The Midservice Crisis

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.
My mid service trip.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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Teaching gigA 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.
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...)
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.
Midservice ConferenceA 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^{nd year. I went out he beach with 3 of the new volunteers and then immediately left for my midservice conference.}
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.
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.
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.
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.
Whale sharks or lack there ofMyself 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.
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...
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!
WorkI 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.
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.
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.

May through June 2012 (Half way point reached!)

Japanese embassy visit:

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.

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.

             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.

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”

-Beer Olympics:
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.

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 5th. 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.

The good bye party
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.

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.

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 :)

Birthday BBQ and Film Festival

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.

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.

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 :)

Bush Fire

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.

Trouble in the Office

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.

The woman who died from stre

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.

             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.
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.

Work

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.

too much time has gone by since my last post

December

·Christmas: Went to a beach called Linga Linga with 15 other volunteers. We basically had our own private tropical beach with a view of both the ocean and the bay. We cooked all of our meals over an open flame. We did a secret Santa present swap and generally we just hung out and enjoyed each others company

January

·New years was cool. I went to tofo beach with some friends, we hung out on the beach yet some more (I got two painful sun burns over the Christmas- new yeas period). On new years eve itself we went out to the beach with a huge crowd of people and listened to the typical Mozambique house music blasting from big speakers. Then when it hit midnight lots of people started to set off their own fire works all over the beach. It was really pretty but it also felt like a war zone because you never knew when one was going to go off right in front of your face. A lot of people were setting them off at low angles so they would explode only 3 feet above most people's heads. That was a little scary. In general it was a good way to kick off the new year. Life was good, everything in my life was more or less taken care of and going well. God hates it when that happens.

·The rest of january pretty much sucked.  I got a really bad fever of 102.75 for almost a week. My brother ended up in the hospital after falling 4 stories, there was a hurricane that hit northern Mozambique. There was also a bunch of other random crap that cumulatively made me feel like the rug had been pulled out from under me. This was definitely the hardest time for me to be living by myself out in the middle of nowhere. What got me through was my other Moz 16 friends who really had my back.

Febuary

·I went to Mapuo to take the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) to see what it was like and how I would do. I got a better idea of what to study for in preparing for this test. I did not pass but I came very very close and I did not do any studying. So I will take it again in a year and if (fingers crossed) I pass that time , then I will be able to take the oral exam in DC right when I get out of Peace corps in 2013.

·Also, a good friend from Training came to my town for a weekend. Myself and the other volunteer at my site showed him around and had a good time having drinks on the bay as we watched the sun set followed by eating a plate of two T-bone steaks, salad and fries for less than 5 USD.

March

-Early March started off with “Bro Summit.” There are not many guys in peace corps. I thinkin Mozambique about a forth or a third is male. So we had  big weekend for all the dudes to hang out with each other, talk shit, play video games, at pizza, involve ourselves in any number of competitions. Also we went swimming at night in a spot that had a bunch of bio luminescence. When I ran through the water it looked like I was a super hero :)

-My real birtday: I basically just ran around town with a few friends listening to music, drinking J&B on the rocks and eating all the nice Tourist food and I normally don't waste my money on (like a steak and blue cheese sandwich)

-My birthday Party was a big cook out in the sandy area outside my house. I invited 10 friends over and we all grille everything and ate over a table we pulled outside. I had a metal worker create a large rectangular grill. I dug a pit and had it rest over two cinder blocks and threw a bunch of charcole in the pit. I went to the Market and bought a large fish that had been caught that day. They gutted it and cut it up for me right there and I took the pieces back to my house in plastic bags. It was cooked in a butter, garlic, rosemarry,lemon sauce. We made potatoes and vegtables and all of it ened up getting cooked in the same sauce. It was great, real butter it difficult to get a hold of so it was a real treat. Everyone brought stuff and pitched in and it was a lot of fun. Also an expat friend brought over arugala and Sees candy and ice cream. That was pretty awesome..

-project design and management conference: All the Moz 16 volunteers who live in Southern Mozambique had our PDM conferencye at the end of the Month. It was really great to see some volunteers I had not seen in a while and for everyone to be together but in general the conference kinda sucked. It was really hot those days. The conference room had no AC, the water and power kept going in and out. My org sent me with a guy that does not consistently work with the org. He was great and he came up with a great idea for a project my org could do, but I did not know him very well and I have not really seen him since in order to follow up with his project idea. Honestly, most of what I have been doing has been helping some of the people in the office learn how to write up reports and forms using Word and Excel. I also got one person to write up a monthly schedule for the HIV home care project that is currently going on. She has consistently been writing up these monthly schedules for the past 5 months and it had really helped out around the office and helped the people doing the ome care visits. So, I feel really proud of myself for helping to initiate this new practice, but now there is not anything more for me to do because she has totally taken over 9which is the best posible outcome)

April

I went to a town called Panda in Southern Mozambique. It was really cool. It was a beautiful ride in with lots of wild flowers and a view of rolling hills on one side and a vast plain on the other. The area was hard hit by the war for independence and the civil war. One woman told me how one side durring the civil war would raid Panda. They burned down her school so then she learned how to shoot an AK47 and through grenades so the town could defend itself from the following raids. The town had electricity and running water befor independence but building the town back up had been long coming. Electricity should finally return back to the town within the next few months. There are a lot of old torn up colonial buildings. For some reason it is really beautiful to see some of these old bombed out colonial buildings all over grown with plants. The main road has some of these run down buildings and a growing number of new government buildings that have recently been put up in the past 5 years. Really, the current town center is now off of the main road where there is a large maze of market stores made of cement block buildings and reed shacks. People sell everything there and it is where the one restaurant is and a few simple bars. Somehow they are able to run refrigerators off of gas tanks, no electricity. I don't get it. 

I guess my plans now are just to focus on trying to get something back at square one with my org and trying to get some project started. I am going to try and stay at my site more and get to know some of my neighbors better. But honestly, I am probably going to break down and head up to central or northern Mozambique within the next couple months. The unknown areas, towns and cities are, for lack of a better phrase, calling to me. I also think I am going to take some more trips to the beach close by just to chill out every once and a while. The strange thing is that it is very stressful to not be doing much when you really do want to be doing and accomplishing something.

My 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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....

Other stuff cont. (dont worry there are no more stories about killing things)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  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.

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.    

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.  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.

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.

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.  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.

Work and other stuff

My work (why I flew half way around the world)

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.

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.

Other stuff

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.

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.

A few short stories from Mozambique.

The Activistas (ActiveeSHtaSH)

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.

Recently my organization trained a group of about 30 activistas to begin this program.  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.

Home

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.  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.

No electricity, no water and I think I smell a rat

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.

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.

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."