02/06/12

Yesterday Anna and I spent most of the day at the house, since we had our girl come to wash our laundry in the morning and we can’t leave the dog at home alone with the washing hanging or he’ll pull everything off the line onto the ground. We were sitting in our front yard reading when heard some kids at our gate calling me by name—turns out it was my host brothers and sister (baby Anata). Their mom had sent them over to play, so I spent a couple hours with them. They climbed our tree and fence, ate lemons I picked them off our tree, and sported the new sunglasses I had bought them a few days earlier.

Our dog has been acting strangely ever since we returned from Swaziland after last weekend. On two consecutive nights he ran away (jumped our fence), which he has never done before while we are in the house (only when we left and he ran after us). Since then we have kept him on his lead or locked in the house 24/7, which has resulted in incessant whining, crying, and barking. Really, incessant, as in non-stop. All day and all night. As much as I would like to let him go have fun (it was undoubtedly a female dog in heat that lured him out), I refuse to start paying for any damage he might do in the neighborhood, like killing chickens or running over a kid. Last night he was outside on his lead and we were in the house when Anna said “weird, he’s being quiet, I’m going to check on him.” Then from outside I heard, “Scooter, he hung himself!” I ran out and we were relieved to learn that he hadn’t actually hung himself, but had jumped over an impossibly high wall and was now outside our fence, luckily his head was long enough! So I had to climb over the fence, Anna unhooked his lead and handed it to me, and then I dragged him (as he clawed and thrashed maniacally in the other direction) back to our yard, apologizing to our neighbors whose yard I was tramping through. Below is a picture of the wall he jumped with me (I’m 5’6”) standing by it for comparison. If I don’t look very happy in the picture it’s because I’m not.

01/06/12

So much to catch up on these past few weeks! April was Blog About Malaria Month, as I’m sure you noticed, with the goal of raising awareness about malaria that culminated with World Malaria Day on April 25th. I was incredibly busy during that month checking in with all the PCVs who told me they were doing malaria activities to hear how they went, get information for write-ups, gather pictures, and post all of this on the http://stompoutmalaria-mozambique.tumblr.com/ webpage. Somehow I thought that things would calm down after April ended, but instead my job finally kicked into full gear and I have been crazy busy. But in a good way, because I love what I am doing and it has been a great learning experience for me. I was traveling back down to Maputo from Massinga after the PIRCOM training sitting on an extremely “cozy” bus when I felt something brush against my leg. I jumped, then shrugged it off and ignored it the first few times. Eventually I was curious enough to try to find out what it was, but between all the bags, sacks of coconuts, people, more bags, and bundles of cassava, there was no way I could see under my seat. “Is there an animal under my seat?” I asked the woman next to me. She laughed at me and assured me that no, it was just baggage or maybe the person behind me kicking me. She announced this exchange in local language to the people around us on the bus and everyone got a good chuckle. Hours later (probably about 400 kilometers later) whatever was under my seat had brushed against my leg too many times to accept that it wasn’t alive, so I wiggled my arm down and felt around, probably not as nervous as I should have been about what I would find. “There IS a cat down here!” I exclaimed to my seatmate. She was surprised and asked if I was sure. Only at this point did the guy behind us decide to speak up and confirm that yes, he was traveling with a cat he had put under the seat. A few weeks ago on our way to Vilanculos for a beach weekend we caught a ride with a very nice and interesting Zimbabwean man who works in Mozambique and was on his way home to visit his family. About 20 minutes after he dropped us off Maddie, another PCV, said “Scooter, why are you calling me?” I reached into my back and realized, with a sinking heart, that my phone was still in the nice man’s car. I talked to him and we arranged to meet up when he returned from his holiday 10 days later. I shrugged, “oh well, I guess I won’t have a phone until then!” One of the other PCVs there, who only just arrived in October of the past year, shook his head at me, saying “you have been here too long! You should really be more upset about losing your phone!” Fast-forward 11 phoneless days (during which I only missed it a few times) and I successfully got my phone back! It’s nice not to have to spend money on a new phone, but it was truly a blessing to not lose all my contacts. On one of my travels north of Maputo I arrived at the “Junta” (literally the joint/connection) which is the Maputo bus terminal. Which in this case means a large, chaotic, trash-covered, unpaved area where 50ish buses cram in and move around and bus drivers shout and people are trying to sell you everything from earrings to toilet paper or friend chicken meals. It’s a very aggressive scene, you have to be aware of your bags at all times and guys from different buses will fight to get passengers on their own vehicles. I dread going there because it’s even worse for me, as a fairly small white female. When I arrive the normal chaos ensues, guys are grabbing my arms and bags, pulling me, yelling and trying to convince me that their bus north will leave soonest, and everyone is shouting such that I can’t really tell what anyone is saying. Then suddenly a man in an orange reflector vest came up and barked at everyone to get away from me. Two of the guys had gotten into a physical fight over me and I reached out at one point when one guy shoved the other one into the road. “Leave those idiots” the man in the orange vest said. “You are the customer, you get to decide which bus you get on. You can see each bus before you make a decision, they can’t force you to get on any of their buses. So, now, which bus would you like to see first?” It was such a bizarre and wonderful moment of civility. I thanked the man profusely and climbed onto the bus of my choosing in relative peace.

29/05/12

Back after spending the weekend in Swaziland for the Bushfire music festival. We had a wonderful time (there were about 25 PCVs from Mozambique there), the music was good, the food was good, and many of us got fun souvenirs! Yesterday crossing the border back into Mozambique I walked up to the three men checking passports of people leaving Swaziland. “I want to marry you!” one of them yelled at me. “No.” “No?” “No,” I responded again. “You are married already?” “No.” “Not yet?” he asked. “A few more guys like you and not ever” I muttered. “What?” I just shook my head and took my passport back.

23/05/12

My job has really taken off recently, so I have been extremely busy, but it’s a good kind of busy doing things I love! This past week the PMI (President’s Malaria Initiative) team from headquarters in DC has been here to plan and write the MOP (Malaria Operational Plan) for FY 2013. I went to the Culver Academies for high school which is a military school on the boys’ side, and I thought we used a lot of acronyms then. But this new world I’m working in combines government employees, malaria specialists, and budgets—and suddenly some sentences are more acronyms and specialized terms than other words! I got to sit in on the meeting where each of the PMI-supported implementing partners in Mozambique presented their work during the past fiscal year. Their presentations included sentences like “the promotion of LLINs in partnership with PSI and SDSMAS” and “run capacity assessments with DEPROS and NCP staff in SBCC” or “gap between ANC and IPTp rates, largely due to stockouts and poor supply chain management.” Interestingly, I know what all of those sentences mean, though I wouldn’t have a few months ago. It’s a whole new world with its own language. Anna has been gone for about a month doing site visits for her position, she just returned home today! I haven’t been at home much either, between the PIRCOM training and meetings in Maputo, but it’s nice to have her back. And I don’t really like being in the house alone. It’s a really loud house—we have a tree that leans over the house and scrapes along the tin roof when the wind moves it. One night while I was alone I made the mistake of watching a CSI-like show right before bed. It was a windy night and at 2:30am I woke up convinced that there was someone on our roof. The tree was making a racket on the roof and also setting off the motion-activated light we have on our latrine. So at 2:30am I found myself standing in the middle of our common room with my rape whistle in one hand and large knife in the other muttering “okay, come and get me you bastards.” Eventually I convinced myself it was just the wind and I went back to bed. So yes, it’s nice to have Anna back. All the neighborhood kids know my name now. Actually sometimes it’s closer to “Ana” than “Anata” but I’ll take what I can get—at least it’s not “mulungu.” The other morning one of the neighbor boys (one of the ones who followed Anna and me down the road a few months back) came running up to me when I returned from my morning run. As he came tottering in, arms outstretched for the hug, I saw the huge glob of snot under his nose, pretty typical of any kid under 5 here. So as I happily received my first hug from a neighborhood kid, I tried to show affection while preventing his face from actually touching me. I ran into Irmã Ana (who was a sister in Inharrime the past two years and now lives with the sisters here in Namaacha) last night. Tomorrow, May 24th, is Holy Mary day, so the sisters are preparing a celebration at their school here in Namaacha. She was returning from my neighborhood with a class of students from the secondary school. To commemorate Holy Mary day each class did some sort of community service project—this class was returning from an elderly woman’s house where they had repaired her roof and done yardwork. She excitedly told me about another class in which one girl was having an operation, so the class was surprising her with a wheelchair they had fundraised for.

On my way home from Maputo yesterday

16/05/12

This morning I returned from buying energy and some food and as I approached my gate a few of the neighborhood kids ran up chanting “it’s big-sister Anata, it is, it is!” It was the first time they have ever done that, it was a really nice feeling. My job is going really well now which is awesome, but means I am busy as ever!

12/05/12

Recently I caught a chapa in Maputo and the driver was hitting on me. Nothing new there (not because he thought I was attractive, but because he was dazzled by how white my skin was), and I brushed him off. The next day I caught the same chapa again so I avoided eye contact. Then later that day I caught the same chapa AGAIN and laughed because the only open seat was next to the driver. “You know, I’m not a witchdoctor” he said “this must be fate.” I just laughed because I couldn’t honestly think of a good argument. I was about to get onto a chapa on a crowded Maputo corner when I heard “mana Anata!” It was Sandra, one of the girls who had been living with the sisters and training to be a sister in Inharrime the past two years! We made plans to meet up next week, since it was late in the day and I was worried another chapa might not come along soon. One of the funny things about Mozambique—it’s a huge country with 22 million people but with only one national highway and a few major roads in the capital, you run into people all the time, or will be driving down the highway and pass a car and say “oh, I know them!” This week I was up in Massinga, Inhambane province attending a training about malaria put on by PIRCOM (Programa Inter-Religioso Contra a Malária). Read about it and see pictures at http://stompoutmalaria-mozambique.tumblr.com/!

If you can't beat them, join them

I felt bad for the dog that the frogs kept sitting in his water dish, so I put out a tray of water for them. I've seen up to four frogs lounging or swimming around in the water.

For fun....

Apologies, I have been on the road to a fantastic malaria training (I will post a description) and on top of that I am extremely busy! Here are some pictures to make up for my lack of writing.

Let's call this Mozambican sledding. The kids cut old broken containers (the yellow thing is a 25 liter container that everyone here uses for collecting, carrying, and storing water), attach ropes as as such, and pull each other down hills. As you might imagine, this makes a terrible racket. I wish they could just once experience how fun sledding is when one person doesn't have to pull the other other rocks and holes.

This Peace Corps promotional poster hangs in our office in Maputo. The sentiment of the poster is good--I hope it reached some people back in the states. Over here, however, all of us education PCVs get a good laugh out of it. If you're a teacher you may have noticed it already too. Check out the middle kid--he's totally cheating.

Contrary to what I thought before joining Peace Corps, my service has not included a lot of sitting in my hut trying to pass the time. I am extremely busy this year with what is basically an administrative job. I was extremely busy the last two years teaching a normal teaching load and managing all my extra-curricular clubs as well. However, PCVs still end up with time we didn't have in the states: inside our houses at sundown, waiting for the water to boil for our baths, waiting to fill every container we have when the water only comes out every few days. So during these times we pick up some fun new hobbies. Micah, another PCV, made this woman and her large mortar and pestel, I made her clothing.

05/04/12

The World Malaria Day celebration last weekend just happened to be about 40k from Inharrime (my old site), so I got to go spend time with my girls and those wonderful sisters again, which is always fantastic. I spent a morning down at the school visiting English students from last year who are now in 12th grade, planning for their futures, and into things like Facebook. And my math students from my first year who used to be little kiddies and are now in 10th grade. My REDES (Rapariga em Desenvolvimento, Educação e Saúde—Girls in Development, Education, and Health) girls are among these. I was talking to them because they earned a lot of money during the past two years with our earring making/selling income generation project. We had talked about getting something made for every member of the group, but I didn’t have time before I left last year. On this day they were throwing around the idea of getting hats made, since they already had a few t-shirts from other REDES events we had during the past two years. When I asked what they wanted on the hats they enthusiastically replied “a picture of you and then written ‘REDES of Inharrime!’” I laughed because they have said this multiple times before on different occasions. We threw around a few other ideas and I kept running different design ideas by them (the REDES logo, a picture of all of us, another design). They continued to responding that they wanted a picture of me on whatever they got. Eventually I told them to be serious, they couldn’t get my picture put on anything. To which one clever girl responded “but teacher Anata, you always teach us to stand up for ourselves and say what we want and you tell us that you will help us achieve our goals. Well, what we want is for your picture on our shirt and now you tell us we can’t do that.” I couldn’t argue with that one. So shortly there will be a bunch of t-shirts in Mozambique with my face on them…I don’t even want to know who will end up wearing some of them. After World Malaria Day (WMD, as it is known in some circles) I headed up to Vilanculos to spend the weekend at the beach with some other PCVs. We had a great time, but the excitement of the weekend unfortunately coincided with me already getting sick, so I lost my voice Saturday-Tuesday. And losing your voice in Mozambique is WAY less fun than in America. Long story short: everyone thinks you’re super weird. I can see them all thinking “why is this weird white girl whispering at me.” I was actually told to “speak well” by one young girl and asked “why are you talking so strangely?” by another teenager. And on chapas I would have to ask my neighbor to call out my stops for me.

Mosquito Piñata!

I wanted to teach the neighborhood kids about malaria for malaria awareness month and in preparation for World Malaria Day last Wednesday, April 25th. Anna and I also wanted to interact with the neighborhood kids in a way that wasn’t us yelling at them for provoking our dog. So a few weeks ago I lovingly created a bright blue (we had food coloring lying around the house, why not?) paper mache mosquito piñata, complete with wings, legs, a large stinger, and candy inside. Last Monday afternoon, as a lead-up to World Malaria Day, Anna and I gathered the neighborhood kids outside our front gate. We showed them the mosquito and promised that it was full of candy that they would receive at the end (yep, I’m not above bribery). I talked to them about malaria transmission, prevention, symptoms, and treatment, and we reviewed each of these points a few times. Each time a neighbor would walk over and ask what was going on I would ask the kids to explain to them. And happily a few of them would excitedly yell something about malaria or mosquitoes.

A few of the older kids (probably 4-6 grade) had already learned some of the basics, like that mosquitoes transmit malaria, that mosquitoes lay their eggs in water, or that you can protect yourself by sleeping under a bed net. What surprised me was that even the kids who knew this much couldn’t name the symptoms of malaria. Honestly I’m not sure what means. Is it a classic case of aid in developing countries: bombard people with marginally useful information (for example, telling people to “always use their mosquito net” is only useful when every person has a bed net) but not tell people who malaria actually looks or feels like? (I have been told that you literally feel like you’ve been hit by a bus when you have malaria, your body aches and you can’t move, in addition to the nausea and headaches. Put this in contrast with the common PCV complaint that any runny nose or indigestion in Mozambique might be called “malaria” by our colleagues and friends.)

After I made the kids repeat a few malaria basics enough times that I was satisfied they would remember even if they didn’t want to, the fun began!

The youngest kids speak little to no Portuguese (kids in Mozambique often don’t learn Portuguese until they enter 1st grade), but I think they had a good time all the same! See more pictures I posted at http://stompoutmalaria-mozambique.tumblr.com/

World Malaria Day!

It happened! I wrote about it and posted pictures to http://stompoutmalaria-mozambique.tumblr.com/post/21790205979/world-malaria-day check them out!

Looking Forward to World Malaria Day!

On Wednesday visit http://stompoutmalaria.org/country-by-country/mozambique/ to read tweets in real time from PCVs commemorating World Malaria Day across Mozambique!

Wednesday, April 25th is World Malaria Day and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and the National Malaria Control Program (PNCM) will hold the national recognition ceremony in Cumbana village, in the district of Jangamo, Inhambane province. Activities will begin at 6:30am at the Cumbana health center with a March in honor of World Malaria Day. Ceremonial placing of flowers and singing of the Mozambican National Anthem will follow. To kick off the day’s activities, spectators will be invited to participate in an activity testing their knowledge about malaria transmission, symptoms, treatment, and prevention. Following this, national and international partners in the fight against malaria in Mozambique will be invited to speak briefly about their efforts. Festivities throughout the day will include songs and skits about malaria from local groups and a soccer tournament. Expected attendees include the First Lady of Mozambique, the Minister of Health, the Governor of Inhambane province, and representatives from PNCM, PMI, USAID, as well as many more partner organizations.

23/04/12

The power has been out at home since about 6pm last night. Last night I played guitar and wrote in my journal by candlelight…I don’t think it gets more Peace Corps than that! This morning I really needed to bathe but we still had no electricity which meant so way to heat the water for my bath. But being the resourceful PCV I am, I remembered that the Peace Corps office has a generator, so I brought my large basin and a plastic cup to bathe at work! On the way I passed a woman who we buy bread from and who I pass each day going to and from the office. “Why do you need that basin at work?” she asked. Embarrassed, I sputtered a reply about needing to bathe.

22/04/12

It seems like anytime a chapa drives past me here the conductor sticks his head out the window and yells “Maputo?” at me. Regardless of whether I am on my morning jog, enjoying a snack, or just strolling down the street, it’s unfathomable to them that a white person would actually want to be on the streets of Namaacha, surely she got lost en route to Maputo. This would happen in Inharrime too. On most days I just wave my finger “no” at them…on some days I yell back “do I LOOK like I’m going to Maputo?!” This morning it happened again. I just shrugged my arms like “what are you thinking?” and gave them a bad look. But then one of the men standing in a group talking between the chapa and me yelled back to the chapa conductor “no she doesn’t want to go to Maputo, she’s going to church!” I laughed and thanked him because he was absolutely correct.