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.