29/12/09

Have been helping sort an entire room of clothing into identifiable piles that are then tied into bundles for a clothing drive the mission will be having. I would kill for a vacuum. I don’t think they exist here. I swept my room six times before 10am this morning. I still don’t know what I am teaching. When I asked my director she laughed and said “why, do you want to start preparing? Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time!” But that makes me nervous because I think that my definition of plenty of time to prepare is a lot different from the Mozambican one.

27/12/09

Happy 29th birthday mama ;)! Stayed the night in Maxixe after meeting up with Jon, Donna, Luis, and Ann at Tofo beach yesterday. I got to meet Mulungu and Amendoin (foreigner and peanut in Portuguese, respectively), Donna and Ann’s new puppies, so named because Mulungu is white and Amendoin is light brown. We washed them with tick and flea shampoo and spent about an hour afterwards picking the dead ticks and fleas off each one. It was disgusting, are there more ticks and fleas here? Met a South African family today who has been friends with our head sister forever. He actually knows her from Namaacha (where we had our pre-service training) where his parents own the hotel and casino in town. They have lived in Mozambique on and off (they returned to South Africa for the kid’s schooling) for over 30 years, and speak fluent Portuguese. It was interesting to meet people who had actually made the effort to learn Portuguese and integrate into the culture, and to listen to them talk about how many times they have gotten fed up with living in a less developed country like Mozambique, but how they can never leave because they love the people here and so many other things about this country.

26/12/09

Headed up to Tofo beach with Natalia (one of the Spanish volunteers here at the mission) to meet up with some of my colleagues today. We ended up catching four different boléias to get there and did a fair amount of walking in between rides, but got all the way there (~100k) for free! I got stuck sitting in the cab of a truck between the two truck drivers for one of our boléias. One of the guys asked me if I was married and I said no. He asked if I wanted a Mozambican boyfriend, I said no. He said why I didn’t want to have any friends if I was going to be here for two years. I said I do have friends but he said no, friends for kissing. I said no I was only here to work. He then asked if it was because I didn’t like kissing black men, and if I only wanted to kiss white men. I was pretty glad when that ride was over.
Our last boléia was with a man, his son, and nephew up from Maputo for the holidays. He had spent some time studying abroad in D.C. and London and now works as an accountant in Maputo. His son was 15 and already going to start 12th grade and his nephew had just graduated from Eduardo Mulane university in Maputo, the top university in Mozambique (out of three), with a degree in electrical engineering. These were Mozambicans who had essentially “made it out.” Though he still lives in Mozambique, he doesn’t live in the same Mozambique that most of the population lives in and drives an air-conditioned 4-wheel drive up to Tofo beach for the day. It was interesting to talk to them because they were bewildered as to why two women with college degrees would leave their developed countries and all their opportunities (especially career opportunities) to come to Mozambique.

25/12/09

Feliz natal. Other than the three wonderful and almost extravagant meals, the day passed without any real indication that it was Christmas. The sisters gave the four of us (the two Spanish volunteers, Ann, and me) each a beautiful capulana. It was really sweet of them to give Ann one as well (since her housing situation is still up in the air, she has been basiclly living here with me anyway). The capulana is a beautiful pattern and really nice quality and thus more expensive than I would have been able to pay. The Salesian priests who run the professional school across the street came over for dinner and festivities. After dinner was sort of a variety show. I had been caught playing the mission’s guitar earlier today, so I played and sang “Star of the County Down.” Some people led songs or dances (there is always lots of singing and dancing with Mozambicans). One sister lead a game. One of the men (I am not sure if he is a brother, in training to become a priest, or just works and lives with the Salesians) played the drum and everyone had to say thank you in a different language. My director and one of the men did a skit of Mary and Joseph on Christmas, looking for somewhere to stay and then giving birth to baby Jesus. She started crying profusely and when Joseph asked why she was crying she said “it’s a boy, I really wanted a girl!”

The Fire

Tonight Ann and I began our weekly cooking sessions, cooking dinner in my room. Ann had bought a two-burner electric stove that we had used this morning to make eggs with no incidents. However, tonight we attempted to use both burners at the same time, for the first time. Since we had bought the stove in Inhambane and it was made in South Africa (like literally everything else here), it never crossed our minds that we needed to take any electrical precautions, other than the adaptor so we could plug it in here. Well we were wrong. One burner was fine. As soon as we turned on the second burner, a fire started in one of the other outlets of the extension cord, the cord of the extension cord burned through and broke, and then a fire started in the wall socket where the extension cord was plugged in. At first it was just sparking and popping so I assumed it would go out on its own, so we were just trying to stay out of range of the flying sparks. Then a real fire began in the wall socket. Ann, in her panic, was running around trying to find a fire extinguisher (I’m pretty sure they don’t exist here). Idora, one of the Spanish volunteers ran in to see what all the commotion was and said to dump water on the fire. Ann and I hesitated at first because we thought we weren’t supposed to put water on an electrical fire, but the fire was getting bigger so that seemed to be the only option. Luckily the water put the fire out immediately. Other than the embarrassment of having to tell the sisters that I had started a fire in my room, we were incredibly fortunate that Ann learned the she can’t use both burners of her stove in my house, and not in hers. If we had learned that lesson in her house we would have burnt it down.

23/12/09

‘Tis the season, which seems to mean two things here. First, you see people everywhere walking around holding squawking chickens, ducks, and turkeys as people prepare for their big meals. It also means that the police are extra extra vigilant, because catching someone doing something they aren’t supposed to be doing means a chance to ask for a bribe. Thus, more often than normal, foreigners are asked for their papers, speeding cars are stopped, and all commercial vehicles (including chapas) are stopped to show their registrations. When I was in a chapa a few days ago we were stopped at a police checkpoint and the conductor threw the driver a 100 Meticais bill to put inside the registration he handed the policeman. Today I was talking to a vendor at a stand when one of his buddies from a few stands down yelled “make sure you charge the foreigner extra!” The man I was talking to giggled nervously and said “he thinks you don’t speak Portuguese.”
One of the sisters asked about how Christmas is celebrated in the states. I told her that on Christmas eve my family would eat dinner before and then go to mass at 10pm or so. She said that they used to have midnight mass here too, actually at midnight, but that changed during the civil war because it was unsafe for anyone to be out at night. So during the war Christmas eve mass was changed to 7pm or earlier and now it just continues to be at that time. It’s crazy to realize how the civil war could affect all levels of society and people’s everyday lives, and how it still continues to do so.

Ann, my sitemate, and me at our swearing-in ceremony

22/12/09

Today I bought an esteira, a straw mat for sitting on the ground from some guys in the market area of our town. We had haggled down the prices for some woven straw sifters but for some reason I hadn’t tried too hard to lower the price of the mat so I paid 70 Meticais for it. I was waiting on my change when a Mozambican walked up and asked how much the same mats cost and one of the guys said 50 Meticais (I’m not really sure why they thought we wouldn’t be able to understand them when we had been speaking in Portuguese with them the entire time). Natalia, a Spanish volunteer who works at my mission (and speaks better Portuguese than we do since her first language is Spanish), lit into him about how we aren’t South African tourists with a lot of money and that we are all volunteers. They thought this was kind of comical until she told them that we will be living in this town for two years, but next time we need a mat or anything we are never coming back to them. “I will give you a great price next time!” he pleaded.
It’s nice now that we are getting our bearings because we know generally how much things can cost. As we were walking around yesterday a few times we asked how much things cost and when the vendor gave the price we would say “no, you’re lying. This is the price.” To which they smile and say “okay, you’re right, I’ll give it to you for this price” but we respond “no, why would I give my business to someone who tries to rip me off?” Ann and I have poked our heads into every single store we found in our town, Maxixe, and Inhambane, and have not found a single one owned my African Mozambicans. A few are owned by Chinese and the vast majority are owned by Indians and middle-easterners (each of these three towns had its own Mosque).

21/12/09

Often buses and chapas (vans) will pile the excess luggage, furniture, or bikes on the roof and tie everything down with rope and a tarp that looks far too old to actually hold anything down. Today a coach-sized bus drove past me down the EN1 with one of these typical 10 foot piles underneath a tarp, but also tied on top of this bus were two live goats, standing in front of this pile and tied to either side of the rack to keep them from falling/blowing off. I was the last person on the chapa today so I had the seat right up against the sliding door. At one point the driver pulled over to help two guys whose car had broken down. When we went to leave afterwards, the sliding door fell out and wouldn’t close so we drove part of the way with the conductor reaching over me to hold it almost shut until he was able to force it shut and tie it with a rope.
Today I went up to see Donna, whose house had been broken into. Donna replaced a PCV who had lived in the same house and it turns out that this girl had been broken into about three weeks ago. The robbers had simply ripped away from the wall the metal grate over one of the windows and climbed in through that window. This grate was supposed to be repaired before Donna moved in, but it wasn’t because things rarely happen in a timely manner in Mozambique. They took her laptop, ipod (but not the chargers for either), camera charger (she had her camera with her), two pairs of running shoes, a hiking backpack, a normal backpack, money (but luckily left her American credit cards), lots of clothes, canned food, eggs, razors, toothpaste. Her bedroom door had been locked, but somehow they were able to get someone into her bedroom through a very tiny space in the grate on one of the windows. It had to have been either a very very small person or a child, which stinks to think because there are tons of kids who are always hanging around her house who would have noticed that she wasn’t home for two nights. In this same neighborhood another PCV’s house got broken into last week, as well as Donna’s Mozambican next door neighbor. She is going to move as soon as possible (which won’t be very soon). It is a shitty situation for Donna to be in because whoever robbed her and her neighbors were clearly people who had been watching them and knew when they were coming and going (her neighbor was robbed while she went to the market in the morning). It stinks for Donna to have to be suspicious of everyone now. And she is also very spooked by the fact that they were able to get into her bedroom, so Ann and other PCVs have been staying with her ever since so she doesn’t have to be alone in the house.

20/12/09

The masses at our church are bilingual with the readings and the sermons said in Portuguese and then translated into Xichopi, the local Bantu language, after. My director suggested I wait a month or two begin my Xichopi tutoring until after my Portuguese is really concrete, but I think masses will be a really great place to learn once I begin. It just drives me nuts on the chapas when all you hear is “foreigner blah blah blah” and they are all speaking in the local language so you can’t understand but you know they are talking about you.
Some of the sisters asked where in America I am from and when overseas I always say Chicago because people are really disappointed when you say a place they have never heard of. They immediately lit up and said “oh the Chicago Bulls! Michael Jordan’s team!” While we were washing the dishes one sister asked me if I knew Shania Twain, so we spent the remainder of the dishwashing singing “Still the One.”
Tonight at dinner whoever had set the table had put out on every single alcohol bottle they could find in the mission. There were bottles all over both tables and on top of some of the plates too. We have soup at every lunch and dinner and my not eating chicken feet has now become a running joke. So every single lunch and dinner I am told to either be careful the soup has chicken feet, or don’t worry there are no feet today!

19/12/09

A few years ago my mission and school had a volunteer named Mary who was not a PCV, but was an American, so now every time I meet someone new and they find out I am American, they begin to rave about how great Mary was. One of our colleagues Donna’s house got broken into yesterday, which is not uncommon here, but it stinks to feel unsafe in your own house only a week after moving in. Ann has been staying with her for a few days to help her feel safer.
We joke sometimes that Mozambique is like the goldmine of the Peace Corps. While it is a country in need of a lot of assistance and development, it has things like electricity and cell phones that are hard to come by or just don’t exist in other countries. Plus, in Mozambique you are placed either in the mountains, or near the ocean. Additionally, I got placed in Inhambane province which, among other things, is known for its mangos and cashews: two of my favorite foods in the whole world. Living in a tropical place in general is a new and wonderful thing for me and I am loving all the fresh fruit that you can get anywhere, anytime and just tastes so much better than the fruit I am used to in Illinois and Maine. I don’t even like bananas in the States, but here they have like 6 different varieties of bananas and they all taste amazing!

18/12/09

18/12/09
In Mozambique the appropriate way of dressing for women is nothing above the knees. So from the waist down female dressing is very conservative here. But from the waist up it is quite the opposite. I would say about a third of us saw our homestay mom’s or grandma’s boobs during the homestay. Especially for the older women, walking around topless is pretty standard, especially when it gets really hot. Public breastfeeding is perfectly acceptable here and what gets me still is women will just be walking down the street with their baby in a capulana sling breastfeeding as she walks. A lot of women wear tops that I consider very skimpy and perhaps a size or two smaller than I would have chosen, with their boobs just bursting/hanging out. Today I put on a dress that I was aware was a little short (it doesn’t quite hit my knees, but it is regulation culver kilt length), so I wanted to see what the sisters thought. When one of the Portuguese sisters saw me she exclaimed “oh you look so handsome!” before I could even ask, so I thought maybe it was okay. But then when my Mozambican director sister saw me she laughed and said “is that a dress? I think you forgot your pants!” I find it so funny that any thigh whatsoever is completely unacceptable, but a lot of boob is just the norm.
Last two days have been absurdly hot, the kind of hot where you never actually dry off after a shower. You know you’re in trouble when you’re sweating at 6am. All of the girls from the orphanage have been away since I got here, but some of them came back tonight. It was nice to see how excited everyone was to see each other again, you would think they had been gone years.

17/12/09

17/12/09
Nick called me out on it, so I thought I would take the chance to apologize for my rapidly degrading English. I realized now that even the book I am reading is in Portuguese, the only time anymore when I have to think in English is when I write these posts. The rest of the time I am speaking Portuguese with people here, obviously, but also conversations with other PCVs, my inner monologue, and my journal are all in some mixture of English and Portuguese. Today a 17 year old guy who is a student at the technical school across the street told me that he has never been to the hospital. He also told me that his math teacher is Asian, not by using the word Asian, but by telling me he has eyes like this. I was helping organize and sort books in what will be the school’s new library today. In a state of complete disorder was everything from erasers and colored pencils, to coloring books, to lesson books from grades 1-12. I picked up one book called Gin & Tonic for the Soul which is a comic strip in English I have never heard of (think Chicken Soup for the Soul but with a drier sense of humor). I showed my school director who is a sister and explained what gin and tonic was. I said I didn’t know what it was doing here. She shrugs and says “eh, maybe it’s so the children can learn how to drink.” I was helping a man who used to be a teacher at my school but now attends a university in Zimbabwe. I told him that my sitemate is a health worker and he said “yes, the big health problem of Mozambique is malaria” which blew my mind. I pointed out that HIV/AIDS is a huge problem too and he said yes it is but he had seen on the news that the prevalence rates had gone down this year. He then asked if people in the U.S. had HIV/AIDS. During training we had many sessions on the kind of myths we would encounter (that Americans/white people don’t have HIV/AIDS, that all the sick people dying have malaria (many people do die from malaria here, but malaria is also often blamed because HIV/AIDS is rarely admitted and therefore never admitted to have been the cause of a death here)) but I thought that we would encounter these myths in the bush with uneducated people, not in extremely educated people. Yesterday Ann had her first experience of watching a person test positive for HIV/AIDS.

Go U Moz 14 for having eight girls brave enough to shave their heads!

16/12/09

Settling in to life here, all the women I live with are incredibly nice. Ann has been trying to get all the things done for her house to get it up to Peace Corps standards. She has a rat problem (they have eaten her breakfast on two occasions) which really needs to be taken care of because she can’t not be able to keep food in her house for two years. The good news is that she found someone with kittens (for the rodents) and someone with puppies (for security) so she will be getting them soon. But she only has three windows, they are all on one side of the house, only one opens, and the screen doesn’t have a lock so the house isn’t secure if it’s open. Additionally, her walls need to be reinforced with cement on the inside up to 5 feet (this 1 inch of cement prevents people from just sticking their hands into the house and pulling out whatever they can grab, but doesn’t stop a determined thief who can simply break through it), she needs to have a metal grate put over her door, and a screen door installed. It’s getting to the point where so much needs to be done, her organization might just move her instead. There is another house of cement that she could have lived in, but apparently Ann’s APCD told her organization to put her in the reed house because that is the “true Peace Corps experience.” Yesterday when she was talking to her land lady telling her all of the things that needed to be done to the house to get it up to Peace Corps standards (this isn’t Ann being a pain, these are the standards Peace Corps Mozambique made themselves) the land lady told Ann she didn’t have the money for all of that, but Ann did since she is American, so she should pay for it. The other day Ann and I were telling one of the sisters who is my school director about all of the troubles with her house. She told Ann that they have a house nobody is using that is “normal” (literally the word she used). Ann asked, what is normal, and she patted the cement wall she was leaning against and said, this is normal.
Today on the chapa a man asked us what we were doing here. I told him we were Peace Corps volunteers from America and his response was “why can’t Mozambican people do that work, I need a job too to feed myself.” I walked into town today (a little over 2 miles) carrying a large tub and got picked up without even asking for a ride by some people who recognized me from church. I walked from town back to the mission with a girl in the seventh grade. I thought my walk was long, but I think she told me she was going to the next town. Even though she was carrying a sack on her head, she offered to help me carry my things. We have a bakery in my mission so when I arrived I asked if she was hungry and she said yes rather rigorously so I sent her on her way with a loaf of bread and a mango. I am hoping that people in the town where we live get to know us and recognized that we are not tourists. It stinks to have all the little kids come running up to you with their hands extended because you’re white and therefore have money. As we are walking around, the thing we hear from almost every guy is “hello my seestah” which I hate. It’s kind of bizarre, I have no idea where they got it from, and it also creeps me out. I have started snapping back, in Portuguese, “I am NOT your sister.” All the vendors will try to speak in English to us because we’re white, but both Ann and I refuse to speak English back to them.
I have started reading Harry Potter e o prisionerio de Azkaban which is a really fun way to improve my Portuguese. I also have the benefit of getting to eat meals surrounded by people speaking Portuguese, which I wouldn’t have if I were living by myself.

The Indian Ocean, about 100k north of my site (but just wait until I start loading pictures from my site).

Quimica with Americo, our wonderful tech instructor.

Moz 14

Ciencia! biologia e quimica in our matching capulanas. All the host parents gave us capulanas. Science had their own, english their own, and health their own.

My homestay family. They did like me, Mozambicans just dont smile in pictures. (From the left) Back: 13 year old cousin, me, mom, grandma. Front: 3 year old cousin, 7 year old cousin, 3 year old brother.

My three year old host brothers digging up sweet potatoes. They were impressively adept with the hoes and had dug all of these holes themselves.

Chapa. Chapas are the mode of transportation here. They are vans with four rows of seat (not including the front seat). Each row seats four people across, plus two people in the front seat, plus the driver, plus the "cobrador" (the conductor/guy in charge) who stands if the chapa is at capacity. Chapas won't leave until they are full and it is generally best to not look at the road during the trip. Imagine squeezing 20 people into your van at home.

The view from the top of the mountain where Swaziland, South Africa, and Mozambique meet. The straight line near the center of the photo is the Mozambique-Swaziland border. Namaacha (our homestay town)lies in the distance to the left.

13/12/09

Today I got completely unpacked and moved in. I realized it’s the first time in my life I am moving into a place where I expect to be for more than 9 months. The head sister here is Portuguese but has lived in Mozambique for 36 years which I merely thought was neat until Ann pointed out today that that means she chose to stay during the gruesome civil war. That’s pretty incredible.
One my very first day here on Friday we sat down for lunch about 20 minutes after my arrival. I was spooning the soup into my bowl when I realized that the spoonful I was pouring included a chicken foot. But it was too late, my only options were to scoop it back out of my bowl or keep pouring, so I kept pouring. I had an awful moment of indecision. Was I just going to suck it up and eat the foot, which still had one of the claws? Then I decided that, at the risk of offending, if my Mozambican host mom won’t eat chicken feet then I don’t need to and I don’t need to set a bad precedent the first day. So I asked if anyone wanted my foot, they all laughed and someone took it. Then, later in the same bowl of soup, a fly dive-bombed my soup and died in it, causing a huge commotion. I quickly scooped it out. Not wanting to appear too finicky or embarrass them by acting disgusted, I made as if to finish my soup. But then they acted disgusted by the idea that I might eat my soup after that, and frantically told me not to finish it. Ah, life’s awkward moments.

12/12/09

Today Ann and I set out for Maxixe (and possibly Inhambane city which you can take a ferry to from Maxixe because it is on a peninsula directly across an inlet from Maxixe) to buy house things. We live on the EN1 (Estrada Naçional), the main highway which runs north-south along the coast of Mozambique, which is great because that means you can always catch a ride. (We also have the advantage of living on a nicer stretch of the EN1. South of us there are long stretches where you can’t average more than 20-30mph because the driver is constantly maneuvering around potholes.) “Boléia” is the Portuguese for a lift, or a hitched ride, and in Mozambique it is the second most common form of transportation (after only the infamous chapas). There are many disadvantages to being a white female in Mozambique, but a HUGE advantage is when you want a boléia—you will get one. We were walking for less than a minute when we were able to get a boléia. The driver asked “where are you going?” and we said “Maxixe” but when he said “well we are going to Inhambane” we looked at each other, shrugged, and said “sure, we can go to Inhambane.” So we rattled along rather uneventfully for about an hour. We pulled over once and the guys got out to cool the engine but then soon we were on our way. But then the second time we pulled over the guys told us that the engine was overheated and they needed to wait for another car to come, so we got out and started walking again. Pretty soon we got picked up by a guy who wasn’t going into Inhambane, but could drive us to the chapa stop, so we talked about tourism in Mozambique with him for a while. Then we sucked it up and took the chapa the rest of the way for 7 meticais.
We wandered all over Inhambane today, just sticking our heads into every store to see what kind of stuff they had. They have these amazing huge canvas bags that are incredibly strong and the size of a medium suitcase and by the end of the day both of our were full with all sorts of things, an iron, water boilers, plates, cups, hangers, floor cleaner, bug sprays, food, dish detergent, etc, and Ann even had a closet and electric oven in her bag. We looked a little like hobos. One guy actually asked us if we were selling things.
We found the Chinese walmart which is just a world of wonder. We were back for the second time today waiting for our water boilers to be fixed because they had Chinese plugs originally, so they were putting on Mozambican ones instead. Ann studied abroad in Beijing during college so speaks some Chinese. I had been urging her to talk to them but she kept refusing, saying “my brain is only thinking in Portuguese right now!” But when she mentioned that we should really become friends with the guys there because they would be great people to know and connections to have, we both knew she had to do it. The guys loved that she had lived in China and spoke some Chinese. We had a funny conversation in English/Portuguese/Chinese with them for a while. Turns out they have a friend who runs a factory in the town where we live (the Chinese have a pretty big presence here, more on that some other day), so we exchanged numbers and Ann is especially excited to be able to practice her Chinese again.
One of the disadvantages of living where we do is that because of the EN1 and all the beaches, there are tons of tourists. We turned onto a street today and were both immediately shocked by all the white people we saw. It’s just frustrating to know that for the next two years I will be mistaken for a tourist which means that the little kids come up to you begging, the vendors try to speak English to you, and the price you are told is about twice what you should (and locals do) pay.
On the way home we decided to try to catch boléias again, but going to a small town is much harder than going to a large city and many drivers apologetically told us they weren’t going that far. Eventually we got picked up by a South African couple who have been coming to Mozambique to vacation since the war ended in ’93 and even used to come before the war. They seemed to really like us and gave us a bunch of contact numbers, introduced us to their friends who own a hotel on the EN1, and gave us their card (they own a resort on the beach), telling us that we should call them and come up for a weekend in the off-season. Unfortunately they weren’t going all the way to our town, so we started walking again. We got picked up by a truck of people who weren’t going all the way, but could take us to a chapa stop, but we had to pay 7 meticais. Asking for money for boléias here is not the norm, but definitely not unheard of. Of course it also might have been because we are white. Then we caught a chapa home for 50 meticais. In total we traveled about 140k today for just over $2.

11/12/09

Today was the long anticipated day of site delivery. We had all heard things about our sites, but nobody really knew what to expect until we actually arrived. Thankfully I was the first person on the route in my car.
My site is a bit of a joke, as far as Peace Corps Mozambique goes. I am living on the grounds of a mission of Salesean nuns. The entire compound is just gorgeous, plants and flowers everywhere, nice paint jobs on the relatively new buildings. This mission has a primary school, a secondary school where I will be teaching, an orphanage, a few dorm rooms for girls in training to be nuns, a building for boarding students who have families but live too far away to commute to school every day, a cafeteria, the main building of the nuns, and the building I live in. But back to the joke part. In the main building there is a room that has a computer with internet, a plasma screen TV, and DVD player. I live in a building where another volunteer lives (there are two Spanish girl volunteers here), some guy lives sometimes (that part got lost in translation), and the infirmary is. My living space is one fairly large room with four electrical outlets and an attached indoor bathroom with sink, flushing toilet, and shower with hot water. Every building has energy (some of it solar-powered) and running water. I was really excited by all of the amenities at first, but now I am kind of embarrassed. Ashamed, perhaps, especially when my colleagues find out (I really don’t want to tell them). One of my friends is living alone at her site with no running water or electricity and has to walk three kilometers to get cell phone service. Hence the shame I feel.
Our mission is a couple miles out of town so I wandered into town this afternoon to get to know it a little. I went to Ann’s house (my sitemate). She is pretty worried because her house is reed which means that people can (and often do) just stick their hands through the walls and pull out whatever they can grab. And if they really want to get in, a pocketknife could cut through the walls. On Monday she is going to figure out options for reinforcing the walls, either with cement or chain-link fence. We have a sitemate named Emma who has already lived here for a year and today Ann got called “Emma” a few times because, well, they are both white and all white people look alike. We poked our heads into every shop in town just to check out the options and got to know a few of the owners and a tailor. Tomorrow we are going to Maxixe where we will have more options and lower prices on all of the things we need for our houses (which is not much in my case).

10/12/09

We had our regional conferences with our supervisors/directors. I thought it was great to be able to meet our directors before we got to site, but I don’t think we needed an entire day to do it. About halfway through the sessions we were all nodding off a little, especially our directors.
Yesterday my colleague accidentally left an unused tampon behind in her room when she left. Her hostmom found it and didn’t know what it was (nobody uses them here), so she took it across the street to our other rather unfortunate colleague who was leaving later in the day. She had to explain what it was and how to use it. On a separate occasion during homestay, one of my colleagues found her little brother chewing on her plastic tampon applicator (yes, it was used). That is why special trash has to be carefully guarded and then immediately burned, because otherwise the kids will go through it, play with it, and inevitably put it in their mouths.

09/12/09

We left Namaacha today, where we have spent the past ten weeks living with our homestay families, attending language and technical classes, and otherwise passing the time and getting to know each other. Now we are split by region, so I am with the other people whose sites are in Maputo, Gaza, and Inhambane provinces (the southern region). Southern region piled on a bus that had exactly two seats fewer than the number of people on the bus, so the back row had to squeeze five people into four seats and one guy had to stand. The luggage truck had also left ahead of us, so we had to drive to Maputo all of us having huge camping backpacks on our laps. At one point during the trip our bus pulled up next to the bus of the Mambas, the Mozambican national soccer team! They were pretty cute and were nice enough to wave back at our bus of excited white people.
Last night we had a huge head-shaving party, so now there are eight girls in our group with shaved heads! Today while we were driving I had the window all the way open and was just enjoying the wind blasting my face at 70mph. I realized I have never felt that before because I have never liked to have the windows down in the car because I don’t like my hair getting messed up. But I didn’t have to worry about that today and just feeling the wind on my face like that was an amazing feeling. Once we got to our hotel we were done for the day so we spent the afternoon sitting on the beach.

08/12/09

Today 67 Moz 14ers (we are the 14th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to come to Mozambique) were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. We lost only two during training. The ceremony took place at the American Embassy in Maputo around a pool that, miraculously, nobody fell into during the entire ceremony. Our Associate Peace Corps Directors, Christy, Sergio, and Custodio announced each of our names. Then Claudia, our wonderful Training Manager who has had control over every aspect of our lives for the past ten weeks, spoke. Todd Chapman, the Chargee (I don’t know how to spell it. He is in charge while Mozambique doesn’t have an ambassador) spoke. The Rubin, our country director spoke and lead us in the reading of the swearing in oath. Then a woman from the health sector in Mozambique spoke and a woman from the Ministry of Education spoke. There were a ton of guests at the ceremony. It’s amazing how many current directors of NGOs and such in Mozambique are RPCVs. It seemed like they were more excited than we were today, perhaps because they fully understand what the next two years hold for us. Afterwards we had to say goodbye to the central region people.
When I got home my mom asked to speak to me in private. She confided in me that she is pregnant! How exciting! And the baby is born in August so I told her I would definitely come back for the birth and that I hope the baby has the same birthday as mine! She told me that if it was a girl, she was going to name it Anata. In addition to being really excited for her, I am pretty relieved. I had noticed she wasn’t feeling well for a while now and, after being bombarded with health information for the past ten weeks of training, I was terrified that there was a possibility she could have AIDS.
Yesterday my mom’s boyfriend gave his son and the other two cousins who live here each toy army trucks. Right now not one has a single wheel on it still, in addition to the other parts that are broken off.

07/12/09

Today was our last day of training--finally! Mozambique is divided into three regions, north, central, and south (me) and tomorrow after the swearing-in ceremony south and north are coming back for one more night with our homestay families, but the central region is staying to fly out of Maputo so tonight was our last night with them. In Mozambique and other countries with similar HIV/AIDS rates, all you hear about is how high the HIV/AIDS rate is. It is 15-22%, depending on your source. But what you rarely hear is that the STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection. This is the newer, more politically correct term dos what used to be called STDs) rate is 79%! And the even scarier thing about that statistic is that having an STI doubles a person's susceptibility to contracting HIV!

06/12/09

Tomorrow the Peace Corps is picking up all of our bags except one small one to deliver them to our sites. I gave my family my thank you present today: a balloon kit and truck and helicopter toys for the boys, a notebook and bracelet for my 13 year old girl cousin, tea for my grandma, a bracelet and earrings and a ring for my mom, and a framed picture of me with everyone, a decorative fan, and some Hershey’s chocolate for the whole family. It was a little sad but they really seemed to like the gifts, especially the boys who, in true Mozambican form, had broken the toys before I left the house this afternoon (Mozambican kids destroy everything they touch). The homestay experience is a trying one, but I really lucked out in getting a wonderful family. My mom, my three year old brother (her son), and his dad are going to Inhambane after Christmas to visit his family, so they are planning to visit me at my new house. My mom asked me what the name of one of my colleagues was. I told her and told her that he speaks Portuguese really well, and she said “well so you do,” it was really sweet.
Last weekend while on our 11 mile walk, we discovered a grove of mango trees that beautiful, peaceful, and seems like it is straight out of a fairy tale. The branches of mango trees are perfect for climbing and sitting in, so we went back to that grove today and spent the afternoon sitting in the trees and reading. I finished one of the most moving and profound books I have ever read called All Souls by Michael Patrick MacDonald, which I recommend everyone to read. You will especially appreciate it if you’re Irish. I was hardly able to put it down and it brought me to tears many times. And while I am recommending books, two other great books I have read while are: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing and Africa: a Biography of the Continent by John Reader.

05/12/09

Today we had our big homestay party, I suppose it was a goodbye party. Each family was presented with a certificate that usually the mom and the trainee went up to receive. Some of the moms were funny, getting really into the Mozambican style of cheering (a high-pitched “yiyiyiyiyiyi”), All of the families were all thanked and applauded. Then everyone ate tons of wonderful food and there was even cake too. Although the mix CD they were playing appeared to have only 5 songs on it, Mozambicans love to dance so everyone was dancing the whole time. Some of the kids must have been born dancing, they are just such good dancers and I don’t know how you learn stuff like that by age 3.
Afterwards a bunch of us watched “The Sandlot” this afternoon. One other girl shaved her head yesterday and two more are planning to this week after the swearing-in ceremony. So that will make 5 total (Roselia was brave and showed up to staging with a shaved head). Training is wrapping up which is pretty relieving, but we are also realizing that we won’t be seeing many other people for a long time, possibly a year. It’s kind of bittersweet because I am ready for training to be over and to start my new life, but I don’t want to have to say goodbye to a ton of the people who have been my best and only friends for the past 10 weeks.

04/12/09

We had our language proficiency tests today and our round robins to test our general knowledge of Peace Corps policies, Mozambican history, culture, and education system, etc. I thought my language test went pretty well (though I did realize later I had confused two verb conjugations) but it’s hard to tell what they will think! So the bread of one baker in town, we will call him “Frank,” is notoriously good. When volunteers come back to help facilitate training that’s one of the reasons they are excited to return to town. The bread is dense like sourdough, so delicious, and if Frank likes you he will go into the back to get you a warm loaf: heaven. Some of the guys have been talking up how much pão (bread) they had been eating, so the decision was made that there was only one thing left to do: have a pão-eating contest. Ten loafs. So after our tests Jon, Brian, and Mike started into their mission, setting a two hour time limit. We had told Frank about the contest and he thought it was the funniest thing ever and was obviously thrilled when they guys showed up and bought 30 loafs of bread. A bunch of us stayed to watch the spectacle and we all played cards and hung out for the two hours. Brian and Mike both were able to eat only 4, Jon put away 7 which is pretty superhuman.
Vonnie’s mom sells biscoitos (literally cookies but they come in many varieties here and hers I would describe as fried donuts) at the market on Saturdays and Wednesdays, so on Tuesday and Friday nights she makes them. They have become a huge hit among the trainees, so last night we stopped by to get them piping hot because it was our last chance!
We were all hanging out playing cards at a restaurant, watching the beautiful lightning storm in the distance. Eventually the power went out, as it does regularly here, but luckily Peace Corps (soon to be) volunteers go nowhere unprepared, so instantly multiple flashlights and headlamps were pulled out so the games could continue. Brian and Jordan, a married couple, were leaving and since they live near me and I didn’t want to walk home alone after dark I walked back with them. The power was out in the whole town so the roads were pitch black, but every ten seconds or so lightning would light everything up and you would realize that there were four other men in the road you didn’t know where there. And then it would be back to pitch black. That was pretty freaky, I would have rather not known anyone was around. During one of these episodes Jordan got freaked out and jumped behind me, stepping on my flip flop, breaking it. I walked for a bit with only one shoe, but we were all pretty scared by how much broken glass we know are in the streets here so Jordan made Brian give me a piggy back ride. Then when we were about 4 minutes from home it started torrentially pouring. We broke into a sprint home and I am still impressed Brian didn’t roll and ankle and send both of us flying into the mud. When I got home I washed my foot immediately and by some stroke of luck had no cuts at all.

02/12/09

Mozambique hasn't had an ambassador since 2006. In 2006 the former ambassador stepped down and the Bush administration appointed a new ambassador. But all ambassadors must be approved by the senate and in 2006 the senate changed from republican to democratic and the slightly controversial appointment was never approved. The Obama administration has recently made a new appointment so, if approved, Mozambique will have am ambassador again in January. Todd Chapman, the American in charge (the highest ranking American) while there has been no ambassador in Mozambique, came to talk to us today. He is such am intelligent and knowledgeable person and spoke so candidly with us, it was a pleasure to listen to him talk about Mozambique. He first came here in 1993, the year after the awful 17 civil war ended. It was interesting to hear him talk about how much things have improved since then. Things in Mozambique may not be great now, but only 17 years ago the country emerged from civil war all but completely demolished. If talked about not being able to stop and pee at the side of the road while driving because only the roads had been demined, but there were landmines all along the roads. I will never understand why anyone would ever use landmines in a civil was. Some trainees' host parents have opened up to them about some of the horrors of the war. Some saw schools bombed, some say their families killed. And these are memories that half the current population still has. Sometimes it seems that progress here is measured in inches here, but progress is progress, especially when one remembers what we have come from.

01/12/09

Today is World AIDS Day and we participated with the community in all of the activities this morning. I wasn't really sure what to expect because generally here everyone knows HIV/AIDS is a problem, but nobody thinks it's their problem. Turnout was higher than I expected, especially considering it was raining (many of our homestay siblings simply don't go to school when it's raining. Again, this would be easier for me to understand if Mozambique weren't a country with a rainy season). Everyone met at one end of town to march down the main road to the AIDS monument. Everyone was singing the whole time and many had posters and signs. Unfortunately all of the singing and the speeches at the monument were in Changana, the local language. I never thought the day would come when I would wish that people would speak in Portuguese so I could understand. The mayor-ish person placed a wreath of flowers on the monument and then people came forward to place flowers all around while everyone sang. Them we went to the school where a local youth theater group put on two skits about HIV/AIDS, a guy told a story, a guy played some songs on his guitar, and the mayor gave a speech. It was really nice. I killed my third chicken today. It doesn't get any easier or more fun, but I am certainly getting better at it. I have learned to firmly pin down the beheaded body because otherwise the postmortem thrashing will spray blood everywhere. Today my future sitemate Ann, who is from Chicago, and I were reminiscing longingly about Portillo's chocolate cake milk shakes.