side of the road just in time to welcome us inside as we waited for the storm to pass. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When the storm passed I started hanging out everything to dry. Unfortunately that included some books that were thoroughly soaked. One the first day we hung out with our friend and two new education volunteers that had just arrived at her town. For over a year my friend had been living in this remote location with hardly any other volunteers within a day's travel. Now she had two other americans living right in her town. Her situation had drastically changed. Out friend showed us around town and the office of the organization she works with. I had seen the town before when I had traveled up about 6 months prior. The organization's office was really nice. It even had a small recording studio to make songs about HIV awareness. It was run by Mozambicans who were refugees that lived in Canada during the civil war. I also got to try a new beer that is being made in Mozambique. It is called Impala and it is made out of Cassava root rather than Barley. It is cheaper than normal beer and has a higher alcohol content (great for a country that has too many alcoholics). The taste was very underwhelming. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The next day we all walked along the long bridge that connected the town my friend lives in, in Sofala Provence to another Town on the other side of the river, in Tete Province. It is about a one hour walk across the bridge and it is one of the most beautiful landscapes. There are small mountains to the south, east and west, but big ones to the north, in Tete. The river area is filled with small trees and tall grasses. It was amazing how different the land was, once we got to the town in Tete. Sofala is mostly flat African bush, occasionally interrupted by a small mountain that sticks up out of nowhere. Tete is rocky, rugged and dry. The town we were in was like going to a small town in the Mountains of Arizona during the “Wild West,” except for the fact that everyone was African and there are TVs and refrigerators (for keeping cold beer and soda). It was also absolutely beautiful. The view from up high, overlooking the river and the endless flatlands was awesome. It was an excellent place to sit on top of a giant rock in the middle of a rugged Mountain town. Then we went back and made some excellent chicken curry. We stayed out late hanging out that night. That was a bad idea. The next day would prove to be the hardest travel day of my entire journey. </span>Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-90178986047051220762012-12-04T03:45:00.001-08:002012-12-04T03:45:18.095-08:00<span id="internal-source-marker_0.4540417601946023" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are a few highlights of the past few Months:</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Canadian Despedida</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There was a going away party for the group of Canadian volunteers in the city. I was invited to it. It was nice to say goodbye to some of the people had known and hung out with. Aside from that It was a little awkward because since I was white and siting with some of the Canadian volunteers it appeared that I was also one of the “guests of honor” so to speak. That and the food made me sick about two hours later.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Reunification</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I got a text message from a volunteer, from another Provence, one day saying, “You know '</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So and so</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">'?” I replied that I had only ever known one 'So and so' in my life; that she was a friend of mine in Middle school and the last time I had seen her was my High School graduation “Ya that's the one. She is in Maputo right now.”</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Apparently my middle school friend became the college roommate of this volunteer and now they are super close. So, our mutual friend came to Mozambique to visit her old college roommate before she finished her time in Peace Corps Mozambique. They were going to Tofo beach (which is about an hour and a half from my house) so I met up with them for the weekend and hung out. It was cool to see her and chat about stuff and people I have not even thought about in years. In general it was just nice to see how she had changed/stayed the same and hear about what she had been up to the past 8 years.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Then the next day I went to a fish taco party in town with some peace corps friends. We got to use a really nice house as one friend is house sitting. It was almost like a real adult dinner party. It was interesting to compare where my life was when I was 14 to where my life is at age 26. Both on a physical location level and social level.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Site Mate Despedida</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For my time at site there has been another volunteer who arrived about 8 months before me. She is a big hippy from the North Wast in her sixties. She did 2 years of peace Corps in Botswana before doing another 2 years in Moz. I would run into her from time to time around town and she was always eager to get into conversations and drink whiskey. She is quite a character and it was great having her around. So for her last weekend, myself and the other site mates told her that we would hold a going away party for her and that we would make it however she liked. She rented a room at her favorite guest house in Tofo and we spent the day swimming and siting on the porch drinking whiskey on the rocks. Then we made a big pasta diner. It was a great way to send her off.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Flesh Eating Bacteria</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the new volunteers who arrived in August got a foot infection with a flesh eating Bacteria. He had to get skin removed around his ankle and then a skin graft. He is currently recovering back in the States it is unclear if he will be returning or not. His site is two hours away from mine and he was always hanging out. He is an awesome and funny guy and we all hope he gets better and gets his ass back to the “Terra de Boa Gente.” (the nick name for my Provence. It means the Land of Good People. I wrote a punk song with some others called </span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4540417601946023" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Fuck your Face and Welcome to the Terra de Boa Gente” )</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Halloween</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I went to a town called Bilene for a Halloween Party (On Friday). During this same weekend all Education Trainees (people that are in Mozambique training to be Peace Corps Education volunteers as English, math, or science teachers) were sent off to visit different site around the country (prior to expressing what type of site they would like to be placed at). Many of these trainees were to be sent to the southern Provinces in which I live. The Plan was to get them all to Bilene and have a huge Halloween Party with all the Southern Volunteers and visiting Trainees. But the party got shut down by the Peace Corps Office in Maputo. So only about 15 people showed up in the end. But we had a great time anyways. We rented out a large Chalet on top of a sand dune overlooking the bay. We swam. We drank. We grilled. We got in our costumes and danced on the Porch (on Saturday). Then I went to a nearby city which has an Indian Restaurant (on Sunday). I had only eaten there once before, about a year ago. It was great :)</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Then as I was in the middle of my meal; got a text telling me that everyone in my Provence is in my city along with all the trainees who are visiting sites in my Provence. I was instructed to book it back. So I took one bus to the outskirts of town, waited on the side of the road for over an hour, hitchhiked to a town just over the border into my Provence, then took a bus to the next town over, then took a bus to the town on the other side of the bay from my city, then took the boat over to my city. At about 9;45 at night I arrived at the restaurant/ bar everyone was at. I am now called “The American Hero.” Later that evening a Mozambique and musician played his guitar for us and sang some songs for us. He was very, very talented. It was a great way to end a long day.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The next day (Monday) I went back to my house to do some laundry and take a bath. I returned to my friend's house in town in the late afternoon. She had three visiting trainees and it was decided that we should have an early thanks giving meal. Os we made mashed potatoes, stuffing, baked chicken and we got a hold of a can of cranberry sauce. We also had some really good chocolate brownies with cashew nuts.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The next day (Tuesday) was election day. We organized for a group of us to stay at a youth hostel in Tofo that had a large flat screen with Satalite TV. Even more Volunteers showed up and the trainees visiting them. We had about 30 Peace Corps people that had shown up by the end of the day. We hung out on the beach in the day, we cooked and drank sangria at night and stayed up late to watch CNN. But seeing as we were 7 hours ahead of east cost time, by 2 in the morning, still not much had happened. So most people fluctuated between getting some sleep and wandering in to check up on things. I was less smart and more obsessive. For the most part I stayed up all night long. Then AR around 6 in the morning (Wednesday). We were essentially just waiting around for one of the major swing states to turn blue. Instead of projecting Ohio for Obama and then projecting his reelection, they just straight up projected his reelection. It kind of came out of nowhere. There were hours of boring nothing developments and the projecting of states that we already knew would go red or blue. Then in an instant it was decided to be all over. I was to tired to express much emotion. But then there was the whole drama of Romney not ready to step down. So I waited for all that to happen. Then Ronmeny gave his very strange speech. Then Finally, Obama gave his victory speech. It was good. Then I went swimming in the Indian ocean.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We slowly made are way back to my city and the whole giant group (plus a few more visiting Trainees who</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.4540417601946023" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">were making their way back down from their site visit. Also two people with another volunteer organization called VSO who were just in town for a visit from their site up north) made a big diner at one of my friend's houses. We ate. We played cards. I had trouble staying awake past 8pm. I felt bad for my friends who were forced to house a ridiculous amount of people that night. Even after splitting the group in two. By the time I woke up the next Morning (Thursday) they were all gone. And that is the story of my 6 six day bender from Halloween through Election day.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Work</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: -24px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I have set up a small vegetable garden with corn and beans as an example of proper methods for growing a substantial amount of food in a small space. This is good for people who are HIV positive and do not have the energy to do hard farm work.</span></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: -24px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I have given some English classes</span></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: -24px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I am continuing to give computer classes and help with project monitoring documents</span></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: -24px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I gave a class on nutrition and medicinal plants in the area after a Mother and doubter from Zimbabwe showed up and tried to sell “natural Chinese medicine” pills at extremely high prices to the health works at my organization. The sad thing is that even though the health workers do not have much money, they were captivated by the selling point of “medicine without chemicals” and all the things these pills promised to do. So they were really tempted to drop a lot of money for six pills that “help their concentration.” Even though they need that money to feed their children. I will continue to give nutrition and medicinal plant classes during our meetings.</span></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: -24px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I went out to another volunteers site and helped give a workshop on growing seedlings for Maringa trees. These trees are legit miracles. The leaves contain protean, calcium, vitamin c, etc.. The different parts of the tree have several medicinal uses. This tree is the real deal and the organization of one of my volunteer friends is helping to build a nursery with the organization of another of my volunteer friends. SO I helped with the preparation and facilitation of this workshop. It was really cool to go to this remote and beautiful site, see all the kids playing soccer at their school in between the Palm trees, then dance with everyone in the evening when they use a gasoline generator to power the stereo system and a single light bulb. Then we gave the workshop. Then myself and my friends went to a totally secluded and beautiful beach. It is my favorite beach in Mozambique.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Recording Studio in the Bush</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A couple weeks ago I went to a get together at the house of an Austrian expat who has been living in Moz for 6 years. He has a small recording studio in my city but his house is a little out of the way. His neighborhood only just got electricity a few months ago. Once they did get electricity he decided that he would build a large, top of the line recording studio on his property. The basic concrete and metal structure is up now. It looks like to is going to be really cool if/when it is completed. Right now he is waiting on a special type of hard palm wood to get trucked down from the North. Then he has to install it all and lastly place in all the electronics. His idea is to start seriously recording and promoting Mozambican musicians. Also, I think he wants to get western musicians to buy packages where they live on his property for some time and get inspired and record and album.</span><br /><br />
Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-76908642923976309892012-09-28T07:07:00.000-07:002012-09-28T07:07:32.890-07:00The Midservice Crisis<span lang="">
The Midservice Crisis is a commonly known stage of a Peace Corps Volunteer's experience. It generally occurs when one realizes that one is half way done with the peace corps experience. One usually feels like he or she has accomplished less than expected after one year at site and experianced much less of the country than he or she would have expected after one year at site. The Midservice crisis is characterized by feelings of frustration, hopelessness, claustrophobia, depression, and a general desire to drop any responsibility and just do fun things.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span><u>My mid service trip.</u>By the end of July I had been in Mozambique for over a year and almost at site for one year yet I had not yet been further north than a town 3 and a half hours north of my site. So decided that I should take a week off and make a trip as far north as I could and be back within a 5 day period. It just so happened that two of my friends who are volunteers in central Mozambique were passing through my site on their way up. One is a volunteer in Chimoio and the other a small town called Sena. My original plan was to gt up to Sena as fast as possible but the Sena volunteer decided to spend some more time at the beach near my house. So I left with the Chimoio volunteer and took the really long journey up to his site. The trip was really uneventful. Once you cross the border between Inhambane Provence and Sofala Provence you have to cross a bridge over a large river. This bridge is manned by a large number of police and military personnel so it feels like a Country border crossing. This is because this bridge is the only major bridge that crosses the large "Save" river. During the civil war this was strategically a very important location as one side had more control of much of the land north of the river and the other side had control of much of the land on the other side. Today the police and military personnel are basically there to charge people to use the bridge and fine them for any paperwork or vehicle discrepancies. I am sure that they would never use their authority and absolute control of the only major bridge across this large river to pocket government fines or try and hassle people into giving bribes. <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>The next stop was a town called Inchope. It is a major cross roads town. Between the river Save and Inchope is hours of driving through absolutely nothing dry, dense African bush for miles, over and over again. Once in Inchope we were easily able to get a bus to Chimoio up in the mounains. The Mountains in this area are old worn down mountains. The landscape is flat and then a mountain sticks up, and then its flat for a few miles, and then there is another mountain. So the landscape around Chimoio has several small, free standing mountains within view from most points. Chimoio is a very crime ridden city. Peace corps volunteers have experienced robbery and assault on multiple occasions there. SO when I arrived at night the local volunteers went into security mode and made sure we avoided the wrong parts of town and always walked at a fast pace (as I was helping my friend carry a large bag filled with stuff he brought back from a recent trip to the states). So that was us, walking as fast as possible, from one side of town to the other as we hauled around a 100 pound bag. The next day I got to explore the city a bit. In the day time I really liked the place. Some neat parks and art deco buildings. Some modern shopping areas, a few very large outdoor markets. There is a strange mix of cultures there. There are a lot of people of Portugese decent that still live there. There are "Black" Mozambiqueans, people of Indian decent and many people from Zimbabwe as well.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>Just when I was sitting around Chimoio wondering what I should do next and if I should just take the long journey back to my site...My volunteer friend in Sena called me and said she was on her way back up. So I went back to Inchope the next day and met up with her. We did not make it all the way to her site. The van we were in started overheating on the road so we ended up having to drive about 32 miles an hour for 6 hours until we got to the next town with a peace corps volunteer. This volunteer was a fourth year extendee. She had decided to stay in peace corps Mozambique for twice the required amount of time. She is my age and graduated from college the same time as me, but she went directly to peace corps mozambique and stayed their for 4 years. She will be leaving in a few months. She was a little hermit like. As apparently she does not leave her town very often or hang out with other volunteers, but she was really really nice and she had accomplished a lot around her town. She had a big house so we crashed there for the night. My friend then realized that she had left her bag with all her clothes on the van that took us up from Inchope. I was too tired to care. I finally realized just how gigantic this country is. My dinner that night was a dark beer, some bread, and a box of pineapple juice (all bought at a gas station).<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>The next day we made it to Sena. Honestly for the most part, once you have seen one small Mozambiquan town you have seen them all. But this one has something special. There is a railway that carries coal from the inland mountains to the port in Berra. That railway crosses the Zambezi river at Sena. There is a Large bridge that traverses the entire river. There is no road but there is a foot path that has been placed along the side of the bridge. This footpath is a little bigger than a sidewalk and there are some holes in it that give way to a straight drop, but the big holes have thick iron plates covering them (for the most part). The last time any of the footpath was re-semented was 1964 (the dates are on the cement bricks). On this footpath there are people walking from one end to the other, people on bicycles, people riding on the back of "bicycle taxis," (a small seat has been atached to the back wheel and the passenger rides sitting backwards) and motorcycles. So there I was walking out into the middle of the Zambezi river dodging motorcycles and holes in the bridge as I was looking around at one of the most beautiful landscapes I have seen in this country (sorry I did not realize it would be so cool, so I forgot to bring my camera.). South of the river there were 5 small mountains and green African bush as far as the eye can see. North of the river was a dry rigid mountain landscape. In between was the long expanse of the river and the long reeds and grasses along the sides. The pure green color of all the plants was vibrant all around. There were small farm plots and shacks on islands on the edges of the river and small fires all around. Looking at this valley I almost felt as if I was looking back in time to an early agrarian community living on the banks of a river in the cradle of civilization. As I was standing in the middle of this bridge (it took me 40 min just to walk to the middle) I decided that everything in my journey had led up to this point, that I had gone through all the long and difficult traveling so that I could stand on that bridge and see this amazing and remote place. Then I was really hungry so I had some fresh river fish for lunch...awesome.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>That night I went to a party with a group of Mozambiquans who had lived in Canada during the civil war and have returned to Sena to do aid and development work. First we went to one person's house where we ate diner and one of the guys offered to take me Parana fishing the next day. I decided against that. Then we all went to the local bar and went to sleep.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>The next day I decided to head back down because I needed to be back to my site the in two days for a friend's Birthday. Unfortunately the bus I was on was having mechanical problems and again I did the ride to Inchope going 32 miles an hour for 6 hours. I tried to see if I could still get a ride going further south at 3:30 in the afternoon, but they all had already left. So I decided to go up to Chimoio and then whey my options. As I was siting in the bus waiting to leave for Chimoio a drunken Mozambiquan man in full islamic dress sits down next to me. He is completely drunk, yelling at everyone and spilling his "juice" all over the place so the driver of the bus had to force him off (normally drivers will put up with it because they don't care and they just want the money so the fact that this driver did do something says something about how big a mess this drunk guy was). On top of this guy being Muslim and completely trashed, it was in the middle of Ramadan. Fail. A police man came over and got the drunk guy to go away. Then three Southern Asian looking guys got on the bus and sat don next to me. The police man looked in the bus, and saw these three guys and me (I was experimenting with growing a beard at the time) and asked to see the pass ports of one of the guys. The policeman decided that he did not like all that he saw so he told the guy that he and his friends needed to come to the police station with him. I stayed in the bus and told the policeman that I did not know them the policeman then looked really confused and said "OK I want all the foreigners in this bus to get out right now and come with me to the police station." So I got out and walked with the policeman, making sure I stood on the opposite side of him from the other guys and speaking with him in Portuguese ( ony one of the other guys could speak any Portuguese at all). I started asking the policeman about Inchope and his job and I told him that I had been living in Mozambique for a year as a health volunteer. He asked me where I was from and I told him that I was American. He said, "Are you sure you are an American? Yo look Italian to me." "Yes I am sure that I am an American." Strangely this is not the olny time a Mozambiquan has assumed off the bat that I am Italian.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>We got to the police station and were brought to the office of the police chief. I made sure that I sat on the opposite side of the room from the other guys. They all took out their pass ports (Pakistani) and the police started to grill them and only one of them spoke any Portuguese at all (poorly). There was some problem with their World health cards that were supposed to show their vaccination records. At this point a friend of my called me and I acted like it was an important phone call. I think it gave the impression that someone of importance had been informed that I was being detained by the Inchope police.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>At this point I had the following set of challenges. I wanted it to be clear that I was not involved with these other guys. I did not want to be waiting in the police station for hours as they drilled these Pakistani guys, I wanted to avoid getting pressured into giving a bribe, and finally I had to overcome my own great, great stupidity. I had forgotten my passport at my house at my site. I was basically undocumented save my California drivers license (that was still in my wallet, and now expired by several months), and my peace Corps ID card (which is a small paper card that any 16 year old with Microsoft word and a lamination machine could make, but it had my photo on it, the phone numbers for Peace Corps Mozambique HQ and the US Embassy, an ID number that has the official significance of fuck all, and a picture of the American Flag). So, as the chief was drilling the Pakistanis I said to myself, I could see if these guys speak English and I could help them out by translating, or I could try and get the hell out of here. So I walked up to the Police officer that originally brought me there with my Peace Corps ID in hand and Said, "Here is my identification, like I said before, I am an American Health volunteer. If you have any questions you can call the Peace Corps HQ or the US Embassy." "OK, can I see your pass Port." "Like I said before, I have been living in Mozambqiue for over a year. So my passports is at my home. I am not leaving the country so I do not have my passport with me. I am going back to my home now to continue my work as a health volunteer. If you have any questions, you can call one of these numbers." The officer took the card up to the chief and said "excuse me chief, here is the ID of this American. He is a health volunteer. There are a lot of phone numbers on this card. Do you want to call them?" The chief shook his head. So the officer walked back and gave me my card back. Then he walked back to the corner. I waited a couple minuets before walking back up to him and asked him if I could go. He said he did not know, so he went back to the chief and interrupted him from drilling the Pakistanis. "Do you want to ask the American any questions or can he leave?" The chief gave me a a discerning stare and then told the officer that I could go. He was obviously more interested in the three Pakistanis with vaccination discrepancies. As I was exiting the Police station a drunk guy came running up to me and said "I speak English! You pay me! I talk to Police for you!" "No thanks Amigo." I think I did better on my own. <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>So I got up to Chimoio and had dinner with my friend who lives there. I had the best plate of "piri piri chicken" (chicken in hot pepper sauce, it is almost the national dish) I have had in Mozambique. Then I went to secure my seat on the only guaranteed bus heading from Chimoio back to my site. I got the last seat, which was the back left corner of the bus, behind the last row of seats, on top of the radiator. I placed my sleeping bag on my "seat" as a cushion and leaned my bag on the side. Then I caught a few hours sleep on the bus before it left at 3:20 in the morning. 8 hours later I was at the town next to mine having a hamburger and Pepsi with some friends as we gathered to begin the Birthday Party weekend.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>The party weekend itself was a good time. We hung out, cooked some meals, went to the beach, and watched a Brazilian Comedy at the local Movie Theater. At the beach we met a group of 9 Canadians who recently showed up in town and are doing volunteer work around town for 2 months with other young Mozambiquans as a part of a cultural exchange. Then they will all go back to a town in the middle of nowhere Canada with the Mozambiquans for another two months. Last year there was a cool guy from Toronto working with my org as I entered. Now there is a girl from Montreal. I remember telling the first guy that he could come back in one year and I would still be here and would still have about a year left to go. It does not seem like that long ago now. <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>The birthday party and some of the Canadians all ended up at the Movie theater. The movie was called "Elvis and Madonna." Its about a Drag queen who dresses up as Madonna and a lesbian who always wears a leather jacket who fall in love. In typical Brazilian comedy fashion, someone gets naked, someone gets pregnant and then someone randomly ends up getting shot, even if the shooter is just some random guy that just so happens to be walking around with a 45 in his pocket at exactly the right time to save someone. Then when the weekend was over I picked up a package from the post office sent from the states. The customs officers opened it to do a search. Four or five officers took me in a back room and drilled me because the description of the contents was "Bibles" yet it had tons of stuff and none of it bibles. So then they told me that I was legally obligated to pay the 45% value tax for importing rare or valuable goods into the country. So I had to pay about 20 USD in the end. Getting intimidated by government officials in the 3rd world sucks.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span><u>Teaching gig</u><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>A friend of mine runs a small project where they try and link art projects with HIV/AIDS education in middle schools. Previously she had a Mozambiquen run the health lecture but that person was not showing up on time and the only information she was getting across to the kids was making them memorize how to say "Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immunodeficiency Virus." So I was asked to step in and do the lecture for 2 days a week for two weeks. This is because I can speak good enough Portuguese and I know a lot about HIV now. <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>On the Tuesdays I would give a short lecture and on the Thursdays I would help keep the kids under control as we did the art component and tried to encourage them to paint about what I had taught them. I really did not know how I would do teaching these kids about HIV. I was not sure that my Portuguese really would be good enough, I did not know if I could keep them quiet and I did not know if I could actually keep them engaged and teach them anything. In short. I more or less did it. I did my best to keep them engaged even though class room participation is not really a thing in Mozambique so they did not know why I was asking them to do stuff and answer questions posed to the class. Normally teachers just lecture and then kick them out of the classroom. That is if the teacher shows up at all and also when the teacher is not hitting the students with a piece of rubber hose as the class watches and laughs (In general Mozambicans think that a person getting physically hurt is the funniest thing in the world. One time I fell down in front of a market and my shin fell on a rock. Everyone around stopped and started pointing and laughing as I was on the ground in pain cradling my fucked up leg. But I digress...)<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>When I went around and talked to the students individually, I fund out that the information I taught them actually did sink in. That was a big relief because when I was asking questions to the group no one said anything. So I did in the end get some knowledge transferred to them. It was pretty satisfying to do something that has a direct result. With my work at my org I am very removed from the direct interpersonal work so it is hard to see and pinpoint my contribution as I am more of a process improver. It was good to know that my Portuguese is good enough to give two lectures in HIV in front of a class of preteens. In fact it was the first time that I gave a real class lecture ever. I really think that I did a good job of connecting with the students so I feel proud of that. There may be future opportunities for me to do something like this again in February. I would really enjoy that. <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span><u>Midservice Conference</u>A week and a half before midservice the new group of volunteers arrived at site. There are several people in my area including a new girl in my city. The ones I have met so far are really cool so I think I am looking at a good 2<sup>nd year. I went out he beach with 3 of the new volunteers and then immediately left for my midservice conference.</sup><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>Midservice is traditionally just when they do medical and dental checkups on everyone. But recently they have expanded it to include some experience sharing and other presentations. It was really good to see everyone from my original group that I went through training with. Unfortunately about as soon as I got to Maputo I started feeling a bit sick. But I went to the city art center for a glass of port and some music with some friends. It is really a cool place. Half of it is a nice bar with an outdoor area and live music and the other half is an artists' studio with everything from oil paintings to sculptures made from leftover weapons and bullet casings from the civil war. Then for the rest of the week I had a fever and diahria (with blood for one of the days, that was a surprise). I was a mess. But thankfully I was at the hotel and receiving attention from the peace corps medical staff. Despite my illness I was able to accomplish the following: eat some good curries, eat some gelato, buy a bottle of imported beer from Belgium for about 7 USD that ended up being sour which was a big disappointment because I really really miss good beer, go to a karaoke bar that has a live band that know how to play all the songs, ride some bumper cars, and facilitate an hour and a half long session on "strategies for working with supervisors and counterparts." That actually turned out really well despite the fact that I was sick and totally unprepared. <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>You see, there were several sessions that the volunteers could lead if they so chose. I had thought that since all of us were in the same place and we all had one year of experience under our belts that the setting would obviously be that of experience sharing. But everyone else that decided to lead a session had prepared a power point and had something very specific that they wanted to present to the group that they or their organization had accomplished. So on one hand I felt like I was not prepared but on the other hand I felt like my idea of simultaneous experience sharing and problem solving would take much better advantage of the situation we were in. I am really glad that some people were able to do some really great things but I just felt like we needed to focus on what problems people were experiencing and how they can approach them. <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>So I rolled up with nothing more than a pad of paper with a list of challenges I had faced with my supervisor and counterpart over the past year. But to make up for the lack of power point I through on some nice shoes, slacks, a dress shirt, a tie, and my glasses (so I would look smart). So I wrote my challenges down one one side of a a large piece of paper and I asked people to add more challenges that they have had. Then on the other side we came up with solutions for these problems and people who had successfully addressed these problems were able to talk about what they had done. Of course there were some people that probably talked a little too much but in general I felt like I did a good job of facilitating a really important conversation. Afterwords, people told me that they had really gotten something important out of it and the Country Director told me that he really thought I had good group facilitation skills. So that was really faltering. This experience and the classroom experience have got me thinking about what the connection is and what I do that is good with being placed in front of a group of people. I know that I sure as hell never want to be a teacher but maybe there is something I could do with this. Ill figure it out.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>As for my actual work, the conference provided me with a few ideas for stuff to do. I want to try and do radio announcements in my city for using mosquito nets and Malaria awareness. The Malaria high season will start in a few months. Also I got some sweet potatoes from a market in Maputo that I thought were the orange type but turned out not to be, because I want to start growing them around my site. I still need to get that together, especially since I have just found out that the conditions of my site are really good for growing sweet potatoes. This would be a really good thing for PLWHAs in my community to have as a source of calories and vitamins. Also, the PC staff told us that it was normal and legitimate for us to be going through a stressful time at this point in our service. So that makes me feel like I understand why I had the urge to just get up and leave my site and through my hands in the air and say to hell with my organization. So I think I will get though it. <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span><u>Whale sharks or lack there of</u><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>Myself and few other decided to stay an extra day in Maputo to hang out and buy a few things. Unfortunately I assumed that the backpackers would have vacancy and I did not reserve a bed. So myself two others and a random German couple we ran into (who had just finished a trip from Tofo and saw a bunch of cool wild life when they went whale shark snorkeling. They saw Mantarays, whale sharks, hump back whales, and dolphins. This was really encouraging to hear.) all rented out a 5 bed room in a really run down and sketchy hotel. There it no good way to describe this place. It is built like a fort but it has all these strange child book paintings in front, a fake lamp post with three orbs on it that are painted different colors, and a giant neon light sign in front that says "Pensao Central" (Central Inn). There were a bunch of drunk guys hanging out front and there was no office. Just a desk at the bottom of the stairs. But I had to get up early the next morning so I did not spend much time there. I woke up at 4:30 and made my way over to the backpackers I originally wanted to go to where I met up with a friend and a random American couple. We all grabbed the early bus from Maputo direct to Tofo beach. The bus had some of the most uncomfortable chairs I have been on, but we survived. Talking to the American couple we found out that they were on an 18 month trip around the world. They had finished South America, had a quick trip in Europe, and now they were doing Africa before they make their way over through Asia.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>So we made it to Tofo and met up with some friends and some volunteers from Swaziland who were also hanging out in Tofo. The next day I took a couple of the Swazi volunteers into town. One said that he felt something rattling around inside his ear so he wanted to go to the clinic in town. SO I took him to the central city health center. We basically rand around asking people where we should go for 20 min as the other Swazi volunteer was wandering around with no real direction, using all 5 of her words in Portuguese to say to everyone she passed: "Good morning. How are you? Emergency!" Eventually we had him seen and they basically took something that looked like a small baster and squirted a bunch of water in his ear. Then a big hard ball of wax plopped out. I guess that is what happens when you have just finished two years living in rural Swaziland. Then I took them to the old Mosque because they wanted to see some of the older buildings in town. The Imam was there and he said we could go in and check it out. It was pretty basic on the inside but I liked checking it out because it was built in 1840. The Imam showed us a Koran that had been written by hand somewhere in Arabia in the 1700s and then brought down here. Then the girl volunteer started speaking fluent (or close to) Arabic with the Imam. They walked all around the Mosque and chatted for about an hour. The guy volunteer told me that he never knew that she could speak Arabic. At one point the Imam asked me if I was Jewish. I said no and then he and the girl volunteer pointed at me a few times as they spoke some more Arabic. Then a little later we thanked him for showing us around and we left. Later I asked the girl why the Imam asked if I was Jewish and why they were pointing at me. She said "Oh, I thought it would be funny to tell him that you were Jewish. He really wanted to rip your head off as soon as I told him that. He said that "We Muslims kill Jews." But I told him that he should accept you because Jewish people are also people of the book. I thought it was a good joke." So now the local Imam thinks I'm Jewish and wants to rip my head off. Awesome...<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>The next day I went out on the whale Shark snorkeling trip. Everyone had high hopes because there had been lots of good sightings recently and lots of other wild life. So we got wet suited up and jumped in a speed boat (which was really, really fun to ride off of the coast and then back on in, bouncing off of high waves and flying in the air was the best part of the trip, though a couple people threw up). Then we spent a whole lot of time trying to find whale sharks. We saw a small pack of dolphins. A single hump back whale, and a baby whale. The baby whale was really showing off and doing a bunch of tricks in front of us. That really was the highlight. But no manta rays and no fucking whale sharks! I was happy I got to see the baby whale but truth be told, I really wanted to see the largest sharks on earth but I guess that was too much to ask for that day. Fuck you Mother Nature! Then a couple hours later I started feeling really weak and started getting diarrhea again. SO I cut my vacation time short and headed back to my house where I more or less stayed for another week and a half as I fought off one of the most long lasting viruses I have ever had. Fuck you virus!<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span><u>Work</u>I already talked about the sweet potatoes and the malaria awareness, but I just recently found out that none of the PLWHAs that my organization's health workers visit own Mosquito nets because they can not afford them. So I really want to do some research on how I may be able to secure funding for mosquito nets for these people as when HIV and Malaria are both present in a body they perpetuate each other thereby destroying the person's health and then life.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>The other thing going on with my org is this very large project that will be starting soon. Unfortunately I have been totally out of the loop with it. After I came back from midservice I was still sick and very tired so I told my counterpart just to give me the first draft of the project plan once he was done so I could look it over. That was the last time I saw him. He has been away from the office for the past week and a half and no one can get in contact with him, so I cant make any progress in helping the program until he shows up again. Ironically the president of the organization scolded me on being away from my house all three days of the recent three day weekend without telling anyone in the organization where I was. It is kind of annoying how they view me as some sort of adolescent who needs to always be looked after and who always has to check in with them even if it is not during work hours. If I do not, then I guess I look like the "bad adolescent" who is always disappearing. So in other words if I act like a normal adult who can do whatever I want on the weekend without checking in with anyone I am apparently irresponsible and disrespectful. Lame.<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></span>Aside from that I am working with the Canadian volunteer at my org to develop a face book site for the organization so they can put information about themselves and some photos up on the net. With a little luck these things will work out. The Canadian volunteer was complaining the other day about how frustrating it was to work so hard to accomplish such little things and that she had been here for one month and will be here for one more month and she feels like she has not done anything and that she does not know what she will be able to accomplish in the next month. Ya, welcome to the midservice crisis. </span>Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-61704235206168381622012-08-15T05:46:00.000-07:002012-08-15T05:46:05.556-07:00May through June 2012 (Half way point reached!)<b id="internal-source-marker_0.9613105417229235" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Japanese embassy visit:</span></b><br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.9613105417229235" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Several Months ago I facilitated the communication between the small community NGO which I have been placed with and the foreign aid department of the Japanese embassy to Mozambique. The discussions ended with my org proposing the construction of two HIV/AIDS information centers. After a few months of deliberation a guy from the Japanese embassy came out to meet us to make a preliminary assessment as to whether or not the plan is realistic and worth funding.</span></b></div>
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.9613105417229235" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Japanese man spoke much better English than Portuguese so I helped with some of the communication. He actually had dual citizenship because he was born in the US while his parents were working there. So, after he graduated college he did Peace Corps El Salvador. So it was cool getting to talk with him and compare notes.</span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 1.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My org was really good about contacting local government and community networks for the preliminary assessment. We spoke with several levels of local government and health care. Then we went to the proposed construction sites and spoke with the heads of households from families that lived close by. Almost none of these people spoke Portuguese. The heads of household would speak their local language, one person would translate that into Portuguese and then I would translate that into English. My supervisor at my org speaks a different local language so he was as lost as I was.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When we had finished with our last community meeting the neighborhood head asked the Japanese man to take a look at their closest health center. We went through some small, rough dirt roads until we arrived at a very large hospital complex. Most of the buildings were abandoned, only one was really in use. Even the building in use was in heavy disrepair, there were rats everywhere and a couple holes in the walls big enough for a child to walk through. There was no electricity and no running water, all the water was carried in from a well. There were two nurses that work there and one of them only works 3 days a week. There were two operating beds and two beds with mosquito nets over them that are used for pregnant women. Those 4 beds are the only furniture. All the surgical tools are kept in a bowl of water. They are cleaned with plain water, no money for soap and no money for any type of anti-septic. They basically just didn't have money for anything, there was one cupboard and it was almost completely empty. It basically seems that the only things they do have are left over equipment from the colonial era of the late 60s. Ironically this spot (were no one is educated enough to speak Portuguese and they have a heavily under resourced health center) is about 20 min drive from possibly the most expensive tourist town in Mozambique where there are very large and very extravagant resorts for wealthy tourists. When I went into the nice town it was like a whole other world. And then I went to “Beer Olympics”</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-Beer Olympics:</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For one weekend each year all the peace corps volunteers from all over Mozambique get together at a beach side hostel for what is officially known as “Beach Beer Olympics.” For some it is the greatest weekend of excitement out of the year. For others it is a worthless endeavor that embodies all the reasons for which they did NOT join peace corps. For the Peace Corps Mozambique HQ administration it is the shame of our presence as an active development and cultural exchange program. The idea is thus: everyone from all over the country joins up and rents out the whole hostel right next to the beach. Then we have a series of drinking game competitions where teams are divided between the North, central, or southern parts of Mozambique. The region that wins the most becomes the champion for the year and gets a trophy.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I had no idea what to really expect. There were lots of images of debauchery and loud drunken 20 somethings running up and down the beach being obnoxious. In reality, the weekend was pretty tranquil. Each day by 10 am everyone was sitting in the water with beer in hand, that lasted all day with the exception of eating lunch. By the time the sun had gone down, everyone was so tired from drinking beer and sitting in the sun all day that most people went to sleep by 9 pm. Then they just got up in the morning and did the same thing promising themselves that they would stay out latter the next night and really go for it. The first night I think a 10th of the group stayed out late and the second night maybe a 5</span><span style="font-size: 10px; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In the end it was almost disappointing how un debauchery the weekend was. But at the end of the weekend I was happy having been given the opportunity to chill out on the beach and relax with some friends for a couple days.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The good bye party</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one weekend a group of friends all got together at the site of an outgoing volunteer couple. They had spent 2 and a half years in Mozambique together and lived in a small town as a school teacher and a community health promoter. They organized a big feast and party for all of their friends in Peace Corps and in their town. In truth, where they actually lived was on the grounds of a Methodist compound (where the school was also located). This compound was built by Germans so it looks like a small Bavarian village built on top of a hill in the middle of African bush landscape. All the buildings have high, A frame, tile roofs and stone walls and in the corner is a stone Gothic style chapel.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All the food was cooked out of giant metal pots that were cooked over wood fires. I helped cut potatoes before they were thrown in a giant pot of hot oil, they were quickly taken out so they could not get crispy, and then placed to the side to cool down because Mozambiquans prefer fries to be soft and cool.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the meal various members of the community gave going away gifts to the two exiting volunteers. This was the most touching part of the evening as everyone got up and sang the same song and then one by one each of the members of the community gave their gifts and said their goodbyes.Then everyone went back to the house of the couple and put on loud music and danced all together for several hours. There was a lot of “sura” (a wine made from the sap of coconut trees) and the Mozambiquans were loving it. The peace corps volunteers mostly just tried to keep it down, its a little foul tasting. One of the men from the community had too much sura and he was refusing to leave when the party was over. After some time of arguing, myself an another guy convinced him to leave, but ten min later he came back through the rickety side gate. Then after some more arguing we got him to leave and we built a barricade out of random pieces of wood and metal. At the least it would have made a lot of noise if anyone would have tried to get in again. Victory :)</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Birthday BBQ and Film Festival</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is an English volunteer in my city as well. He is with basically the English version of the peace corps. He has been a really great friend over the past few months, so when it came to be his birthday I wanted to do something awesome. So I decided to make American style BBQ chicken for him. I had a grill previously made for my birthday, so we set that up in his backyard, a friend made some home made BBQ sauce and we had a legitimate BBQ feast amongst 10 or so people. Unfortunately I took the chicken out too soon at first and several people bit into some raw flesh...oops.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next day we went to the Film festival that was taking place in town. There is a small, run down, one screen theater in town. The inside is all falling apart but back in the 60s it must have been a really cool art deco interior with geometric lamp chandeliers and broad designs along the walls. Once a year for the past 3 years there has been a three day film festival in town. They played only African made films and they are in Portuguese or have Portuguese subtitles. I learned a lot about an organization started by an Austrian musician and a UK couple. It is called “Positivo” and they do social change work through music, where the lyrics are in effect written by the population that is being targeted for behavior change. One example is high risk teenagers writing out why they felt uncomfortable taking the HIV test, then writing counter arguments to those reasons. Then the musicians make lyrics out of the counter arguments and then a song and then they give out the CDs for free to the teenagers in the area.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was very proud of myself because I and a fellow Peace Corps volunteer gave a small presentation (in Portuguese) on the HIV prevalence in our Provence and the need for prevention and also reduction of stigma and acceptance of HIV positive people. It was a little awkwardly pulled off because audience participation is not really “a thing” in Mozambique and my Portuguese is also far from perfect. But it worked out in the end :)</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bush Fire</span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the end of May every year there is a music festival at an out door venue in the middle of rural Swaziland. It is called “Bushfire.” It is a bit of a peace corps tradition to go down to Bushfire. Most years, peace corps volunteers from Swaziland, South Africa and Mozambique all meet up there. (However this year the South African peace corps volunteers were not allowed to come because there was a small chance of a national transit strike in Swaziland) It is a three day long festival of African Musicians and African arts. Its like cochela but all african and much smaller in scale. I got there by getting a ride in the back of a pickup truck from a friend. We left my city at 5:30 in the morning. A friend of mine and myself were in the bed of the pickup with a couple blankets and wearing winter hats. Its winter time now and with the wind chill it was like 40 degrees, which is colder than I have felt in over a year. So there we were freezing our asses off in the back of a pickup truck getting beaten up by the wind with the Mozambican landscape passing us by as the sun came up over the mists of the bush. It was uncomfortable but fun. By the time we got to our lunch break the sun was in full force and it was hot as hell in the back of the truck. We made good time and made it to a large city in the middle of Swaziland before dark. It was my first time leaving Mozambique since my arrival almost one year prior. Yay! I had been to Swaziland four and a half years ago when I was studying abroad in Durban. The country has become noticeably more wealthy. Or it could just be that Swaziland is a bit more developed than mozambique. I got a little jolt of culture shock when I went into the big supermarket and it was even more fancy than 80% of grocery stores in the US. I was even able to buy some cans of real Guinness! For the past year I have only been able to drink Mozambican bear (of which there are three brands) and one type of South African beer. I really miss good European and American beer. I miss that the most of anything. Good Mexican food is a close second. Finally we made it to the Area where Bushfire was taking place and to our camp site. We got there at 5:30 pm, so it was exactly a 12 hour journey. We stayed in a hostle in the middle of a wilderness park so one one night I saw a small pack of hyenas 30 feet from my tent! It was very cool but later I realized that is was probably not safe. It is Winter in Africa now and Swaziland is semi mountinus so it was surprisingly cold. At night I was wrapped up in a blanket, a sleeping bag, sweat pants and a sweat shirt. By the evening everyone was drinking cups of hot mulled wine. Ironically when you enter the venue you are encouraged to by “drink tickets” but these are only usable for beer and not hot wine (what a scam). In general the large out dour venue with lots of strange cement sculptures had a very cool vibe. At one point a few 20 foot puppets from Mozambique did a performance. They were made in my city so I kinda knew one of the puppeteers. All the peace corps volunteers were really excited about the food. There was Indian food, Sushi, Italian pasta and pizza, Mediterranean sandwiches etc... Ironically the music itself was nothing special. There were a few really good exceptions, but most of the bands were easy listening semi jazz semi rock. A lot of it was Swazi christian music groups (they are very popular there). In general it was a good time.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trouble in the Office</span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One day I was told that the organization I am working with was going to hold a group meeting. I thought that this would be great because we could identify weaknesses and strengths and try and improve the organizational processes. What it really ended up being was a lot more immature. Apparently the maid that cleans the office in the mornings has been sneaking off to have sex with the guy that owns the store next dour when his wife is away. It has been a big topic of gossip around the neighborhood. So my boss decided that he needed to put an end to it because he felt it reflected poorly on the organization. So an hour long scolding of the maid commenced and I felt like shooting myself because of the awkwardness of the situation. But at the end of the meeting it came out that there was a lot of instances where people had been leaving the office without telling anyone and no one knows how it get in contact with them. So I proposed the creation of a sign out sheet. If someone one is leaving the office for a full day or more they write down when they will be leaving, where they are going and when they will return. They thought that was a great idea so I made one up and stuck it on the wall. If it actually gets used im going to step forward an claim having accomplished some organizational development. Go team Jack! In addition I downloaded some type learning software on their computer and made a folder of PDFs with information on possible future projects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The woman who died from stre</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One day I was sitting around on my porch. It was a spontaneous holiday that day. The new Mayor of the city was getting sworn in so the local government decided to announce a holiday. But the maid and the nurse who works with my organization did not know so they showed up for work anyways. Then the Gardener showed up at my house in the middle of the day with the Maid. They told me that the mother in law of the Gardener was not talking, that they were not sure if she was sick or just sad, so because I was a health volunteer I should go over there and see if there was anything wrong with her. I decided that I was highly unqualified for this responsibility. Thankfully the nurse was still in the office so I spoke with her and she decided to come with us. So we set off into the poor outskirts of town not 15 min walk from my house.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The house we approached was made entirely of palm leaves. There were five young children standing around in tattered clothes. There was a small table, a pot and a metal stand over a fire pit for the cooking. This was more or less the entirety of this family's possessions. The nurse went inside the house to check on the woman. Two minutes later the nurse came out shaking her head. “Its very bad,very very bad, very serious. This is now my responsibility.” The woman was suffering from advanced hypertension which causes paralysis in random parts of the body. For her, it had caused her face to go stiff. The woman was unable to move her mouth or even blink. In general she was very weak. The nurse got one of the neighbors to take the grandchildren away and care for them that afternoon. She then told the Gardner to get some men from the neighborhood to get a door or plank of wood to carry the woman to the main road where she could get a bus to the hospital. She told me that if she got to the hospital they could take care of her and in time she would completely recover. She also told me that there was nothing really left to be done, that it was now in the hands of her neighborhood to get her to the hospital, so I might as well go back home. So I went home assuming that everything was going to be taken care of. Four hours later the Maid came around the office and told me that the woman had died of dehydration. Her mouth and eyes had apparently completely dried out and she had diarrhea as well. No one in the community wanted to help get her to the road because her illness scarred them. On top of that no one wanted to give the 14 MTZ (mozambiquan currency 1USD=28 MTZ) to pay for her bus ride from the main road to the hospital.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Later I found out the full story of this situation. The daughter of the dead woman was married to a man a couple years ago and had five children with him. Then he found out that she was having an affair with the Gardener at my office so he left her. When he left her the Gardener married her and she moved to his farm plot several miles away. But apparently Mozambiquans don't do stepchildren. So she left her five children to live with her mother (the woman that died). So the grandmother spent a year and a half taking care of her grandchildren struggling to survive with little to no resources. The stress of this lifestyle built up and physically manifested as hypertension (really really bad blood pressure), and untreated it turned into advanced hyper tension and that turned into face paralysis and death. I am not sure what ever happened to the children. There was some talk of them going to move in with an aunt or an uncle but it is possible that they have been sent to an orphanage. They may be the saddest part of this situation because they have effectively been abandoned.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: -1.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Work has been kind of slow. There is a woman who works in my office who makes arts and crafts and is trying to sell them. I am trying to see if there is any way I can help her expand her business. She is very smart and she is also teaching other women how to make the different crafts. I could see her shop as becoming a big woman's community empowerment project. Additionally, my org just got a very large project proposal accepted. They will be conducting HIV education focused on preventing the spread of the virus to young girls. I just finished up a small report covering what the curriculum should include and what learning tools should be used. I did a bunch of research first, wrote up a report in English and then translated it into Portuguese. It was a lot of work for a piece of paper with 20 bullet points but it was really fulfilling to have completed it and have something to show for my work. It felt a lot like the research and report writing I used to do in college and grad school. So it was cool to get to flex those mussels again. After peace corps I think I could see myself doing something along those lines and being happy (think tank or government research kind of thing). On another note. I am at the half way point of my service. I arrived in Mozambique over a year ago and I have one more year to go before I become a “normal American.” A person in peace corps training came up to my site for a few days to get an idea of things. Her group will start working in mid August. They will be with us for our second year and us with them for their first. Of the new people I met, they seemed pretty cool. So it will be fun to hang out with some new people over the next year.</span></b>
Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-83185551636461403792012-05-04T04:56:00.001-07:002012-05-04T04:56:51.251-07:00too much time has gone by since my last post<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">December</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">January</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">The rest of january pretty much sucked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Febuary</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">-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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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 :) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">-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)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">-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..</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">-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)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">April</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">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. </span></div>Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-87535943549606911912011-12-11T22:59:00.000-08:002011-12-11T22:59:06.542-08:00My work cont.So here is a quick rundown of what has been happening in my organization and in my head since I finished with my fist home visits.<br />
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First I came to realize that the whole first 2 months at site I was making lots of notes about problems I perceived and solutions I could provide to them. By the end of October I realized that this was totally the wrong approach. It is ironic because I knew from the start that the way that aid agencies and orgs have made big mistakes in the past is when some guy from the west shows up, thinks he knows better than everyone else and then creates a project based on his own assumptions rather than the self identified needs for those in the community. So after doing a lot of thinking and reading (particularly two very good books which I recommend. "Mountains beyond Mountains" and "Pathologies of Power", the first is a biography of a Man named Paul Farmer and the second is a book written by Paul Farmer) I decided that I needed to start from the beginning by conducting a community needs assessment or CNA. Basically it is just a tool to figure out what the biggest problems are for a group of people. But I had a lot of questions about the details and how to go about it as there are many different types of CNAs. Most importantly, would the CNA be for my activistas, the neighborhood in general that the office was located in, or directly for the HIV positive people that my org already was providing services to? Thankfully I had my reconnect meeting coming up, so when I arrived in Maputo I had a list of questions to ask my Peace Corps supervisor. After a really good session of sitting down with her I decided that I would focus the CNA on the individuals that were living with HIV in the surrounding neighborhoods in which my organization operated.<br />
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After a lot of time spent back at site trying to get something off the ground and a lot of frustration, I held a couple in prompt to CNA with all the activistas after one of their normal meetings. I asked them if there was one problem that their "patients" had in their lives that was common amongst all of them and was very serious. The answer was the same amongst all of them. The people in our area who are HIV positive don’t have enough food to eat and also don’t have money to pay for transportation to go to the hospital to pick up their antiretrovirals or even to get to the hospital if they have a serious health problem. I realized that CNAs are really more important for outsiders to understand what is going on in a community than the people themselves. The activistas knew what the main problem was and have for some time. First I focused on food. I said to myself, ok we have Identified the problem and now I have to figure out a solution. At first I was really excited about developing some form of food security project, but then the real world happened. <br />
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My org got a surprise visit from one of its large American donor organizations. They got all the activistas together and held a big meeting that was for me very awkward. It was very hierarchical and obviously intimidated the activistas, therefore it was not very useful in my personal opinion as an independent observer. Next, a couple of the activistas took some of the representatives from the donor org on some home visits and I went with one group. This was a very depressing experience for two reasons. First, the people we visited were living very hard lives. The first person was a very sweet soft spoken 10 year old boy who was blind in one eye and also HIV positive. The second was a single mother of two who was working 3 house cleaning jobs and barely making enough money to feed her children. The third was a man who was extremely skinny and suffering from something that cased him to walk with a serious limp. The second reason this was all so depressing was because I realized that the plots of land that these people lived on were very very small. They had no chance of being able to grow any significant amount of food in the small patch of sand that their entire family called home.<br />
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So I was back at square one, I knew that food was a big problem, especially because HIV positive people need to eat more calories than uninfected people. (Also the antiretroviral drugs hurt peoples stomachs when they are not taken with food, so it is very common that people will not take their meds when they do not have food. This causes an individual to take their meds irregularly which in the long run is even worse than not taking them at all because it increases the chances of creating a drug resistant strain of HIV, which puts the individual and possibly other in much greater risk.) However, I had no clue as to what the solution was and this was extremely frustrating for me so I reached out to some people at the Maputo peace corps office and had some good conversations with them. The country director just so happened to stop by that week for a routine visit, so it was good to run things by him. He validated my frustrations, validated the fact that I live in a very rural spot and also validated that I was doing good work, he also gave me some cheese and dark chocolate from Maputo, so that was very cool. Also I talked the whole thing over with my mom and that helped me get everything organized in my brain. Basically the end result was me realizing that it was my responsibility to help my org find a solution and improve itself but it was the responsibility of the org to actually find the solution, implement a program and “help the people.” This was a big relief as it took the responsibility of having to "save" the whole community of HIV positive people in my area off my shoulders and gave me a better perspective of what my role should be over my period of time here. So I came to the conclusion that my main responsibilities were that of a teacher and a question asker. <br />
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I have started out just teaching things that people told me they wanted to learn and then moved on to asking questions about problems and then asking if people wanted me to teach them something I thought could help them. I started giving computer classes to people in the office and a few have really gone from 0 to 100 (well maybe 75 but 75 is 100 in Mozambique). I sat down and helped a colleague make a December calendar of events for the acvtivistas. Right now in the office everything is organized by word of mouth and there is no official calendar or any list of upcoming meetings or activities in the office. So helping people in the office get calendars up has been a small but important project that they have really responded to. I felt really proud when my colleague came into the office one morning and put up a calendar she made on her own the day after I taught her how to do it. I also gave a class to some colleagues and activistas on how to conduct a CNA so that in the future they could go out and do it on their own. So at the next activista meeting they did a CNA with all the activistas (it was basically the same thing I had done and we got the same answers but this time they were doing it, which is the whole point, so that was good.) After everyone had spoken I raised the question as to what they thought the solution should be. I also asked a lot of random questions about stuff that I thought may be possible solutions, and it probably all seemed like stupid questions to them but it got them thinking about what things could work and what things could not work. By the end of the meeting they decided that the best thing to do would be to organize all their "patients" into groups according to what neighborhood they lived in so they would not have to travel far to see each other. Each group would have an income generating project that they would work on together. Each group would have a project that was best suited to their skills, resources, and abilities. So hypothetically one group in a more urban area would make clothes while some in a more rural area would grow pineapples, and another would raise pigs etc...<br />
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So that is more or less where I am: trying to keep them at the lead, finding the solutions on their own. Now I need to just keep asking them questions about how they think it would be best to more forward and what are the next steps. So that is my plan. I think....Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-41403098353488325972011-12-11T05:44:00.000-08:002011-12-11T05:44:38.187-08:00Other stuff cont. (dont worry there are no more stories about killing things)<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the end of october I went down to Maputo for the Moz 16 “reconnect” meeting. After being at site for about 3 months everyone in a Peace Corps group reunites for an additional week of training and reflection on our individual site placement situations. The primary goal is to come out of reconnect with a solid idea of what your role in your organization will be. These long sessions took up most of our time, usually 8 in the morning till 6 in the evening.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It was really really good for everyone to see each other again. Everyone in our group gets along sooo well and we all just love each other to death. It is ridiculous and was to cute, but true. So part of reconnect was just all of us running around hanging out with each other and laughing a lot. In addition, we ate a lot. A lot! We took full advantage of the fact that the hotel provided us with free buffets for each meal of the day. This was a welcome relief to the normal diet of rice and beans for dinner and bread and peanut butter for lunch and breakfast. It just so happened that the first day of our conference was also Halloween. Only a few people dressed up that evening. I had the best costume. I dressed up as our country director (the person who is in charge of all Mozambique Peace Corps activities). I still do not know if he has seen the pictures but when he does I think he will have a good laugh. He is a good guy. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On the Thursday of that week we were given some “down time.” We got out of our session at 4 instead of 6. So I walked downtown and accomplished my two main goals. First eat some gelato at one of the two gelato places in Maputo and also all Moz. Check. Two, buy a Portuguese novel that I could begin reading to improve my language skills and vocab. Check, but it cost $40 USD because in Moz novels are apparently luxury items that are imported from Portugal that only the wealthy elite buy, lame. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">After getting down with some gelato and novel, I met up with some other volunteers for a beer and some pizza before heading back to the hotel. Upon arriving at the hotel some of the other volunteers suggested we go to the carnival that was two blocks away. A carnival with rides and games and beer in the middle of Maputo at night? That sounds like the right mix between a bad idea and a really good idea. So I went with them to check it out. Unfortunately they were just closing everything down as we got there but we walked around anyways. If you think walking around an empty carnival is a surreal experience, try walking around an empty carnival in the middle of a large third world city. So then we walked home and on the way found a hip little bar/dance place close to our hotel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The next night was our final night, after having snacks and wine at the country director’s apartment overlooking the Indian Ocean (nice) we all went to the hip bar. It was very interesting to so the wealthier young Maputo scene. It is very ethnically diverse, white, black, Indian, and people of various mixed ethnic backgrounds. There were a lot of ex-pats as well, South African on vacation or who owed businesses n Moz, European and American tourists and transplants. People that were in country for a year or so for work, and others just kinda bumbling around that found themselves in Maputo, Mozambique of all places. Some of the music was American pop, some was popular Mozambique techno. It was our last chance to all be together for another 6 months. So we danced and laughed and all gave each other big hugs goodbye. The next day I took the long bus ride back to my home and got back late and tired, and when I opened my door I saw that my living room floor had lots of lizard poop on it. I was too tired to do much so I just swept it all out, went into my outhouse/showering area and poured a bucket of water over my body, dried off and went to sleep knowing that the next day I would have to thoroughly clean my whole house. And I did, but that really is not much of an interesting story. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Two of the volunteers who are placed in the north took the opportunity to travel up to my city and hang out for a couple days. It was really awesome to hang out with them because they are both absolutely hilarious and really good guys. Unfortunately they had been having a rough time adjusting to the towns they are living in so it was good for them to get some R&R and hang out with some of us in the south. So we did our best to get them some nice western style food and hang out at a couple tourist sports. One evening we all had dinner at a volunteer’s house in the middle of town and when I showed up they were both passed out on the couches and bright red. They had spent toooo much time at the beach and were in a miserable state. But on the up side the food was really good.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the middle of November I went to visit another volunteer in a town in a more inland, dry part of the country. Getting there required me to take a 3 hour trip on a really really really bad dirt road away from the national highway. The scenery was nice, all really typical African bush, very green, lots of butterflies, reed huts every once and a while, large Baobab trees and oh ya… land mines. Mozambique was basically in a state of war from 1968 to 1994 and there are still a lot of land mines laying around. But the good news is that most of the fields are clearly marked. So on my chapa ride through the bush every once and a while you would see a whole row of sticks along the side of the road that had been painted red and white and some had animal skulls on top. This is how you know where not to take a bathroom break. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Eventually the road just ends at a small roundabout and you look over and you are in the middle of what looks like an old west town except it is in Africa and all the buildings are made of cement instead of wood, but same basic layout. One main strip of road filled with general stores, bars, hair cutting places, hardware, and then a central market place. The rest is surrounded by bush and cattle farms. Normally, they get 3 hours of electricity a day. When I was there, there was none at all. It was really hot there and I look at that as being the official start of my first African summer, because when I returned to my site it started getting really hot here too. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the down side of that is that it is just terribly hot right now and no air conditioning anywhere. The up side is that its Mango season :-)mmmmmmm ya! I eat one or two mangos a day now. And let me tell you. That is pretty awesome, and I can get 4 for about 40 cents.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The next week I took a trip down to Xai Xai where a bunch of volunteers from Moz 16 met up because it was one volunteer’s birthday. Originally I was not going to go because I had been away from my site the week before, but I had a very stressful week at work (I will cover that in “my work cont.” post) so I decided, to hell with it, im going to have a couple beers with some friends and…drum roll….eat at the Indian restaurant there. Yes, there are plenty of Indians in my town but not a single one has decided to start an indian restaurant and since Indian food is my favorite I went straight there before I even said hi to any of my friends. It was soooooooooooo good. I ate lamb curry. I think this mostly rice and beans diet I have been living with has seriously changed the amount of meat I can eat because I was really full after eating about a half of what I normally could eat. But I still ate it all and washed it down with a chai tea. That was an amazing lunch. Then we all hung out on the beach followed by getting together and making ginger black bean tacos for dinner. It was just a really nice time to hang out and talk with some good people and eat good food. I am becoming more and more aware that my general attitude is very dependent on the quality of food I eat and how much I eat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So on the food theme: the following weekend was thanksgiving! We held thanksgiving at the house of a volunteer that lives in the center of my town because she has a full stove and oven, and place for people to sleep. Basically I arrived just before 11 in the morning and we started snacking and then people just went up to the stove in shifts. Some people had bought a large plastic jug of cheap wine and some spices. They wanted to make mulled wine because it reminded them of autumn but were not totally sure how to make it. As it so happens, I love making German mulled wine, so I took it on and spent a solid 3 hours making one batch after another of mulled wine. It was good, and now we know the best thing to do with the nasty cheap wine they sell allover the place here but no one wants to drink. As the day went on we continued making one course after another. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people would make some stuff and then we would eat it and then other people would make other stuff and then we would eat that, We did not get to the main course of deep fried chicken, garlic rosemary mashed potatoes (made by yours truly), mac and cheese and cranberry sauce until like 7:30 at night. Then we had pumpkin ice cream with ginger cookies. I was so full I was only able to eat half my desert and that was sad because the pumpkin ice cream and ginger cookies were home made and really amazing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The following weekend I went back up to Vilankulo, really it is my favorite beach I have ever been to. It is just gorgeous. Though the two highlights were really unrelated to the beach. When I first arrived I had lunch with a friend at a cute little café that reminded me a lot of beach side cafes in smaller towns on the coast between LA and Monterey. It was really cool to sit down and have a nice bowl of pasta with vegetables and feta cheese and then enjoy an espresso and then read a few articles in a recent news magazine. It just kinda took me back home for a bit. Like as if I were living a normal American life again. It was a good two hours.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The next day I went to the sending off party for a volunteer who is apart of the last group of volunteers to be sent home of the group that arrived in 2009. It was an interesting experience to be one of the new people who has a solid 19 months left saying goodbye to someone who has completed their two years. It also made me think about what it will be like for me when I am on the opposite end of the peace corps time line. I am sure it will be very strange to look back on a completed 2 years of living and working in Mozambique. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I really do not have any clue what my thoughts and feelings will be 19 months from now. I just know that I will probably be hoping I have a job lined up for when I go back home. </span></div>Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-40985213293199907082011-12-10T02:26:00.000-08:002011-12-10T02:26:23.135-08:00Work and other stuffMy work (why I flew half way around the world)<br /><br />In mid October I went on a couple home visits with an activista. It was the first time I was able to see the on the ground work that my organization was involved in and what in effect I was there to support. We visited two homes. The first was the home of a woman who was extremely skinny and elderly. The activista had a good relationship with her ad they talked about general family happenings and the activista then moved on to making sure that the woman had been taking her anti retrovirals. We then gave her a kit of health supplies (soap, condoms, bleach for water purification, and a health handbook with lots of different information about preventing disease). This kit was a part of a USAID project to dispense these health info booklets along with some basic supplies. There was a young boy living with the woman, I am still not sure if he was her son or not as she seemed much too old to have give birth to him but she could have been younger than her appearance, so the activista registered him in a program for vulnerable children so he could receive some food since his care taker was obviously burdened with the task of caring for herself. The second home we visited was relatively uneventful and the individual was fairly healthy. I did lean that the neighborhood next to mine was occupied primarily by people from another part of the province and they moved there a few years ago when there was a large flood and some nuns built 60 houses for these people so the neighborhood is now called “sesenta casas.” Apparently the whole area that I live in (the outskirts of the city) has only recently been built within the past 5 years. Before that it was all just coconut and cashew trees. That would explain why my house is in such a rural area but at the same time close to the city.<br /><br />The next day I went on a trip with the same activista to a school where she gives weekly classes on health and HIV prevention. The school was kinda out in the bush and was very simple. it was maybe 4 large reed huts with palm leaf roofs and all the children sat on the ground as the teachers stood in front of the class with a blackboard. I was much more of a distraction than a help as all the kids wanted to do was just stare at the white guy. SO I played two games with them that are linked with teaching HIV prevention and education and it all went fairly well. Then the teachers invited me to the 10 year anniversary party of the school, I said I would be happy to, they said great and that because I was not a student I would have to pay about $10 USD to attend the party (what?!?!, I could go to a fancy restaurant in the city and have a nice meal with that much money). Sensing some strange scheme to get money out of the American I told them that I would get back to them.<br /><br />Other stuff<br /><br />I had some interesting run ins with wild life in October. Of course there is another rat story: One night I woke up to hear my rat trap go off, when I checked it there was no rat but three whiskers attached to it. The rat had just barely avoided death. I think I set the trap too sensitive. SO I reset it but found no rat the next morning. The following night, just as I was settling into bed I saw the rat trying to claw its way into my plastic chest where I keep things like pasta and beans and rice. I realized that the rat had learned not to take the tasty food sitting on the rat trap. I then realized that this rat would never be killed by the rat trap and I had to kill it any way I could or accept it as a new room mate for some time. So, as it was occupied with trying to claw through plastic, I gently got out of my bed and grabbed the broom next to me. I crouched down and snuck up behind the rat very, very quietly. Then I lifted the broomstick and quickly brought it down on the rat’s body. I had thought that the rat would try to run, but I must have broken some bones or something. So I smacked it a couple more time to put it out of its misery. Then as I started to slide it away with the stick and towards the door it woke up and started coughing blood. SO I guess I didn’t kill it I guess I just knocked it out, so I slid it out of my house as quickly as I could as is was convulsing and spitting up blood on my floor. Finally I got it on the veranda where a few more well placed smacks to the head finished it off. Oh how I yern for the days when the most disgusting animal killing experience I had to deal with was sawing off the head of a chicken.<br /><br />My other wild life I have had to deal with has been scorpions which I have encountered in my bathroom twice now but thankfully (knock on wood) no stings as I was able to scare them away with rocks. Also I had a flea plant a sac of eggs in one of my toe. I had no clue what it was, just a half bubble of dead skin raised from my toe and all the skin around it was numb. The peace corps Dr. I talked to over the phone told me that any Mozambiquan house wife would know how to remove it with a needle. So I went to a Mozambiquan hose wife and she showed up at my house not with a needle but a twig that had been sharpened to a point. I took out a needle and was like “This would be better right, nice, clean, sanitary needle that I washed in bleach?” “No.” she replied, the pointy stick was in her mind obviously the better option, so I washed the pointy stick in bleach and let her go at my toe with it. So she tore off the dead skin and revealed a large sack filled with black puss and then she pulled it out with a dirty, sandy piece of plastic. Then I poured bleach over the crater in my toe. good times.Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-42781610543692537072011-10-16T04:53:00.000-07:002011-10-16T04:53:10.895-07:00A few short stories from Mozambique.<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><u><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Activistas (ActiveeSHtaSH)</span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The organization I am working with recently started a program for home based care of HIV positive people in several districts of my province. When someone tests as HIV positive they are added to a list that the hospital keeps for people that are to receive anti retroviral medications. The activistas are health advocates of sorts. They visit the people who have tested positive and count out their pills and help them make sure that all the propor medications are being taken regularly and in addition check up on the general state of the household. For example, if there is a child that is in need of food then the activista places the child on a vulnerable child food distribution program. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Recently my organization trained a group of about 30 activistas to begin this program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was observing several of the days of the training so they all have gotten to know me. Now every couple weeks they hold meetings in my office to hand in paper work and organize themselves into groups. I have spent time trying to learn different Gitonga words from them and singing and dancing to Mozambiquan songs. Mozambiquans are very energetic people so on one hand when I am actively trying to talk and joke around with them they are very happy, but if I am trying to read something or I just don’t feel like talking a lot they all think I am either sick or very angry. It is a very strange situation to be I when you have a group of people telling you to immediately go to the hospital because you do not feel like dancing today. But in general I feel very happy to have gotten so integrated with this group of 30 activistas. It is with them that I hope to learn the most and achieve the most over my next 22 months (I have now completed my second month at site). My time has mostly bee spent making observations about the org and the activistas and how I may be able to contribute to their success. However I recently realized that I have not yet just sat down with a group of activistas and asked them what their greatest challenges are in trying to help the HIV positive people they work with. I felt very silly having made scores upon scores of notes about my perceptions of what the greatest challenges are but I never just sat down and asked any of the activistas. SO this is my next goal. Wish me luck.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><u><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Home</span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A couple weeks ago I took a 6 hour journey up the coast to Vilankulo, a beautiful beach side large town. The town is in an area of rolling dunes filled with coconut trees right up against the ocean. At low tide a very large sandbar is above the water and you can walk over a huge area as if the ocean had just dried up. It is a very surreal experience. in the close distance there are several islands that make for a pretty view. They also block the rough ocean waves making it nice and calm swimming water. Also, this gives the water a wonderful bright blue color. I was never one that yearned to be relaxing on the beach in some exotic tropical location, but I have to admit, it was pretty nice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then when it was time to go I took my 6 hour journey back to my home and when I got to my city and started walking around I realized that things were starting to actually feel like home here. For a while I would step out of my house and look at ll the trees and houses and people that were around me and I felt that I was in a place that was very foreign and it makes you feel kinda small. But now I feel more and more that I am at some level connected to the rest of it. Now, when I look up at the stars that are totally different from the stars back home, it just doesn’t feel that intimidating anymore.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><u><span style="font-family: Calibri;">No electricity, no water and I think I smell a rat</span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last weekend the electricity went out for 42 hours and when the electricity goes out so does the water. I had a large bucket of water and that was what would last be, but of course I never knew when the electricity would come back and therefore the running water. I spent most of my time reading because there was not a whole lot else to do ad the first day all I ate was raisins peanuts and crackers. I had some shrimp in the fridge that I was worried about going bad. I had dropped a significant amount of cash for these shrimp and I wanted to make the meal worth it but by lunch time on Sunday I was just worried about getting to eat them at all. my stove is electric so the only way for me to cook them was to build a fire, so I dug a pit in my year and filled it wit the various materials of a coconut tree and the whole thing went up in flames and burned itself out really really quickly. This was disappointing for two reasons, firstly, it meant that I was going to have to collect a lot more coconut tree material and use it more carefully in order to cook my shrimp. Secondly, this was a little surprising because many many people in this area build their entire houses out of coconut leaves. So basically my whole neighborhood is a tinderbox. Eventually got a fire going and cooked my shrimp, they ended up being a little dry but they were good enough to satisfy my hunger for something that was not peanuts, raisins and crackers. Ironically about 2 hours latter the electricity came back. I was so ecstatic to just be able to take a bucket bath! I was particularly interested in just getting everything in my house clean as well. I had had a rat a few days prior and I did not want another one to come into my house, attracted by any filth that accumulated. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A few nights prior I was woken up by the sound of some silver wear falling from my table. I turned on the light and saw a small but extremely fast rat dart from my table to the wall and then out under the tin roof, all in about 1.5 seconds. I locked down anything with a food sent but I could still hear the rat enter my house as soon as I got in bed, and then as soon as I turned on the light it disappeared again. After repeating this a few times I resigned myself to just go to sleep. The next day I bought a rat trap and set it out with a piece of tomato as bait. I remembered hearing the rat enter the house that night and thinking to myself, you are sooo F*&ked. I woke up the next morning thinking to myself, that’s funny I did not hear the rat trap slap. I went over to the trap and it was exactly as I left it the evening before except for one thing. The tomato was gone. So, I experimented with setting the rat trap supper supper sensitive (almost destroying my hand at one point), until I got to the point that I could set the trap so that it would go off if I dropped a small piece of paper on it. I set it with another piece of tomato (who knew that rats love tomato so much), and the whole day I was absolutely filled with the anticipation of the kill. I wanted to get this guy so bad by now. During my lunch break I went back to my house just to check on the rat trap, no dice rats usually don’t come out in the middle of the day. Then after work I took a bucket bath and when I came back inside, there it was, the rat trap bar had hit it exactly on the neck, a perfect kill. Right or wrong, I was very satisfied.</span></div>ps when I chose this backgroud it was a little bit ironic because it was so cliche tropical, but now I look at the palm trees in the background of this blog I I say to myself, "Hey thats like my site."Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-19361546174529178772011-09-15T05:39:00.000-07:002011-09-15T05:39:26.097-07:00Highlights of the Past MonthHere are a few highlights of my past month and more or less my first month at site.<br />
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In the beginning of August my whole group had to say goodbye to our host families so we held a big party with lots of meat. We gave our host family members presents and they gave us neat capilanas (shirts for the guys). Then on the last night we packed up all our stuff and left our town at 6 in the morning as we waved goodbye to our host families and got on the big bus for Maputo.<br />
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We then had our swear in ceremony. Our group chose a capilana pattern that we would all make one piece of cloathng out of. A lot of the girls went all out taking the oportunity to live out their "project runway" fantasies of designing their own dresses. I just showed up at the tailor with a button up collared T-shirt in one hand and the capilana material in the other and asked the talor to just make me an identical of the t-shirt. Some of the other guys had bow-ties mad (mad props).<br />
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So we all arrived at the house of the Ambassador of the US to Mozambique decked out in our capilana gear sitting in the hot sun on some plastic chairs , in the back yard overlooking the indian ocean, with a bout 100 people looking at us, most of whom we did not know. Most of us latter commented that it felt like graduation but sadly our families were not there. So then some people got up and spoke about their wishes for our future success and finally the Ambasador came to the podium and had us repeat after her as we swore into the Peace Corps to become full fledged volunteers (woohoo!). Then we stood up and all sang our rendition of "Home." I forget the artist but its a good song and fairly recent and you should check it out and i will try to get a link to the video of our performance to my mom and on my facebook. Then we stuffed our faces with lots of tasty orders before we were shuffled out and onto the bus to take us to our hotel. (Which had a very nice view of the whole city from my room, very cool) <br />
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All of the people that went up North left the next day so the night after the swear in we all had to say our sad goodbyes as our very united group was split in 2. Those of us who have site placements in the south had the weekend to explore Maputo and enjoy such things as gelato, expresso, thai food, indian food, and fresh lunch at the Maputo fish market which is a large open air fish market with restaurants attached that will sell you the fresh fish grilled and served with rice and hot sauce and salad.<br />
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We then had our supervisors conferance where we met the people that would be our organizational bosses for the next two years. The conference lasted two days and was in the hotel where we were staying. One of my friends described it as being like a blind date that lasts 2 days and you know your stuck with each other for the next 2 years. So it was a little odd at first but on the up side the food was very good at the hotel and fore some reason fancy places in Mozambique have the best chocolate moose ever.<br />
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Then I had my big drive up to my site. It took a while but it was very beautiful to see the landscape turn from the typical dry African bush to a luch tropical setting with lots of Mango and coconut trees. We got there aty night and I did not have a materes to sleep on so my org placed me in a mozambiquan version of a hotel for the night. Unfortunatly on the way from my new home to the motel we got rear ended by a van but there was not serious damage. Then I got to the hotel at took a shower and then I realized that the wires attached to the small watter heater were touching the watter and I was getting a little electrocuted every time I touched the faucet. So I stopped taking a shower. Then my supervisor took me to a place to get some dinner. The woman behind the bar did not speak much portugese but she really liked me so she kept speaking in Bitonga to my supervisor and he was translating everything she said to me in portugese. More or less she invited me to spend the night at her house because she thought it was really important for me to learn gitonga and she promised me that she was a good language teacher and I would learn really quickly. I told her that I was sorry but I need to focus on learning portugese right now. This was a very odd conversation to have using my new boss as the translator. <br />
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The next day I woke up and had a breakfast of cashew nuts, cake and overly sweet tea that was provided to me by the motel. This was a bad combo for my stomach for some reason and durring my trip into the city to buy everything I would need I ended up throwing up in the street in front of one of the shops. (to this day if I ever go back to that shop they people working there will start making fun of me, I guess that is a form of community integration).<br />
All in all my city is very beautiful it has lots of run down but pretty buildings and an unbeatable naturallandscape. I live in the rural outskirts of the city (about 20 min bus ride) so it was very disorienting to go between a nice western style store or restaurant to houses with roofes made of palm leaves. Ingeneral it just took a while to feel ajusted. Just getting a rutine together for making sure yuo have enough time to do laundry, take a bath, wash dishes, cook your meals, clean your house, do all your shopping and be in the office several hours a day is very difficult. Its alot like cmping, everything just takes a long time to do. Also, I had rats at first but I killed them with rat poison (which is called "Medicine for rat killing" here). It was pretty gross placing the stiff little bodies of the ratts in plastic bags, even their tails were totally stiff.<br />
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My first week my organization introduced me to the neighborhood by holding a big community gathering where all the older men and women showed up to meet me. It was classic Peace Corps. I was sitting in a circle with all these people that live off the land and basically live the same way the people have lived here for the past few hundred years. They asked me random question and I answered and then they all sang a song and I went around shaking everyones hand and that was that. The other days my org took me around the city and introduced me to government and local NGO officials. A few days latter one of the men from the community that I had me invited me over for dinner. He is a little better off. He owns several markets around town and had a nice house for his family. We ate small fish (head and all) in a very spicy sauce and drank gin from a plasic bottle. After talking to him a while he told me that he grew up in germany and spoke german. i thought it was the gin talking. But then he broke out in fluent German. I was able t understand most of it from what I remembered of my college german classes. His father worked in East Germany when he was a boy, a little outside of Dresden. So his frist language is actually German and then he learned Portugese when his family moved back to Mozambique.<br />
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A couple weeks ago I went to the Tambila festval which is a Mozambiquan instument a lot like a zailaphone, but bigger. I staied at the house of an toehr peace corps volunteer. It was really cool becuase there wer about 15 to 20 volunteers all camped in abd around her house. I got to meet a lot of the volunteers that arrive almost a year ago that live in the southern region. They were all super cool and we all had a great time listening to the music, hanging out with a large group of japanese volunteers that have a similar program to peace corps and then going to a big open air dance club. This town was really beautiful as it overlooked a huge light aqua blue colored lagoon cerounded by bright green treas.<br />
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Last week I finally made it out to a big rural market I had been hearing about for some time. it is only on tuesdays and fridays and people from very distyant villages come here to sell their goods. I was told that if I wanted to get any seafood I would have to get there between 6 and 7 in the morning and it is a 40 min walk. So I woke up at 5:30 and started walking just as the sun was coming up. There was a thick and very creepy layer of fog coverng everything just about 15 feet in the air. It was very pretty to walk past all the little farm fields and coconut trees and reed houses as the sun was comming up,. Finally i got to the market which was a clasic, large outdoor African market filled with lots of fruit and vegtables for dirt chep prices. I made my way over to the sea food area. Most of it was very small shrimp and different form sof small dried fish. I was not down for that. But they did have a lot of clams and decent sized crab so I bought about 2or 3 pounds of crab for about 70 US cents. not bad. I recently bought a refridgerator with a small freezer (I know, posh corps right) so now I am able to keep frozen crab in my house all the time. I have pretty consistant electricity but I have to walk maybe150 feet to the closest watter faucet where I fill up my large watter bucket and carry it back to my house. Its not a bad deal at all considering the fact that a lot of other people in this country have to walk a long while to get to their clossest watter. The only anoying thig is that when the electricity goes out, so does the watter and when the electricity comes back, the watter takes a long time to get back.<br />
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Right now with my organization I am just doing observation until mid november when I will present my findings and define a role for myself and responsibilities in order to contribute to the long term sustainable improvement of the organization. I already have a few ideas but just in case wish me luck.Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-13282872923511031482011-08-04T01:58:00.000-07:002011-08-04T01:58:32.695-07:00Cultural ExperiencesSo a couple weeks ago I went to a sort of mozambiquan baby shower. Once a baby survives being alive for one month it is taken out of the house for the first time. Then freinds and family say some prayers and then they start chanting "The baby has nothing! Give to the babby!" and everyone places presents on the table that the baby is laying on. Then they place a blanket over the baby and everyone start throughing coins at the baby and then give larger amounts of money. I was the only white person there so a lot of people took pictures of me. Then when it was time to eat I was apart of the first group of people that got up to get food (the older men) then different groups of people went up to the table as the food became less and less. Most people just got beans and rice. (which is what I took in the first place along with a little chicken and french fries) The young children were given a slightly fermented, sweatened corn porage. it tasts like apple sauce that tickles your toung. But it does not have any sgnificant amount of alcohol. Then it was cake time and the proud mother and father had the first peace of cake. The Father(late 40s early 50s) was the father of my home stay father(26). The mother is another wife (between 18 and 24). I am not sure if this man has multiple wives or if one has died.<br />
Then I got to eat cake which i was very happy about because I was very hungary,. I did not eat much of the food because I felt bad about eating much when there were more people at the party that the food could have posibly satisfied. Then after cake I got dinner. My plate consisted of two chicken feat and chicken liver on rice. (I ended up just mashing up the chicken feat into some of the rice so it looked like I ate them. I actualy like chicken liver a lot. Then for the next few hours I danced with a lot of the children along with my homestay partents. They really like to dance and play withy kids so it was a lot of fun! Then we took a car back home and an old woman we were giving a ride to sang a bunch of traditional songs. It was very cool.<br />
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A week later I had a very different cultural experience. I few people and myself wanted to take a trip to a small shopping senter in a suberb of Maputo. The chapas that go there were telling us that they would not take us to that suburb but that they would take us to another suberb and then we could take another chapa from there, but first they wanted moe people to show up (and no one was around because it was sunday mornign). SO instead we decided that we should embark on the Peace corps Mozambique tradition of Balaying (hitchhiking). Hitchhiking is very common in Mozambvique and the only people that do it are travelers and very poor people. And givven the poor conditoin of a lot of the chapas, hichhiking is a lot saffer than public transportation. So I waited on the side of the main road with two other volunteers and 20 minets latter a wealthy Mozambiquan in a big SUV stoped and was happy to give us a ride (the shopping center is along the main road and he was going to Maputo anyways). SO initiation into 3rd world hitchhiking compleat! Then going to the shoping center was very strange. It was like a little american minimall. There was a big suppermarket and nice cloathing shops and a couple restautants. I had a straight up feast. Thin crust pizza with capers, olives, and anchovies, followed by a greak salad with feta chease. Then I ate some chocolate I bouyght at the suppermarket. It was so good to eat really nice food and a big salad. If you had told me a year ago that I would be having a nice thin crust pizza for lunch in late july 2011. I would have saied to you: Nope, I will be in peace corps. oh well!Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-5685783499306942872011-07-23T05:53:00.000-07:002011-07-23T05:53:18.389-07:00The last week and a halfThe last week and a half has been an emotional roller coster ride for the pre-service training group. Once we got back from our site visits everyone was very happy becauswe we all had so much fun getting to see a day in the life of the current peace corps volunteers. However soon after we returned we discovered that one third of all the people in the group did not pass the language exam that we had taken prior to our site visits. I was very happy that I had passed the test but overall I was sad that the group as a whole did not perform as expected. This feeling was shared by many as we feel like it was more a group failure that the failure of individuals. It is still quite a mistery as to how such a large percentage of us did not pass as we have all been very enthusiastic about learning the language. So now instead of moving on to learn local languages, our trainers have decided that we will just focus on learning portugese for the next few weeks. Before I was in a language class of people that all lived close to me. Now I am in a class of people that had the same score as me. I feel like I am learning a lot more portugese now and even though I will not be learning a local language during training I feel like I will come out of training with strong portugese. <br />
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The day after we were told the bad news we had our placement interviews were we were able to express what time of site and job we would like to be placed with ofr the next two years. I told them that I wanted to do organizational development of a smaller local Mozambiquan NGO and also simultaniously work with a larger international NGO. I told them that I would prefer to be in an area with several other volunteers and that it would be nice to be in a larger town so I could focus on learning Portugese and not a local language. Then from Friday (the day of the interview) to wednesday the day of site anouncements) everyone was just crazy anxious with anticipation. I even had a dream a few night before site anouncements where i saw a sheet of paper with eveyone's name on the left side and their towns on the right side. In the dream i scroled downwith my hand to my name and then saw the name of a southern mozambiquan city next to it. <br />
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And then it was wednesday....We were all standing together in a school basketball court with a chalk map of Moz in front of us and the names of all the site writen out on the map. We were given envelopes and said that when we were tole to open the envelope we would all open ours at once and then go stand on our site on the map. 5.....4.....3...2....1....."Open your envelopes!" it took me way longer then it should take a normal human being to open an envelope becauser I think my hands were shaking a bit. Finaly I tore it open and looked at the piece of paper. For the first few seconds i only saw the words describing the NGO I would work with and I was very frustrated that I could not see where it said what site i was going to (that was a very long 2-5 seconds). And then I saw it. "HOLY S#!t!" it was the same damn city i had the dream of. Crazy! So I went over to my site on the map and saw the group of people i would be living close to for the next two years and the ni looked over my sholder and saw the 2 thirds of my group that are all going to be living and working in the North of the Country. it is a little sad that so many of the people I have become friends with will be living so far away but it just gives me reolve (and resorces) to make a big trip through the north of the country at some point in the next 2 years.<br />
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More or less everyone is very excited about their placements and group moral is at an all time high. Though we are all so ready to get to site now that we for sure have trouble paying attention during the technical training sessions. I will be working with a larger local mozambiquan organization that runs the spectrum of HIV prevention and treatment. They recieve funding from 2 large INGOs and the US embasy. So it should be a really good experiance. I will be living in a city that is very beautiful and I am excited about exploring it and the serounding area.Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-23904986671175020492011-07-17T05:06:00.000-07:002011-07-17T05:06:21.793-07:00A day in the lifeI am in one of my extremely vivid Larium dreams right now. I am in some sort of situation that is completly not my life at all. All the people in my dream are people I know from different times and places of my life but for some reason they are all in this dream world as well, but the way that I know and relate to the all is completly different from real life. This dream is dragging on and on as if it were a full day and everything feels so real. Even my sence of smell is more real in my dreams since I started taking Larium.<br />
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Suddenly i am awakened by the sound of screams! Wait, no thats roosters...and now is dogs...and pigs squeeling too...and now cats. It is still dark but all the animals in the town have decided that it is time to wake up at about 3:30 in the morning. The mix of animal noisies blurs together and creates what I would amagin to be the sound track to hell. The wind is blowing hard, cold air is pooring through small cracks and the vent hole at the top of the wall and my room is getting colder by the second, good thing I am wearing a sweater, sweat panta and thick socks. The wind is blowing twigs and dust on the tin roof above me and i combination with the cats on the roof it sounds like im in the inside of a snare drum. i get up an relieve myself over the black bucket I have in my room because the out hose is always locked in the night.<br />
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I then go back to sleep for another round of Larium dreaming. At 6:30 I am woken up by my host mother and told that it is my turn to takea bucket bath. I walk into the bathing room which is a small room with a small drain at one end and underwear hanging from the walls (it is not considered proper in mozambique to dry your underwear outside so people do it in their bathing rooms). The air is still cold but the water is worm so I crouch over the bucket and bath myself. After i get dressed i eat breakfeast. Today I am a lucky boy my homestay mother made me frenchfries and a deep fried egg for breakfast. I only get this about once a week. Usually it is peanutbutter on bread. I eat my food and drink tea before grabbing my language books and note books before heading to class at 7:30.<br />
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I walk over to a neighboring coleague`s house were i and three others share the attention of our Portugese teacher for two hours. We take a five minet break to eat a snack that each of our home stay mothers have packed for us. Mostly we get juice and crackers ant are slightly sweet. The crackers make me think about hard tack that sailors used to survive off of, because we all have been eating these for almost 2 months now every day for snack once in the morning once in the afternoon.<br />
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After Language class we go to our technical training session where we learnign about how to become good peace corps health volunteers in Mozambique and sometimes we get guest speakers from the Mozambiquean government or from the US embacy. Then we walk back home for lunch. I live down the road downhill so myself and my language class coleagues always spend about 15 min walking back home and 20 min walking back to tech class after lunch. My lunch us usualy plain pasta with vegtable oil, breat and a lemon soda. Today I am lucky, I have a little extra time to wash some cloathes durring my lunch break. I take two buckets of water I place my dirty cloathes in one bucket and soap them up and scrub them between my fists then I rinse them off in the bucket with clean water. Then I empty out the bucket with the dirty water and fill it up with clean water and rinse the cloathes out in the water for a final rinse. Then I squease them as best I can and hang them out to dry on the cloaths line beforegrabing my back pack and walking 30 min to the building where we are having a session on preserving our own health. <br />
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The woman that does all of our personal health sessions is the head doctor for the Mozambique Peace corps. She is supper funny and has tons of crazy stories, but in general she is a very sweet woman and everyone is very happy when she comes to speak with us. if we ever get sick she is our main go to person. <br />
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Its about 4:30 now and we are finnished with our classes for the day. Now it is time for all of us to get in some chill time and hang out with eachother. There are just under 30 of us. Overall it is a very positive and easy going group. There has not been any drama to my knowledge and everyone gets along pretty well. So we hang out for a couple hours at a small bar/restaurant to chat. Im enjoying a nice dark South African beer and a piece of meat with spicky sauce becauce I do not eat dinner until 8. We have a cerfew of 7 so at 6.30 I am walking some people home. Less than a third of the group is male and a lot of the girls get cat called so I am walking a few of the girls that live by me homein a big group. <br />
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I am at home by 7 and my home stay mother is at night school and my father is about ready to head out to teach a night school class. I sit with the 2 year old girl and her 15 year old aunt and we watch Portugese who want to be a millionare and I do my Portugese home work. Then i take another bath (you want to take two baths a day when you live in a town where all the trash is burned) and at 8 I eat dinner (a bunch of rice with chichen in a salty tomato broth) Then I brush my teath, change into sweapants and a sweat shirt, climb under my covers and fall into a larium dream in the protective bubble that is my mosquito net.Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-27654013628898570742011-07-14T00:04:00.000-07:002011-07-14T00:04:39.564-07:00Into the BushLast week everyones life here in training was about tests. We had a writen portuguese exam on tuesday, an oral portuguese exam on friday and an oral technical exam on friday as well. We will not know the results untill later on the week but depending on how we did on the portuguese oral exam we will either be able to move on to studying a local mozambiquan language and continue technical training or be placed in intencive portugese classes. I feel fairly confident in how I did on all exams. I have been learning Portugese very6 rapidly copmpared to other languages I have studies in the past. The small language group sizes combined with the home stay family experience has really forced a lot of portugese into my head. Additionally the previous latin languages i studied have helped me get a hold of the gramar.<br />
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On SUnday all of us trainees we sent out on shadowing visits with active volunteers. One of my coleagues and myself were sent off to a small district capital in the center of the Gaza provence. We were very close to the city of Chokwe, if you feel like google maping it. The volunteer we shadowd has been there for over a year and a half so it was good to get some insights from someone who had experienced the majority of the 2 year service. She was also supper busy and supper experienced. She is totaly proficiant in portugese and knows basic chengana (local language), works with the local cealth center, a large INGO and a couple small comunity based organizations. So I was able to get some insights into whatever my responcibilities may end up being eventualy. My fellow trainee and I we also very lucky because the volunteer we visited and her education volunteer site mate cooked us awesome curry and pasta dishes. Mmmmmm.....<br />
On Monday we went out into the "community" which is an other word for a small town out in the mittle of the african bush, It was very cool to take a chapa for 15 min and then get out and walk down a dirt road through the bush for another 20 min before getting to a village with not running watter or electricity. We then did house visits with a local health activist. The job of the health activist is to check up on people with health problems in the community and make sure they are taking care of themselves properly. A lot of the time this inculdes people that are HIV positive and need to be keeping up on their meds. So we walked around a large area in the "community" for about 3 to 4 hours visiting about4 or 5 houses. Then my coleague and myself called it a day but the volunteer we were visiting went ot the health center to help out with an overflow of patiants.<br />
The next day We went to the health center qand had a little tour of were people recieved treatment and where the babies were waied and given vacinations. If someone has an easily treatible condition then they are treated in the health center by health technitions (there is only one doctor per health center because for the whole 22 mill population of mozambique there are only 1000 doctors) If someone is very sick then the health center will put the on an ambulence to the closest hospital. If the hospital is having trouble carring for them because they are really really really sick, then the hospital will put them on an ambulance and send them to Maputo. Ambulances to not puck people up from their home they are so few that they can only be used for taking peoplefrom one health building to another getting to a health post orhealth center if you are sick is your own resboncibility. The volunteer showed us all the paperwork she usualy has to do throughout the day for the hospital and the INGO she works with it was a lot of info but it made me think "hey, I could do that and that would be somthing I could do to really contribute to a health center." So that was very encouraging and in general the whole experience made me feel very eager to get out of training and into my site (which I will not know for one more week).<br />
On wednesdaty I navigated 4 chapa rides from the small town, then to Chokwe, then the big bus/chapa terminal just outsode of Maputo, then to a smaller chapa terminal in Maputo, wandered around maputo with my coleague (causiously and with care to my seroundings and my belonings and to always know how to get back to the chapa terminal of couse, no worries mom). Then When we went back to the smaller chapa terminal in Maputo we mety up with some other trainees who had gotten back from their visits. We waited around for about an hour for the correct chapa to show up. Our group was first in line but when the chapa showed up a bunch of Mozambiquans tried to cut in line in front of us but the people that worked on the chapa argued with them for about 10 min and made sure that we got on first because we were first in line. That was very curtious. In my experiance the chapa drivers and the "cobradors" (guys that controle who gets on and oof a chapa nad colect all the money. Are some of the most reliable and trusworthy resorces when traveling (I was origonaly suspicious of them but the volunteer I visited confirmed my geneneral trust of chapa drivers and cobradores). By the time I got back from maputo to the town we are doing training in I stoped in a little bar/restaurant and got a cheap bowl of soup half, a large piece of bread and a big beer. It was excelent and exactly what I needed after the long day. Then I went to my host family's house took a bucket bath, watched a Brtazilian soap opera episode, ate dinner, told my family baout my trip, gave them some cashews straight form the region they are grown and went to bed. Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-31036502749169244742011-07-03T01:33:00.000-07:002011-07-03T01:33:34.812-07:00Church, SIDA, And the 2nd of julyLast weekend I went to a Methodist chruch in the town. It was a small cinder block building and about fifty people sitting sholder to sholder on a few benches. There was no preacher or anything just a girl in the front of the church that called off songs for everyone to sing. That lasted about an hour. The next hour was filled up with individuals getting up and singing and if anyone liked their singing then they gave the person a few coins. The singer would then deposit all the coins in the collection tray. Then at the end, everyone kinda formed a conga line to the collection tray and gave more money. I had thought that over two hours of church was quite a lot (but im no expert). Then I found out that some of my colegues were taken to an apcolistic church. They arrived a 9 in the morning had a lunch brreak at noon and then went back to church until 5 in the afternoon.<br />
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During this past week we have been focusing on the AIDS epidemic in mozambique (11.5% of the population is HIV positive). Part of everything we learned has been very depressing because the problem is so big and there is no easy way to counter it. The idea of using a condom just is not taking hold and in addition to that, infadelity is not just common its expected. However. about 50% of people that get HIV in Mozambique get it from a faithful spouce that had contracted the virus from a previous partner. The good news has come from all the advances in anti retro viral drugs and an effort to make sure people that are HIV positive get a good diet and good nutrition. There are people that have been living with HIV for over 10 years in Mozambique by simply kepeing up with their meds and having a good diet and their immune systems are still doing well. <br />
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yesterday we had a 4th of july party on the 2nd it was really great to hang out with all my coleagues informaly and eat some hamburgers and cake.Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-46710713911190250172011-06-25T06:29:00.000-07:002011-06-25T06:29:59.982-07:00FoodFood has for sure been the big theame in my life over the past week and a half. Last week i went into the out house to find two chickens sitting in the corner. I knew that they were going to be killed for eating probably that day. i had been told by Peace Corps that we were all recomended to learn how to kill a chicken. I suspected this was my day. However, Nothing happened. And the next day the two chickens were still in the out house. i thought it was a little strange to have to do my businesss in front of an animal I would eventualy kill. But there was not much choice. Later in the day one of my other coleagues said that there was also a chicken waiting for her to kill it but that her family was waiting for the weekend. I then realized that Peace Corps had asked all the families to teach us all how to kill chickens this weekend. But the very next day (Thurseday) the mother of my house came walking out of the kitchen with a knife and a bucket of hot watter. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was going to kill the chickens. At this point I realized that I almost missed my oportunity. So I asked if I could help and learn how to kill a chicken. She asked me if I was scared and I said no. So we went outside and took the chickens out of the out house. She killed the first one and showed me how to do it. Then it was my turn. I was a little nervious but I felt that it was somthing I should know how to do and that since I have been a meat eater all my life I should experience the process of killing an animal that I would eat. So I knelt down next to the chicken and asked myself one last time if I thought that this was an ok thing to do. Is there a concious complex life inside there? Was my vegetarian father, high school teachers and friends right? Nope, I looked at that thing in the eyes as it dumbly sat there and randomly jutted its head around and realized that there really was not a whole lot going on in there. So I grabbed it by the wingsand placed them under my left foot. I pulled out its legs and held them down with my right foot, I streched out its kneck with my left hand and I sawed its kneck off with a very blunt serated knife with my right hand. Then I waited for the pulsing to stop and that was that. Not going to lie, it was pretty grose. But my only regret is that I wish I had a sharp knife to use. That would have been better, but thats just no how they do it in Mozambique (pernouncee as I recently found out , Mozambikeee)<br />
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I got sick last weekend. There has been a cold that has been going around the peace corps trainees. I spent the whole weekend on the front porch of my house studying verb congigations for a test that was on monday, and watching the local kids run around yelling randomly and getting very dirty and then getting my newly hand washed pants very dirty by huging my legs. (not cool, it takes a very long time for me to hand wash a pair of pants) But in the end I got a good score on my test which has ben a great relief for me as i really weant to become very good at portugese and language learning has been a big chalenge for me in the past. I cant even spell in english.<br />
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On tuesday my language group and I (4 people total) made a mexican/american meal for each of out home stay mothers. We made guacamole (its avacado season now) Pico de gallo, pinto beans and fried green pepers with onions. it was soooooooo good to eat guacomole again. our house mothers tought us how to plucj and gut a chicken after one of my coleages had his first oportunity killing a chicken (he had some difficulty at first so his homestay mothergrabed his hand and killed the chicken with him)<br />
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On Thursday and friday All 29 PC trainees learned how to do permagardening (permanent gardening) whcich is a techneaque used to create high producing vegtables gardens in small areas. It was origonaly designed for people living with HIV/AIDs so they could have a strong healthy diet easily accesable to them. The gist of it is that you dig very deep and fill in the land with soft soil mixed with compost so you can plant lots of plants closer together and you can reenergise the land with the compost over and over again to the soil never gets depleated. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoied the oportunity to get outside and do some gardening work. Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-37347738782891997132011-06-12T07:57:00.001-07:002011-06-12T07:57:39.031-07:00My Host family calls me Irmao Jack but they say it so fast it sounds like "Man Jack"<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">From May 30<sup>th</sup> to June 12<sup>th</sup> 2011. I have experienced a lot. I had my last gelada in Phoenix. It was not great quality but it was hazelnut gelada and that was good. I met up with my group of Peace Corps volunteers headed to Mozambique. (Mos. 16) We had a quick intro to Peace Corps. We got vaccines (except for me because I already was vaccinated for yellow fever from when I went to South Africa. I took a quick trip to the liberty bell and the outside of Independence hall, got some sushi and had some last microbrews and American food with the other volunteers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then I woke up at 2:00 in the morning to get on a bus to JFK and fly 15 hours to Johannesburg. I got to see all of Manhattan at night and that was really cool and then we drove right across the city at 5 in the morning when no one was around. The flight to Job burg was relatively boring except for when we landed and someone played Toto “Africa”. That was awesome. I was really excited to be back in Africa and see all the South African stuff in the airport. It was very nostalgic. Then I got in the plane to Maputo for the hour flight. I was so anxious that thistles hour was almost painful. Then we flew past Maputo and it was solo beautiful. It is a city perched on a little peninsula separating a bay from the ocean. Thins but the city is on the north side, its smaller, it’s always sunny and it’s in Africa.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the next couple days my colleagues and I got more intros into Peace Corps and more info about Mozambique and more shots. We then got some info about what life would be like for the following 10 weeks of training. We also are lots of good food and drank lots of good mango juice. We were in the hotel the whole time so we never got to see Maputo.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last Sunday I met my host Family. I am in a town in the mountains about an hour and a half drive inland from Maputo. It is called Nemaha. I and all the other trainees are staying with host families as we are trying to learn as much Portuguese as possible. My host family consists of a 26 year old father 19 year old mother 2 and a do year old doubter and a 15 year old sister of the father. They are all very nice and funny and they enjoy my company even more than I enjoy theirs (at least I think so). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Every day I wake up at 5:30 in the morning (with the sun) I take a bucket shower and eat a simple breakfast of fresh baked bread (really good bread in this town) peanut butter, and tea. Then I have a Portuguese class with 3 other volunteers and one teacher. This is from 7:30 to 9:30. From 10 to noon I have some sort of introduction to some form of PC activity or health info session. Then I go back to my house for lunch (lunch and dinner are either pasta with a little tomato and onion or rice with a chicken stew with a little tomato and onion and sometimes green pepper, all with a grape Fanta and an orange, its orange season right now). Then I go back for some PC lessons or cultural event until 4 or 5. Then I do some homework at home and talk with my family and take another bucket bath until 8 when I eat dinner and then I go directly to bed at 9 or 9:30 because I am so tired and then I do it all over again. This weekend I went to Maputo to buy a cell phone. That was cool Maputo is a lot safer than Durban and prettier to so it <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has been a welcome relief to my fears of spending time in a city where I have to be worried about getting stabbed. I got Chinese food with some colleges at the Chinese cultural center in Maputo. It was nice to eat lots of vegetables. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Today I did a lot of our door work for a hospital and for my house it was nice to do that I like out dory gardening work a lot. (Sorry about spelling and stuff imp in a rush)</span></div>Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6145906576343473360.post-52255019254193687482011-05-22T22:08:00.000-07:002011-05-22T22:08:14.915-07:00Background Post<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, to make sure we’re all on the same page I will begin from before the beginning. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">About a year ago I began my Peace Corps application amongst the over 300 job applications I sent out after finishing grad school with a Masters in International Relations. In mid July I had an interview with a Peace Corps recruiter in LA. My original interest was to be sent to a French speaking African country to work on some form of development project. I had focused much of my studies on Africa (studied in Durban, South Africa for a semester in undergrad) and had a great interest in becoming fluent n French. The recruiter informed me that she wanted to place me with an NGO development program, which I thought would be perfect. However, she said that the only one that was open in the appropriate time line would be in Spanish speaking South America. She gave me the option of that position or a youth program in some other part of the world that would not have been French or Spanish speaking. I chose the South American program and she nominated me on the spot. She said that nothing was for sure so getting some sort of leadership experience would be good for my competitiveness. Then I had to sign a paper stating that I would commit a significant amount of time studying Spanish. She informed me that I would have to take the CLEP Spanish exam eventually to prove that I had acquired a working knowledge of Spanish.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Fast forward after taking many medical exams, getting legal clearance, working a 5 month stint as a union organizer etc… to March 2011. I received an e-mail asking me for an updated version of my resume. I sent the updated version and asked when I would be expected to take the CLEP Spanish exam. I received an e-mail back thanking me for the updated version of my resume, stating that I no longer had to take the CLEP exam and that I would hear from someone in the next 6-8 weeks with more info. Ok?...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Two or three weeks later I got a call from someone at the Peace Corps HQ in DC. She asked me several general questions about my interest and commitment. I replied by assuring her of my total commitment and desire to be a part of something bigger than myself and hopefully significantly improve the lives of those I interact with. She then informed me that the South America program had been canceled due to new federal spending cuts. She did however say that she would make it a priority to find me a new post. I said ok and asked her if this meant that I was guaranteed an “invitation to volunteer” (the official acceptance into the peace corps). She said “Anything that would change that would have to come from your end.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said “So I basically just have to avoid getting arrested and I’m good?” “Exactly.” She replied. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">About a week later I got a call on my cell when I was in the shower. I checked the voice mail at about 11 am. It was another woman from the Peace Corps who said she wanted to discuss a possible placement. However, she said that the only way for me to get this placement was for me to confirm with her before 5 pm eastern time (2pm my time). I called periodically at first and semi-frantically as it got closer to the end time. Then 5 min before 5pm eastern time I got a call on my cell, it was her.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This lady explained to me that there was a recent opening in an NGO development program and that it would be the only one for the next several months. She said that it was in a Portuguese speaking African Country. She said that I would be working with NGOs that are working to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and helping them build their capacity. THIS WAS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED! (well ok, not exactly, the whole Portuguese thing was sort of out of the blue) So I took up the offer even though I only had 6 weeks before I would leave, May 30<sup>th</sup>. I got an E-mail telling me that I would be sent to Mozambique for the next 2 years.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Over the past few weeks I have been getting all my stuff together (including a bad ass new Swiss army knife and a hand crank radioflashlight) and stuffing basic conversational Portuguese into my head. It’s a good thing that Portuguese is very similar to Spanish. I basically just have to add a sh or oo sound to the end of every Spanish word. Right now my brother is visiting me and my parents in LA from NY. I am spending time with them before I take a plane to Phili in one week. I will be given a bunch of shots and some orientation in Phili with 29 other new Peace Corps Volunteers and then they will fly us out to Maputo, Mozambique for more orientation over a few days. Then we will be bused to a small village for a 10 week training. The 10 weeks training will focus on getting us to a working knowledge of Portuguese and getting us ready for the jobs we will be undertaking. Then the superiors will analyze my brain and decide which part of the country to send me to and to what specific project. This could be in a small village or a big city. I could have easy access to the internet or it could take me a five hour bus ride. I may have electricity or I may not. I just won’t know until the 10 month training is over. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So there you go. The next time I post I will be in Mozambique. I will try and post it myself or I will send a letter to a family member who will then post it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wish me luck,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Jack</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ps: Over the next two years you always have a place to stay in an unknown location in Mozambique. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">ETA back in USA : Mid September 2013.</span></div>Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10125078240699237772noreply@blogger.com3