Yesterday Abby, our cat, and I left Chibuto - we packed up our home and said goodbye to all the friends we made in the last 23 months. My last week in Chibuto was very special because I had small parties with my work colleagues and young women's empowerment group, and enjoyed a lot of last visits. We received official word that our cultural center project is fully funded, which is exciting news! (Thanks to all who donated).

My last night I visited the house of a young girl named Aissa. She has been a regular participant in my young women's empowerment group for the past 2 years but for one reason or another I never made it to her house. Perhaps because her house was on the other side of the town. More likely because I had almost written her off (as terrible as it sounds). At age 20, she is still in the ninth grade and does not seem particularly motivated in her studies. Furthermore, she is habitually late, and not just a little bit, which can be frustrating. Aissa is a tiny girl; she does not stand more than 4 feet 9 inches tall, so you would not expect her to have a child, let alone a large 3 year-old son. So right or wrong, I was inclined to invest more time and energy to the girls more dedicated to their studies and with obvious potential for brighter futures. What I had overlooked was how loving and caring she is - always greeting me with a smile and even moved to tears when I broke my nose last year because she hated to see me in pain. Although I did not feel like going to her house the last day because I knew I’d inevitably be forced to stay a long time and endure a lot of special attention, I figured it would mean a lot to the family and was the right thing to do. And boy was I glad I went – late is better than never! I showed up to her house and was offered a chair & promptly asked what my preferred soda was; the routine that had become so familiar to me during any house visit. I sat and enjoyed getting to watch the house dynamics play out while they prepared a special dinner.

I had met most of her family members in town, but never all at the same time. All 8 of them lived in a modest three-room house made of reeds, and without electricity. What was shocking is that 20-year-old Aissa’s 3-year-old baby was older than her mother’s youngest child. The mother’s youngest child was also 3 while her oldest was 28. Aissa and her mother got pregnant at almost exactly the same time and gave birth two months apart. Today the two 3-year-old boys are inseparable – a son and grandson the same age. Family planning is clearly not something Aissa learned from her mother. However, in many ways both the young children Aissa and her mother said came from unwelcome pregnancies, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The two young boys have become inseparable and it was fun to see them playing together. After a delicious dinner, I left so happy I had gone and with a much better understanding of Aissa – her humble abode was filled with loving and kindness, which are perhaps two of her best characteristics.

I also went to watch the 7th week of the 10-week talent show many of my favorite youth have been hosting. They have been putting on an American Idol like show complete with three judges and voting opportunities for the viewers. They have made it as professional as possible – arranging a sound system, microphones, and generator so the show does not get disrupted from the frequent power outages. They charge a $1 entry fee to help cover the costs. It gives the youth a chance to shine and discover their talents while also providing entertainment and a positive way for youth to spend their free time in a community lacking extracurricular activities. It was impressive to see the young people making this happen all on their own and seeing the kids performing songs, dances, and skits. The whole event was exceptionally similar to a talent show in the US minus one crucial difference. There was no one over the age of 25 in the building – no parental or teacher support. I was imagining the audience for a talent show in the States and thinking how it’d be filled with parents and grandparents snapping photos and proudly cheering on their children.

The young adults responsible for the talent show were recently elected leaders of the new cultural center we have started. The cultural center is designed for older youth and adults to teach younger kids art, dance, music, etc. so hopefully it will encourage inter-generational collaboration. It is pretty amazing what the teens do on their own but far from ideal in my opinion; so much would be gained if there was more direction and support from elders to youth. Nevertheless, watching youth in action was such a good way to go out – it gave me a positive feeling that things might be heading in that direction with the help of these young leaders in the future!

On Monday, I arrived to Namaacha to spend my last week visiting my host family brining it full-circle. It never fails to amaze me how despite their busy schedules and financial limitations, they are so generous and give me princess treatment. The children play happily and simply without thousands of toys or expensive forms of entertainment. It always reminds me of what’s most important in this life: family, how you treat others, having food on the table and shelter over your head, and loving relationships on a daily basis; take or leave the rest.

Although my Peace Corps journey is coming to a close, I will never forget how much this experience has marked and changed my life. I have so many fond memories and am so happy I had the opportunity to embark on this worthwhile sojourn.

I have written far less blog entries in year two; one reason is recently I’ve been in a slump and not felt much like writing. Homesickness is setting in after 2 years of living so far from my family. I also had the privilege of having so many visitors from the States this year, and as soon as they all left in early August, my roommate Abby has also had to move from our home for work-related reasons. That meant a harsh readjustment from having constant company to being very isolated. Compounded with that, I got sick and had an overall bad week during all the strikes and rioting that recently took place in Mozambique. I was feeling really ready to go home, getting frustrated easily and just struggling to keep a positive attitude!

Luckily, last weekend we had a girls’ empowerment conference for my main secondary project called REDES (Raparigas em Desenvolvimento, Educação e Saúde – Girls Developing in Education and Health), and it was just what I needed to drag me out of my slump and get me in a better, more positive mindset to finish out the rest of my service!

I have written about the REDES Project before, but I’ll include a quick recap of our mission and vision statements before writing about how the conference was my saving grace.

Mission Statement

Our mission is to empower young Mozambican women through gender-awareness and skills-based activities, giving them the knowledge to make healthy decisions and build successful futures, thus reducing their vulnerability to HIV and AIDS.

Vision Statement

We envision a future in which young Mozambican women are equipped with the skills and self-confidence needed to make their own decisions about what is important to their lives and futures. We envision REDES as a national movement linking young women throughout the country and encouraging them to work together to advocate for women’s rights, learn about women’s health, and become leaders in their communities. We hope to someday soon see young women become their own best and strongest advocates.

September Gaza Provincial REDES Conference

To achieve our mission and work toward our vision, Peace Corps Volunteers and Mozambican professors and exemplary women are working together to form REDES groups in primary and secondary schools for girls between 12 and 23 years old. These REDES groups meet throughout the school year doing a variety of educational and fun activities, giving the girls a safe space to learn. Additionally, twice a year representatives from each group are selected to participate in regional and provincial conferences. I have had the honor of participating in three such conferences and they have been some of the most inspiring and most hopeful days in my whole service. And the latest provincial conference could not have come at a better time to lift my down spirits.

At the provincial conference in Gaza, we had 55 participants and our theme was “Analyzing the Roles of Women in Society.” One of the areas the REDES Project has been focusing on is to allow the Mozambican professors to take more leadership in the project, and have the Peace Corps Volunteers take more of a back seat. I had the opportunity to work with the professors from my town before the conference so that they were equipped to lead all the HIV-related sessions and activities without my help. I was so proud watching them stand in front of the girls explaining the risky behaviors associated with HIV, and helping the girls distinguish the myths from the facts. You could also tell how proud they were of themselves, and how happy they were to be making a positive difference in the lives of the young Mozambican girls.

Another highlight from the conference was watching the young girls present what they learned and practice public speaking. Often in classes, it is difficult to get the young girls to speak up and share their opinions. Many of my PCV friends have shared their frustration that when calling on a girl in the classroom, she will refuse to answer or just giggle and put her head down, even when she knows the correct response. I think one reason is because this culture places more value on the opinions and education of males, although it is beginning to change. I often see males speaking for females, and rarely hear females challenging males or strongly asserting their opinions. But the REDES Conferences provide an all-girl setting that gives the young women a chance to speak their minds and gain self-confidence, hopefully giving them courage to speak up more in their schools and communities after they leave even in mixed company.

Before the public speaking presentations, we broke the girls into four small groups giving them each the chance to discuss different roles of women in society. The youngest group discussed girls and education because it is still common to see girls drop out early to get married to older men and have babies, especially in the rural areas when their parents sometimes give them no choice. We also talked about how many of the schools have many more male teachers, and how sometimes the female teachers face discrimination. The girls are challenged to form an opinion and a plan of action on what they can do to rectify these injustices. The next group talked about girls and sports focusing on an interesting article about a group of Afghani girls who gained self-confidence and new dominion over their bodies through participating in a soccer league. Before the Afghani girls only used their arms to clean the floors and cart water, which is very similar to young women in Mozambique. When the boys saw them playing soccer, it changed their perceptions of the role of girls and helped them see girls more as their equals. The young Mozambican girls talked about how this article parallels their lives’ in many ways, and how sports can be used to empower young women. The third group spoke about women in the business world, debating if women should start businesses and why it is important to have a business skill to be able to support yourself. Too often, women turn to transactional sex or stay in abusive relationships in Mozambique because they have no means to support themselves financially. The oldest group talked about domestic violence and came up with a definition and what women should do about it. It happens very frequently here, especially because there is such inequality between the genders, and all too commonly people turn a blind eye or stay quiet, so the vicious cycle continues. The girls talked about how this is dangerous, how women (and the community) need to stand together in solidarity to denounce it, and provided information on where to go to get help.

Once the girls started presenting and speaking, the flood gates opened and we could not get them to stop! The following activity was for them to create posters with HIV messages to take back to their communities, and so we asked for a few volunteers to come forward and share. It was crazy because they all lined up with big smiles on their faces, and started sharing one right after the other when usually it is like pulling teeth to get them to open up in big crowds!

In the afternoon, we had a special treat because an exemplary Mozambican author who has challenged what the role of women should be in society was our guest speaker. We had the privilege of hearing from Paulina Chiziane, the first Mozambican woman to publish a novel. She is a 55 year-old-lady who was born in Gaza Province and her words were powerful. She has written books on topics such as polygamy, the practices of traditional healers, and her experience of living through the war for independence and the subsequent civil war (she spoke of writing one of her books holed up in her house as bombs exploded all around her, not knowing if she would live to see it published). Paulina’s story resonated with the young women because she was born in the same province as them and spoke of how she learned to write on a dirt floor using a stick as a pen because there were no proper writing utensils at her school. Only later did Paulina learn to write using a pen and notebook, something that she pointed out only totaled about one dollar in cost. Paulina pointed to her appearance; as a youngster, she did not like to spend her money on fancy clothes and hairstyles, preferring to spend them on books – something she sticks to her guns about today. I thought this was a particularly good point because many of the girls choose to spend their money on weave to make their hair long and stylish and fashionable, tight clothes to attract men (same as in the States). Paulina told them she chose reading over vanity, and it was one of the best decisions she ever made. Another interesting thing she shared was that she first wanted to be a painter, but did not have money to buy the materials so decided to instead express her thoughts through writing. Not only that, but after writing, many people discouraged her from publishing saying she could be in danger if the government or people did not like what she had to say. Her dad was not supportive of her decision to publicize at first, but Paulina is a strong woman and felt it had to be done. She drew strength internally and started publishing, and eventually gained the support of her father and many others. Being the talented writer that she is, she has become a famous author and her books are translated into many languages including English, Spanish, French, and Chinese. Paulina’s address captivated the girls as she shared these importance lessons telling the girls to speak up, think independently, read, and value education. You could tell that Paulina really made an impression on them, and I think many of them took her message to heart and will try to follow suit because the potential is there.

In the evening, we had each back home group perform in our FAMA REDES Show, giving them the opportunity to present a song, dance, or theater piece that they can share with their communities. The show started out with dancing, one thing that Mozambicans are not shy about, which was a lot of fun. Other groups created songs with messages encouraging people to get HIV tested. I think the most impressive though were the theatre presentations on domestic violence, unplanned pregnancy, and HIV. My friend Emily brought a group of girls who often do theater, and she was shocked at how well they performed during FAMA REDES because although they acted boldly and fearlessly in the environment we had created, she said they often clam up or they are overshadowed when they act in mixed company. This conference served as a learning opportunity for these girls because it gives them an opportunity to shine and see what they are capable of; I think they frequently leave happily surprised by discovering hidden gifts. Emily followed up with the girls encouraging them to continue with their gained self-confidence once back in their communities in mixed company. My group did a theater piece on unplanned pregnancy and I think all our mouths hung open when a young girl named Anatercia, a 17-year-old, ended up being the funniest one in the whole play. My group was asking her beforehand if she was going to actually talk during the theater piece because although there was a general plot, the lines were improvised. Anatercia is generally shy and unsure of herself, but as soon as they started acting she had everyone howling with laughter and we could not get her to stop talking. It really is an amazing transformation to watch, and leaves you with the best feeling.

To round it off the next day, we concluded with a game of writing compliments on the papers we had taped onto everyone’s backs. Again, we asked for volunteers to read some of the adjectives people had used to describe them and we had so many beaming girls. I heard exclamations of “Wow, she thinks I’m intelligent,” or “she thinks I really am capable of achieving my dreams,” or “she says I’m a good singer.” It was so nice to see them building one another up, and all the girls left smiling and eager to go home and share what they had learned during our conference. I left feeling rejuvenated and lucky that I was able to participate in such a special project. Not only do the girls get to travel and see different parts of their country, meet other girls, sometimes take a shower and eat with a knife and fork for the first time, but they learn so much and gain self-confidence. The conference participants and organizers both benefit from this awesome project geared at helping create brighter futures and women leaders in our world!

I have had the pleasure of hosting 10 of my family members and friends in Chibuto this year and all of the noted one of their favorite things about being in my town was just sitting in my house or porch and listening to the many surrounding sounds. At any given moment, there will be children banging on their makeshift instruments on the dirt path right outside my front doorstep; roosters crowing at all hours (my dad learned that roosters actually love to crow in the wee hours of the morning); the rhythmic bom-bom sounds of women grinding peanuts in the mortar and pestle; the noisy chaos of the school from 6 am to 10 pm (you wonder how the students ever learn amidst all the commotion); and either waking up to the sounds of our guard sweeping out dirt yard at dawn or the neighbors’ loud eclectic American music blaring from the sound system (ranging from Celine to Michael Jackson to Avril Lavigne to Akon), that is, if we’re lucky enough to have electricity on that particular morning.

However, none of my American visitors experienced being awakened by our next-door-neighbor’s death celebration ceremony. It is customary that family members and the community hold a lively mass to honor the dead in some religious traditions here, and they often happen to kick off around midnight! I had been invited to attend a few of these masses, but always respectfully declined thinking it was better to be in the safety of my house in the middle of the night. One Friday Abby and I went to bed at 11 pm, but woke up minutes later to drum beating, rowdy cries of aye aye aye, and stomping and clapping—it was a powerful noise! Abby and I agreed that they could not possibly keep up the racket that long, but we were very wrong. After about two hours and putting the pillow over my ears, which somewhat muffled the noise, I eventually fell asleep. Poor Abby did not fair as well, light sleeper that she is! She drifted off sometime after 6:12 am (she timed it) when the music and shouting finally stopped. It was some celebration and certainly impressive endurance! It also demonstrates what a strong sense of community there is in Chibuto and what a special tradition of honoring those loved ones who have passed on that takes place!

It will be an adjustment to transition back to the States where neighborhoods and houses are more spread out and life does not happen in the streets, but rather in the big houses with white picket fences and manicured lawns. Everything appears neat and tidy; all the messy parts of life are hidden behind closed doors. Heck, even the cats and dogs are better fed and received better medical care than many of my community members. You get in the car and drive from Point A to B in the States – it is more rapid and efficient, yet very impersonal. You lose the human contact and daily greetings you exchange every time you leave the house walking from Point A to Point B - the market, school, your workplace, your friend's house, etc. Yes, this means that it’s hard to keep your business private but the other side of the coin is that you really know your neighbors and there is a sense of solidarity that, in my opinion, is missing in many neighborhoods in the States. My neighbors are always cooking together, the children roam freely from house to house, and when a large event happens everyone around is considered family. I remember how comforting it was to be on the receiving end of this support on the occasions when our house got broken into and a crazy man kept inappropriately turning up at our house. The neighborhood came together forming a strong bond—a force not be reckoned with—and helped us tremendously in resolving these problems ! Everyone literally circled the culprits; it was life happening on the streets all right.

Last week I listened to some returned Peace Corps Volunteers share their experiences about moving back to the States, and all noted how lonely it felt. People are so busy, concerned with the next step, getting ahead, and have so much stuff to entertain them (TV, internet, video games, expensive toys, iphone) that they really do not spend much time together. Part of me is really excited to get back to a faster pace of life and more comfortable lifestyle. But my time in the Peace Corps has taught me how invaluable the small daily interactions and connections are, which is something that is often lost in our own culture because of our material wealth. I am grateful that I have gotten to see the advantages of this simpler way of life in a way that I would not have otherwise.

Dear friends and family,

I have been serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Southern Africa in Mozambique as a community health promoter since October 2008. My primary assignment is being a community health promoter and I have been working towards the goal of improving the quality of life in Chibuto, where I am stationed, in various capacities. One way is through collaboration with a local group of working professionals as well as other Peace Corps Volunteers in efforts to build a cultural center.

Since April 2009, I have been working with this group to construct a cultural center for youth on the outskirts of my city. Utilizing local materials, labor and expertise, the cultural center will provide an environment where young people can productively spend their free time, thus reducing their chances of engaging in risky or unhealthy behavior.

The center will provide training and development in the areas of theater, music, visual arts, dance, sports and culinary arts. Talents in these areas will be cultivated with the help of Mozambican professionals, creating a form of expression that preserves, appreciates and celebrates Mozambican culture. In doing so, participants will also be developing their fine- tuned motor skills.

The local government has donated the land for the project just outside of the city center. The cultural center will consist of the construction of a small office and stage and eventually a kitchen/café for culinary students. A large space behind the center will be kept open for sporting events and other large gatherings. Phase one of the project will include the construction of an open-air stage, a small building to be used as an office, and a reed fence surrounding the entire property for privacy and protection.

Creating a sustainable center will be an ever-present priority in the creation of this project, its objective, and its methodology. Our request from the Partnership Program will help greatly in the initial start-up cost. It would contribute greatly toward the preservation of cultural pride and other such factors would motivate the local community to encourage healthy and creative behaviors among the younger generation.

This cultural center project is an out-of-the box method of HIV prevention for our community in Mozambique, where the HIV rate is estimated to be 29% in our province. It will also bring the community together through the events we will hold.

Please think about contributing to our cause to make our dream into a reality. If you decide to donate, you may do that through the Peace Corps Partnership Website (https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=640-020). The total amount we are raising for the project is $6,646 while our community is contributing $2,993. The good thing about this cause is that your donation merits a tax-exemption and there will be Peace Corps Volunteers overseeing the project so you can rest assured that your money will go directly to the cause and benefit our community.

Thanks so much for your help and support!

Gracey Uffman

Peace Corps Volunteer

Mozambique 2008-2010

graceyuffman@gmail.com

Perhaps the project I have the most involvement in during my Peace Corps service deals with coordinating women’s empowerment girl’s clubs and conferences that are designed to educate young women about their health and human rights with the following vision. Our vision statement declares that, “We envision a future in which young Mozambican women are equipped with the skills and self-confidence needed to make their own decisions about what is important to their lives and futures. We envision REDES as a national movement linking young women throughout the country and encouraging them to work together to advocate for women’s rights, learn about women’s health, and become leaders in their communities. We hope to someday soon see young women become their own best and strongest advocates.” This REDES Project has become a huge passion of mine, and so I suppose that my friend Callie called for my advice because of my ties to this cause.

Callie began her Peace Corps service about 8 months ago and recently got involved in the REDES Project, helping a group form at her local high school after bringing some enthusiastic students to attend our regional conferences in April. At the conferences, PCVs get a chance to see girls learning and discussing many challenging issues that they face such as domestic violence and sexual abuse (especially with minors). Unfortunately domestic violence and sexual abuse are fairly common in this machismo culture coupled with the fact that much of society, particularly women, have little education and do not know their rights or are not in a position to stand up for them because they are economically dependent (although this is changing). The conference is great because the girls hear from strong, Mozambican women who started off just like the school girls—many growing up in the bush in poor families—who worked their way up to become leaders of women’s rights organizations in Mozambique and who are the exception to the rule in that they openly demand their rights. At our conference in April, two of the speakers spoke about personal experiences, which really touched all of us and served as an example of how any woman can be a victim of gender-based violence, but all of us should speak up! In this particular case, the guest speaker’s husband had tried to use a heavy hand to resolve a marital argument and as soon as he did, she screamed until everyone in the neighborhood came and so did the police. She urged the girls not to keep quiet from embarrassment or to protect the family’s reputation, because once you let gender-based violence happen once with silence then it easily slips into habit. The other guest speaker confessed that she had an abortion after an older powerful gentlemen had used force to sleep with her, and how she had ended up later having two children with another man in her life, but ultimately was raising them as a single mother. The guest speakers’ speeches hit close to home for many girls and after they finished speaking, one confessed a secret she had been harboring a long time and asked them for advice on how she could get help. I have followed up with these guest speakers since the conference and know that more conference participants also called for help with stories of gender-based violence that had happened in their lives who no longer wanted to stay quiet and needed advice on the steps to seek justice. More than anything, these women and girls just needed to know that they were not alone. They wanted to know someone supported their decision to speak up because it is not easy and takes a lot of courage.

When Callie went back to her community after the conference, Alegria, an older woman who had been her Portuguese tutor and had become Callie’s friend, informed her of a grave situation. Alegria’s 49-year-old husband was cheating on her with multiple minor-aged girls! Although sadly this information was not new to Alegria, she had just learned that her husband got a 13-year-old girl pregnant who had given premature birth to a baby boy. Callie went to visit the young girl and reported that he birth was hard on the young girl’s body, which has not yet fully developed, and consequently the girl had dropped out of school. She is an orphan, living with her grandmother, and the older man is paying their family to support the baby. The economic incentive is enough for the family to keep quiet and the girl does not realize that what the man did is even a crime—just imagine the man started having sexual relations with her when she was just 11! He is rumored to be having inappropriate relationships with other young girls in his neighborhood too.

It does not just stop there, but he is a high school teacher and it is pretty commonly known that he goes after students, but it is hard to provide concrete evidence. That is, until this evidence of a baby cropped up! Alegria confessed to Callie that she was sick of it and wanted to draw the line, go to the police and report him, and then divorce him. Callie said that she’d help Alegria, but Alegria responded that she would like to think about it some more. Alegria talked to fellow community members who advised her that the police would not really do anything and that his life was almost already over at age 49, so they should just leave it be and “let God punish him one day.”

Callie called me more and more upset by the day about what she should do in the situation because she felt it was her moral duty to go to the authorities, but also wanted to respect Alegria’s wishes. I was set to meet with the local government representative in charge of gender, Daniela, who has become a good friend of mine, so I invited Callie to come talk with Daniela so we could get some advice from a Mozambican woman that’d understand both the law and culturally-appropriate way to handle it more so than us foreigners involved in this situation. Daniela wanted to take the information to the police as a public crime and get the young girl some help from social services, but Callie wanted to clear it with Alegria first. Daniela said that we could not just sit back or else he was going to continue, and it would one more case adding to the overwhelming silence that occurs commonly when gender-based violence happens in the community.

Callie talked more with Alegria who by that point had shifted completely in favor of keeping quiet because she was worried that her life would end up worse off in the end by turning in her husband. She had decided that a divorce would not be possible or snitching on him because she is unemployed and economically dependent on him. She felt that the community would marginalize her if it became public knowledge and her husband would end up in jail. Poor Callie was torn between taking the case to the police on her own and respecting her friend’s wishes in this gray area, with no clear-cut white or black correct answer. Daniela even proposed a way that they could anonymously tell authorities. In the end, after getting more guidance from the Peace Corps, Callie decided not to go to the police although this story continues to weigh on her heart. She is devoting her energy 100% into the REDES Project, and along with Daniela, we will be holding a training in August to educate 25 local teachers about how to start REDES groups in their schools and use the curriculum. Our hope is that the REDES Project helps empower these women and put them in a position where they can and will speak up in the future, free of economic dependence and full of self-confidence! And where this vicious cycle will not continue to repeat itself.

*By chance, I just so happened to be Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl Wudunn, which is about the oppression that many women face in developing countries and what is being done about it. I highly recommend it!

*Some names changed to protect privacy

It’s been forever since I’ve written and I cannot quite put my finger on why so much time has passed without a post. I think one reason is that things have gotten so normal to me in Mozambique and the other is that I have been busy with more work responsibilities and hosting visitors from the States, but with the end of my service coming in 5 months, I would like to take the opportunity to start writing more. On that note…

I have recently started helping out every once in awhile at a pre-school for underprivileged children in a far out “suburb” of Chibuto. Playing with children is one thing that I have faith will always remain pure in this crazy development culture where it often seems like people forget the primary goal in development is to help the children and not to just pocket money from identifying the children in need and forget about the help. The pre-school is an initiative of an elderly Mozambican nun named Sister Catarina and she puts 100% into helping 30 Mozambican kids age 6 and under learn how to speak Portuguese and care for themselves. She also makes sure they get at least two meals a day while they are at the pre-school.

The pre-school opened just over a year ago and although Sister Catarina has help from the Catholic church and from a Portuguese NGO, she spearheads the effort to take care of the children mainly by herself on a day-to-day basis. I am moved by how she has taken Jesus’ call to heart on “caring for the widows and the children” and how she works tirelessly.

The 30 children attend the pre-school Monday through Friday and start to arrive as early as 6 am and some do not get picked up until as late as 6 pm! Think of all the hours she is putting in with no hope of overtime pay, or much in the way of a “thanks”! During the day, the children receive breakfast, snack, lunch, and a bath. They also spend a lot of time playing in the yard, singing educational songs, and napping. It is a large undertaking and two of her main challenges are lack of manpower and finances. The caretakers and parents of the children are supposed to pay about $6 monthly for the pre-school. (Can you imagine sending your child to pre-school for just $6 a month? You can’t even hire a babysitter to watch your kid for that amount for one hour in the States!) Many times the parents either do not pay in full, pay late, or do not have money to contribute at all. Because of these financial challenges, Sister Catarina has a hard time keeping other professors on board because they earn little for a lot of work and often decide it is not worth their efforts.

In spite of all these challenges, Sister Catarina is doing impressive work and giving such a gift to the children and community. The kids are being fed and watched for hours of the day so the caretakers of the orphans or parents can work or go to school (some of the parents are single teenage moms). The children learn to speak Portuguese, which will help them so much when they start elementary school. All schooling is done in Portuguese although in many homes strictly Changana, the local language, is spoken, especially in lower educated households. This poses a great challenge when the kids start school because they have trouble understanding the teachers and the books.

The Catholic Church in Portugal and a Portuguese NGO have aided Sister Catarina immensely by providing her with resources and enough financial support to stay afloat, but there is a lot to be done to keep her project up. Sister Catarina always welcomes me when I stop by to play with the kids or bring visitors to meet them, but I have the easy job. I show up when I have time and stay for a few hours and play with the kids, but then get to go home and do things for myself. I could not help but thinking about all the traveling I have done in the past two months, and how if I had made it my life calling to do something like Sister Catarina, vacation would be nearly impossible. Sister Catarina has those children depending on her every weekday all year long—talk about exhausting!

The last few times that I have gone to the pre-school, I have checked out children’s books from our recently opened library to read to the kids. As soon as I open up the first book, the children go crazy repeating all the words from the picture books. They are hungry to learn, which is so encouraging to see! I think developing a reading culture is so important, but also recognize it is such a luxury. I think back to my childhood when my parents read me 4 books each night before bed. My grandparents used to send them as gifts all the time recognizing how important they were. I was so lucky to have two parents that had time to read to me and a family with the money to buy books. Reading opens so many fountains of knowledge and gives the possibility for us to educate ourselves and learn about anything and everything! Although reading to a few kids is just a small contribution, I still feel like it is one way I can give back while I am here. I can advocate the advantages of reading to all my Mozambican friends and form a habit of bringing books so that the children and teachers at the pre-school might see how beneficial they can be. My hope is that one day the kids grow up literate and that Sister Catarina continues to meet success and improve upon her pre-school project. Because of putting her dream into action through hard work and continued dedication, 30 children have better lives in this community!

In the last few days, I have spent a lot of time with many of my favorite teenagers in Chibuto. What I noticed is that all of them have much less parental support than I did growing up. What impressed me is that all of them work hard to achieve their dreams in spite of the many barriers they have had to cross. What makes me sad is that the teenagers I am talking about actually have more support than most children in our area in Mozambique, although it is not much when compared to the average child or teenager in the States.

Case #1: I went to hang out with my 19-year-old friend Isabel who is in twelfth grade. I have written about her before because last year she often invited me to eat at her extended family’s house and her friendship has made quite an impression on me. Isabel has been very involved in many projects run over the years by PCVs in Mozambique such as REDES (a young women’s empowerment group), the Science Fair, and English Theater competitions. She is a bright young lady who dreams of being a nurse. It was a PCV she confided in almost 2 years ago when she thought she might be pregnant, and who supported her throughout the pregnancy.

These days Isabel rents a one-room reed hut in Chibuto so she can finish high school because there are no schools around her home village that go up to 11th and 12th grade. In addition to caring for her one-year old daughter, she attends school and takes care of all household responsibilities. This year her younger sister who studies in 11th grade also came to live in the small hut with her so she could finish high school and help out. The final person living in their humble residence is a 9-year-old who is an extended family member. This child’s parents left her in Mozambique while they went to live in South Africa, so she remained behind to serve as Isabel’s babysitter. The 9-year-old spends at least six hours a day with the one-year-old baby tied to her back, supervising, which is crazy to me because in the States I used to babysit nine-year-olds!

When I went to hang out with Isabel, she cooked rice and beans for us and offered me a big plate. She nursed her daughter as she talked about her plans of entering in nursing school next year. Isabel expressed concern over the pus-infected wounds that had recently appeared on her baby’s head, which I told her she should wash with clean water and take her baby to the hospital. A few weeks ago, Isabel’s baby was sick with diarrhea for an extended period, causing her to miss a lot of school. (We made plans to get together so I can teach her how to make a home oral-rehydration therapy to help treat her baby in the future, which is one of the roles I like best about being a PCV—the ability to help your friends in the community with the small things). As we sat there eating and chatting, I could not help but realize how lucky we are in the States to have such a high level of support from our parents. And Isabel is one of the lucky ones here in a sense because she does have a home with parents located only about an hour away; and she has a father who gives her money to pay school fees and for food. She just has a lot more responsibility and challenges to face than your average American teen.

Case #2 and #3 are my friends Eugenio and Edgardia. Both of them are smart teenagers; Edgardia just graduated from high school and Eugenio is on track to graduate in the next few years. Although having a high school degree is something to be proud of in any culture, in the States is widely taken for granted what a privilege it is to have that educational opportunity. Being a high school graduate is a huge deal in Mozambique and although more and more Mozambicans are attaining this level of education these days, most adults I know in Chibuto do not have their high school degree. What Eugenio and Edgardia have in common is that they both lost a parent and are being raised by a single parent. They both have another blessing in common, one that would be less likely to happen in our culture, which is that they have many older siblings that have stepped in to help the single parent raise the younger kids.

Case #4 is my 8th grade buddy Shelton who comes over to visit often with a huge smile and a long list of questions about how to say this and that in English. Shelton is raised solely by his mother although his father lives in the neighboring town. Shelton’s father does not play a role in his life. This is a common trend in Chibuto. Often father figures are absent in the lives of children around here. The amount of casual sex that goes on results in a lot of unplanned pregnancies; it then often falls entirely upon the woman as her responsibility to take care of the child and there is little to no social accountability for the man to accept the responsibility for the consequences of his actions. In the States, it is much more socially taboo for the man to get a woman pregnant and then not offer any support (although there are exceptions).

I have spent a good deal of time getting to know these four youth, all of which have touched me and impacted by Peace Corps service in positive way. It recently dawned on me how all of them are either growing up in single-parent families or without a high level of daily parental support, and yet all are growing up to be exceptional people. Why do I think this is, you might ask? One contributing factor that I think matters a lot is that all of these youth have a parent that values education and has done the best they can to support their kids in spite of the barriers.

I contrast that to many of the other children in my neighborhood who have already dropped out or who fail grades on a normal basis, and to my many female teenage neighbors whose early pregnancies became the decisive factor that led to them dropping out. Many of these children come from families with low education levels. They do not have the advantage of having adult role models to push them to do well in school, to help them with their homework, and to provide constructive activities for them to do doing their free time. It just puts in to perspective those moments I had and have seen many American teens have of fussing because your parents are getting on your nerves or pushing you too hard in school. But, now I see that damn were we lucky to have that luxury.

The Peace Corps is an experience about challenging yourself to go outside your comfort zone and then learning how to adapt, which in my opinion leads to a lot of personal growth. If anyone would have told me 5 years back that I would join the Peace Corps, or live in Africa, or be speaking Portuguese, or confidently navigating myself through the daily craziness of the market; I would not have believed any of these things that are my reality these days would have become part of my life story. However, I have always been interested in travel, languages, cultures, adventure and social justice so Peace Corps was not a completely random experience I chose; just an intense one! But if anyone had told me I would be leading an agricultural training, I surely would have laughed in their face. Agriculture has never played much of a role in my background, but I have taken a new interest in it since starting Peace Corps because it is so central to daily life in Mozambique. Around 80% of the population where I live are farmers, food security is a huge issue, and rather than eating many processed foods we buy fresh produce from the market or from or neighbors.

Last April, many of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and I along with our Mozambican counterparts received a two-day training on the Bio-intensive Permaculture Garden because food security is such an issue here. These agricultural techniques are based on effectively managing water through creation of holes and water-directing swales, deep digging, composting, planting and management of crops to produce a high yield of food in a small space. My Mozambican co-worker thought it was interesting and so did I, and so we went home and put together a powerpoint presentation to show off what we learned and try to generate interest in putting the technique to use. Ultimately though, a permaculture project never got off the ground in our town. I was a little bummed, but my co-worker and I chose other projects to work on and I accepted that was probably the end of that.

So this year when my friend Katie asked me to come help her lead a permaculture training at her school I was excited, but nervous. I am definitely no expert, which I told her, but I was willing to study the manuals and had the overall idea in my mind from last year. We agreed to help lead students in her teacher training institute with the help of the agricultural professor at her school who had expressed interest in learning about permaculture. During the training, we started by teaching the students how to build compost piles and explaining all the benefits of the compost pile. Katie and I tried to explain all this agricultural terminology in Portuguese, which was comical because, who am I kidding, I do not even know it all in English!? However, with the knowledge and support of the Mozambican agricultural professor and because the students were engaged in the practical learning environment, they were able to fill in and add valuable information in our gaps. I showed off some pictures of gardens that had used compost in half versus no compost in the other half to show how much better the vegetables grew with compost to give a visual of the benefit.

We also measured out a good garden size and went to work digging channels and holes to direct the water, and double digging and providing soil amendments to the garden beds, all of which are important techniques for permagardening. At the end of the day, we had a very good start to the project and had generated a lot of interest and excitement in the project, although admittedly Katie and I are not the most qualified teachers. Thanks to Katie’s initiative I agreed to do the project, thanks to a passionate Returned Peace Corps Volunteer named Peter Jensen (who now works in Peace Corps staff in Tanzania and goes all over the world doing permaculture trainings) I learned about this agricultural process that can improve people’s lives, and thanks to the hard work of the students I was helping train we had something worthwhile to show for the day. It just proves that a little effort can go along way (in this case, Peter, Katie, the agricultural professor, the students, and I all had the desire to teach and learn), that with collaboration we go much further than we could ever go alone (neither Katie, nor me, nor the Mozambican professor, nor the students could have done the project alone), and that you only must be willing to go out of your comfort zone to be the difference you want to see in the world.

When I first arrived in Mozambique, I had lots to write and share because everything was new and there were so many observations to be made. One of the reasons I have stopped updating my blog so often is because all the crazy ways of living and ludicrous scenes have become normal parts of my daily life. It has become commonplace to pass women who walk for miles balancing large loads of wood on their heads while carrying babies on their backs. I have all but forgotten that all the goats, pigs, chickens, and roosters that roam freely in the streets were ever an unusual sight to me. Bathing under the starry night sky is routine.

Another reason I have stopped writing is because I vowed to myself that I would not allow myself to get totally disillusioned with development work before I left to begin my Peace Corps service. Some of my well-meaning friends told me to think twice about going because I would surely come back completely jaded. I shrugged them off, figuring I would be able to handle the challenges, and saying the good would outweigh the bad.

But lately, I have been straining not to lose hope with development work. I have always liked to think of myself of someone with both idealistic and realistic views, heavy on the optimism. All my I’m-here-to-change-the-world hopes, have been doused with some major barriers in the past year and a half. I have been meeting many hurdles while working on my projects, and have now come to a crossroads where I have to decide how to move forward. Do I just give up on my projects and let pessimism and cynicism sink in? My heart tells me that is not the right answer. But then what is?

I have been searching for the answer to how to deal with my frustrations high and low. Most Peace Corps Volunteers experience my same frustrations and so we were given a manual with 25 Tips to refer back to when necessary.

I find it important to remember that:

•Development is disruptive. Most poor people cannot afford to change radically. It takes a huge amount of energy (physically and emotional) for average rural folk to maintain daily life, let alone try to break out of the poverty cycle.

•Do not give up and do not give in. Unfortunately, the process of development cannot be shortened. Respect that those you work with drew the short straw, appreciate that you did not. After you die, you can ask God about all this. For now, your anguish, guilt and questions about this will just from the task at hand and are really rather self indulging, if you think about it. (Peace Corps 25 Tips)

One of the challenging situations which affected me the most this week is the work my co-worker Paula and I do with a group of orphans and vulnerable children in a small community 7 kilometers outside of my town in a community called Uahamusa. The community is mostly women and children, many of the men are migrant laborers and either have left permanently or died off from HIV and AIDS related causes. Although my organization has been working with them for the past years, Paula and I only began our basic health education program last year. This was our first week re-starting the activities and it proved a difficult day for me. One of the reasons that we took a long break over the Christmas holidays is that the transport there is a huge problem. We have to cart the materials back and forth each time to Uahamusa because the unfinished community center is not yet a safe space to leave materials (the man who was supposed to finish died last week). This includes carrying heavy backpacks full of paper, pens, colored pencils, snacks, toys, and balls. It takes at least 1.5 hours to walk each way. After the hassle of toting all our materials there, we usually work with two groups of children. First we work with the children who study in the afternoon until they depart for school, and after the children who study in the morning come to the community center.

I found our work Tuesday to be particularly disheartening because Paula and I decided to do a very basic activity. We wanted to read and look at some pictures books in Portuguese that the town librarian had lent us and then allow the children to draw pictures of the objects in the books or whatever else they might like to draw. The children ranged from 7-18 years old, so I figured a picture book intended for toddlers would certainly be on their level. But Paula and I were both surprised to see how little they seemed to grasp the concept of learning, I felt like an alien (and in a sense I am, because I’m probably one of the only foreigners they met but I have worked with them for months already) when I was in front of them pointing to pictures and then reading them aloud in Portuguese. After our failure with the book, we decided to let them draw and so they drew pictures of houses and people and trees. This is good, but every time they draw, it is always the same thing – a house—and I get discouraged with how difficult it seems to get beyond that. At this point, Paula asked them in the local language how many of them still go to school. There was some arguing and lying, but the general consensus seemed to be 7 out of 16 children are still enrolled in school. The others, many of them only 7 or 8 years old, stopped attending and just stay at home or do not have anyone looking after them. I find it disheartening that these children drop out at such a young age. The other thing I find to be exasperating is that the only thing they seem to get is the snack provided at the end (although I guess that’s not much different from the States), and that my organization expects me to handle that every time, which is a whole other issue!

Compounded with the fact that it seems our progress has been minimal with these kids and that each week there is a constant struggle to find transport or walk both ways in the blazing heat without much food all day, I have been facing many other difficulties in my three other main projects. I returned feeling blue and dealing after my day in Uahamusa and was having an internal crisis about coming all this way and feeling that I have not been able to actually help that much or been that successful with our projects!

I did not realize I was even that upset until I marched over to my friend Filipe’s house where he graciously allowed me to skype my father using his Internet. Thus, begin a pour-my-heart-out to my dad conversation about how I was not feeling like I was in a good place and how I definitely was not cut out for development work long-term. First, we started with the children and my inability to get through to them and how it made me question whether it was worth the effort. My dad was great in that he challenged me to ask myself what, if any part, did my faith play in helping me determine if this was a worthwhile use of my time. Thinking back to my study of Jesus’ teachings in the Bible, and reflecting on the greatest role models I know, both famous figures (ie Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi) and people who have personally touched my lives (my parents, exceptional teachers and coaches, and Alamance Presbyterian church community members)…one of the most important lessons I have taken away is to help the poor. Jesus expressly states that extra care and attention should be given to widows and orphans, because as my dad pointed out, “Gracey, many of those orphans were never really given a fair shot at life.” I find strength in my faith to keep hoping and trying to make a difference rather than giving up despite disappointments.

We then transitioned into talking about why it might be so hard for these children to go deeper with Paula and I, past drawing pictures of houses and eating their cookies and juice at the end. “Don’t you think the children are trying to tell you something when they draw houses? Shelter is probably something that is not a guarantee in their lives, Gracey.” Good point – I guess it would be an understatement to say that their lives have not been a walk in the park. He then directed me to think about the hierarchal needs diagram I learned about in my psychology class and try and look at it from that angle. Whereas I seek to meet the needs at the very top part of the pyramid such as self-gratification, most of these kids are just trying to keep their heads above water and have their basic needs met such as shelter and food. I guess I should focus more on trying to provide simple activities consistently for the children and the fact that these programs are something out of the ordinary, and less on seeing unrealistic miraculous successes in the short time I am here. Patience never fails to be a challenge for me.

The phone conversation with my dad certainly helped, but there is no instant cure for my disillusionment with development work. Before hanging up, my dad challenged me to focus on working with the people that were motivated to work and just loving the rest for who they are and where they are at. Also, I needed reminding that these are common problems that anyone who does human development faces that exist all over the world, and they are not unique to poor countries like Mozambique. This all sounded like good advice, so I went home, mulled over it, and woke up with a fresh start the following day.

One of my other projects is running an “Extracurricular Activity Classroom” at the school with the other PCVs in my town and other high school professors that help out when they can. We open the classroom in the morning and afternoons at least 4 days a week where the youth can come to learn English, have homework help, participate in our jewelry-making project, and borrow sports balls to constructively occupy their free time. As I was teaching an English lesson and watching young women creatively design jewelry that next afternoon, I realized that the inspired, eager learners in the high school that come everyday have become my saving grace and they make this experience well worth it. I may not meet success in every project I try to help with in this community, and more often than not it seems like we have faced failures or things not working out the way we planned, but in the end I have met and been a resource to some youth that remind me of all the light and good shining through the dark in this world.

Yesterday had to be one of the most dramatic afternoons in my life thus far. The day started out like any other Thursday. I went to work at my community-based organization in the morning and came home around 1 pm for a lunch break. When I was preparing to leave to teach my English class at 2 pm, two teenage boys showed up to ask if they could borrow my guitar. A few weeks ago, one of my favorite students, a well-mannered 13-year-old boy named Shelton introduced me to his 15-year-old cousin named Alberto. Shelton has been coming to my house for months to practice his impressive English, to borrow my soccer balls, and to use a typing program I have on my laptop. So when his cousin Alberto asked to play my guitar on my porch a few weeks ago, I decided to let him sit outside my porch on a straw mat and play for a few minutes after he promised to be very careful. Since then Alberto has returned to my house a few times with different friends to ask to play my guitar, but always at inconvenient times. Alberto was polite, seemingly shy, and when I told him I was on my way out the door to go to the school, we decided he could come back over the weekend.

At 2 pm, I went two doors down to the high school and enjoyed working with two star high school students who always have a million questions about English song lyrics. I kicked those boys out of our “Youth Room” at 3 pm because our young women’s club meeting was scheduled to start. It was our first official meeting of the year and we had many new participants show up. We had just begun singing our first song about why it was important for the young women to stay in school when one of my star students interrupted. I asked him to return after our meeting to talk, but he said it was a grave matter – someone had stolen our computers and Abby and star student #2 were chasing the robber down. This news shook me up, but I went back to leading my young women’s group. I figured Abby would call if she needed me, but what was done was done, although I probably should have sprinted to my house directly.

About 10 minutes later, Abby called and confirmed that our house had been broken into and a young man had stolen our computers and torn up our house. Abby asked me to come quickly because she had no idea what to do; there was a hysterical lady crying in our living room beating a high school student who was apparently responsible for the crime while half the neighborhood had entered into our fence and were peering in through the windows. I dismissed the meeting immediately, almost as upset about having to leave the girls as I was about the robbery.

I came home to a nightmare of a scene, just as Abby had explained. I ran to my room and saw that a phone and I-pod were also missing from my room. That was distressing, but not nearly as much so as the 30 year-old woman sitting in our floor in the living room sobbing about the senselessness of the robbery. She was lamenting, “For what? I feed him everyday. He has a loving family. He has the opportunity to go to the school. Why would he rob? How could he do this to his family?”

Abby gave me a run-down of what had happened at that point. She came home after being gone less than an hour in the market. She unlocked the gate to our fence, unlocked the metal grated front door, the other front door, only to find that our back door was busted into and everything was in disarray. She immediately noticed the stolen computers and ran outside where she saw them sitting in a computer bag on top of our 6-foot fence. Just as she spotted them, a hand reached over and grabbed them so she sprinted out the front gate, eyed the teen with our computers in his hand, and started screaming, “We’ve been robbed!” The teen started running, but Abby chased after him. Enter our two star students who were leaving English class I had been teaching. They saw Abby running and were in disbelief because they exclaimed to us that they had never seen Abby run like that! So they came to help, recognized the teen, who by then had gotten scared and dropped our computers on the sandy road to escape. But not before, Amerigo, star student #1, had recognized this delinquent.

Abby recovered the computers and then Americo took Abby to the robber’s house, but he was not there. Americo then took Abby to find the guy’s sister, a very nice lady named Angelica who was distraught when she learned what had happened. Angelica went to find her brother, the alleged robber, and brought him to our house where she started throwing our furniture at him and yelling that she might have done a lot of bad things in her life, but never would she steal. When the teen continued to claim his innocence and would not give the rest of our things back, Abby told Angelica she was sorry, but she had to call the police. Angelica not only approved, but also said of course you have to call because he needs to be punished. We will all go to the police together.

I got home right before the police showed up. What was the most traumatic thing was how the police handled the situation! The first thing they did when they got there was yell at the teen and backhand him, push him onto the wall, and handcuff him! This was an Earth-to-Gracey moment because until that point, I had not realized that Alberto, my guitar-playing friend, was the one responsible for the crime! I had not pinpointed in the crowded room who was the perpetrator, and only thought he was there to be supportive—an innocent, unassuming 8th grader who is only 15 years old! Boy, did I have it wrong!

Then began the public humiliation where we started the parade to the police station. When people get arrested, they are not inconspicuously escorted in the back of a police car to the station. Instead, the suspect walks handcuffed in the front with police pushing him along with big guns (AK47s) while the victims follow behind with ever-growing crowds of onlookers. On the walk up, Alberto looks back at me—tears streaming down his face, blood dripping from his lip from his sister’s beating—pleading, “Mana Graça, nao fui eu.” It wasn’t me, using my name with a title of respect attached to it. The nerve.

In the bare police station, the female police officer told Alberto he better confess. The junior police officers made sure Alberto was low down on his knees while we sat with Angelica, his sister, and our two star students on a bench facing him. He continued to deny he was the culprit, and said that some man just gave him a bag and told him to run with it although he did not know what was in it. (Liar)! The police officers, our loyal students, and his sister had little patience with this game and they all told him if he did not confess where he hid all of our stolen belongings, he would be beaten by a crowbar-looking thing. Afterwards, Abby and I discussed how the hardest thing about the whole situation was watching all this violence, which is actually what it took to get the truth out of him. Village justice at work.

The police led him back down to the high school with his sister where he had hidden the rest of our belongings in a baggie in a field by the school. Meanwhile, Abby, our students, and I were asked if we wanted to open a lawsuit and to evaluate the worth of our stolen goods. We said no to the lawsuit and that we just wanted our things back. And they did come, about 45 minutes later, he re-emerged having made his third walk of shame that afternoon handcuffed in his school uniform! Abby and I spotted his sister walking next to him with a whole plastic bag full of our things (besides our I-pods and telephones, he had grabbed various speakers, and even items like my face wash and my make-up). To add to his embarrassment, the police looped a half-empty bottle of whiskey he had stolen from our freezer through his handcuffs. Message: say no to the bottle, kids!

After about 3 hours of this ordeal, we had miraculously recovered all our stuff and went home just after dark accompanied by our star students who walked us to the door. By that point, Alberto’s whole family had come up to the police station and were apologizing for his behavior, wondering out loud why their teen would do that to a neighbor especially when all his basic needs were met and when he had the opportunity to go to school. Apparently, Alberto had been skipping school to drink and getting into trouble at home recently. The bad decision that he made yesterday not only had immediate negative consequences such as public humiliation and being physically beaten, but will really make his future tough. There are no second chances in this culture for robbers who are caught; the school director came to the police station and expelled the boy from school. He has been living in the city with his older sister and extended family, but is now going to be sent back to the bush where he will work to help his mom. Although Abby had signed a declaration saying that we did not want the police to hold him any longer or put him in jail, as we were leaving the police said that wanted to hold him overnight. Americo and his friend told us that it was a form of corruption because the police wanted the family to pay money before getting Alberto out so they would get something out of it. From start to finish, it was just all one big mess!

Whereas Alberto’s decision to rob for some quick money, effectively bought him a ticket to nowhere, our star students were another story. They acted like heroes to us all day by walking us through the unfamiliar (and harsh) legal processes here. Moreover, while we were waiting at the police station they told Abby and I that this is exactly why they take school seriously, participate in extracurricular groups in the school, and stay away from too much alcohol. As they were explaining how often the corrupt behaviors the police were employing take place, they also talked about the ludicrousness of it. How are the police officers going to beat someone for robbing, but then turn around and rob the family of that robber to earn money, they asked. The outstanding students have a theatre group and they write plays that speak out about these injustices.

Although being robbed is awful, most of the community really came through for Abby and me big-time, which is reassuring. The adolescent’s sister, Angelica, came to check on us this morning to make sure we are doing okay, saying, “After something like this, we are family.” In spite of the awful situation, we were so lucky not only to get all of our things back, but also to have such strong community support and genuine concern. That day, the community made an example out of Alberto about how in the end it does not pay to rob, and how school, hard work, and honesty are the things that will take you far in life.

Although a lot of your Peace Corps experience is “roughing it,” I will not deceive you into thinking that is what it is all about. There are plenty of perks depending on your country of service. When I got my assignment to Mozambique, I remember people telling me, “You won the Peace Corps lottery.” In a lot of ways, I have found this to be true. We have beautiful beaches lining the coast, people are generally friendly; and although there is petty crime, it is pretty safe country. I would also add to this list of perks that the cultural events you can attend out on a Friday night in Maputo are unforgettable.

My friend Alexis and I arranged to have a ladies’ night out to go hear some live music last Friday. As we were driving along the coast, I marveled out loud, “Isn’t this funny? Just two young American girls out on the big town in Mozambique!” Occasionally, these thoughts still cross my mind because I never expected to join the Peace Corps or live in Africa for most of my life. Yet I have become so comfortable in Maputo, and sometimes I still cannot believe all the things that have happened along this big adventure that seems so normal now.

So on Friday: We park on the street and decide to check out the reggae festival going on at the cultural center to honor Bob Marley’s birthday. For the inexpensive entrance fee of 2 USD, we get to enjoy a great show with four reggae bands! It is a perfect summer night and we sit beneath a half-closed pavilion while the breeze floats in mixing with the pleasant music. The band on stage is full of energy jumping, dancing as if they are one with the music, singing about peace, love, and harmony. The crowd is a wonderful mix of foreigners and locals. The foreigners, a mix of expatriates and tourists, all seem enchanted by the allure of Mozambique on this Friday night. The locals are in their element, fixed below the stage rivaling the performers with their synced, fluid dance moves. It is interesting to watch the Mozambicans enter with their fashionable outfits, the girls looking so glamorous in their flowing tops, chunky jewelry, and skinny jeans. The term for skinny jeans in Mozambique, is garrafas, meaning bottle jeans. Mozambican women pull them off like I’ve never seen, and not just the thin girls; I’ve seen some curvy African mamas manage to wear them in a flattering way! Alexis leans over to me at one point, observing that she has never seen this many dreads in one room. I laugh, agreeing, of course we are at a post-humous birthday celebration for Bob Marley so it’s just to be expected! We stay until we’re tired, leaving relaxed and content.

On our short walk back to the car, Alexis and I hear another awesome-sounding band in a neighboring bar. Alexis looks over at me, catching me with a mischievous smile and says we absolutely must go check it out. I cannot resist, and although I am exhausted, I am pleased that we enter. This band of 7 members plays traditional Mozambican music. They play timbilas, xylophones made out of local materials that are very unique to Mozambique. They have all sorts of drums and guitars. I smile when I see this beautiful African woman playing the bass guitar, completely defying gender roles in this country. Progressive, I note. The band members are all dressed in traditional African clothes, wearing lots of beads, faces painted. They put on a good show, interacting with the crowd. One of my favorite parts about live music is just that – seeing how the band and the crowd interact – and I rarely am disappointed by the performances in Africa. Tonight the sexy main dancer does her moves, smiling confidently and moving effortlessly, while a local comes up and begins to dance with her. She does not mind, only turns up the intensity. An older European expatriate steps in, and then tries to out-dance this local. It is not a genuinely competitive rivalry, but more of a friendly dance-off. The woman dancer plays along for awhile. The crowd loves it, especially when she manages to outdo both of them with ease – the obvious winner. We leave after the set, thoroughly pleased with our night out. I think about how on Monday I will be back to “roughing it” in my town holed in my house after dark, but along the way all the exotic, different cultural events I have gotten to experience along the way. How much of the world I have been able to see and what an enriching journey this has been.

I had the opportunity to go home and visit North Carolina for the holiday season during part of December and January. It was a month of bliss for so many reasons! I was able to reconnect with my family and many dear friends after being out of the States for almost 15 months! Although I have loved being on this great big adventure and met many wonderful people along the way, it rings true for me that there is no place like home. The separation from loved ones has been the most difficult part about this once in a lifetime adventure.

Some of my other favorite things about going home were simple things such as running water, hot showers, and familiar food. The variety of food was never-ending and I drank a whole year’s worth of Dr. Pepper and sweet tea to make up for lost time with those two true loves of mine. Fast food restaurants and delivery pizza were heaven on earth.

It was liberating to have access to a car again and so nice to be able to jet around on my own schedule to wherever I wanted whenever I wanted. My perspective on personal cars has definitely changed since living in Africa. I have a different perspective on how unique it is that many families own not just one personal car, but several! I rediscovered how costly and what a responsibility it is to drive private cars. My biggest expense while at home was gas, which adds up quickly in the sprawling state of NC. I take a car to do everything in the States – to eat at a restaurant, go shopping, go to a friend’s house, work out at the gym—which translates to multiple car trips per day. This is a stark contrast to my daily life in Mozambique where I walk everywhere including work, school, my market to buy groceries, my friends’ houses, and local restaurants. Sometimes I go weeks without riding in a car.

That got me thinking…I remember back in college when one of my professors in my Environment and Society class had us take an online quiz determining what our carbon footprint on this Earth was; I am curious to see how my carbon footprint in the States would compare to my carbon footprint in Mozambique. I would dare to guess that my carbon footprint in Mozambique for an entire year would be less than how much carbon I emit in the air in just a few weeks of my life in the States. With the smaller towns, simpler lifestyles, and the limited number of personal cars, the average Mozambican is forced to live a much different lifestyle than the average American who always on the go. While visiting the States, I really enjoyed driving but this experience has forced me to reexamine how unusual our situation is and all the pros and cons that accompany this privilege. In conversations this week, I have been throwing around the questions with my colleagues and peers: What if all 6 billion plus people in this world owned a private car? Traffic is already a great problem worldwide and only grows bigger each year. Think of how exponentially pollution would expand and what consequences this would have for our world. Driving enabled me to see lots of people and accomplish many tasks over the break, but I have become more mindful of how all the travel (done the way it’s done now) is taking its toll on our Earth.

Another refreshing thing about being home was the anonymity I enjoyed in public. Around my town in Mozambique, you draw lots of attention as a white foreigner and are constantly treated differently. When I get in a chapa, the minibuses that serve as our public transport, I am offered the mulongo seat in front next to the driver. This is the most un-cramped seat, usually the only one with a seatbelt, and it often gives the driver a chance to talk to the white person. Many of my PCV girlfriends and I are often hit on by the drivers who badger us to give them our phone numbers (this is another reason I was loving being in the driver seat of my own car back home, both figuratively and literally). After a year of constant spotlight, I welcomed blending into the crowd. I can safely say that I don’t think I would make it as a celebrity ever.

The States offers a lot more privacy in general than Mozambique. Our material wealth enables us to put up walls and spend our time holed up in big houses with huge yards separating us. Many Mozambicans do not have the choice or the luxury to this privacy both within and outside their homes. The average Mozambican household is a small cement house or a reed hut with way more people than rooms. This means no private suites, bedrooms with TVs, or even enough beds to go around. The average Mozambican family is large with all kinds of extended relatives living in the same house or compound so everyone knows everyone’s business. My roommate Abby and I have a 6 foot reed fence that does afford us some privacy, although it’s rapidly deteriorating because some unruly neighborhood children love to tear it apart. Even with the fence, it seems like our neighbors know our every move and often like to report back to us on a list of all the guests who have dropped by our house on a given day. This was to our advantage last year when we had a strange man in the community continually drop by our house because the closeness of houses and lack of privacy allowed the neighbors to be involved and send him on his way anytime he tried to bother us. One positive consequence I have noticed is that because the Mozambicans are forced to be around each other all the time, you often see them laughing, singing, and so content to be in each other’s presence. In the States, sometimes all the walls we put up have negative consequences and people end up old and lonely having spent so much time holed away in front of computers and TVs and other entertainment to ease the loneliness. It is not easy to isolate yourself in an environment like my town in Mozambique.

One of the starkest contrasts is the differences in schools between Mozambique and the States. I had the opportunity to visit both my mother’s 8th grade classes in Greensboro and my friend Sarah’s kindergarten class in Raleigh in January. When I went to the schools in the States, I had to check-in at the office where a video-camera snapped a picture of me and printed out an official visitor pass. I walked into the classrooms, which all had less than 30 kids, desks, books, computers, central heat, electricity, running water – you get my point, resources! My mom and Sarah both had volunteer helpers to assist them. The students had snack time and/or lunch time at school, which would be unheard of in Chibuto.

I visited my neighborhood primary school just yesterday in Chibuto. It was mind-blowing. There are 1800 students (approximately, they still do not have official records) and 39 professors. There was definitely no fancy office for me to check into as a visitor! In fact, there was not even a desk to speak of in the whole school. The students sat on empty sacks as their desks. This school was so overcrowded that there were not enough classrooms. When this becomes a problem in the States, it usually means that the school resorts to constructing trailers. At this primary school, their solution for not having enough classrooms was constructing makeshift tents out of empty sacks where the teachers held class for 50 students. I was escorted from tent to tent to greet the children. What surprised me even more were the classes being held under trees. During my visit, it started thundering and lightning which frightened many of the children and disrupted class completely. The other shocking thing that there were only four latrines available for students to use and they looked unsanitary. You would think that I would not just be learning this 15 months into my service, but I do most of my work at the secondary school adjacent to my house, which was recently redone by the World Bank, and out in the country where poor learning conditions are to be more expected. I was caught off guard to see all my professor friends and neighbors learning in such a poor school right in the town. Oh, how good we have it back home in the States in so many ways that we do not realize!

I found my blog title to be appropriate because my visit home marked the halfway point in my Peace Corps service, but not only am I halfway home in terms of time. I found that coming back to Mozambique and my town in Chibuto was like being halfway home. 15 months ago, sub-Saharan Africa was just a faraway land was completely foreign and slightly terrifying to me. I remember looking out the airplane window as we were landing and not believing I was about to try and make a home in Mozambique – it was not just a land I have never been to, but I did not know a soul, did not know much about the culture, and it had a language that I had never spoken. “Who was I fooling,” I thought to myself, “how will this ever be a home because it’s just so different!” Let me be clear that it did not feel like a home at the beginning – not when I was being showered by strangers, not when I was being served river fish for breakfast at 6 am, nor when I arrived to my town and had a terrible case of food poisoning in 40 degree Celsius heat. But this year, I gave a confident goodbye to my folks, and hopped onto that plane from America, feeling like I was going halfway home to Mozambique. I looked out the plane window, happy that I was going back to continue my work, to continue building friendships, keep improving my Portuguese for year two.

These first few weeks have certainly been confirmation of that feeling. Exhibition one is that I have established family in this faraway land. I went to visit my host family in the hospital because my new baby host brother, Tomas, needed to have an operation in the capitol. Tomas was born last November and my host family actually invited me to name him. When I walked into the hospital during visiting hours, Mama Adelia and Papa Isaias were telling everyone that I was their daughter, and that I had just arrived from America. Exhibition two is the warm welcome back Abby and I arrived to in Chibuto. We were greeted by a whole gaggle of children from our neighborhood and our friends all rushed over to give us hugs and kisses. We arrived exhausted, hot, and with a lot of baggage, but within the first minute, the kids had taken our baggage and relieved the burden, leading us to this home. And it might not be the real thing, but it sure feels darn close this second year, which makes this voyage one of the most worthwhile experiences of my life.

There has been a big push in the recent years to help start micro-businesses and give out micro-finance loans. I have always had this idealistic dream to help start up a micro-business ever since I learned about it in college, but only recently have I actually gotten on that train, which is super exciting. However, our micro-business train is just starting to move and we have a long way until those wheels are moving efficiently and rapidly.

So what is our fine product, you may ask if the blog title has not given it away? To make fun jewelry using locally available products! The creators and entrepreneurs are young women and (brave) men (unafraid to break down gender roles) from the high school who meet in their free time to make earrings, headbands, and rings. My Mozambican counterpart and I bought materials for the girls who received our purchases and industriously began creating different earring styles.

We are using their created products to show them how a good idea put into action can be turned into a profitable initiative. We are trying to teach the young entrepreneurs good business skills such as marketing, keeping inventories and sales records, and having first-rate customer service. The young women are included in discussion on what to do with profits, which we have decided to save part, give a small subsidy to them for incentive to continue, and use the rest for our extracurricular club. The young women have plans to sell their products locally and hopefully take advantage of their connection to the States through PCVs and sell their products there in expositions. It has been awesome to see their minds start turning as they think up possible new products and think of other unrelated business opportunities such as selling popcorn at school during snack break because they are looking for demands and a way to supply those demands.

Hopefully we will get this micro-business train on the right track, one that will continue long after we have gone. Only then, will we have reached our goal. We will have equipped high school students with a skill set to ensure that they can be conductors in their future generation rather than passengers looking for a free ride, which has sadly become the case in much of Africa (and for that matter, too many people like that worldwide). The way international development has been done has left many Africans reliant on handouts when in reality it is better for both the developer and benefactor of the development work to work together to focus on building human capacity. In lieu of the old adage that "it is better to teach a man to fish rather than fish for him", our micro-business’ goal for the 2010 year will try to be to get all our students aboard so that new leaders are born and the very capable and intelligent Mozambican young women learn to help themselves!

P.S. I titled my blog “The Sexy Jewelry Store” because it’s a funny anecdote about the entire learning process the young women are going through. One of the instructions my Mozambican counterpart and I gave our young women to inspire creativity was to think up a name for our business. A few returned the next day with this name “Bejutaria Sexy,” and we got the biggest kick out of it. We said, “Thank you girls for the idea, and we get that our products are going to be incredibly sexy because they’re pretty and feminine. However, that’s probably not the most appropriate name because we do not want to market ourselves primarily as being sexy. This is a women’s empowerment group and there are a whole lot of other adjectives that would be a better choice for our public image – intelligent, capable, creative, and so on.” Anyway, they got that after our explanation and we decided upon a more fitting name and that’s that. Little victories.

When you think of party, what are the first words that come to your mind? Perhaps fun, celebration, good friends, cake, cocktails, dancing, or something of the sort. To me, all those things comprise elements of a good party. Parties are usually something out of the ordinary to look forward to, but I have to admit that I was not excited about putting on the CARE Party because I knew it would be a lot of work and would not involve a lot of those aforementioned words.

Parties are one thing, but party planning is a whole other realm which can be stressful and leave you feeling anxious about whether the party will be a success. Although party planning in the States is serious work, I’m going to say relatively you’ve got it good. Here’s one case in point. For parties in Mozambique, it is customary that all the adults get together and cook a big meal with some type of meat because it’s too expensive for many families to have in their diet often. In the States, the party planners would a) have the food catered, b) buy rotisserie chickens at the Fresh Market, or 3) buy frozen chickens at Super Target and go home and cook them in a nice big kitchen in the oven, but that’s not how it went down in Chibuto!

We were celebrating the end of our 6 week program named CARE, which Abby, our colleagues, and I designed to teach children between aged 7-15 how to care for themselves and their world. 70 orphans and vulnerable children came to participate in the festivities which meant lots of mouths to feed, so obviously cooking was a bit of an ordeal. My co-worker Lidia and I bought everything but the chickens to prep for the party days before, but had to wait until the morning of to buy the live chickens. The day of the party 12 activistas, a group of mostly HIV positive ladies who are leaders in the community and examples for how you can still live a normal life despite having HIV, volunteered to be our kitchen staff and rounded up huge pots, spoons, and plates from all over the neighborhoods. I was in charge of money so I went with 3 co-workers to buy 20 live chickens in the market. On the quarter mile walk there, I started asking how we were going to carry them all. When they told me that each of us were going to carry 5 live chickens at back at once, my eyes got huge, and I told them they had to be kidding. But, I psyched myself up to be a good sport and we entered the smelly market section with hundreds of live chickens. I paid the $4 for each live chicken, and then let my co-workers put 5 upside down squawking chickens in my hand and we were off. I got a lot of looks and smiles from the locals on the way back to the office, and I think I impressed some of the activistas. (No wonder Mozambican ladies are in such good shape – carrying 5 chickens at a time puts any dumbbell arm workout to shame!)

The women spent all morning cooking and singing together as Abby, my co-workers, some teenage children I recruited (I am Mary Helen’s daughter after all), and I led the festivities. In the morning, they were free to run around and we had sidewalk chalk, drawing stations, books for them to read in English, soccer balls, and jump ropes for the children to play with. We started with about 40 city kids, but 25 children arrived singing boisterously in an overloaded pick-up truck, which came into town from the outskirts of the city! It reminded me of so many church events I have gone to over the years – parents organizing food, kids running about having a great time with all their friends – friendly people really coming together as a community to celebrate life.

After all the guests had arrived, we started the activities, which were just basic field day activities from the States that people enjoy worldwide. The sack race was first and hilarious because so many little children jumped right out of their sacks, fell to the ground, or could have out-hopped the Easter Bunny! It was highly competitive because the winning teams got candy and kept rushing Abby, who quickly became the most popular adult at the party. We continued on to balloon relay races and limbo – everyone was smiling and laughing, even me, the girl who had been the stressed party planner.

The activistas kept coming up to Abby and me and telling us how happy they were that their kids were participating in this program, and our co-workers for the week after would not stop talking about it. It really was a wonderful ending to our first year of service, and a reminder that although Abby and I get frustrated and feel like sometimes we are not doing enough or being effective, that our efforts are appreciated and maybe we are making more strides than we think. Abby and I might have been the organizers, but I was also so thankful that the activistas had pulled together a lunch and helped us serve it without chaos (the real miracle) to all 70 children. It could not have been accomplished without them! The CARE Program and ending party formed a good base for the project we are hoping to start next year with some of the activistas, which will be a pre-school in Uahamusa, the community 7 kilometers outside the city. It will take much more work and effort than just a day to get the project off the ground, but our party was a great way to kick it off. Here’s to energy and success in the upcoming year for creating a pre-school to permanently teach children how to care for themselves and their world in the midst of a poverty-stricken town!

One of my REDES girls, Edna, called me last month with news of a family tragedy. Her sick father had passed away prematurely leaving behind a widow and 7 children. I was away from my site because it was a Mozambican holiday so I missed the funeral, but went over twice that week to pay my respects at Edna’s request. I remember thinking I needed to visit her house to show my support and because that’s what friends do, but I remember dreading it because it’s hard to know what to say or how to act in the face of death. My parents gave me good advice long ago – don’t say it’s all going to be okay, don’t try to talk reason into it saying, “God wanted it this way because…” – just be there. So remembering this advice, I went and sat with the family, meeting Edna’s mother, siblings, and out-of-town grandmother for the first time.

Most of the women were seated on straw mats covered in black fabrics, but rather than seat myself on the mats they insisted I sit in a chair. They would not let me leave until they had cooked and I had eaten. While I waited, so many neighbors passed in and out of the house, just to pay their respects and see how the family was doing. A death is something the community feels as a loss, as an extended family, rather than an event the immediate family mourns alone. While we sat, the newly widowed lady also had her toddler grandson crawling around on her and making her and everyone else in the room smile. The power of a child to bring happiness and remind us of all that is good in this world is truly amazing. I left, and promised I return to visit soon upon their urging.

A few weeks ago, Edna asked me if I would go to the “40 Days Mass,” a service that some families do here, as a way to commemorate the life of the lost loved one and another healing service that takes place a month after the funeral. Again, I was not looking forward to the service because I knew it would start early and last most of the day, be hot, and I because I was unfamiliar with the layout of the ceremony. Not to mention I would be the sole foreigner and sometimes am made to eat things I’d rather not. Even so, I knew it was important to go and reminded myself that friendships are only deepened when you share in each other’s burdens and sorrows – not just celebrations and fun.

The day before the ceremony Edna and her sisters stopped by my house and told me all the important details I’d need to know for the ceremony tomorrow. The ceremony would start between 6 and 7 am on the Saturday morning (so no hope of sleeping in). I needed to wrap a capulana around my waist and drape another over my shoulders. At 7 am we were to leave for the cemetery and then we’d come back, have the mass, and finally eat.

It had been a long week, so I rolled out of bed exhausted, wrapped two African capulanas around my body (they kept falling and I felt slightly self-conscious dressed like that, but hey, when in Rome…), arriving right at 7 am. I found all the men and boys sitting in plastic chairs and all the women sitting on straw mats while the young girls scurried around starting food preparation. I was shown to a chair because I was considered a guest of honor as a foreigner, but I insisted on sitting with the other women on straw mats. Almost immediately my neighbor noticed one of my capulanas had an oil stain (whoops, a huge faux pau) so the women took care of it by offering me another stain-free capulana.

The next announcement was a huge surprise – the truck driver that was going to take us to the cemetery stepped out and gave a short speech in the local language saying the women would wait at the house while the men went to the cemetery. This had to do with a statute of the Islamic faith from how it was explained to me. Edna’s father had been Muslim while her mother and the children practiced Catholicism. It was interesting how this family of mixed faith incorporated beliefs and traditions of both faiths throughout the day. While the men went to the cemetery, I waited with the women on the straw mats. The widow and some of the neighborhood women began crying while others sat silently helping absorb her pain through their presence.

The next part of the day was breakfast after the men had returned from the cemetery. The women persisted that I sit at the table and chat with the men, and I happily obliged because after awhile those straw mats are uncomfortable! Breakfast was welcome – not only because I was hungry, but also because I was starved for the Portuguese the men were speaking after I had spent the last few hours listening (and not understanding) the women chatter away in Changana. It was obvious that the deceased man and his family were very well established in the community because of all the prominent community guests. Over tea, I conversed with the school director, an important man in Chibuto, about my projects.

The mass following breakfast was a lot of singing and speeches in Changana by neighborhood people, while we alternated between sitting and standing. At one point, a collection plate was passed around and the community all pitched in coins to offset the cost of the food the family had bought for the “40 Days Mass”. The school director gave the only speech I could understand completely. Originally from northern Mozambique, the school director does not speak Changana, so he gave a moving speech in Portuguese about how he and the neighborhood were there until the last day accompanying this man to the hospital and hoping and praying for him. I was sitting by Edna and her younger sister for the mass, and although Edna had always asked me to be there for her after her father’s death I had never seen her in an emotional state about it, even during my visits immediately following his death. Usually Edna and her sister had been running around cooking when I visited, but this service was their one public opportunity to stop and have a good cry. Tears streamed silently down their faces for the entire mass, as they used their capulanas to wipe them away. As soon as the service was over, their tears had stopped, they recomposed themselves and they were off to continue cooking and serving the guests. I thought to myself what a healthy way of dealing with death this community has – rather than avoiding it or dealing with it holed up alone in your house, the whole community grieves, remembers and celebrates the life of the lost loved one, healing together.

Lunch was served, and boy was it a feast – goat, pork, chicken, beans, xima, and rice – that many women had worked hard to prepare. I sat in a room with Edna and all her other sisters and young relatives and shared a meal, laughing and discussing the similarities and differences between Mozambique and the States. After the mass, the mood was considerably lighter and joking had commenced. I eventually excused myself because I had to travel to a neighboring town and was exhausted, but the girls insisted on accompanying me home. I left this all-day event with 5 young women in tow who walked me to my house, and thanked me for coming. I, however, felt thankful because of all that I learned from taking part in their cultural practices and how with each experience like this I am gaining a new understanding and appreciation for humans and our fundamental similarities, although we may have been born cultures and lands apart.

* I wanted to include this passage called “The Pearls of Poverty” one of my friends shared with me months ago because at this particular event, I would dare to say I witnessed an act of the pearl of love. Although after being here a year I am not so naïve as to say these always hold true, I still see a lot of veracity in them and think the passage worth sharing.

The Pearls of Poverty

“I often say that everything good I really need to know I learned from the poor themselves, in the fields and around the campfires in Nielle (= village on the Ivory Coast where Stafford grew up with his parents who were missionaries). They taught me what matters most, and I use those values to try to shape the culture of the present.

Those precious values I have come to call the “pearls of poverty,” given to me by the peasants of West Africa. The pearl is like a jewel, like the ruby, the diamond, the sapphire. But unlike the others, a pearl comes originally from suffering. The oyster gets a grain of sand inside its shell. This is uncomfortable; it hurts the oyster. Over time, the oyster begins to protect itself from that irritant by coating it with a secretion, layer upon layer, until it becomes a smooth, brilliant, shining treasure—a pearl! Wealthy women wear strings of them around their necks and wrists, seldom remembering that some little creature suffered greatly to provide such beauty.

The lessons my village gave me were just such treasures. Many of them came from the suffering, hunger, sickness, and vulnerability of the peasant eking out a living for himself and his family in the harsh, rural African environment. Here are a few of the precious pearls I still carry in my heart today.

The pearl of love. Nothing is more powerful in the world today. It cannot be bought; in reality, it belongs to the very poor as much as to the very rich. My village taught me in so many ways that you may not have anything else to give, but you can always give love. The great mystery, of course, is that though you give it away, it never runs out.

Sometimes in the midst of famine or disease, when the villagers had virtually no money, no medicine, no answers, all we could do for one another was to give love. Nobody died alone in Nielle. As much as it broke our hearts, we would be there for each other’s final moments of life. When you hold a friend in your arms and feel that final tremble as he or she slips into the arms of the heavenly Father, you can never be the same again. You become compelled by love.

The pearl of joy. The poor comprehend that joy is not dictated by the circumstances of life. Joy is a decision, a very brave one, about how you are going to respond to life. We in the West tend to be joyful when things go our way and good things are happening in our lives. For the poor, such good fortune and good things almost never come. Yet laughter and smiles abound.

Over the years as I have hosted dozens of Compassion’s “vision trips” to the developing world, I’ve observed that Western visitors are greatly surprised by this. They simply can’t believe how much joy thrives in the midst of harsh realities. If the poor chose to respond with anger or frustration, the world would be a much more dangerous place. Since the poor make up nearly two out of every three people on earth, imagine the ramifications if they had not learned to glean joy from the harshness of their everyday lives.

The pearl of hope. This is another courageous decision. Even when life’s harshness and injustices pile up, the poor cling tenaciously to hope. They will humble you with their absolute belief in a loving God who can be trusted to sustain and bless them. We tend to be hopeful when we have more assets then liabilities. The poor always have more liabilities than assets. Yet their hope is consistently and amazingly strong.

Their prayers in times of overwhelming crisis have both humbled and strengthened me over the years. I have nothing more than to sit listening to a peasant pastor as he unpacks the Scriptures for his little congregation. He hands out nuggets of truth. The handholds for hope are there for all of us but are made plainest to those in poverty, for whom survival actually depends on hope in their God.

The pearl of perspective. The poor understand that time is to be our servant, not our master, and as a result they manage to have time for one another and what is important. The tyranny of time, I find, is a dreadful disease, especially for the wealthy; among them it is a nearly fatal condition and horribly contagious. I feel this dichotomy keenly in my frequent world travels. When I get on a plane in Paris and get off five and ½ hours later in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, I find that the obsession with time has been left somewhere up there at 35,000 feet.

Another pearl the poor have shown me is the reality that people matter; things don’t. Here in the West, the general name of the game seems to be “use people to get things.” We even have bumper stickers that are humorous but all too true to our values: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” If we stop and put the values of eternity into perspective, we realize that we take nothing with us. Our only legacy is the lives of the people we have touched in Jesus’ name.

…I will mention one more pearly of poverty: knowing how to give and receive. It has often been said, “You cannot out-give God.” That is true. And the corollary is this: “You cannot out-give the poor.” They, like God, will overwhelm you with generosity if given the choice. To give selflessly is truly one of the greatest joys in life. Unfortunately, much of our giving here in the West tends to be in the form of investment. As we write our check, we inwardly question, What’s in this for me? In contrast, the poor widow who gave her last coins that day in the temple touched Jesus’ heart, because she gave all that she had with absolutely no idea that the Lord of Glory was standing right there observing her. It would have blown her mind to be told that two thousand years later, her quiet act of giving would be used as a noble example and would underlie a common expression, “the widow’s mite.”

These pearls of poverty, taught quietly and consistently by the people of Nielle, made deep impressions in the wet cement of my spirit. You can live and succeed in the everyday whirlwind of life without them, but where they show themselves, they are recognized and still valued in our hearts. We know the kind of people we all, deep inside, want to be.” [Wess Stafford, Too Small to Ignore]

One reason that schools, businesses, and community-based organizations (CBOs) are often inefficient and poor quality in my opinion is due to the lack of accountability. I find it appalling how often many teachers miss school and just leave the students to mill around aimlessly. In this environment, it is hard to learn because class time is inconsistent. It also sets an example for the students that once they become professionals that they too may miss out on work. There is no substitute system like in the States that teachers may rely on when they need to miss. I understand that sometimes the teachers have to miss school for reasons out of their control such as sickness, but it seems to me that too many just go when they feel like it.

Another interesting and alarming observation is the lack of accountability and transparency, which often leads to corruption in businesses and CBOs in Mozambique. In many of the health volunteers' experiences, they have seen the lower-tiered employees demonstrate a harder work ethic than the bosses and accountants. These employees with little power are not in a position where they can provide checks and balances with the 1 or 2 man show running the organizations. The health volunteers commonly see the employees suck up to the bosses even when the bosses are MIA much of the time. When the employees get paid months late, which is not uncommon, they are not in a position where they can be critical of the system. You often hear about the 1 or 2 bosses running the CBOs pocketing the money they receive from international donor organizations, but it is hard to actually prove because of two factors. First, there is a lack of transparency in the organization and the budget is a very secretive hush-hush business. The second factor is that the international donor organizations fail to demand adequate accountability. One volunteer said that every few months an international donor organization announces they will do a visit to monitor and evaluate. This volunteer says it is easy for her organization to put on a heart-warming show for these donors. The activists bake a cake, sing a song about fighting HIV, do a dance, and effectively fool the international donor organization into thinking their money is being put to good use. In between these little "song and dance" visits, the international donor organizations manner of monitoring and evaluation is often asking the CBO to do a report and turn in the number of people being reached. Let me say that it is really easy to make up the numbers the international donors want to hear so they can write a report annually about how much they're doing in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Also another sad trend in the CBOs is that once an organization has "made it" by having certain status symbols, there is a tendency to lose sight of the original goal of helping people in the community because the CBOs get lost in thinking they are a "big deal." Certain status symbols include having motorcycles and cars, or having computer, internet and AC in the office. These resource tools are necessary, or helpful, in making the CBO be able to do efficient work, but are often abused or not properly appreciated in my opinion. For example, the internet is a great way to improve communication and also an information source, but one that is often misused in the offices (aka to look up porn in some cases). In some CBOs, the community members wonder if their bosses have bought their personal cars with money that was intended for another purpose.

It is disheartening to hear of these stories and especially at how common they are, but in spite of all these alarming trends I have still seen plenty of good work accomplished. I just wonder: how can we eliminate this lack of transparency and accountability that leads to corruption? My recommendation would be that international donors monitor CBOs more closely by showing up unannounced and having a liason that spends a considerable amount of days at CBOs making sure good work is being done. It would be incentive to be more honest with reporting and an opportunity to help with capacity-building. The workers could receive training on how to use computers, internet, on organizational development and how to establish checks and balances. It is human nature to want to make yourself look as good as possible to an outside donor and frankly money can make people do ugly things, especially in a country with a lot of poor people. But with all the aid money pouring into Mozambique, it ought to be developing faster as I see it! However, systems to hold people accountable are just not in place which amounts to so much corruption. To eliminate this ugly side of human nature to be greedy with money, have a system with checks and balances, transparency, and better evaluating and monitoring! Let's get Mozambique to develop faster, stop pouring money down the drain unnecessarily, and do it better…..

*What I have written is an account of problems and trends that PCVs and locals have discussed with me, which is not meant to reflect any particular organization.

I spent the night at a nearby Peace Corps volunteer´s house on Sunday, and left Monday morning to head back to my site. The way home is not too difficult; it´s just two short chapa rides. Chapas are packed minibuses and the primary form of public transportation in Chibuto. They are probably my least favorite part about Mozambique because of how uncomfortable they are – at least 4 people are packed into each row, there are assorted animals and foul odors, often the drivers are reckless, and trips always take longer than expected because of unforeseen stops and how long the buses take to fill up before leaving.

The first chapa to pick me up on Monday was pretty full, and the driver ordered the passenger in the front seat out so I could sit beside him. Trying not to roll my eyes, I climbed in and was prepared to diplomatically tell him that I was not interested and refuse to give him my number. The driver continued on down the road asking me questions about America, telling me I should stay in Mozambique forever with him, before five minutes later pointing out where his wife lived. After 20 minutes, he stopped the car at his brother´s restaurant to run something in. He came back with two Smirnoffs that he thought we could enjoy together on the ride. 9:45 am. The driver pops them open and hands one to me while I´m internally trying to decide how to best handle the situation.

It was not really funny, but I struggled to hold back a laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the chapa ride. I decided, perhaps hypocritically (because I did not want to offend him and thought it´d be my best chance to get him to listen), that we would discuss drinking and driving over our Smirnoffs. As I take my first gulp, I ask if he drinks and drives at the same time often. He glances over, half smiles avoiding a direct answer by saying, “Today´s a holiday.” My next question is how much does he plan to drink. He responds, “Not much until I arrive.” I don´t know if I really believe him or if he can just tell that´s the answer I want to hear. But I say you better not drink much because you are responsible for the lives of a lot of people right now. Since he has been interested in learning about America, I tell him that in my country we would be arrested for having open containers in the car. I also inform him how many traffic accidents are caused by people whose judgment is impaired by alcohol. He listened, we chatted some more, and despite his irresponsibility he was not a bad guy at all. By the time I polished off most of my drink, it was time to get out, so I thanked him and went on my way. Poor guy, I am sure he was not anticipating a lecture when he treated me to a Smirnoff that morning, but I thought it needed to be said because if no one speaks up, then it´s never going to change.

I climbed into my next chapa at the crossroad and again ended up in the front of the car, only this time between two twenty-something males. The passenger next to me handed the driver a half-empty huge beer right before we took off for Chibuto. Unbelievable. Back-to-back drivers drinking, I thought. I greeted this chapa driver with a friendly “How are you?” to begin and then followed it with a “Have you drank much today?” Again he promised me that this was all he was going to drink until he finished working that day. I proceeded with a very similar conversation to the one I had with the first driver; the tone was light and we were laughing and joking, but I was serious when I warned them about the dangers of drinking and driving. I was also thanking heavens that I grew up in a place like America where women generations before me fought for the right to vote and be heard and be men´s equals. My status as a foreign woman allowed me to be in a position to challenge these men and speak up; in Mozambique, women are just starting to become more vocal, but are not yet considered equals in their society by most men. The conversation actually transitioned from drinking and driving to other important topics such as why having more than one partner at once is one reason the HIV rate continues to increase so quickly. At this point, we were having the classic chat about how I could be faithful to a partner even if he did not live nearby, and how they as Mozambican men could have four women at the same time if they wanted. We shared our opinions back and forth, listening and learning from one another, and before I knew it we had arrived to my home. I started my chapa journey that day rolling my eyes, and ended it shaking my head in disbelief about what an adventure and opportunity for speaking my mind it had become. Maybe they´ll think twice about drinking on the road next time, especially if enough people start speaking up about it.

I flew into South Africa five days ago for medical care and since I got off that plane I have felt at many moments that I could be in America. First of all, the Johannesburg airport is unlike most other airports in Africa. It is huge and modern, comparable to a big airport in the States. The dream continued as we descended to the parking garage, full of nice, new cards – Toyotas, Mercedes, BMWs, Volkswagon, you name it. As my driver took me from Johannesburg to Pretoria, I marvelled at the smooth highways with multiple lanes, the shopping malls, and gated housing developments. Just like the urban sprawl you see in the States. This certainly wasn’t the Africa I’ve grown accustomed to.

My friend Aubrey, another PCV, and I have been mall-hopping at a few of the newest malls in Pretoria. So many things have blown our minds that are such stark contrasts from our normal posts in Mozambique and Cameroon.

Case #1: The food. You can get anything you want – Greek, Thai, Chinese take-out, Italian, Smoothie Shops, even sushi! There are supermarkets with organic foods. We’ve eaten cheese, real chocolate cake, strawberries – all of which have been missing in our lives for the past year. I’ve been eying McDonald’s and frequented it for a Big Mac yesterday before I have to return to McDonald-less Mozambique.

Case #2: Western Fashion. Aubrey and I have been out of Western fashion for the past year, and I was feeling a tad bit self-conscious about my style and appearance being thrown back into it all. Don’t get me wrong, Western style has its influence in Mozambique, especially in big towns and cities, but not like in South Africa where you could easily mistake anyone on the street for being American. It’s still considered high fashion in Mozambique to sport your capulana (African fabric) proudly, but in Pretoria it’s all Western clothes. It was so strange seeing so much highlighted hair, stiletto heels, miniskirts, leggings, and crazy make-up after living a simpler lifestyle the past year.

Case #3: US Stores. Aubrey and I did a double-take when we walked by a store selling Gap, Banana Republic, Clinique, Estee Lauder, Bobbi Brown, and on and on. Yes, I am aware that many American stores are international, but not in the Africa where I’ve been living.

Case #4: More similar environments and opportunities. South African youth (in the big cities) and American youth have many similar educational opportunities from what I can tell – there are good public schools, private schools, boarding schools, many types of universities (correspondence, public, private). Many South African teens have regular access to internet, watch many of the same movies Americans do, have travel opportunities, and seem to face many of the same issues that Americans do. Credit cards and debit cards are taken everywhere. There are big office buildings everywhere. Of course, some of these similarities are because the US and South Africa share English as a common language – especially with media overlap.

Case #5: Health Care. There are top of the line hospitals, tons of specialists, latest medical tech available – you just feel like you are in good hands.

However, there are some noticeable differences to remind me that I’m not in America. Many people have tried speaking to me in Afrikaans and are taken aback when I open my mouth and say in an American accent that sorry but I do not understand Afrikaans. Another difference is the largely dichotomous world that exists. The majority of white people I’ve seen seem well-off, at least well-off enough to have a car. The PCVs and I often either walk or ride the mini-buses for public transportation. We can’t help but notice that we are the only white people we’ve seen on public transport and have often been asked on the sidewalk by friendly black folks why we are not driving. Another reminder that we are near Mozambique is the shantytowns north of Pretoria that have cropped up to house the minders. Many immigrants live in these shantytowns from Mozambique and other surrounding South African countries.

This vacation to South Africa has been interesting for a number of reasons. In many ways it has felt like being home – English speaking, houses full of comfort and luxury, delicious food, and dressing up. I’ve enjoyed it, but am also seeing the Western World through new eyes after a year of living without running water, shoddy electricity, limited internet, and lower maintenance fashion. Each way of life has its advantages and it is fun to slip between the two trying to keep sight of the best of both worlds.

If anhyone is interested in a ridiculously detailed account of my whole medical evacuation to South Africa, then happy reading...

Last Monday I had to be medically evacuated from South Africa. Why, you might ask? To have the nose job that I never wanted. I might as well explain from the beginning. I've been working with a high school girls group since April and we have been talking about taking a field trip to visit a nearby girls group about an hour away. This is a huge deal because field trips are practically unheard of in these parts and so it took us months to get it off the ground! But it finally happened; I woke up early and organized 50 snacks and had rented out a private mini-bus for my girls. I was responsible for everything that day so nervous about how it’d go. When we got there I was overwhelmed because there were 50 Mozambican high schoolers, 2 Mozambican professors, and me - the sole foreigner. The first thing the girls wanted to do was play soccer so they all looked at me to get the game up and running. We decided to play 2 25 minute halves and my girls begged me to play. I had been stressed out trying to get this whole field trip off the ground, so I decided to play and during the first half I remember how much I loved playing sports and how therapeutic it was for me (I felt the stress just leaving my body). It was awesome watching my girls running around, most of them barefoot playing and just being able to be kids, free of responsibility for the moment, which is pretty rare here. I marvelled at their natural talent and also at how they had no concept of some important rules. Most noticeably I remember thinking, man those high kicks are dangerous....foreshadowing for what was to come.

This whole first half was a great bonding moment with my high school girls - they were impressed I could actually play soccer well and so glad I was out there with them. The last minute of the first half my team had a breakaway and 4 of the girls kicked the ball down the field and scored. Oh how they cheered! Then we had a 10 minute halftime where our 11th grade goalie, Isabel had to nurse her 6 month old baby (different worlds). I said maybe I'd sit out for the second half, but my girls begged me to stay in so I stayed in. Maybe 15 minutes into the second half there was a corner kick near the goal I was defending so I headed the ball. The ball went to the ground, but the offender was a minute late and reared back and did a high kick...right into my face. I've had plenty of bloody noses from sports injury, but not like this. Blood poured out everywhere and the girls rushed to wipe the blood from my face. Someone screamed in Portuguese not to touch my blood because it was not sanitary - they had no concept of this, only concerned about helping me. As more blood than I'd ever seen poured out my body at once, a guy came and poured a whole jug of water on my face and then someone helped me walk off the field. They took off one of the 2 tank tops I was wearing to use as a compress. As you can imagine this was quite the scene - one white girl and foreigner down on the field with blood everywhere. I'm just glad I didn't pass out because I had little sleep the night before and had eaten very little that day. I was a bit scared when I felt my nose and the bone was tilting to the right side, especially for vanity sake! It could have been much worse though - I'm so happy my teeth weren't knocked out.

Luckily I was in the town with the most PCVs in Mozambique - 4 total! One lived nearby and we got in a car, which took me to the local hospital where no doctor was scheduled to be all day, and so I ended up with my nose tilted to the right, gauze to stop the bleeding, and 10 concerned Mozambicans standing around my hospital bed watching me intently. On the way to the hospital I called the other 2 female PCVs who dropped everything and ran right over and escorted me out of the hospital to their house where they nursed me all day - making sure I kept ice on my nose, cooking me lunch, watching DVDs on the computer screen, and talking with me to distract me from the pain. Oh yeah, and it was crazy - 3 of my high school girls cried because they were so worried about me and walked over to make sure I was okay afterwards and I think the poor girl who broke it will always be known as "the girl who broke the mulongo's face" (me being mulongo - meaning white foreigner) - poor thing, I told her it was okay and just an accident, but I think she learned why high kicks are dangerous.

A Peace Corps car left and drove the 2.5 hour drive from the capitol to come pick me up and take me home, but because of traffic I did not arrive at the health clinic in Maputo until 6 pm (over 7 hours after the time of the injury). But I was so lucky to have the best medical care from Peace Corps - to have a private car come get me and a doctor I knew waiting at the hospital for me. They took 4 x-rays of my nose and face without any cape to protect my body from the radiation. Then I had to wait 2 more hours to get a second opinion to confirm the first doctor's assessment that I needed to go to Pretoria, South Africa to get the best medical care to get my nose popped back in place. There was a PCV named Tiffany being my sort of angel for the day sitting with me in the waiting room.

Finally around 930 pm last night, the second doctor checked me out with 5 medical personnel all chattering in Portuguese. This doctor assured me that he was just going to feel the bone, but then started pushing hard and I wiggled at the pain. He sneakily tried to shout from them to give me anaesthesia while I was sitting up in a chair to set my nose that had at this point been out of line for 10 hours. He muttered something about how Americans and our culture were so picky about our medical treatment, and stopped trying because I put up a fight. Damn right, I was going to be choosy when a doctor was trying to fix my nose without my consent! That was honestly the worst part of the whole experience, but also a valuable learning experience. In developing countries, you have to be assertive about your medical care and once I recounted this part to the doctors in South Africa they told me I did well to refuse that treatment.

Then I finally went to the hotel PC booked for me with painkillers and my friend Tiffany to get rest. The other PCVs have been great calling and texting to see if I need anything. The PCV that lives closest to Maputo has an adopted expatriate family who heard about my accident and invited me to their American -like home to spend the day watching movies and eating delicious meals to pass the time before I got medically evacuated to Pretoria, South Africa for examination and surgery.

In South Africa, I was met by Peace Corps doctors who referred me to a specialist who was able to do the surgery last Wednesday, no problems. Well, I was bummed that I would have to spend my birthday all alone in South Africa, but it has actually turned into an incredible trip. As it turns out, I bumped into my childhood friend Aubrey who is a PCV in the Cameroon and just happened to be medically evacuated at the same time Aubrey and I both grew up in Hammond, LA but had not seen each other for almost 13 years. We reconnected after 13 years, and she just so happens to a complete sweetheart and volunteered going to the hospital on surgery day so I wouldn't be alone, so she had me laughing with her great sense of humor in the prep room, watched my stuff while I was under, and really made the experience 100% better. (We also figured out that our last vacation together was a family trip to Disneyworld when we were 8 years old, ha, the world is smaller than ya think…)

The day after surgery we went on a safari, which I had never done! We saw tons of animals - giraffes, elephants, rhinos, zebras, impala, etc. and it turned out to be a good birthday present. I went with 5 other PCVs who had been medically evacuated and Aubrey and I sat in the back having a ball!

My healing has been miraculously fast too – I was not in too much pain and do not even need the splint. Thanks for all your prayers, and please rest assured that what started as a bad accident turned out better than okay! Appreciate all the support.

A month ago a local radio station commenced in our town, which is funded by UNICEF. I think the radio station will serve as a highly effective tool in Chibuto for distributing information to large amounts of people and also uniting the community. The station is broadcasted in a mix of Portuguese and Changana, the local language, to reach different target audiences.

Our friend Binaisa is serving as a journalist on the radio project and asked if he could interview Abby and me about Peace Corps and our role in the community. I was honored because I have never been asked to do a radio interview before, impressed by Binaisa’s well thought-out questions, and a little nervous to do the interview in Portuguese!

Binaisa also knows Abby and I run a local kid’s program three times a week. Separate from the original broad interview Binaisa planned, he called last week to see if he could shadow us at our program,“Care,” and do an additional story on us. Again flattered, we accepted and Binaisa set out with us at 8 am to walk the 7 kilometers to our most remote location. As we walked into “the bush,” Binaisa remarked on all the open land that just sat there but could be turned into prosperous farmland. He greeted old ladies tending the field and asked children if they went to school, and if not, why they did not go. Binaisa is assertive and is constantly dreaming up ways to improve the lives of his community members – a characteristic I admire in him.

Once we arrived, Binaisa taped parts of our lessons that day for the radio interview. Our theme was “Care for your future” and we talked about why it is important to stay in school and then the children brainstormed simple goals they’d like to achieve in their futures. Binaisa chose a few of our star kids from each session and recorded interviews about what they were learning from our program. Finally back at our house that afternoon, Binaisa did a closing interview specifically related to the day’s activities and asked how we could expand upon our kid’s program and involve more community members in the future. Abby and I did not receive these questions in advance (ha) so we did our best to think of intelligent answers and respond in Portuguese on the spot. Afterwards, we both agreed that it was super helpful that there were two of us because when one of us began to struggle articulating a thought the other would jump in and help. It was a good feeling having our work recognized and applauded in the community. As a bonus, the following day the high school principal was interviewed and he mentioned the young women’s club we have started and how we do HIV prevention and teach the girls income-generating skills. The next day a professor informed me, and I was happily surprised because I did not think the principal was following our work that closely. I mention these radio interviews because it feels like validation that our projects are succeeding even though I have many days when I wake up feeling like our projects are failing to get off the ground or are just underappreciated. Slowly but surely, we’re getting places! In any case like they always say, no mountain was ever moved in one day.

My good friend Sarah and I were heading south to the capitol on Saturday morning for some meetings. We decided to hitchhike because it’s usually both safer and more comfortable. We had been standing on the side of the road less than five minutes (lucky day) when a truck pulled over to pick us up. Sarah and I squeezed in the back of the pick-up truck and we began a long conversation with a family of four brothers. Three of the brothers were only going halfway to Maputo so the first half of the trip was spent talking about what Sarah and I are doing as Peace Corps Volunteers in Mozambique. They were really curious about the Mozambican foods we liked, if we spoke any of the local languages, and they also wanted to practice their English with us. We are usually able to “wow” the locals with our knowledge of matapa, the local cassava dish, and our few phrases of Changana, their mother language. We had a grand ‘ol time chatting and hugged three of the sweet Mozambican brothers bye-bye halfway through the journey…

As Sarah and I continued on with Silva, the driver, we learned a lot about his interesting story. Silva has been working in the South African mines for 10 years now to support his family. It surprised me when Silva said he was a miner because every miner I’ve met in my community seems to have a low economic status. Silva was well-dressed, a car owner for 7 years, and although not formally well-educated, he was conversationally fluent in English and an intelligent guy. We learned that he works for a black South African man who owns many mines and is a multimillionaire. Silva is a chief supervisor for all the Mozambican workers at his mine. There are 1,600 miners and they work 8 hour shifts each day. Silva had a lot of hours to drive so picked Sarah and I up so he would not have to go alone and so that he could practice his English.

As many people say, Silva said that if he ever had the opportunity to go to America, he would stay there forever. To him, America was this ideal of endless opportunities and a life without problems (He was correct about us having ample opportunities, but of course everywhere has its own problems). Silva could not imagine why we would choose to come here for two years, and what about our husbands or boyfriends? Who were are sexual partners for these two years? How could you make it through without being sexually active? There is this mentality that it is impossible to live without having sex for any period of time after puberty that many Mozambicans have. Yes, it is natural and a biological urge that all humans have, but in his mind there was no way to abstain for long periods of time. Sarah and I did not actually answer all of his questions directly, but we did do a lot of explaining about safe sex practices, which rolled right into a great discussion on HIV and AIDS.

During this trip I was exhausted so I was expecting to lazily snooze in the back seat, but I perked up hearing Sarah share all this wonderful health information to him in the front seat. Sarah was first campaigning for the use of condoms and why it’s a good idea to use them and I observed Silva listening intently. From there, Silva started asking questions about HIV. Sarah explained the three main ways someone can get HIV – unprotected sex, dirty needles, and mother to child transmission. Silva wanted to know if an HIV positive mother can give birth to a child without HIV; the answer is yes, almost certainly if the mother is on the appropriate ARV meds during her pregnancy. One of the most interesting debates was when Silva and Sarah debated HIV testing. Sarah said that you should get tested every 3 months, but Silva wanted to know why that was necessary if he and his wife were only sleeping with one another and they were both negative. Sarah replied that would be okay if both partners were absolutely 100 percent faithful and he got a kick out of that! “You women,” he said, “You are sneaky and we have to watch out for you and what you will do behind our backs!” Truthfully though, one of the main reasons that Mozambique and other countries in Southern Africa have a high HIV prevalence rate is that having concurrent sex partners is tolerated culturally. I was proud of Sarah for her role as a informal “public health ambassador” and happy that Silva seemed so receptive. Silva is in a good position to share his newly acquired health knowledge with other miners, which is a career known to be associated with a high HIV positive rate. The miners often spend long months away from home and travel back and forth, which is one of the trends tied to the rapid spread of HIV in Mozambique.

This instance of Sarah as a public health ambassador is just one example of many I know where volunteers have had a chance to informally discuss and answer HIV-related questions with interested Mozambicans. It is rather humorous how the conversations usually come up with female volunteers in public transport. Often the drivers or a passenger will say they want to marry us, help us make a baby, or some other forward comment along those lines without knowing our names. Usually we’ll reply that sorry we already have a boyfriend (be it a fictitious one or not) and are not interested. Then when they find out we are here for two years with a boyfriend far away, they get concerned about how we are making it. Finally, the conversation switches to more of a consequential talk about what we are doing over here and they usually ask us a lot of questions, which is ultimately a really awesome thing. Just one of the many benefits of living in a community for two years where Mozambicans really feel comfortable asking us and we feel equipped to answer.

The 6-week program for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) in our community that Abby and I created started this week. Each week we focus on a different theme about caring. Week 1 we focused on caring for your body, specifically highlighting good nutrition and healthy hygiene habits. Our idea was to make the program as interactive as possible to get the information across rather than lecture the children.

Abby and I run our program 3 days a week with 3 different groups of children. The first two groups are at our offices located in our town, but the third is far out in the mato, or African bush. Observing the children was interesting because child development is such a different process here in comparison to what it is in the States. One of the major differences is that children are not taught to think critically here, neither at home nor in the school system. Children are taught to be submissive to their elders, which is not all bad. However, in the schools the children either copy directly off the board what the teacher writes into their small notebooks or regurgitate memorized responses to the teacher in class. The typical teaching style is such that teachers usually talk at students with little or no room for questions or dialogue. When Abby and I involved the children in our lecture by asking them questions about what they liked to eat and did not, it definitely threw them for a loop. When we asked them if they had any ideas about when to wash your hands during our lesson, most looked at the ground, only a bold few ventured to respond. Although I think lecturing can be helpful sometimes, I also think it is important to create a space to encourage children to think for themselves, which is one of our project goals. We hope to create an environment where they feel comfortable doing so.

Our program went pretty smoothly all things considered for the first week. The collaboration between Abby and I and two of our Mozambican co-workers was effective. The role Abby and I played was pulling together information and resources and coming up with creative activities while our co-workers’ role was translating into the local language for the children who do not speak Portuguese and gathering the children.

In the first hour of the program, we did a food pyramid activity, which required coloring, cutting, and pasting foods into the correct place in the pyramid. The children were so well behaved and calmly shared supplies, working diligently, making it obvious that access to these coloring supplies was a rare treat. It was amazing though because some of the oldest children in our program were 16 and had never used scissors. They were so timid to try for the first time. Many of the children from 8 upwards lacked the motor skills or confidence to use the scissors and had to be helped by adult volunteers. There were a few exceptionally bright children at each session that assisted the others in placing the foods in the right places, but the activity was overall much more challenging for the kids than we had anticipated.

The second half of the program we went over some basic hygiene practices and then actually practiced doing them to a song Abby had made up to the tune of 10 Little Indians. The children had to wash their hands properly and for a set amount of time while we sang along – and boy, have I never seen such dirty water after hand washing! They also received instruction on how to properly brush teeth, and then we practiced according to the song lyrics making sure to get the back teeth and the tongue too. Singing is money in this culture – it’s a perfect way to connect with the kids. And let’s just say, it’s lucky I have Abby to be the leader in that area!

I look forward to getting to know both the children and the adult helpers more through this program. Some of the difficult life circumstances they come from are unfathomable, especially in the mato. It shocked me today that one of the 16 year-old girls could not even write her own name on her paper. My co-worker Paula told me a little about Marcela, this girl, on the way home. Marcela is an orphan who is the head of her household and takes care of her 3 younger siblings. Marcela stopped studying when both of her parents died long ago so she could work the fields during the day and do the cooking and household chores in the evening. My parents always told me when I was a child, life is not fair, but I’m finding out that saying has a whole new meaning in this part of the world.

Another shocking thing was how small some of the children were for their age. Our program targets 7-12 year olds because we figured they’d be old enough to actually retain information, but not too old for basic content. When we arrived, I thought Paula had gathered a bunch of 5-year-olds judging by their size. I soon learned when we had the children go around during introductions that most of them were 9-11, just with severely stunted growth. Paula and I speculated on the reasons why they are so small after the program, among which are malnutrition, being sick a lot as babies, losing parents as babies (not breastfed, which is particularly disturbing to a baby here without access to clean water and sanitized food because bacteria can cause chronic diarrhea), and being made to carry heavy things starting at a young age (eg. carting heavy water jugs).

Many of the adult helpers were also asking for the worksheets to the art activity we were passing out, which made me happy because you ask yourself, is this 6-week program really going to make a difference? The answer in my head is probably some, but I hope it makes a lasting difference. If the adults can learn as well from our program, maybe they can use that information to take care of themselves, their own children and babies, and hopefully be inspired to teach someone else what they learned. It’s too soon to tell, but I have great hopes and dreams for our program. And if nothing else, those hopes and dreams are what got Abby and me this far. I’d say that’s a pretty good start and all we can ask for at the moment…

One of the most frustrating and disheartening parts of this experience is discovering the sheer amount of people who expect handouts or want to cut corners with work. Lazy, lazy, lazy in my opinion. It is easy to propose an idea and generate immediate interest, but when it actually comes down to the knit and grit of hard work, only a rare few are willing to stick it out for results. I wish everyone lived by the philosophy that it takes hard work to earn the results you want. Things do not just come to you. If this were a more widely followed practice, this world would be a much better place. But we must accept the world as it is and do the best with what we’ve got, so one of my challenge in this first year of service has been doing that. My quest was determining a vital community need, creating a sustainable project to address the identified need, and then the kicker: finding committed people willing to work with you.

I’ve had varying levels of success and failure with this challenge, but I am choosing to tell my greatest success story yet. I managed to clench the 3 part deal – find a crucial community need, create a project, and find a group of people that impress me with their hard work ethic and level of dedication to the project. And like so many of the best things in life, I stumbled upon it by chance one day.

A few months back, my young hardworking coworker Aurelio was correcting a poorly written Portuguese document for me. Most of my coworkers brush me off when I ask for help with tedious tasks like this, but Aurelio has always been the exception. On this particular day as he was doing this task for me, Aurelio and I were talking about how flighty some of my coworkers had been with my attempt to teach them English. All of them said they wanted to learn, so I started lessons, but when lesson time came their attendance was erratic and there were a lot of excuses. Only Aurelio showed up faithfully and always studied. Based on his performance with the English lessons and willingness to work, I decided to confide in him that I wanted to help with a community project, but needed his advice on a few things. The first issue was determining the major community needs because often foreigners come in with the best of intentions and want to start projects, but they miss the mark on what is actually needed. The second issue was that I had available funds, but only wanted to team up with a hard-working group of people. Often PCVs have problems being seen only as money bags. Alas, Aurelio was my jackpot that day. First, he nailed a major community need; there is no place for children to play out of school or a cultural center in Chibuto. Our vision became to change that and ideas started flowing. Secondly, Aurelio was already part of a group called GPROIL (stands for Group for Promotion of Local Initiatives) that had formed a year ago. The group had written a project proposal for a cultural program that had been approved by the government, but the group had lost steam because the funding fell through and they were at a loss for finding more. It was settled then and there that afternoon – we would form a collaboration. The puzzle pieces fit together – myself and Abby, the Peace Corps volunteers would bring funding and organizational development guidance while the Group for Promotion of Local Initiatives would bring the rest, particularly the leg work and knowledge of what works best in their own culture.

That day was less than two months ago and already we have 2 acres of land donated from the government to construct our cultural center. GPROIL is composed of six dedicated individuals, all young local professionals who have their own day jobs but are also committed to bettering their own community. (Additionally, Abby and I are considered honorary members). We have been meeting with GPROIL to come up with our project proposal while simultaneously working to develop their organization.

Abby and I offered our house as the meeting place until GPROIL builds their own office, and have discovered that it’s been a refreshing pleasure to work with them. I am impressed because they are committed to respecting time—usually meetings do not start until hours after scheduled in Chibuto, which is so frustrating, but the members of GPROIL have a pact to be punctual. I am amazed at their tenacity. We meet long hours and our actually productive—sometimes you forget what that feels like in this country. We had a deadline a few weeks back so GRPOIL had multiple 3-hour meetings in the evening at my house after finishing their day jobs. One night the electricity went out for over an hour and rather than throw in the towel, they continued working by candlelight. Usually it is like pulling teeth to get someone to help you write a grant, but all I have had to do is ask them, and they take care of it for me. Although we are still a long way off from having our project of a cultural center turned into a reality, I am confident that it will happen with their drive and dedication.

Many people told me that I’d surely come home disillusioned and jaded after doing Peace Corps, and although I have discovered there are plenty of things I do not agree with in development work and I have witnessed a lot of people just trying to work the system for money, GPROIL stands as a shining example of why I must not allow myself to give up hope. There will always be individuals out there willing to work for their own communities with hearts of gold even though they may be the minority. I know I have a tendency to sound (maybe even be) idealistic, but I think I am fairly realistic; just intentional about choosing to focus on hope. I meet plenty of people who want something from me without being willing to work for it themselves and that can get me down. But you have to stand back and ask yourself why? I’d say a few simply don’t have the means or health to work for it. I’d wager a lot are just lazy, which I’ve already said I have zero tolerance for. Others have probably just lost hope altogether, which deters them from working because they don’t think they’ll gain anything even if they work. Also, one of my favorite sayings my dad always tells me is that, “We’re all mixed bags. We all have some good in us, some bad.” I found some people harping on the good within and manifesting that good outwardly bringing what light they can in this world with the members of GPROIL and I cannot wait to see where this project takes us!

As I approach the one-year marker of my Peace Corps service, I pause to reflect on the recent events that have made my service so worthwhile. At the top of my list of these moments is Farida’s five-day visit to my house. Farida, my 14-year-old host sister, is an absolute delight so when my host mother asked me if I would allow Farida to come stay in Chibuto during her school break, I jumped at the chance. Mama Adelia, Farida’s mother, had confided in me a few months back her worry that some of Farida’s peer group had started getting into things that were no good and that Farida would be negatively influenced. Instead of having Farida at home with lots of free time and nothing to do, Mama Adelia wanted her shipped off to me. What a unique opportunity this visit was for Farida and me – a gift to both of us!

It was funny because culturally Farida and I had very different ideas about her role as a houseguest. I wanted her to rest and not lift a finger—essentially to spoil her and allow her to play free of all household responsibilities for a change. Farida wanted to voraciously clean and cook for me—both as a sign of respect and also because that’s all she’s ever known. I know Americans get a bad reputation for always needing to be busy and doing something, but I am discovering that is not an entirely accurate assumption. I often noticed Abby and me reading a book leisurely for relaxation while Farida dreamt up the next thing she could cook or clean. Aside from all the floor mopping, clothes washing, and water carting she did, Farida and I spent the majority of the time doing many new special activities.

I was able to share some of the skills my parents and other role models in my life poured into me with Farida. Each day Farida wanted to play basketball, so I took her to the court doing all the drills my father showed me as a child. Farida and I also worked on learning computer skills and English. It still shocks me how disproportionate the opportunities granted to us as children in the United States are in relation to the rest of the world. Being trained by knowledgeable coaches in sports, having money to buy the equipment to play each sport, and even having school sports available are opportunities granted to most American children. All of which are virtually unheard of in Mozambique. Computer skills are a whole other ball game because almost everyone in my generation and below is competent in the United States, but knowledge of computers is very limited outside the big cities in Mozambique. Some Mozambican schools get computers labs donated, but often they sit unused or end up virus racked because there is not enough widespread computer know-how. Farida used a computer for the first time in her life visiting my house at age 14, which I know is not that startling considering I’m living in Africa, but contrast that to the average knowledge a US teen has these days about computers. My 14-year-old sister, Molly, in the States has been using a computer for years and can do it all.

The other highlight of Farida’s visit was her first real trip to the beach. Farida had a wonderful time splashing in the water, digging in the sand, and collecting shells (I had the hardest time convincing her she couldn’t take a dead crab home, ha)! All day long when Farida and I rode public transportation together, other passengers asked how we were related. Most people assumed that she was my empregada, or maid, and were thrown from a loop when we replied sisters matter-of-factly. The typical conversation went like this.

Passenger : “But you’re skin is different.”

Bus driver: “But she’s American and you’re Mozambican.”

Farida: “Yeah, but none of that matters. We’re sisters. My home is hers and hers is mine.”

Me: “She’s right, I lived with her family. They taught me their language and culture. They treat me like one of their own.”

When it was time for Farida to leave, we arranged a visit for the next school break. As I put her on the bus, Farida thanked me for investing so much in her to make the visit possible. My reply was that I was only beginning to try and do the same thing so many people have done for me my whole life, which made all the difference in the world. And it still does.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I threw back-to-back birthday parties at my house for two very important birthday girls. The first birthday party was for Abby's 23rd birthday. We spent all afternoon making tortillas from scratch, dicing veggies, making fresh salsa, and using up lots of taco seasoning in packages (thank you, my sweet relatives). There was a chocolate birthday cake from scratch too, because what other option do you have here (no ready-made bakery cakes available)? Abby and I enjoyed putting work into setting a festive mood because it helps pass the time well (sometimes it seems crazy, voluntarily isolating yourselves from loved ones for two years!?) by creating joyous celebrations. The birthday party was a success; we all stuffed ourselves, mingled, and sang to Abby while imitating the Mozambican cake ceremony (on birthdays, the person putting on the party and the birthday girl have to feed each other cake wedding style). The party was not too elaborate, but the guest list included a few nearby PC volunteers, one American grad student and a young college professor doing research in Chibuto for a few weeks, and a French PhD student. One of the reasons I enjoyed the party so much because it demonstrates what interesting people you come into contact with while abroad – each of the guests were from different states in the US and we invited the French lady along. Our volunteering and our studies had brought us together in this small town in Mozambique to commemorate Abby's birthday and form a tight community away from home. I really like this aspect of the experience, because sometimes I am lonely over in Africa (and people ask how it feels to be "all alone" in Africa), but it's surprising how often we have guests passing through and how many wonderful friends and contacts I'm making. On occasions when it's hardest to be away, Abby and I purposefully have chosen to put more effort into ensuring that we'll pull off the next best thing to being home with friends and family – a celebration with the people around us.

Although Abby went out-of-town before birthday party number two, Abby and I had already discussed that we wanted to do something special for the birthdays of each high school girl in our REDES group. (One of the points of our group is to make the girls feel like they are special and let them know we truly believe they can make something of themselves, and so we want to make sure that we compliment them on their strengths and do just that while we are here and have the chance because this is not something they usually hear). We had already had two REDES meetings previously in the week, but the girls returned on Thursday for a cake and card we had promised to make for Isabel. 12 hours earlier, I had been singing "Happy Birthday" to Abby in English with a lot of other Americans and now here I was with 10 Mozambican high school girls singing "Feliz Aniversário" in Portuguese to Isabel. Isabel, an 11th grader, was turning 19 and she and I did the cake ceremony feeding each other too, which gets a slightly less awkward for me every time. The girls wolfed down my chocolate cake as we listened to Michael Jackson (Mozambicans love him and mourned his death with the best of 'em) and they all passed 19-year-old Isabel's four-month-old baby around the room. I laughed to myself thinking at the back-to-back parties I had the opportunity to throw here in Mozambique as a Peace Corps volunteer—when else in my life will this be possible? Probably never. So as difficult as being away from home is for me for such a lengthy amount of time, I feel blessed to have such a unique opportunity to be part of multiple communities at once—the foreigners brought together by being so far from home and the Chibuto community I came to serve.

Just Another Case of It's Who You Know That Makes the World Go Round and My Search for Hope for Women's Futures in Mozambique

On Monday at work I did not have much going on so my co-worker Especiosa invited me to do hospital visits with her. As always, the hospital was overflowing with people waiting to be attended. And as always, the hospital was severely understaffed and most of the people in the waiting area would sit there all day without being helped at all. Day after day, many people wanting medical care go to the hospital in hopes of getting adequate medical attention and leave unsuccessful, only to return and try again the next day. Especiosa and I went to meet Sarifa, her neighbor, to help her get medical attention. As I understand the story, Sarifa had a run-in with a cactus a few months back and wounded her forearm. Two months later, the wound is still infected and swollen. Although the wound probably would have healed quickly on a healthy person, Sarifa is HIV positive so even simple cuts and wounds do not heal easily, or at all.

When Sarifa, Especiosa, and I walked in, Especiosa led us past hundreds of waiting people and knocked directly on the nurse's office. The nurse opened the door, obviously used to working closely with Especiosa whose primary job is helping HIV positive mothers. Especiosa called Sarifa in and the nurse tended to her arm then and there on the spot. As we left to take her prescription to get signed by a doctor, my eyes scanned over all the people we had skipped waiting in line. Especiosa and I left Sarifa at the hospital to get her wound disinfected while we went to the pharmacy to buy the pills Sarifa needed. I had been putting the pieces together in my mind and questioned, "So if you had not been here, Sarifa would have had to wait with little hope of being helped?" Especiosa nodded, saying that Sarifa had been going to the hospital for help and been passed over for the past month, so that's why Especiosa had stepped in. (Another clear case of it's who you know, for better or worse…)

On the way back from the pharmacy, I learned more about Sarifa's story. Sarifa is 27 years old and HIV positive. She has two children, aged 15 and 9. Sarifa's husband recently left her to live and work in South Africa and has stopped sending her money. Sarifa has no job and struggles to put food on the table. Sarifa did not have money to buy the pills she needed for treatment, so Especiosa bought them although she does not have much herself explaining that, "I cannot just let her wound go untreated just because Sarifa does not have money for the pills."

As Especiosa and I walked home, I was thinking and struggling about all my conflicting thoughts about our visit to the hospital. Was it fair that we got to skip the waiting line because my community-based organization has a strong working relationship with the hospital employees? What about all the other people waiting who are not our beneficiaries? Why does it have to be the way it is all over the world – so many people in need with not nearly enough help?

Then there were my thoughts about Sarifa. I know my job was to help, not judge. I liked her and think it is important to have compassion for others, but there is a part of my mind that ends up how one ends so vulnerable and out. I just cannot imagine having no job, no money, a terminal illness, a husband that left me, and little education to go on. The sheer number of women like her in such hopeless situations in my community is shocking. I wondered what initiatives can my community and these women take themselves to prevent these situations from happening? How can we help these women help themselves? How can we, in the Chibuto community, empower someone who has got so many odds stacked against them? Was it a series of irresponsible choices and actions that put so many women in this sad situation or the life of absolute poverty they were born into? Did they not have parents who could mentor them or an opportunity for education? How much did the war negatively affect their lives leaving them unable to provide for themselves? (Most likely a lot) Is it Mozambican culture that leads women to have so little power? I have so many questions and know that so many factors contribute to why so many women end up in helpless situations like this that it is impossible to come up with either a clear answer or simple formula for how to help.

I resist the urge to be depressed and give up on working to empower women. After all, there are Especiosas out there in the world taking their vulnerable neighbors to the hospital and making sure they get treatment. There are initiatives in our community where single women are learning to generate income with projects such as sewing and raising livestock to sell for a profit. The mentality is changing in Mozambique and more women are being given the opportunity for education and becoming professors and professionals. Our young girls group is also a source of hope. Abby and I are working with young high school girls in the community on a women's rights theater piece that the girls wrote themselves and are planning to perform in the primary schools in the area. Our group is really talented and I see more confidence and leadership skills being developed in the girls each meeting. Yesterday our girls finished the play practice and were deciding how to bow. All 10 of them joined hands, raised them to the sky, shouted "Help us in the fight for women's rights" and bowed in unison; in the back of my mind I was thinking, there are 10 girls I see being future community leaders. All these collective efforts in the community will ensure that fewer women find themselves in such compromising situations. As for Sarifa, I can be only be thankful that she has people around her reaching out to help, and I'll take a lesson from them.

Over the weekend, I returned to visit my host family in Namaacha for some quality time. My friend Emily and I traveled together because our families are practically next-door neighbors, so it's more fun that way. In between our host families' houses is the house of a single uneducated mother raising two kids who also hosted a Peace Corps volunteer, but unfortunately her volunteer had to leave Peace Corps early. I think this single mother, Mama Rosinda, feels left out and her feelings are hurt when Emily and I show up to visit our families and her "daughter" is absent.

Emily and I always have to prepare ourselves mentally and physically before we go visit our host families because we know that we have to be prepared to eat all the food they will stuff us with and be prepared to put on a smile when they show us off to the community. We joke it's the "mulongo parade" (mulongo means foreigner) because the moment we arrive, our host mothers make us parade through the neighborhood as they brag that their "daughters" have come back to visit them. They are prideful because our frequent visits are a sign to the community that our families treated us well and formed a good relationship with us, so naturally they want the whole world to know. Last visit Mama Rosinda started crying when her "daughter" did not show up too, so this time Emily and I tried to be sensitive about that. Emily's host mom and my host mom were busy sending us to one another's house delivering cake and tangerines as gifts back and forth. Each time I'd have to walk by Mama Rosinda's house because her house is positioned between our two houses. The second day I was there, my host mom had just sent me to deliver something to Emily's house and I was instructed to hurry back for breakfast. On the way home, Mama Rosinda called to me inviting me to "tomar cha" with her. "Tomar cha" literally means to have tea, but in this country you never know what all that entails.

Although it was not actually something I wanted to do because I was thinking 1) I'm going to have to eat food that might gross me out, and

2) this is going to be an awkward, silent tea time because I'm going to run out of things rapidly to talk about with this woman because our lives have next-to-nothing in common. Yet, I figured it would mean a lot to her if I accepted her offer and sat with her for breakfast. So I sucked it up and entered her tiny house.

Once inside, I saw Mama Rosinda had already begun to "tomar cha." I stared at her breakfast, xima (a Mozambican staple which can best be likened to tasteless grits) topped with an actual chicken foot and tomatoes. She opened the serving dish to give me some, just as I opened my mouth diplomatically stating, "I really can only have tea with you. My host mom already has a cooked breakfast waiting at home for me and I do not want to offend her." In the back of my mind, I was praising God that I was spared stomaching a chicken foot at 8 am in the morning!

Mama Rosinda accepted my tactful response and she settled with pouring me tea. Mama Rosinda chatted away happily as she ate and I sipped my tea. As our teatime went on, I realized how much it meant to her that I had decided to stay. And I was surprised at how touched and humbled our breakfast left me. Quite to the contrary, rather than an awkward silent breakfast where we just sat and stared across the table at one another, she opened up and talked about the struggles and joys of her daily life.

Mama Rosinda is now probably in her late 30s or 40s. She was born in northern Mozambique, but now lives in Namaacha, a town on the southern border of Mozambique and Swaziland. Life circumstances caused her to drop out of school long before finishing high school. Mama Rosinda is called a "casa dois" in Mozambique or the "second wife" of a man, but he is no longer in the picture. Now she lives with two of her children in Namaacha, working hard to make ends meet and trying to encourage her children to complete the education she never had. Mama Rosinda laments the fact that she sent one of her daughters away to live with a relative in South Africa in the hopes that her daughter would learn English and have a chance at a better education, so that the daughter could one day support the rest of the family left back in Mozambique. It's been a sacrifice though because the daughter left for South Africa at such a young age that she has all but forgotten Portuguese, and now there would be a huge communication barrier between mother and child if they were one day reunited. Also, she has not seen her daughter for years because she has trouble getting her passport approved to cross the South African border for a sufficient length. This is something she grieves too.

Mama Rosinda has worked at the border for the last 17 years. Each day she gets up early, crosses the border into Swaziland, tries to buy goods for a cheap price and bring them across the border to sell and make a profit. Mama Rosinda describes how she has been playing a game with immigration and border control for the past 17 years. Sometimes they will make her pay so much to bring stuff across the border that after a long hard day of work she will make either little or no profit. Sometimes she argues and bargains her way down with immigration officials to increase her profit so she can put food on the table. Other days she hides goods she is transporting on her back pretending like she is transporting a baby instead of materials, so she can re-enter Mozambique and make more money. Keep in mind that border patrol sometimes asks for more money than is fair because corruption is widespread. Mama Rosinda works closely with other women in the same boat as her and when one woman is in trouble, they all put their money together to help her out until that woman can pay back what she owes the others. On the side, Mama Rosinda also has a small farm, but it is miles away from her house and she must travel great distances to till it and harvest it.

This woman fights hard and seems to reap little benefit for her efforts. Mama Rosinda is concerned because her eldest son just failed 8th grade (which is pretty common in the Mozambican school system) and she is worried that if her children do not succeed in school, they will be resigned to do the same ill-fated work she has to do. I sat listening to this story, mesmerized; my attention was enough for her. As she talked and told me her sad story, she was not pitying herself; just sharing her struggles in a "that's-just-the-way-it-is" attitude. Tea with Mama Rosinda has been the most memorable experience I have had when it comes to this precious daily ritual that is part of Mozambican culture. To have tea, or tomar cha, brought Mama Rosinda and I together indelibly making us part of each other's story. It is memories and events like this that really make my time in the Peace Corps worthwhile and make me feel like I am making a positive difference while also being changed for the better myself.

*Later that day, I began reading the book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, which is a story about a former student that reconnects with his favorite old professor who is dying of ALS. Morrie, the professor is teaching his former student insightful lessons about the meaning of life. I found these following quotes from the book really interesting because they are things I am learning and discovering through such experiences as having tea with Mama Rosinda.

"Remember what I said about finding a meaningful life? Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need other to survive, right?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "But here's the secret: in between, we need others as well."

Today, June 15, marks the six-month marker from when I moved to my site, Chibuto. One of the things that I have been hoping and praying for since I got to site is making some really good Mozambican friends. Friendships always involve effort, but sometimes more so here for a number of reasons. Although I am always willing to put in effort in to friendships, what I am not willing to do is force friendships. One of my biggest struggles has been finding a balance between putting energy into getting to know people in the community and realizing that it is just going to take more time to build meaningful friendships here so I should let it happen naturally. In this respect, I try to keep a balance between investing my time in people in Chibuto and allowing myself to have a good deal of alone time in my house because that’s something I also need, especially so far from home. It’s also difficult to make friends with people in my town sometimes because even though I think they genuinely like me, sometimes they end up wanting me to help them out with money or wanting me to do their homework, knowing well that I come from a privileged background and am well-educated. This can be tricky because I really like helping others out and, like everyone, want to be liked. As time goes on and my new friends and I learn more about one another, this becomes less of an issue. I often find myself charting new territory while building friendships in Chibuto because the dynamics are different than if I were making friends with my fellow American peers.

Nevertheless, after six months, I’ve come to the conclusion that the key to “How-to-make-real-friends” for me is the same as in the States, only it takes more patience and the realization that sometimes what constitutes a good friend here will be a little different than what I consider a best friend at home. One of the biggest challenges to the first six months of service has been letting my friendships develop naturally because I am usually to quickly and easily making friends back home. But yesterday was a very encouraging breakthrough. I had just returned home from traveling and was prepared to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon when a string of visitors arrived, and I genuinely enjoyed spending time with all of them.

My first visitors were two teenage girls named Elvira and Maria who have started dropping by regularly to practice English. Spending time with them is fun because they ask me a million questions, all the while trying to braid my hair and strum my guitar. I can count on Elvira and Maria to arrive with huge smiles, and the good mood that follows is a result of their infectious laughs. I usually get tired of practicing English with people because few are willing to actually put effort into learning the language and just expect me to magically transfer my speaking abilities to them. But that’s not Elvira and Maria; they show up with song lyrics to translate every time they come and with papers where they have copied in English numerous times everything we practiced during their last visit. It’s refreshing having young friends with work ethic and very worth it to me to spend all the time in the world teaching them English as long as they keep up the drive to learn.

My second visitors were my co-worker’s daughters. Neidy, a 22-year-old, just started college in the capital this year so was briefly home for a family visit. Neidy called to ask if she could drop by with her sister and it was really nice having someone my same age to chat with about how school was going and her upcoming exams. Although more young girls are going to college these days, it is still somewhat unique to find young women who are university students outside of big cities like Maputo.

My third visitor was a 20-year-old girl named Isabel who participates in the REDES group Abby and I started, which is designed to empower young girls. Isabel has been asking if I will come to her house to meet her three-month-old baby Mirna. She appeared just before dark yesterday to take me to her house. Isabel is actually from a small town about 30 minutes away, but is staying with some Muslim relatives in Chibuto to finish high school because her hometown has no high school. The visit to her house was one of my favorite nights at site even though I was not prepared to be there for almost five hours! Seven people live at her house – Isabel and her baby, Amelia (a 13 year old the family had taken in as a maid in exchange for food and a home), and the Muslim family who owns the house. The family members include a grandmother, two of her middle-aged children, and the most precocious 7-year-old I’ve ever met named Fifi who I immediately liked when she plopped herself down on my lap. After being introduced to everyone, Isabel nursed her baby as she talked about the project she did for the upcoming science fair. Isabel is one of seven students participating out of the whole school because science fair is a relatively new thing introduced by Peace Corps and has yet to take off. I liked having the opportunity to tell Isabel I was proud of her for finishing school and raising her baby at the same time because many girls do not have the courage or the means to continue after becoming teen mothers. I also watched the Mozambican version of “Dancing with the Stars” with all the girls in the family with every intention of slipping out after the show finished. However, the family would not let me leave without eating with them so we feasted outside together. The whole evening was full of new, fun experiences for me, and the family enjoyed introducing me to the special bread they make, which they explained is part of their religious customs. They walked me home late; I was happily exhausted because my hopes and prayers of forming true friendships with Mozambicans are finally happening, slowly but surely.

A month ago I noticed workers feverishly giving Chibuto a major face lift – planting trees, redoing sidewalks, painting city walls and repainting roofs of all the major buildings. I soon discovered all this hard work was for President Guebuza's upcoming visit to Chibuto. Presidential elections will be held in October in Mozambique so President Guebuza is currently touring the country flying from town to town to endorse his political party, FRELIMO, to win more popular support from the people. Maybe you didn't notice what I said, but yes, he is FLYING with a 6 helicopter entourage from town to town. Why does this infuriate me so much? The President is choosing the flashiest most expensive way to travel! This does effectively "wow" the people and seems like a strategy to promote national pride. So maybe that's the reasoning behind it in their minds. But more importantly, I see it as is a huge waste of money! Yesterday President Guebuza traveled less than 60 kilometers from the last village he had visited to get to my town. If he so badly wanted to arrive in style, why not take a luxury car the 30 minutes it would take to get here instead of choosing to rent helicopters from South Africa which are rumored to cost an obscene amount of money?

President Guebuza and his entourage arrived to be welcomed by everyone in town. Most work places closed; it was a school holiday. The children spent all week coloring Mozambican flags that they attached to reed poles to wave upon his arrival. The mood was festive and when he stepped up on that big stage our community built specifically for the occasion, the crowd went wild. I admit he was a very charismatic speaker. He emphasized just the right points sending waves of resounding cheers through the crowd. President Guebuza's platform was "to fight against absolute poverty" and he repeatedly emphasized the vital role education plays in helping a nation develop. I agreed with this particular message. President Guebuza also spent a lot of time reminding the people about how FRELIMO brought peace to Mozambique after two wars. The first war he referred to was Mozambique's fight to gain independence from its Portuguese colonization. FRELIMO was the party accredited for helping Mozambique achieve independence in 1975. After independence though, a civil war followed. Guebuza played up his party's role in these wars and advocated, "Look how far we have come! Viva FRELIMO! Viva Mozambique!" The speech continued, full of promises that sound great in theory as in most political speeches, but Mozambique has a long way to go before climbing out of the poverty that plagues it with no convincingly concrete plan on how to do that. Not to mention having the politicians jetting around the country isn't using their budget prudently to help the people achieve the goal of escaping absolute poverty!

There were many cultural aspects of the political rally that were totally new to me. Cultural groups each performed a short song and dance to welcome President Guebuza. The most attention-grabbing group was the traditional healers who dressed in feathered costumes. There were also many social action groups who performed. It was funny to hear them read off the list of all the things they had given as gifts to the President. The majority of the gifts were things like huge amounts of corn and rice, and livestock such as goats, pigs and cows. Most of these things are valued highly here, but are extremely different than things that would be given as valuable gifts in the States. The other noteworthy cultural aspect was the language translator. While President Guebuza and all the officials spoke in the national language, which is Portuguese, only about 25% of the population speaks and understand it. Thus, a translator was needed to speak in local dialect so that everyone could understand what the President was saying.

Another interesting part of the President's visit was all the international diplomats included in his entourage. After he finished speaking, Guebuza said, "I'd like you to meet all of our international friends whose countries have helped us to gain independence and develop. Guebuza gave a short introduction to how each country had helped Mozambique before each visitor would introduce himself. I was surprised to learn that Algeria was a major partner with Mozambique. Algeria not only aided Mozambique in the fight for independence, but also gave aid. I was astonished probably because not so long ago Algeria was struggling for its independence from colonial power France as well. Next, representatives from Italy, the European Union, and Japan introduced themselves; all who are working in different capacities to develop Mozambique. The European Union representative made a show of emphasizing in his short speech that as Mozambique developed it should do so hand in hand with democracy. Some serious Western influence, right there.

I was attending this political event with three other foreigners. I was with fellow PCV's Abby and John, and a Dutch girl named Daniela doing research for her master's degree. We all agreed the three best adjectives to describe this rally were: crowded (a given), hot, and overwhelming fragrant (not in a good way). Daniela was doing her research on local politics in developing countries so she leaned over on my right sharing her academic observation, "Do you notice that there is absolutely no female representation on that stage?" Indeed, each big dog on the stage was male, which is typical in most developing countries. Women are beginning to make strides and get their foot in the door with politics in Mozambique. Currently, Luisa Dioga is serving as prime minister in Moz. Seconds later after Daniela shares her thoughts, Abby leans over from my left whispering, "Do you know how many hands on are on my butt right now?!" Ha, a testament to what happens in crowded spaces in cultures where there is no concept of personal space! My thoughts had been more aligned with Abby's and we laughed, deciding that was about right. Daniela was preoccupied with the academics, and Abby and I per usual were being goofy together. As you can imagine after a few hours of this, we'd had enough so slipped out early just as President Guebuza was inviting citizens of Chibuto onstage to voice their problems. I thought this was a good step because he was giving the citizens a chance to voice their opinions. All in all, a fascinating experience to learn more about how politics work in Mozambique.

Two weeks ago we had a house call just as it was getting dark. This is a bit unusual because we always tell everyone that we do not allow visitors past dark, although there are a few exceptions. It is Mozambican culture that when you make a house call that you do not enter unless explicitly invited. But on this particular night, Abby opened the gate and this man entered and walked into our house without invitation. Abby expected that he either knew Daniela, who is our Dutch roommate staying with us to do a master's thesis for a few months, or me.

His abrupt entrance took us all aback and when it registered that none of us knew him, all of us just stared at him and his unwelcome presence. When none of us invited him to sit down, he introduced himself as Sergio saying he was hungry. And asking us, "It's good to say when you're hungry, right?" After telling him no food was available, he left. The whole exchange happened in 5 minutes, and afterwards we discussed how we need to be more careful about situations like that. We have been at site over 5 months and our neighborhood is really safe and we rarely ever have problems. So we had gotten comfortable and this minor incident happened.

The week continued, but two days later the man showed up at 7 am at our house. I answered the door, still waking up, to find Sergio standing outside. I did not invite him in this time and firmly asked him to leave because we were all getting ready for work. Sergio loitered, not leaving, and asked if he could live with us. Excuse me, I thought, not believing I had heard right. But then he asked again, the absurdity of it. I told him no way, please leave us alone. But he stubbornly refused to leave so Daniela, a native Portuguese speaker came to reinforce my answers. The guy had seriously family problems and also appeared not be right in the head. We told our friend Naldo, our most trusted friend, about our unwelcome visitor at this point.

Nothing happened until the following week when we were getting ready for work and our neighbor was inside our gate sweeping for us. Sergio returned and let himself into our gate and walked around to the back of the house where I was brushing my teeth. Indignation coursed when I saw him, and yelled, "What do you think you're doing and who let you in?" Sergio replied, "You're neighbor let me in. Can you give me a job?" NO. "Can I live here?" NO. "Can I at least leave some of my things here?" NO. Abby has come by this point and we are asking him to kindly leave, but he remains put and launches into a sob story. We tell him to go to social services because although we feel for his problems, we are not the ones to help. Then I forcefully move him to the gate and make him leave. At this point, I call our Peace Corps Safety Officer and alert him about Sergio. I was not that scared because Sergio is not big and never aggressive, but I did not want the problem to continue and turn into anything big.

Later that day, I was out shopping at the market while Abby was at home, in and out of the yard every few minutes. When I returned, I saw a few sacks thrown into our yard, and called Abby saying we have a problem. Sergio had launched his belongings into our gate and disappeared. The PC Safety Officer instructed me to go alert the police so I met my friend Naldo there where we talked to the police. A little aside, one of the first questions the police chief asked me was if any of us were sleeping with Sergio. Sad, but I think that's a typical question here. After informing the police, Naldo accompanied me back to my neighborhood.

We went to talk to this respected elderly man on my street, who wasted no time informing the head lady you are supposed to talk to in the neighborhood if you are having problems. They rallied the neighborhood and starting asking questions to find out more about this man, Sergio. Abby and I had thrown Sergio's sacks outside of our gate so they checked the sacks. Also, a group of neighborhood boys came by offering they knew who he was, where he came from, and that something is wrong mentally with him.

The neighborhood was awesome though, and they said when he comes back, we will talk to him with you. Well, Sergio arrived a couple hours later and women, elderly men, and children gathered around Abby and me, a startling number, calmly telling him to get his things and go home. "You have inconvenienced these nice ladies enough already so please go," Senhor Arão, the oldest most-respected man in the neighborhood advised him. He continued, "And if you do try and come back, then these ladies have been instructed to tell us and we will take measures." On his way out, Sergio asks if he can still come visit, and our neighbors echo, "No, that would be inappropriate. Go home, sir. For good." We have not been bothered and rest confident that our neighbors are taking good care of us after how they rallied behind us to take care of this situation. Each day on our way to work they always ask us if we are okay and make sure that the man has not returned to bother to us. What a wonderful set of neighbors we´ve found on this side of the world!

Some statistics that made me stop a minute…so, naturally interested to see what you think

America controls nearly 20 percent of the world's wealth. There are around 6 billion people in the world, and there are roughly 300 million people in the US. That makes America less than 5 percent of the world's population. And this 5 percent owns a fifth of the world's wealth.

1 billion people in the world do not have access to clean water, while the average American uses 400 to 600 of liters of water a day.

Every 7 seconds, somewhere in the world a child under age 5 dies of hunger, while Americans throw away 14 percent of the food we purchase.

Nearly 1 billion people in the world live on less than 1 American dollar a day.

Another 2.5 billion people in the world live on less than 2 dollars a day, while the average American teenager spends nearly $150 a week.

40 percent of people in the world lack basic sanitation, while 49 million diapers are used and thrown away in America every day.

1.6 billion in the world have no electricity.

Nearly 1 billion people in the world cannot read or sign their name.

Nearly 100 million children are denied basic education.

By far, most of the people in the world do not own a car.

One-third of American families own 3 cars.

1 in 7 children worldwide (158 million) has to go to work every day just to survive.

4 out of 5 American adults are high school graduates.

Americans spend more annually on trash bags than nearly half of the world does on all goods.

Now, when many people get a glimpse of how the world really is, whether it's through travel or study or reading statistics like the ones we just cited, it can quickly lead to guilt. We have so much, while others have so little.

Guilt is not helpful.

Honesty is helpful. Awareness is helpful. Knowledge is helpful.

Guilt isn't.

-An excerpt taken from Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile, by Rob Bell and Don Golden (122-123)

-Most of the Statistics are from UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, World Bank, and The CIA World Fact Book

Farming, or tending my own garden, is just one of the many skills I never realized I'd learn and utilize in Peace Corps. Among others skills I've learned are: cooking, expert bucket bather, and learning how to say no to people even though I'm a people pleaser by nature (crucial skill). Where did I acquire this great knowledge about farming you might ask? At none other than a two-day permaculture training led by a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Peter Jensen, who is introducing permaculture farming all over Eastern Africa for a number of reasons. His primary reason is that people living with HIV and AIDS often do not have a steady or adequate food source, which is apt to diminish more after they get sick because they cannot go to their gardens and work. In Mozambique, machambas are big gardens that can be located far from the house and difficult to tend. Using permaculture farming, families affected by HIV and AIDS can have gardens in their own homes that produce a high crop-yield. But this farming technique benefits any family, not limited to ones plagued, by sickness. Abby and I are planning to start a permaculture garden in our home in fact.

There were 10 PC volunteers at this training with 10 of our co-workers and we worked hard during the training to build our own permaculture garden. We composted, we dug an irrigation system that caught water from the nearby house gutter and directed it into the garden, and we planted all kinds of vegetable at the end. Though I must say, one of the most exciting moments was when the cows escaped after we gathered manure near their pen! It was a riot watching some PC boys run around trying to corral them in, when they clearly had no idea how, yelling about how they were Billy Crystal right out of City Slickers. The main goal of the training though is to take what we learned back together and incorporate it into our project designs so my co-worker, Paula, and I plan to teach orphans how to do permaculture gardening in a rural community our organization partners with.

*So what exactly is permaculture? Here's a very brief synopsis of what a bio-intensive permaculture garden is in case you're interested. And if you're really interested, I encourage you to look more into it. Permaculture is a combination of the words permanent and agriculture and refers to how permanent pathways are built into the garden beds to capture and direct water. The project is bio-intensive because it incorporates an efficient

Today I had a memorable lunch. A couple months ago I did a home-care visit to a really sick little boy with HIV, which I blogged about already. I thought he was 6 or 7 at first glance, but after a closer look realized he had to be much older because his skull was really developed. He is 12, it turns out, and he and his grandmother both became infected with HIV when they went to the hospital for blood transfusions a long time ago. His mom abandoned him as a baby and he lives in a poor family.

Just a tragic life and he just sits there listlessly obviously hurting all the time. When we went back to visit Abilio today, he was much worse, laying under all these blankets, coughing, even more emaciated. I went with my co-worker and an HIV+ activist too, and we were teaching his grandmother how to cook nutritious food for him so we stayed about 2 hours grinding up peanuts and green leaves. The poverty level was astounding, and they only spoke dialect. But anyway, when the food was ready, they insisted that I eat with the little boy, even though I'm sure the food could have been better off with one of the other family members who don't get enough to eat. So Abilio, literally a living skeleton of a boy, and I ate porridge side by side. He was so sick we had to lift him up to eat, and then my co-worker spoon-fed him. They cared for me like they cared for him, but my, we could not have been dealt more different cards. The best way I can process and reconcile my lunch is to believe that this life is not the end because their physical suffering was so great. But in spite of all that, the entire family was laughing and smiling as we cooked (minus Abilio). They asked me to come back next week, so hopefully I'll make it a regular thing because although I can't do much, at least I can go be with them, and to them, that's something. It was powerful to witness this circle of care in the midst of this broken family, everyone caring for one another out of necessity.

Dinnertime is at the top of my list for favorite times of the day. Abby and I have become pros at making tasty things out of the same five vegetables, the few fruits that are in season, eggs, beans, rice, and pasta. There you have it—a list of our entire average diet.

In spite of the limited options available, Abby and I actually eat really healthy, delicious meals. So far this week, we have had eggplant ratatouille, homemade hummus and tortillas with fresh veggies, and a curry rice stir-fry. We eat like vegetarians, and even though I am not one, at times I catch myself wondering if that will be something I continue when I get home. But only just for a second until I think of a tender, juicy steak prepared by Granddad Uffman. And then I laugh at the absurdity of the passing thought because my mouth starts watering as soon as I picture the steak. However, I do think that I will take home some of my new dietary habits to the States. I do not plan on eating meat at almost every meal, as I was accustomed to doing before joining Peace Corps. Partially, this is due to the fact that I have learned to live on more vegetables and less meat out of necessity. Also, thanks to Abby's advocacy, I have learned it is better for the planet to eat less meat. The following arguments have also contributed to my decision to eat less meat. So much more land is wasted growing crops for the animals we raise to eat, than if we just ate the crops ourselves. The meat processing industry has a bad reputation for being cruel and unclean. The transport to ship meat is expensive and all the fuel wasted in transport is bad for the environment. Also our bodies do not need as much protein as many of us usually intake in the States.

Yesterday I was feeling really proud about all the wonderful meals we have made, and thinking about how well I am eating. That is, until my family called, and my sister Sarah and my dad decided to describe the dill sauce they served over salmon with all sorts of fancy side dishes, none of which are available in Mozambique. I will only find salmon over dill sauce in my wildest dreams for these two years! Oh, and on down days, Abby and I start playing this cruel game about all the foods we would like to eat but cannot. On the top of our list are: good cheese and wine, pizza, Taco Bell (Abby), ice cream, waffles with real maple syrup, a berry of any sort (blue, raz, straw, or black—we'd take any), Granddad Uffman's steak (Abby too), whole wheat bread, crème brule, cream cheese bagels, New England clam chowder, North Carolina barbeque, Mexican food, and deli turkey sandwiches. We literally did a dance of joy and tears of happiness welled in our eyes when Heinz 57 Ketchup and Parmesan arrived, thanks to my aunts. And where oh where are all the condiments? Far away are the A1 Steak Sauce, salsa, barbeque sauce, raspberry vinaigrette, and blueberry syrup. All I can say is spices have been our saving grace, our supply of which is rapidly diminishing! Basil, garlic powder, spice blends, black pepper, thyme, dill, and turmeric—we use them like our life depends on them, or at least to work magic with our 15 ingredients. Abby is giving me spice lessons, if she were not around then I would probably survive on fried bean curd sandwiches. (Seriously, some Peace Corps volunteers who live alone eat fried bean curd sandwiches as their main staple. I eat bejias sandwiches pretty often myself, I promise they are better than the name sounds)!

While cooking the other day, we started talking about how insane it will be to prepare food back in the States. Besides not having many of our favorite foods available, it is weird not being able to just drive through a fast-food restaurant or pick up something quick at a 24-hour grocery store when you do not feel like cooking. Also, we follow these routine precautions and extra steps daily:

1. Always boil or filter water.

2. Peel and/or wash and bleach fruits and vegetables.

3. When you prepare rice or beans we have to pick out rocks, and then rinse it thoroughly before boiling it.

It is going to be amazing to just turn on a tap and get a glass of water rather than fetch it from a barrel, filter it, and then drink it. It will be nice just throwing on the instant rice or beans, and eating them without crunching on a rock you did not see. Sometimes I complain about the lack of foods available here, but I am so grateful to see how lucky I am to have such a diverse and abundant food selection at my fingertips in the States. I think I will be able to appreciate our food availability and not abuse it anymore in a way I have never been able to when I return. I will be able to appreciate it more because I miss it. When I say not abuse it, I will not overeat meat or eat so many processed foods that are bad for me just because they are everywhere and good. Since we have to prepare everything from scratch, I have come to love eating fresh fruits and veggies and discovered it just as tasty as that processed-bad-for-you food. I will be frequenting my local farmers market and starting a vegetable garden when I get home.

P.S. Yes, I think I've done it, managed to write a blog entry that makes me sound like the quintessential tree-hugging Peace Corps type.

Abby and I had our first successful REDES meeting on Saturday. It was our third attempt to get the ball rolling because it takes things longer to get started here, which is so frustrating at times! Just have to keep on truckin' and tryin' I try and remind myself. Our first two meetings only a few girls showed up, and late at that, because it is hard to get the word out and well, bathing takes precedence over all here. When the girls finally showed up on Saturday, some apologized for missing the first attempted meetings, stating their excuse was they had to take a bath, ha! They literally take 3 a day, no wonder why my host family tried to bathe me… So who comes to our REDES meetings? The meeting is for high school girls, technically. In the US, that would be a pretty easy group to define. It would be girls aged 14-18, all English-speaking, all literate, and probably all fairly free of serious responsibilities. Well, here is a little different. It is more difficult to classify what a 'typical high school girl' is as illustrated by our attendance at the first REDES meeting.

Abby and I have the REDES meetings at our house. We lay out straw mats for the girls to sit on our front porch and wait for them all to arrive. We had about 15 girls show up to the first meeting, and one might say it was a diverse bunch. Some girls rolled up in fashionable outfits looking very groomed. Two others carried their babies on their backs, and before the end of the meetings the babies had fallen asleep and were cat napping on our porch as we sung and danced and let the teenage mothers enjoy their kid role again. We invited a few girls from our neighborhood, and although many of the REDES girls come from poor families, these girls were a different level of poor. They came barefoot and although they were the same age as most of the other girls, they were far behind in school progress and one was actually unable to understand and Portuguese. This took Abby and I until the end of the meeting to grasp hold of, after we had asked her to stand and talk about things she had liked to do. When she was silent, we just assumed she was shy. It turns out that this child, Rita, is an orphan who had dropped out of school in fourth grade. We had a few 19-year-olds in the eighth grade although the majority of eighth-graders who came are just 15 just to give you an example of how varied the ages in the same grade were. I point out all these differences not to look down on the teenage moms or the 19-year-olds that are taking a longer time to complete their studies than is average or even Rita who does not know how to speak Portuguese. Rather I just want to highlight that in the developing world, neither school nor much of anything follows a routine schedule as it does in the developed world. These girls have to overcome a lot of challenges we do not in the developed world in order to finish their studies—among these challenges are poverty, gender inequality, being required to do a lot of housework from a young age, and not having much or any parental support. I was excited that each of these girls showed up to our REDES group and cannot wait to see their progress if they decide to stick with the group.

The goal of our REDES group is to empower young girls and teach them important life-skills. During our meetings we are going to not only discuss how to realize a bright future, but also we are doing a number of projects. Our major three projects this year are going to a dance and theatre group, a mini-basketball league, and a sewing project. The girls chose the projects and we are going to do HIV and AIDS-related performances to educate the community in the dance and theatre group. Our basketball league will emphasize the importance of exercise. The sewing project is going to be an income-generating project and the girls will sell the clothes and purses they make in the community. Here's to hoping REDES takes off in Chibuto! These girls have so much potential, and we are hoping REDES provides an outlet to develop it.

True or false: learning is fun. I admit there were plenty of days in school when I thought false despite all the cheesy posters with rainbows and smiley faces in my school hallways promoting the 'learning is fun' slogan. Yeah yeah, I wasn't convinced. Sometimes the subject did not interest me or the teacher would drone on in a monotone voice giving some dry lecture. I was bored and was not enjoying learning. I did not want to be there.

But the truth is that learning is fun, especially when both students and teachers put effort and creativity into learning. Students need to realize what a blessing it is to have the opportunity to learn while teachers need to find a way to connect and engage the students. A few weeks ago I went to be the teacher at a seminar, but I ended up doing a lot of learning myself. I learned how powerful it is to combine the passions of music and learning. I was invited by my friend Katie, an English teacher trainer to her school for a project kick-off. Katie is partnering with Lima, an English teacher, who started a children's music school a few years back. Lima has been using his musical gifts to create songs and lyrics that teach children to important values such as being hard-working, promoting peace and unity, and having pride in heritage. Recently Katie and Lima have decided to expand their project vision, by training more teachers to use music in the classroom, and by incorporating health messages in their music. That's where I came in.

A few Saturdays back I was invited to be a guest lecturer at their project seminar to share health knowledge on HIV and AIDS, malaria, and cholera. The seminar was for students in their 20's and 30's who will be English teachers next year. They go to a boarding school and learn English from sunup to sundown, and when I say sunup, I really mean it. Bells awaken these students at 4:30 am to start morning drills; they have to walk in a courtyard before English classes start everyday! Intense, huh? At any rate, I was nervous about giving my one-hour talk in English because I worried the students would either be bored or not understand the content. However, my fears proved unfounded. They blew me away with their understanding of the English language and with their sheer hunger for learning!

What was supposed to be a one-hour lecture turned into a 3-hour-question–and-answer session about HIV. I presented a great deal of biological information about the disease that they were hearing for the first time, which sparked the questions. I was so encouraged by this because Mozambicans hear about HIV so much they stop paying attention because it's often the same old thing, "Practice abstinence, be faithful, always use a condom." I am not discounting the importance of these messages, but I think they should be accompanied with a more in-depth explanation of what HIV is. After almost 8 months in country, I can tell you that just spouting out the ABC message against HIV is not effective. Not a lot of people are abstaining, being faithful, or using condoms – but maybe they would be more inclined to if someone actually explained to them what happens inside the body when a person is HIV positive or if they had a clearer understanding of how HIV is actually transmitted. I took advantage of the opportunity to offer a biological explanation on HIV, working to draw out charts and graphs in terms they could understand (I, myself am no biology expert after all). The graphs and charts successfully peaked their interest and the questions started flying. On and on I plowed. Question after question they asked.

My original worry that I would not explain the information well or that it would stump them was thrown back in my face when their brilliant questions eventually stumped me! The students started asking questions outside of my area of knowledge; I later had to send them additional documents to fully answer their questions. It was so refreshing and rare to teach a group of students so eager to push the envelope and learn. But what was even cooler is that they are taking this enthusiasm for learning, and will share it with their students next year! This will be made even more powerful through the use of music in the classroom…

After my health lecture, Lima and some of the other students gave music performances. They strummed the guitar and sang, animated and talented. I left that day on Cloud Nine, glad I was able to be part of the project take-off and looking forward to seeing where it goes.

The REDES Girls are an Anthem of Hope

A little background first

Five years ago, the PCVs in Mozambique decide to start an extracurricular club for young women in high schools across Mozambique. The PCVs named the project Raparigas em Desenvolivimento de Educacao e Saude (REDES), which translates to Young Girls in Development of Education and Health. What started as a small project has rapidly expanded into a nation-wide project with more clubs starting every year and more girls participating.

In a few sentences, REDES is a group to adolescent girls mold their own lives and to create more options for a brighter future. The girls are actively involved to think about challenging solutions that they face everyday in the school, at work, in interactions with the opposite sex, and with gender roles. The girls are encouraged to take control of their futures and taught they are responsible for the decisions they make. We talk about topics such as health, family relations, education, work, community involvement, marriage, having children, and human rights in our groups.

We are working to start a club at the high school in Chibuto, which starts officially next week in fact! The clubs vary in size and anywhere from 15 to 16 girls regularly attend. Usually a PCV facilitates with a Mozambican professor, but many clubs that have been ran for a few years have been transferred solely into the hands of Mozambicans. The PCV and Mozambican facilitator partner bringing their collective strengths and abilities to the table, but eventually the Mozambican professor usually takes the reins allowing the project to be more sustainable. After the project is off the ground, PCVs take more of a supporting role.

This year Peace Corps put on three REDES Conferences in Northern, Southern, and Central Mozambique, which is funded by PEPFAR. There were 50 students participants and 20 teachers at the Southern conference this year. Each school brought 1 PCV, 1 teacher, and 3 students who take what they learn during the conference back to share it with other group members. The 3 students usually take their enthusiasm back and develop into group leaders.

REDES Conference 2009

Last week I helped with the 5th Annual REDES Conference. When I decided to do Peace Corps, before I left many people asked, “Why I decided to join?” Depending on my mood the answer varied because it was hard to give just one concise answer and truthfully I did not fully know why myself, but I found a concrete answer this week. The concrete answer came when working with these young girls. Participating in this conference was one of the most memorable weeks of my life. One of the most challenging, yet inspiring too.

Memorable

I said this week was memorable. How can I even put into words how fun it was to watch many of these girls who have never been on a week-long vacation respond to the conference? The first day many were shy and unsure of themselves, but man were there transformations impressive. They absorbed information like sponges, spoke with more confidence each passing day, encouraged and respected one another constantly, and naturally, danced like there was no tomorrow. I’ll give a few examples.

• We had a 2-hour session on public speaking where the girls were advised to be confident and have strong contact with other while speaking. This is huge because girls often look down when speaking to you because it’s what they learn in their culture (women are taught to defer to the men and be submissive to authority in general). REDES teaches girls to be assertive and that they are equals. The girls loved the public speaking tips and did an activity where we gave them the chance to be in the 60 Seconds Hall of Fame. In order to be in the Hall of Fame, they had to talk without stopping for 60 seconds about whatever they liked in front of the group as public speaking practice. Many failed at first, but each girl bravely tried. Eventually, most succeeded, some refusing to give up even after 3 or 4 tries, all the while cheering on one another. At the end of the week, many of their feedback comments said things like, “Thank you for teaching us about public speaking. It was the first time I have ever heard of it,” and “I did not realize I could be an equal,” and “I will speak with more confidence in the classroom.”

• Three women living with HIV came to share their stories and afterwards the girls were able to ask questions The HIV positive women had just given their testaments: one had been disowned by her family, one young mother had recently lost her husband and had not yet told her young kids of her status, and the last one experienced a lot of discrimination. The room was somber even though the HIV positive women were insisting that their lives had continued thanks to proper treatment and that knowing their status had saved their lives. They were HIV activists. After the first few questions a young girl named Regina raised her hand to ask if she could get up right then and there to kiss and hug these women for their bravery. She did just that in front of this room of people and others followed her example. Regina was the good Samaritan, unafraid to touch the sick. I am normally “Miss-I-don’t-cry-in-movies-or after-I-lose-my-valuables-or-for-much-of-anything,” but I was moved to tears by her compassion.

• At the close of our first day, the girls changed into their swimsuits and ran straight for the ocean. The conference theme was “Eu Sou Eu” (I am who I am) to encourage them to love themselves and realize they are capable of reaching their dreams. You couldn’t help but see that this week they were getting a chance to take this message to heart when they bounded into the ocean freely, modeling and asking for pictures in their swimsuits. You’ve never seen girls so excited to be in the ocean – they were so full of energy and seemed so empowered!

Challenging

•Hmm…the conference went great and all the girls loved it and got a lot out of it. Of course, I’ll spare you all the logistical challenges, but will say there were additional challenges. I was a camp counselor with another PCV named Sarah for 10 girls. We all stayed in a cabin and did various activities together during the day and then reflections at night. Very much like most conferences I’ve attended in the US. However, Sarah and I were responsible for leading these girls in Portuguese, which was nerve-racking after only 6 months of speaking it. We just went with it, and did the best we could. I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say everyone got a kick out of our condom demonstration on a cucumber in less than perfect Portuguese!

• Also, it was harder to initially connect with the girls because of the dual language and cultural barriers. Generally, carrying on conversations with people I have just met comes easily, but it was work at times as a counselor. This is for a number of reasons:

o 1. It’s harder to say what I wanna say in Portuguese and have them understand me.

o 2. Often American culture dictates that we carry on a constant dialogue while in Mozambique they’re more comfortable to sit in silence and enjoy each other’s company.

o 3. We have less similar experiences due to different cultures and opportunities. That’s not to say similarities don’t exist, because fundamentally we’re the same, sometimes it just takes a little more effort and digging to realize it.

•In order to overcome these challenges and connect with these girls it just took some patience, creativity, and resolve to make it through some awkward silence during meals and miscommunications. I had to be patient because it just takes the girls a little more time to warm up to you. I found that connecting with the girls using things like music, dance, and sports (we played a lot of beach volleyball) works like a charm, which is probably one of the reasons I like those activities so much. I put on Beyonce the first night in the cabin and the girls started singing along in a cross between English and jibberish, ha…and then we started a dance party, which loosened up both me and the girls. Eventually, the creative ways to connect opened up conversation.

Inspiring

You always seem to read about all the colossal problems the world faces such as poverty, suffering, gender inequality, and illiteracy. I definitely see my share of these everyday. But despite all of that, I see bright futures for these 50 young girls. They fearlessly asked questions on women’s health and reproductive systems, gaining so much knowledge last week. They stood up eloquently sharing their dreams and goals to be lawyers, business owners, and singers. They were very self-sufficient and responsible all week-long (skills they have to learn at a young age out of necessity). They were full of energy and enthusiasm. Not only did they sing an anthem of home all week literally about how they would make something of themselves, but they became an anthem of hope to me promising to be a ray of light for Mozambique, for Africa, for this world.

Easter Mass in Mozambique

One of my least favorite parts of this transition into adulthood is not being able to be with your family and take part in your favorite traditions because of work on holidays. But as my parents always tell me when I try to tell them my sob story, and whine about how life gets harder as an adult: to first of all, stop over-dramatizing. Perspective, honey! Then comes the sensible advice to find a way to enjoy the holiday in the place I am with the people I am with no matter where that might be in the world. So that’s precisely what I tried to do today.

My friend Vic, a devout Catholic, invited a group of us to attend mass at his church and then cook a big lunch and dye Easter Eggs. I enjoyed attending my first mass in Mozambique for many reasons. It was interesting to compare to the many different kinds of churches (Catholic, Presbyterian, Universal, non-denominational) I have attended in each of the three countries I have lived where Romance languages are the official languages (Mexico, Spain, Mozambique). I believe participating in the worship services has enhanced my travel experiences significantly.

The Easter mass was noteworthy because although the liturgy, rituals, and traditions were the same as the Catholic churches I have attended in the US and Spain, the feel of the service was different. When I went to mass in Spain with my host mother, I could appreciate the Catholic tradition by listening to the powerful organ sounding hymns and admiring all the beautiful artwork and architecture that reminded me of another world. Although, truthfully, I found the services a little dry for my taste. In the US, I have fond memories of attending my friends’ first communions and weddings in the Catholic Church. But never have I been to a mass so full of energy! From the moment it started, barefoot women dressed in heart-patterned sarongs processed down the aisle dancing to the famous hymn “Glory Alleluia” presenting those who were to be baptized. The whole service followed like that – traditional hymns and prayers, but the Mozambicans had tied in their culture. It was apparent in the songs and by the random whooping noises from the congregation, ha, which really livened up the service.

At one point all 5oo people in the congregation joined hands and we swayed side to side singing “Glory, glory, glory, is peace among all men.” Touched, I leaned over to Vic, half-joking “It’s like we’re acting out He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” Here we were on Easter Sunday, actually on the other side of the world, sharing the same faith with the Mozambicans, singing in their language we are learning, being graciously welcomed to join them, black and white arms literally linked. Yes, another sappy, yet wonderful moment in this experience!

I still would prefer to be with my family during holidays, but I have learned that you can find a strong community and good people anywhere. So in the end I felt fortunate to spend Easter 2009 dyeing Easter eggs with my Peace Corps friends who are my family in these parts. Oh, and how much I have enjoyed going to church services and seeing how people all around the world worship!

For the past few months my organization has been partnering with UNICEF and AMURT (Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team) in efforts to improve sanitation practices and distribute knowledge of good hygiene habits. What this entails is basically mobilizing the community to build latrines for schools and teaching the kids to use them. Some simply had been defecating in the open, and although many are learning to use the latrines we’ve still got some work to do. It’s not the most glamorous work in the world, but it’s so important to give these kids a decent bathroom at schools! I know the US school system has its share of problems, but in comparison to the bamboo huts and one classroom schools without bathrooms I’ve been visiting, American primary schools are palaces.

Extracurriculars in the States consist of activities such as student government, organized sports teams, and chorus groups to develop leaders and give children constructive manners to spend their time. In Chibuto though, we’re not there yet. The schools are choosing about 15 kids from each school that demonstrate good behavior and leadership skills. These children are trained to be the Sanitation Committee. I like to think of it as the equivalent of Student Government in America, a bunch of overachieving students working together to make their school a better place. Community activists pull committee members aside during school and teach them good and bad hygiene practices, educating them about endemic sicknesses such as malaria, diarrhea, and cholera (there’s a cholera outbreak in our district right now so the work is very pertinent). The Sanitation Committee is responsible for encouraging other kids to wash their hands before eating, teaching you get cholera from dirty water, and for setting a good example for their peers. My first encounter with a Sanitation Committee was listening to them sing a song in the local dialect about diarrhea and how to avoid it…it was truly music to my ears, lemme tell ya.

The activists and latrine builders also hold assemblies with all the school children, leading an interactive discussion about why it’s important to use the latrines. UNICEF distributed illustrations of good and bad hygiene practices, which prove very effective at engaging the children into the material. Friday morning we were having a school assembly, and Maria, an activist was onstage talking about fazer-ing xixi in the latrine and the kids were so absorbed in the drawings it looked like they could have been watching a concert. I looked out from the stage and saw a sea of little faces peering at the illustrations and screaming answers to Maria’s questions, all pushing for a better view. I’m interested to see more of how this campaign develops and hope it successfully improves sanitation habits so that preventable sicknesses like diarrhea will cease to be responsible for so many deaths in the developing world.

I remember being very proud of Maria and Angelica, our two activists who were training the Sanitation Committee and teaching the entire school. The activists are both HIV positive women who are not very educated, living in a culture where women are not afforded equal rights with men, and live with the additional stigma that comes along with being HIV positive. But look at them and what they have chosen to dedicate their time and hearts to! The have not fallen into the potential binds of gender, sickness, or low education levels, but are rising to the occasion and overcoming the odds. They are alive and fighting admirably!

Today I’ve been visiting my Mozambican host family for the first time in three months. The day before my visit I got that excited nervous feeling you always get in your stomach before seeing loved ones you haven’t seen in awhile, but as usual when I finally got to their house I instantly felt at ease. The whole experience is much like a college kid going home and being surprised by how much they missed being taken care of and the comforts of home, and how nice it is just to relax in a safe space. The last few weeks of homestay all the PC volunteers were feeling a bit smothered by the love, attention, and advice of our host families. Like a kid about to go off to college, we were ready and anxious for some space (especially b/c in our PC homestay we were treated like little children after being on our own schedules in college). But it’s wonderful to have a kind family to visit anytime I want in Mozambique, a whole world away from NC where this adventure began…

Get ready because I’m about to draw a series of shamelessly sappy comparisons, but that’s just the mood I’m in. When we arrived to our host families last October, Namaacha was barren and brown. The roads were just dust and mud lined with the exposed skeletons of trees. The view from my bedroom window was the bare, brown hills of Swaziland. In the same way, our host families, this culture, and Namaacha meant nothing to us but an empty landscape.

Just three short months later my friend Emily and I were blown away as we traipsed the 30 minute walk to our families’ houses because the terrain was completely transformed into a luscious, green paradise with flowers and crops everywhere; we were following the trail now lined by six-foot corn husks that had shot up from the ground quickly. (Emily was carrying a bag of 20 coconuts on her head to gift our families, so you can imagine we were making quite the entrance). It was touching to hear everyone in the neighborhood welcoming Emily and me by name as they peeked out from their yards where they were doing wash and gardening. Of course we were received with open arms, big hugs, and kisses from our families who kept pensively claiming, “Gracey, you’ve lost weight.” (I think I might have lost around the 5 lbs I gained during training, maybe, but in the US this would normally be a congratulatory affirmation rather than this great cause of concern).

I had not realized how much it meant to our families that we visit until the following happened. During training three of us PC volunteers were next-door-neighbors so all of our moms were good friends. Unfortunately the volunteer in the middle of this row had to go home immediately for family reasons in January and had not had the chance to give an explanation to her host family. When we greeted Mama Rosina we did not know she had not heard the news and so when we broke it to her in the midst of all that celebrating, she started crying. We felt sad she was sad so we are trying to get the volunteer in touch with her, but it hit home with me that I better not neglect these families because they really care a lot about us. As the visit continued, I became reaffirmed how important it is to invest in relationships and how beautiful (and humorous and hard and every other emotion in the book) the cultivation of them can be.

This time when I showed up at midday I welcomed the bucket bath awaiting me like a pro, celebrating the privacy my family learned I liked (but only after some humorous events). When I finished my bath, I noticed they had washed the outfit I was wearing (undergarments too, just gotta go with it); it was hung neatly on the line. The house runs like clockwork and after 10 weeks I was familiar with how it ticked. There was no discussion or arguing the fact that I’d sleep in my room and I’d be crazy to call it anything else even though there are three beds for nine people. Since I’d been gone, my family had also adopted another child who was not being well taken care of so now they have 6 small children to feed. That did not stop them from stuffing Emily and me with food because they had baked cakes and more in honor of our visit. They even killed a chicken the hour I arrived so dinner would be fresh and the kids spent the afternoon munching on liver, which they kept offering and I kept declining!

It was fun to spend the afternoon with my host siblings. The CDs I’d burned for them as presents were blaring, the kids were dancing the jitterbug to “Build Me Up Buttercup” and re-teaching me the dance I’d taught them months ago, they were singing “Hey Jude” by the Beatles which I was learning to play on the guitar with them during homestay, and they were Crazy Eight card-playing champs! Farida defeated me in Speed and promptly trounced the older neighbor boy too; I could hardly hide my smile as she confidently gloated. After an afternoon full of playing, I decided it seems they benefited and learned some about American culture and I certainly benefited and enriched my life through this exchange. I was navigating their language with much more confidence thanks to their help, introduced to another way of living, and familiar with a new culture because they had opened their doors and hearts.

Five months ago I met this family in a bleak-looking Namaacha and now they have grown to be an unforgettable part of my life much like the physical transformation of the land here into a much more welcoming, fertile place. And this morning as a final reinforcement, I saw the water coming out the faucet at their house for the first time. There was no water when I lived with them because of a drought and they had to walk miles carting it everyday, but a few months later it is coming out with no effort. That’s one of the beauties in life that parallels this experience and makes life wonderful – one moment the water finally pours out after a long, dry spell and you feel content. What a good feeling when things that were once hard and took a lot of work, start to flow naturally and you see the fruits of your hard labor! How nice it has been to be laughing with this family in our home like I’ve been part of it forever…

Yesterday morning as I sat at the kitchen table, I stared at the world map on our wall, noticing that the African continent is literally the most colorful in the world (mostly due to the colonial legacies when the Western powers just to decided to divide it up, but that’s another story). I couldn’t help but wonder, is there something more to that? Could it be because they do in fact have some of the most colorful, richest cultures in the world?

Soon after this thought, I walked the five minutes to the local Presbyterian Church, trying to time it so I’d arrive early, but not too early because you all know how uncomfortable it is to feel all eyes on you in the pew when you are the obvious newcomer. My goal was to minimize this time, but failing miserably and in true Gracey-time, I instead got to slip in with a few others through the back because the service had already started. This worked to my best interest because I altogether managed to avoid the waiting period when you inevitably think to yourself, “It would have been easier to stay at home.” But then again, a little discomfort isn’t always bad for me..

I had finally motivated myself to make it to church because it is a huge part of Mozambican culture, (everyone goes!) and while I’m here I intend to experience it fully. The service lasted two hours and was entirely in Changana, the local dialect. However, that didn’t matter much because most of the service was dancing and singing, more universal languages.

First, a group of around 20 young adults in their twenties danced their way up to stage singing a song about going to the promise land tomorrow, in English. The song was a pleasant surprise, entertaining because it was sung with a Bob Marley-like accent, and the energy was incredibly rejuvenating.

Next, the Big Mommas (if you will) bounded onto the stage belting “Amazing Grace” in Changana. If there were ever a choir I was meant to belong to, it would be the Big Momma Choir because although most of them were a little off key, it didn’t matter because they were praising with all they had just the same. They were dancing, and clapping, and having a good ol’ time…

Finally, most of the church sauntered onstage and at this point the church was really celebrating. I sat, watching them smile their toothless grins, some dressed in Western suits and others in traditional capulana dresses, swaying as one, and I imagine this scene was the image of the Body of Christ Paul envisioned. Here are a people oppressed by poverty and AIDs, yet their spirit did not seem crushed at all. Quite the contrary, just like that cheesy worship songs says, I think they could sing of His love forever…

I left feeling uplifted by their energy and inspired by their faith. Maybe I was not worshiping with the most educated people in the world, but that didn’t mean I didn’t stand to learn something from them. Oh, and, maybe there is something more as to why that map of Africa is so colorful on my wall. At least I like to think so based on these experiences.

I just finished re-reading one of my favorite books by Phillip Yancey

entitled Where is God When it Hurts? This book helps me to view pain

in a new light and encourages me to find meaning in suffering. I

accept I’ll never know why the world is full of so much pain (age-old

question), focusing instead on how it can be transformed. I am

reminded that it can be destructive to provide cop-out “Christian”

answers to the suffering when we really don’t the know the reasons

behind it and the situation seems unfair and nothing we can say will

resolve the pain. Despite all that, this book challenges me to hope

that this life is not really the end and teaches me how pain can

sometimes be a gift. For example, pain is a warning system to inform

us when something is wrong and alerts us to take action to try and

make it better. I could continue, but Phillip Yancey puts it better so

if you’re interested then I urge you to check out his book.

Even if I had not been reading his book, I still think I would have

noticed a silver lining in the fight against AIDs. Please understand

that I do not wish this upon anybody, but it’s here and we have to

respond to it. As an observer and participant in the crusade to

combat AIDs, I’ve witnessed people joining together in a beautiful way

to care for one another. Brought to their knees, humbled out of

necessity to be cared for, coming together because their sufferings

are too great to bear alone – people leaning on people. I see it in

the Chibuto community as the sick, the healthy, the locals, the

foreigners, the educated, the uneducated, young and old link hands.

For the last month I have been participating in home care visits and

support groups. At every meeting the participants sing, dance, and

pray. During the home visits, local community members routinely check

up on the sick in a gesture to say, “You matter to me. I share in this

pain with you.” (I would like to point out that the caretakers are not

under family obligation, and that the care is not institutionalized.)

Genuine concern. Love in action.

During the support groups, all the HIV+ people share their pain,

complaints about their symptoms, anguish over hunger, and ultimately

comfort one another. Sometimes they cry in sadness and yell in anger

because they don’t understand and they hurt. There is always someone

else there who has been through a similar experience with the disease

and can provide a testimony on how they made it through. I was

particularly moved by a young, pregnant woman who feared that she

would transfer HIV to her baby. A woman bouncing a toddler on her knee

responded that she had experienced that same fear, but that she had

prevented the transmission by following the recommended protocols

she’d learned at the support group.

Often the group laughed and smiled. Another young woman said she was

done for good with men because they’d never done anything good for

her. When she adamantly proclaimed she was swearing off sex, the group

teased and laughed with her telling her surely she’d change her tune.

Nothing like the mention of sex to get any crowd riled up, guaranteed.

Their sickness definitely did not strip them of their sense of humor.

In all seriousness, what struck me was how these people came to the

meeting and what they gained. They came raw, real, broken. They seemed

to leave with rejuvenated spirits and the will to keep on living.

Afterwards, I traveled out to the country and watched another

spectacular scene. A group of activists at the community center were

passing on their culture by teaching AIDs orphans their songs and

dances. The activists circled with the children singing about how

they were here to help and support the kids. The song acknowledged

the children’s great loss, but strongly affirmed that the children

were not alone. The song continued that these women, the larger

community, and a loving God all remained with them.

The AIDs epidemic is awful, but I am seeing humans pull through

against the odds, forced to lean on each other for strength. In the

process, they are loving and bearing each other’s burdens. Where my

faith figures into all this is simple. I maintain hope that this life

is not the end. Furthermore, I trust that God himself knows what we’re

going through because he came down as Jesus and experienced every

human emotion personally. He knows what it is like to be lonely,

tired, sick, suffering, to die. But death on the cross was not the

end, resurrection followed. My faith helps me hope there’s something

more to all this, and for now my job is to respond to others by trying

to model Jesus’ life on Earth all the while finding the silver lining.

I cannot imagine a better way to lead my life or a leader I respect

more to try and imitate…

Yesterday I was reading a People magazine my friend sent me from the States. The final page listed celebrities' responses at how they're cutting back in the current US economic slump. Admittedly, my first reaction was to scoff because celebrities are known for buying exorbitant things and leading excessive material lifestyles. The thought of them cutting back brought out a cynical, self-righteous side of me. But celebrities are not the only ones in our culture to spend excessively. We are all often wasteful with our resources because we can afford to be and do not see the gravity of our harmful consequences. I stopped my scoffing at the People article (sorta), instead being thankful these celebrities are trying to cut back. Also I don't have much room to talk, because I too am often reckless with resources. It's easy to do in a country with so much. Growing up it's been the American way. To a degree some of the wastefulness is just the nature of this life, but I think it would all serve us well to re-examine where we could stand to cut back and conserve. How can we better care for the environment, have a more responsible carbon footprint, and save more resources for others?

Take water for example. I remember being reminded as a young child to turn off the sink while I was brushing my teeth to conserve water. Eventually, this became habit. When I was in college, NC suffered a drought so both state and university ordinances were mandated for things like car-washing and lawn-watering. My dorm had a campaign for shorter showers so I consciously did just that. I suppose my efforts could be counted as small, noble acts, which many of you probably have habituated into your lifestyles as well. However, it's not something I gave much thought until now when conserving water has become an ultimate necessity.

Since Abby and I don't have running water, we get a large barrel of water filled up once a week that has to last us the entire week. I probably use more water in one shower in the States (or luxurious bath, which is my preference) than Abby and I do together for the whole week in Mozambique. That's something to work your head around. We are able to cook, clean, wash dishes, have drinking water, and bathe daily on just one barrel. Impressive, right? I hope for the rest of my life I remember how possible it is to get by using less water, thereby leaving more for others. I am not suggesting that myself (or any of you for that matter) should take this lesson I've learned to any sort of extreme back in the States because that'd be impractical. I am just putting it into a new context. I am a child who grew up in a world where not having running water is practically unheard of and so the way I'm accustomed to using water in the US drastically differs from how I use it here in Africa. I'm amazed to see just how little I can comfortably get by on. I wanted to share my testament that it can be done, and how I'm personally learning to view water as the precious resource it really is.

*PS. At the end of February when I have access to good internet, I am planning on updating photos so expect a visual of our trusty barrel.

Now I realize how lucky we are to be able to call for a personally scheduled appointment and sit in air-conditioned buildings as we wait to be examined by well-trained medical professionals. It only took one trip to the local hospital here for me to come to this realization; health care here has a long way to go.

Today I was shadowing my co-worker Especiosa who exclusively works with pregnant women and young mothers, most of whom are HIV+. When we strolled up to the hospital at 8 am, we met an overwhelming scene. Over 100 young mothers and their babies were crowded into the waiting room, which was really just a hot porch, in line to weigh and vaccinate their babies. (Running through my thoughts, was the following: whoa baby, most of these mothers look younger than me.) As we weaved between the mothers and crying babies, I considered the hell this would be for someone who is not a kind person. I also imagined my college roommate of 3 years, Lauren Falduti, who would be busy running around this waiting room pouring love and compassion into these children. Me, I didn't know what to do, so I just smiled weakly and busied myself helping to set the demonstration on how to make baby food we were about to give.

Since neither packaged baby food like Gerbers is available here nor is the knowledge of healthy foods common, many mothers end up feeding their children only rice to supplement breast milk. Our mission was to do a hands-on demonstration on how to cook locally available foods that provide health value for babies to decrease malnutrition and to foster healthy growth and development. We passed around handouts that included both written and illustrated directions (because many of the moms are illiterate or only speak the local dialect, not Portuguese) on how to prepare a healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner for their babies.

I enjoyed watching them cook because about 30 moms worked together communally stirring pots and singing until the baby food was ready. As the food was rationed, I chatted with some of the moms and they convinced me I had to try the baby food. Normally the thought of baby food is utterly unappetizing, but I was starving and they were expectantly waiting. The baby food was corn flour, pumpkin leaves, ground peanuts, and carrots mixed together into a grits-consistency and it was surprisingly tasty. It blew Gerbers out of the water, just so you know…

I look forward to working more with the moms and babies because it's easy to fall in love with the kids and hands-on teaching is exciting. And next time I'm in an American waiting room I will be seeing it in a whole different light, more thankful for our medical facilities and professionals.

It is not entirely uncommon that men have more than one wife. Just last week when I was asking my co-worker how her kids and husband were, she replied nonchalantly, "I assume my husband is fine, but he works an hour away and lives with his other wife and family during the week. He spends the weekends here." I tried to mask my disbelief. I assumed that it was only women with low education levels and in rural settings that were part of polygamous relationships. Yet here was my intelligent co-worker with a good job and four kids of her own telling me she was a "casa dois" (casa dois is the term for second wife).

· One of the main campaigns my organization is working on in partnership with big INGOs such as WorldVision, Save the Children, and UNICEF is child registration. This entails visiting the homes of orphans and vulnerable children (those directly affected by the AIDs crisis) to fill out registration forms. In the US this is automatically completed at birth, but since not all babies are born in hospitals many births go unrecorded. I observed as my counterpart Paula went through a series of questions. Again, I found myself astonished by how many small children busy playing in the dirt nearby were orphaned from their parents' AIDs-related deaths. Time and time again, Paula checked the boxes on the registration form for both "mother living" and "father living" as no. In the boxes that indicated their weekly food consumption, only rice and vegetables were checked. The boxes remained empty for meat, dairy, fruits, etc. If they had a nutrition pyramid, most of the food groups would not be on it.

· Child safety is practically unheard of. We see young kids playing with sharp knives instead of rattles. There are not labels reading this is dangerous for a child 8 and under. What's more is, they have little parent supervision. The amazing thing is you do not see many accidents, though you can tell they do occur by all the scars.

· These are the most resourceful kids I have ever seen. I love observing the games they play and the toys they make because it takes talent and creativity. In place of juggling balls we'd buy at a toy store, they use round fruit from the trees. In place of an expensive toy car, they use recycled cans and wire to construct handy toy vehicles. Just goes to show you don't always need expensive things.

· When you take public transportation, count on two things: it is always PACKED and PUBLIC in the largest sense of the word. The main public transport is a chapa, which is essentially a mini-van converted into a small passenger bus. In the States, I am accustomed to riding in cars with air conditioning and personal space. Not so here! The chapa experience can be likened to two American games. o Public: You often find yourself in more compromising positions than on a Twister board – sometimes standing, limbs intertwined, a free-for-all. You have a simple choice to make: be supremely uncomfortable or embrace the experience. I try to embrace, but thank God for the heaven on Earth I will experience when I ride in an air-conditioned private car again! o Packed: Every chapa ride is a game of Sardines. How many people can we pack into one small space? At the very least, 18 people. 4 people in each of the 4 back rows and 2 more up front. To top it off, you squeeze assorted babies and live chickens to fill in any remaining spaces.

· Their version of a movie theater in small Mozambican towns is far from the luxurious American movie-theater experience. Instead of stadium seating, surround sound, and grand multi-showing air-conditioned theatres, the Chibuto movie theaters are bamboo buildings. Rather than high-quality films, the movie is some English-speaking action-packed movie without subtitles like Rambo. This does not sound appealing to me so I have yet to enter. I am holding out to once again be my dad's movie date next December. The difference is one movie ticket in the States is about $10 a pop while Moz theatres cost 1 metical or about 4 US cents. They do say you get what you pay for…

· I do not shop for food in a grocery store because they only exist in the capital, Maputo. Rather I go to the market. I alternate between loving it and dreading it. It's convenient to buy fresh vegetables and fruit and know they'll be available everyday. The market is chaos that somehow works – the constant movement of buying and selling, women weaving about in colorful skirts and baskets on their heads, dodging the steady stream of cars. It is a vibrant scene that keeps you on your toes, which I appreciate. I also enjoy the friendly interactions and not having to deal with cash registers and long super market lines. However, some days the thought of entering the market exhausts me because as a foreigner you get a lot of special attention that I do not want to face some days. Alas, regardless of my mood I brave the market everyday equipped with my woven basket (I still have not carried it on my head, maybe I'll brave that by year 2) and a smile.

· While I'm on the subject of food, you can buy an entire cow's head at the butcher. Each time I walk by and see the cow's head it surprises me because it looks like it might moo at me any minute. The live chickens, goats, and pigs you take home to cook for dinner do not faze me, but I can't get over the cow. My parents reminded me that it is how you buy food in most of the world, but I spent the first 22 years of my life buying frozen meat that bears little resemblance to the animal. I think seeing how the rest of the world lives and where my food really comes from is good for me….hey girl heyyyy this is reality. (I couldn't resist a small, cheesy tribute to my fabulous senior year).

· If there is not a dressing room when shopping, it's perfectly acceptable to create your own in public. Yesterday I found myself in thrift store junky heaven in our second-hand clothing market. The occasion was finding a chique de doer top for my first real Mozambican girl friend my same age. She is the oldest of 5 kids and about to start studying journalism at university, so we hit it off. It was comforting to shop with my new friend Netty because it reminded me of being home with my sisters and friends. Netty found a top she liked and tells me she is going to experimentar (try it on). I tried not to laugh out loud when she stripped down to her bra right there on the spot as people continued passing through the market. I will not follow suit because I am a foreigner, but I love that it doesn't matter here. This is probably Reason #465 why I love Mozambique.

In class? A staff meeting? Sleep in after a late Thursday night at Top O? What I did Friday morning was a first for me. I participated in tribal dancing (*) with 9 mothers under a mango tree. The experience was both surreal in the sense I was wondering how the heck did I end up here, and very normal because you could tell this was part of their usual routine and comfortable for them.

My co-worker Paula and I walked the hour to Uahamusa where we are building the community center to find the mothers already hard at work. The were clearing away the weeds with hoes around the center. I made a point of helping because they should know that we're on the same level. We are working together, equally hard, to make this community center a reality and that should be reflected in sharing all the responsibilities. (I admit it crossed my mind to rest and watch because manual labor is tough, but I had to remind myself I did not come all the way to Africa to sit on my butt. Although it takes constant motivation and discipline to do something, it is rewarding in the end).

Eventually we took a break for much needed relief from the sun. That was precisely when the fun began. The moms all stood up in a circle so I did likewise. They started singing, clapping, and stomping to a beat. Naturally, I followed suit. It's lucky I've never minded making a fool of myself because they got the biggest kick watching me learn their dances. The songs kept coming, the dances changed, and eventually I caught on. How much fun to be part of their rich culture! The site was awesome. The hoes were discarded on the ground around us. The moms, both young and old, outfitted in traditional colorful capulanas, dancing, some with babies strapped on their backs. Our feet moved to the rhythm—about half the moms were barefoot, the other half wearing rain boots (for gardening), and me in my New Balances. We were all smiling. All happy in the moment. I almost forgot I was an outsider until the moms pointed out the small crowd of kids that had gathered by the water pump to watch the white girl dance. Ha, I guess that just comes with the territory…

When the dancing ceased and the work recommenced, I observed the area surrounding the community center with Paula and was pleased to see I could put some of the knowledge I learned in my college classes to use. Outside the community center were uncovered buckets of stagnant water that had been sitting for weeks. We talked about the importance of covering them as a way to prevent malaria because open stagnant water is a prime breeding place for mosquitoes. By the end of the day we had lids on the buckets and I felt content to help in that simple way. Drops in the bucket, right?

This particular Friday morning I got to live the best of all worlds. I got to mix work and play, and share a little bit of the education I have been gifted with others in need too.

*When I say tribal dancing, I mean that in a loose sense of the term. They were simply engaging in song and dance in the local dialect.

This vignette will be most truly appreciated by the very people I usually take on this role with…my little sisters Kristi, Sarah, and Molly, alternately known as my favorite victims. I really enjoy the company of my host sisters and am comfortable enough now with Farida (13) and Maria (11) to mess with them and play annoy them in that way only your siblings can. Last night I had loads of energy stored up after weeks of not running, so I playfully poked my sisters in the ribs a few times. BAD IDEA because after that it didn’t take them long to discover my greatest secret…how ticklish I am. As rain pounded on our tin roof, they chased me around our small house tickling me as I scrambled to take refuge anywhere and everywhere. All 3 of us laughed until we had tears in our eyes. The tag team of Farida and Maria have become my latest tickle monster, a rival to my childhood tickle monster (that terror I will call Keith). I guess that’s what I get for starting “trouble” with my sisters, but on any given day I am happy to be tickled by them because laughter really is the best remedy for any wave of homesickness I feel.

Some have emailed me to ask how to subscribe to Gracey's blog, as many have, so that her new posts are delivered to your email. It's simple. Attached is a picture of where to subscribe. On the right side of the blog, it says "subscribe via email." Simply input your email in there and click "Subscribe." That's all there is to it.....

Craig

I've just posted about three weeks of missives from Gracey. I'm sure you will enjoy reading them as much as I have. You'll note that a recurring theme in these posts is HIV/AIDS. She also mentions the theme of myths that compound the problem.

I have posted a spreadsheet I prepared for a project I did on the Church and HIV/AIDs in Africa. You can view it here. The data is a bit old but astonishing. It is very difficult for us North Americans to comprehend a world in which more than a third of the young adult population is wiped out and in which the average life expectancy is in the late 30s. But that has been the reality for more than ten years for some of the sub-Saharan countries.

Some of my African friends who are Anglican priests in Zambia, South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania report that the lethal combination of war and HIV/AIDS is radically changing cultural norms. The number of marriageable males is so low in some areas and the death rate for both sexes is so high that females are organizing society the way it was done among the natives of North America centered in the great Mississippian culture a thousand years ago: they are shifting to a matriarchal culture (in those areas most affected) in which women exercise authority over most aspect of life (other than war-making) and every woman is an aunt to every child.

These colleagues report that Saturday is "funeral day." One friend reports that he regularly conducts five funerals a day.

Such is the effect of HIV/AIDS, and why we can expect to hear much more about it as Gracey's ministry there continues.

This week was difficult because it is the halfway point in training. The days drain you because you wake up at dawn to learn Portuguese and sometimes battle heat, homesickness, and everything new. I have been here over a month and still have three more weeks until I know where I will live for the next 2 years. Naturally frustrating. As PC trainees, sometimes it feels like you are juggling a lot. On Tuesday when I woke up without energy, I shrugged it off and chugged along until about dinnertime when I retired to my room early feeling sick. We had the big halfway test on Thursday and then our much anticipated site visit – and so I was refusing to get sick! Until of course I threw up the next three days straight.

At points the week was miserable, but I have never felt so supported in my life. (This is fantasy land during training and it will be different when I’m a volunteer without the luxury of 56 other PC volunteers as neighbors). The first day I was sick I had about 10 house calls from all 6 volunteers in my neighborhood. This continued all three days parading in with smiles, Sprites, and saltines so I couldn’t help but feel a little better. Text messages came from the Brasilian women I teach English to, from the locals I play basketball with, from volunteers wishing me well. Other host moms and dads dropped by while Mama Adelia and Farida graciously catered to my needs.

Living abroad is sometimes unpleasant away from the comforts of home and there are certain risks and precautions, but for me it’s worth it. And I count this experience for why I’m a believer that you can find family everywhere. For now, Namaacha is not such a bad home away from home.