i know, i know, yet again, i haven't posted in forever. i'll give you two reasons: one, i've been somewhat busy, on and off, and two, as the time for me to go home comes closer and closer, i've been feeling more and more apathetic about things, including blog posts. but i'll give it my best shot.

so here are some things i've done since my last post:

trainings/meetings/conferences:

- stakeholders workshop. over the past several months some other health pcvs and i have helped my pc boss write and analyze a survey for health volunteers to see about the health project going in a new direction. this meeting, for all the government and ngo partners to the pc health project, was the culmination of this, presenting the results of the survey and new directions for the project. it was a stuffy embassy affair, but it was also interesting to see the process, help with developing the new project framework, and understand how unbelievably complex the whole thing is.

- training on financial management. pretty basic stuff about book-keeping and budget-management. honestly, i went more because i think it will be useful for me in my job next year than because i needed it for my current work. even tho it was basic and very intuitive, i've never actually been taught this type of thing before, so it was useful.

- COS (close of service) conference. 3 days for my pcv group (Moz 13) to talk about our service, the end of our service, re-entry and reverse culture shock, how to go about applying for jobs and grad school, and, for those 13 of us crazy enough to stay for a third year, about the logistics of going home and coming back. it was also a last time for all of us to be together (52 out of the original 57 made it through the 2 years), and pc staff were wonderful and allowed us lots of down time talk, catch up, and process everything. we were at a beautiful beach resort in northern inhambane province and it was a really relaxing time.

- JOMA transfer meeting. my loyal readers will remember that last year in july i went to a meeting where the "older" generation of pcvs passed on the burden of the JOMA project to us. this was our chance to pass it on to the next group. even though i (and the national coordinator) will be here for next year, the new group needs to take over. and they were great, we tried to give them a clear outline of what had happened in the past, the new directions we tried (not altogether successfully) to move in, and some ideas about how they could move on in the future, and they ran with it. they were making decisions by the end of the meeting that we were only making by our planning meeting in january, so i feel like we're leaving the project in good hands. and good hands or not, i know all of us are feeling pretty exhausted and ready to be done with JOMA!

- ANAMED. this was a training on natural medicine, developed by a church group, held at my friend Denys's site in Mulevala. over the course of 5 days 6 PCVs and our counterparts learned about a variety of natural treatments, how to make therapeutic oils, lotions, and tinctures, and how to build a firewood-saving stove. i had been feeling pretty stressed out before this training, with all the traveling to all those other trainings and conferences, and spending a week in rural, beautiful, peaceful mulevala, with no cell-phone service, was just the relaxing break i needed. i'm really excited about the possibility of teaching some other peer educators some of what we learned at this training, both for their use in helping patients, and possibly to be able to sell the oils and lotions to make money.

work:

- the first savings and loan group is coming along well, they now have over 2000 meticais in their "pot," (to put this in perspective, that's roughly 60USD, and about 1/4 of what i get in a month from pc), and all the members have been able to take out at least one small loan.

- another small group of peer educators also decided to start a savings and loan group. i've found explaining the concepts to them a little more difficult, probably largely because their members are older and at least 2 speak more limited portuguese, but they seem enthusiastic about it.

- the sewing training for orphans that i helped organize with a local association came to an end. they hadn't been able to include funds for a closing ceremony in their grant, and they'd been worried about that, because that type of ceremony is very important, but they produced a lot of material throughout the training, mostly baby clothes, school uniforms, and tablecloth and place-mat sets, and with those proceeds they were able to buy drinks and food for a simple closing ceremony, and i was really proud of them. they started a second training a few weeks later, so we'll see how this one goes!

other:

- i've been reading a lot. i keep a list of the books i read in my journal, and i went back and counted recently and i've read 62 books (and counting) since entering the peace corps!

- i've also been studying. i'm taking two courses online, intro psych and nutrition, and i've really been enjoying the experience of studying, and having some sort of structure in a life that is so often so un-structured.

so that's mostly how i've been filling my time. i mentioned above that i've been feeling somewhat apathetic and lackadaisical about new work stuff. even tho i'm coming back for a third year, i will be doing different work, and so i feel that as my time with these people and this job is winding up, i've accomplished pretty much all i can with them, and there's not enough time (and i don't have the energy) to start anything new. i'm still really excited about my third year, about learning and doing different things, but i am SO happy that i'm coming home in a few weeks. i'm looking forward to relaxing, catching up with friends and family, and enjoying the peace and quiet that i so value and is virtually impossible to get in this hot, crowded city (oh yeah, it's getting hot again, another thing i'm looking forward to it NOT being at home!). so, pc still hasn't given me my official ticket information, but i am supposed to arrive home november 20, and will leave january 2 or 3. i plan to be in vermont for most of this time, with probable trips to maine, boston, and connecticut, and i plan to spend new year's in nyc. so i hope this means i will be able to see all of you who are nearest and dearest to me. you know who you are. i'll be in the eastern standard time zone before you know it!:)

So my biggest most recent adventure, as promised….i went to the world cup! (that’s soccer for those of you who are super clueless). It was in south Africa, just one country away, how could I not? I bought the tickets over a year ago w/ my friend kate, and the whole idea seemed sort of distant and unreal until all of a sudden it came time to leave! In the interest of saving money, we drove the whole way. Actually scored a ride in a private car down and back with a guy from quelimane who was going to Maputo to apply for a scholarship, so we luckily avoided the bus, but it was still 24+ hours. We spent one night in Maputo and then got on a bus to south Africa. We came into the same bus station in joberg as I’d been to before, and I went through the same sense of “I’m supposed to feel unsafe here,” but everything worked out fine. A really nice lady at the information desk called us a taxi and while we waited we watched people go nuts watching the last south Africa game. The host country unfortunately didn’t qualify to move on to the next round, but they beat france, usually a powerhouse, which was really exciting, and the bus station sounded like a stadium, complete with screaming fans and those god-awful loud horns called vuvuzivelas. Our taxi man came into the station to meet us, and right away we could tell he was…special. He talked a mile a minute in a really thick accent I found hard to understand. Our hostel was like 45 minutes outside the city and he talked animatedly the entire time, narrating as we went along “this is a mall…this is a school…we’re turning here….” Our hostel was called the thatchery, and he was convinced this meant the place had a thatched roof so at every semi-rustic looking building he’d slow down and say “thatched roof, this is it!” we had the hardest time convincing him that we didn’t know what the roof looked like but it was the name of the place. It was probably the most hilarious taxi ride of my life, but we finally made it to the hostel. It was freezing! I mean literally, freezing, the news said it was getting below 0 degrees Celsius at night, total shock for two girls living in the tropics, cold in quelimane means I can sleep with a sheet. But kate’s from Wisconsin, and I’m from Vermont; we sucked it up. Other than the distance from the city, the hostel was great. Friendly staff, comfortable rooms (thank god with blankets!), and a nice pub where we got dinner and watched that night’s soccer games. Kate was the perfect friend to go with, because she’s really into soccer. I could understand the basics of a game but a lot of the finer points are often lost on me and she explained it all to me without making me feel stupid.

The next day we had to go out and get our tickets. We’d been a bit worried about this, conflicting information about how much identification and proof of purchase we’d need, but it turned out to be a piece of cake! We took a taxi from our hostel to the airport cuz he was picking up other guests, and there we used a kiosk, just put in my credit card and out popped our tickets! Crisis averted. That afternoon the final games of the US group were on, US-algeria and Slovakia-england, at the same time. There were roughly equal numbers of Americans and brits at the hostel, and since the pub had two tvs both games were on at once, with the sound on the England game. It was super confusing for awhile to hear one game and watch another. And it was super tense because both teams needed to win to move on to the next round. England scored relatively early and so their fans became super boisterous , but the US kept missing shot after shot, even got one shot that was called off-sides and wasn’t (I actually know what that means!), and we were all on the edge of our seats until the US finally scored in overtime! It was so tense, but then so amazing to be in a bar full of fans, ALL of whom were happy!

The second those games got over a bunch of us piled into shuttles to go to a live game, Ghana vs. germany, at soccer city, the (I think) biggest stadium of the tournament, the one where the final game will be played. It’s gorgeous, looks like a glowing, benevolent spaceship. When we first got off the bus, quite a ways from the stadium, it seemed pretty chaotic. It reminded me of going to a state fair, cars parked in a field for miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers), and hordes of people pulling you along towards the final destination. Except here, the hordes of people look like they’re going to some kind of crazy dress-like-your-flag themed Halloween party. So we walked to the stadium, and I thought it was going to be painful chaos trying to get through lines and find our seats, but I was amazed at how smooth everything went. I probably spent no more than 10 minutes total waiting in various lines to get in. in contrast, I waited in line for probably 20 minutes to buy “spiral chips,” a potato cut in a long thin curly-cue on a stick and deep fried, yummy and different but I’m not sure worth 20 minutes and 15 rand. After snacks, and a quick trip through the over-crowded over-priced official FIFA fan store, we went to find our seats. We were way up in the top tier, but when we stepped out of the stairwell the view was spectacular, you could see the whole stadium, it was just like a shot on television but breathing in the air, it was really amazing. We were rooting for Ghana, the only African team that still had a chance of moving on to the next round, but we were surrounded by loud germans which was a little scary, but we held firm. The game was pretty good, both teams played well. It was so funny to be in a place that I’d been seeing on tv, that my mind was telling me was such a big deal, but watching a game felt just like any other sporting event I’ve ever been to, so normal. Except for those vuvuzivelas. They are LOUD. And there were over 83,000 people in the stadium, the better part of them blowing them. Someone had suggested we bring earplugs and thank god we did because I think we would have left with permanent hearing damage otherwise, no joke. Germany ended up winning, so they were ecstatic and it was sad for Ghana, but then they announced that the result of the other, simultaneous game from their group meant that Ghana got to move on to the next round too and they just flipped out, they were more excited than the germans, and it was such a sweet happiness, it really touched me. Some players went flying around the field with their flag, and some Ghanaians sitting near us noticed we were rooting for Ghana and took a picture of us with their flag. It was such a high, i totally caught futbol fever. Who wants to go to rio with me in 2014???:)

After the game we hiked several kilometers out to a gas station where we were meeting the shuttle, bussed home, and crashed in our freezing beds, only to get up early the next day and head back to Maputo. One more night there and we headed back up the 24+ hour trip home. It was completely exhausting, but totally worth it. I hadn’t been paying a ton of attention to the games before I went down, I’d caught a few cuz I happened to be at someone’s house or in a restaurant but wasn’t worried about it, but I begged laras to lend me his tv for the remainder of the cup (or “Mundial” as they call it here) and ever since I’ve been a faithful fan watching every night. I was secretly glad when Ghana beat the US, because it meant they moved onto the quarter finals. It’s just right that an African team should be in it as long as possible. It’s actually really interesting, a lot of the big-wig teams have gotten knocked out, so it’s shaping up to be an interesting and unpredictable last few rounds. God, listen to me. I promise, once this is over I won’t have anything to say about sports for another 4 years…..

I’ll try to put up some pictures as soon as I can. And for anyone who wants to feel in the spirit with me, just turn on Shakira’s “Waka Waka” song, because I seem to have it permanently lodged in my head. “This time for Africa!”

i went to maputo to meet them, and they were about the last people off the plane. we didn't get to our hotel til after 11, we were all exhausted but hungry, so we went downstairs to a local bar to find something to eat. they told us they didn't have anything to eat cuz it was late, so we ordered drinks and bought bad potato chips from a street vendor. then we saw the waitress bringing grilled cheese sandwiches to a table next to us, and were like, wtf?, so we asked and she said, "oh, we just have sandwiches, not real food".....yeah. welcome to mozambique guys! the next day we got up and caught a chapa to namaacha to visit my host family. it was totally surreal to be sitting on a chapa with my parents. worlds colliding! and then it was totally amazing to be back in namaacha. my family was awesome as usual, because of the cell-phone problem i'd only been able to re-remind them we were coming the day before, and they were like "sure, show up with your family, no problem!" we basically just relaxed with them, had good meals, my host-mom plied my dad with beer, my real mom plied my host-sisters with questions; my family harangued a cousin or something into driving us around town so they could see the swazi border and my host-mom somehow convinced the border guards to actually let us walk past the mozambican immigration (we'd left our passports at home), all the way up to the sign that said "Welcome to Swaziland." crazy. the next day after lunch we headed back to maputo, did a little walking around the central market and got some souvenirs, and rested a bit. then went out for thai food for dinner with my old boss juliana, her mom, and her empregada/my friend luizinha. it was a strange combination of people at the table, only juliana and i spoke both english and portuguese so there was a lot of halted conversation and translation, but it was really wonderful.

the day after we headed to quelimane where we had a whirlwind tour. my parents of course wanted to see everything, and everyone i know wanted to meet them. we had exactly one meal in my house because people kept inviting us over, i've never had such a busy social calendar! we rented a car, which seemed like a bit of a luxury but also completely necessary in order to see everything. and luckily laras had vacation at the same time and was a saint and drove us around the entire time. the first full day, while laras picked up the car, we walked to town, and even tho for me it was finally cooling off it was sweltering for them coming from spring in new england and they almost melted. but we cooled off, they saw the icap office and met some of my co-workers, and after lunch we drove around so they could see the city and the variety of neighborhoods, even went to some places i'd never been! that night was our one and only meal at home, laras and i made coconut rice and fish, and my parents got to experience grating coconut and cooking on my charcoal stove, it was pretty fun. i'm having trouble remembering the exact order of our other adventures, but here's what else we did:

we ate out: one breakfast at laras's aunt's house (mandioca with coconut); one breakfast at paulo the peer educator's house (mandioca and mucapata and coconut water); dinner at a restaurant with my bestest pc friends (half-chickens all around!); lunch at laras's mom's house (matapa, mucapata, chicken); dinner with my land-lord's family (matapa, beans, 2 kinds of chicken, fish); drinks at the top of hotel chuabo, watching the sun set over the river; and dinner at my friend gina's house (matapa and zambezian chicken). we were stuffed silly the entire time.

we drove to gurue, a beautiful town in central zambezia. it was about a 6 hour drive, and we went there and back in a day. it was pretty ridiculous, i know, but i think it was worth it. mom and dad got to see a lot of scenery, and lots of different towns and places i've talked about a lot. laras really wanted to take my parents there because he'd lived there for several years, and we had a great time. we walked around the market there and bought capulanas, then drove up a long, windy, narrow, cliff-side path to the top of a hill, to a place called casa dos noivos (the newly-weds' house). the house itself was pretty run down, but you could tell it had been lovely once. and the view from the top was incredible, you could see forever. the only thing i could compare it to was a national park i visited in brazil, but this vista had the added bonus of being full of gorgeous green hills, so it felt more like home. after a picnic lunch at the top of the hill we drove all the way home again. again, ridiculous, but worth it. another day we visited a house where they're running the sewing training i mentioned in my last post. mom and dad got measured for capulana clothes. we then went to visit paulo, one of the peer educator leaders and my counterpart for permaculture, he'd invited us over, and was so proud to show us his machamba (farm), serve us food from his land, and introduce us to his infant twins who'd i'd been given the honor of naming, and did so after my dad's parents, frank and ruth. it was really touching both to see dad with the babies and to hear paulo thank my parents for sending me to africa and for all the help i've given him. from there we drove through nicoadala, where laras lives during the week, through licuare, where he works during the week, to luala, where we picked up gina, my best mozambican friend, who teaches there. we surprised her at her house and it was so amazing to see her, we'd been out of touch for weeks between my work and hers and the cell phone problems. she gave me and my parents huge hugs, it was like she'd known them forever. we piled her and her son into the car and kidnapped them to continue on our field trip. the destination of the day was the Zambeze River, famed in song and story, and southern border of zambezia province. it's always farther than i think it is, but i think it was worth it, kind of a mile-stone, and more beautiful views. we drove back to nicoadala and a late lunch at laras's house, then went north to the Lagoa Azul ("Blue Lagoon"), a famous local beach spot i've never been to. we had to bribe a guard to get into the grounds, but we got there just in time for sunset, it was beautiful.

on a sunday my mom and i went to church, something she'd really wanted to do. i hunted down the anglican (episcopal) church in queli, not easy to find, it's off the street and still under construction. it appeared "normal," pews, ornaments on the altar, etc. the format of the service was pretty traditional, it was luckily in portuguese not chuabo so i could translate the basics for my mom, until it came time for the sermon, when a handsomely dressed lay-woman stood up and began to basically re-hash all the readings, in english and portuguese (turned out she was nigerian, but never figured out if the english was solely for our benefit or not), with a lot of fire-and-brimstone style moralizing. the sermon lasted over an hour, by which point my mom was getting antsy to leave, which i thought was kind of funny. but the service wasn't complete until we newcomers had stood up front and introduced ourselves. i hate that. but we survived. we went straight from church to the beach with some of my pcv friends. we'd forgone the prettier beach for the long trip to gurue, but my parents couldn't leave without putting their feet in the indian ocean. that's probably about all they did cuz it started raining not long after we got there, but it was pretty and we relaxed and had a nice lunch afterwards.

and that's it. i can't tell if it sounds like a lot, but it sure felt like a lot! i think just 5 full days in quelimane. i think we were all exhausted by the time it was over. at times it was a little odd to be mixing my worlds like that, but mostly i was really pleased with how easily my parents fit in with my friends and my world here. i'm having camera issues and can't get pictures off my camera right now, but my mom has posted lots of pics on facebook, so friend her and see them for yourself! or go hunt down my dad, who's the professional photographer in the family.mom and dad, if you disagree with anything i wrote, or if you think i left anything out, feel free to write up your own account and send it to me, i'll even post it as a real post. :)

omg, i don't know if i can handle this, i've been gone so long and so much has happened. but i know the longer i put it off the more daunting this task will be. so......

let's start with april, which is when i pretty much dropped off the face of the earth. towards the end of april is when the joma conference happened, so pretty much the whole month of april was spent being really really tense and stressed. it's hard to explain, cuz in some ways i would say the conference wasn't that much work, i mean, it was all pretty straight forward, the national level project and financial coordinators did all the hard work and sent us regional underlings precise lists of what we needed to do. and it wasn't anything particularly hard, most of the prep stuff was actually kind of mundane: open a bank account, pay deposits on venue and food, make a million photocopies, buy supplies, etc. and my good buddy luke was actually the conference coordinator, i was his second-in-command and the money person, but as i have learned at other trainings i've helped run i have trouble letting go and letting things happen in their own way so i was antsy and micro-managing a lot. i think the real stress was just the weight of the idea, it was "The JOMA Conference" in big bold letters, something i'd heard about and thought about for so long that it was like we had to be stressed just to make it seem like we were doing it right. sigh. and we did it. the actual conference only lasted 3 full days. most things ran pretty smoothly, and the things that didn't were pretty predictable: the trainer, who was from maputo (a city many of whose inhabitants don't realize they live in one of the poorest countries in the world) wasn't satisfied with the accommodations; the food was late more often than not; almost all of the sessions ran over schedule (i take a large part of the blame for this, we tried to pack probably 5 days worth of really heavy material into 3 days); often the other PCVs (all newbies except for me and luke) seemed a little uninterested in what was going on.....i could go on. i unfortunately can't comment much on the actual content of the sessions, i probably missed about half of them cuz i was running around organizing stuff and during most of the rest i was so stressed out i didn't absorb anything. like i said, the content was dense, and i'm sure got a little much for some people, but i think over all they were interested. they played games at night at had a blast. we got a lot of good constructive criticism but no super-negative feedback, so all-in-all i think it went about as well as could be expected. it was a good experience that i have no desire ever to repeat!

right after joma, i just crashed. literally, the day after i was running around town paying the remaining balance on the venue, food, and trainer's expensive hotels, and i almost fell asleep on my feet. i booked it home and collapsed. a day or two after, my technological world collapsed too. meaning, something happened to a major fiber-optic cable and the northern 2/3 of mozambique was without mcel (the main cell phone company), land lines, or internet, for about 2 weeks. i know, boo-hoo, i'm in the peace corps in africa without technology. actually, i'm not complaining at all. sure, it was a slight pain in the ass. but i managed to get my most vital communication done with a cell phone number from the other company (which was so flooded with new customers that it basically didn't work either, but did a few times for me when it counted most which is all that matters), and other than that i decided that this was the universe's way of telling me it was ok to chill out and relax and not work. all the work stuff i needed to do (and there was definitely stuff i needed to do after 2 weeks of thinking about nothing but joma) involved either catching up on email (no internet), finding and meeting up with people in quelimane (no cell phones, and i'm WAY to lazy to walk ALL over the city looking for people i'm probably not going to find), and communicating with joma folks in other parts of the country to work on finalizing data for that (no cell phone again).

the biggest upcoming thing that i couldn't work on was my parents' visit, but i'd managed to text a friend in maputo (where they knew nothing of our northern technological woes) to email them so they kenw why i'd dropped off the face of the digital world, and they made it here just fine without any virtual hand-holding. i'll give their trip a blog-post all their own. stay tuned.

since their trip, i've been re-figuring out, yet again, what i'm doing. one big activity i have going right now is a project that i helped a local association of people living with HIV write months ago that took forever to get approved. the association, called VAHIYA, includes several peer educators, which is how i met them. several of the members are skilled seamstresses and tailors and they wanted to run a 3-month training for OVCs (jargon for "orphans and vulnerable children," basically any child who is hiv-positive, has a parent who is hiv-positive, or has lost at least one parent) on basic sewing skills. with the grant money we were able to buy machines and sewing materials, and pay the trainers a little something for their considerable time and effort. the group has been great, i've hardly needed to oversee the activities at all. i see the association's president about once a week to see how things are going, give him money, get receipts, etc. i also try to stop in at least once a week to just sit. it's one of those funny things, sometimes it doesn't seem like a lot, people sitting quietly in a mud house and learning to sew, but to me it's so amazing that the initiative came from them, and they're doing all the work all on their own. some days recently, after lots of rain, the house where they're holding the training is almost impossible to get to, i had to have a bike drive me all the way up to the doorstep once cuz the house was completely surrounded by water, but they're always there working. i can tell some of the kids are going to come away from it with very good skills, and while others may just be able to fix their clothes at home, i think having this kind of attention paid to them is an opportunity many wouldn't have otherwise, and i'm really happy with how the project is going so far.

the small group of peer educators doing the savings and loan project is still going. i had a hard time meeting with them for several weeks because of joma, no cell phones, then my parents' visit, but they keep going, saving bit by bit, and actually gave out their first loans to 2 group members a few weeks ago! they don't always use the exact processes that i laid out, but what they're doing works for them and they all still seem happy with it, and last week they were extra happy because i was finally able to get them some materials, most notably a lockable cash box. they had gotten to the point where they'd saved enough money that they were nervous about leaving it around the house, so this was a great addition. still no other groups have latched onto the idea, but another group has proposed a much more modest and reasonable income generating project that i'm going to see if i can get funded, and regardless, i'm going to look into getting training in business skills for some of the more motivated peer educators.

so that's where i'm at in work. the only other big news in my life is that my extension has been approved and officialized so, pending disaster, i will definitely be staying for a third year of service. some days i think i'm crazy, but i am excited about it. i'll still be with icap, but i'll be doing different work. there's a grand plan within the ngo world and the ministry of health for ngo partners to slowly phase out of the country and leave their services to the government and local orgs. it's such a complicated process i can't even begin to envision how it's going to happen. i agree it needs to happen, but it will be difficult. and i will play a small part in it. icap will be one of the first ngos to start phasing out, as they were one of the first to start working here, so next year i will be helping some local organizations prepare for that switch, to receive responsibility for services icap currently provides as well as to handle the money that comes along with it. there's still a lot up in the air for me, for instance, the particular orgs haven't been identified yet, and depending on what area they work in and where in the province they work, my work could have some very different outcomes, but i'm excited about all the possibilities, excited to be moving to a different sector of icap.....we'll see what happens! but as promised, i will be home at the end of the year. i have to "c.o.s." (close of service) along with my group, so i will go through all the processes as if i were going home for good, and will leave the country november 19th, and be home through christmas. so mark your calendars and come and see me!

k, as promised, i will post a separate entry about the big family vacation asap, and, if you're lucky, i might even right about my most recent adventures. but i need to go get something to eat first. stay tuned! hugs all around! :)

in mid-january we had our mid-service conference, my entire training group together again. it was really cool to see some people i hadn't seen since training, tho also weird and overwhelming at times, i found myself often retreating to my little zambezia group of friends. at the conference we talked about a lot of stuff, including m&e (monitoring and evaluation, a necessary evil), savings clubs (more on that later), and the increased peace corps budget and enrollment goals and the possibility of extending for a third year of service (yes, i'm thinking about it, but don't worry, i'd be home in december no matter what). also got a cavity filled and had a doctor's appointment, no parasites or anything!

once that week was over, a smaller group of us stayed an extra few days to plan the joma and redes conferences. my loyal readers will remember way back in july i went to a meeting to plan the transfer of joma responsibilities from the old group to the new. this planning meeting was the shit from that transfer meeting hitting the fan. 7 or 8 of us sat around a table and ate greasy pizza and tried to plan out all the details of how JOMA's going to run this year. the meeting went well, but it was when it first started to hit home how much work this is going to be, planning conferences, managing money, writing new curriculum, designing and implementing stronger m&e tools...it's a lot of responsibility. the national coordinator and financial person are bearing the brunt of the headaches, but it's still a lot even for us regional underlings!

so JOMA is one of the things i've been focusing on most since i've been back at site. my main roles are in curriculum and trainer contacts. i've had to contact all the new pcvs to try to convince them to do joma, and find old and line up new technical and gender trainers. but the thing i've spent the most time on is the gender curriculum. joma has always had the purpose of working with youth (specifically boys) to promote gender equality through communications projects. but something we've decided to focus on more this year is the actual gender-related messages. in the past the conferences have been mostly about the communications areas, and only briefly touched on gender issues, and this year they're all about gender. also, the manuals the groups use only deal with their communications area. so what i did was go through a bunch of manuals that peace corps gives us, full of various activities that deal with topics such as gender, hiv, health, self-esteem, etc. from these manuals, i created lists of activities that lend themselves easily to one of the communications areas of joma (theater, music, journalism, photography, art), so that groups can use them as suggestions of activities that more directly address gender issues while still working within their chosen area. eventually i'd like to have all the activities typed out so that we can have an actual manual tailored to gender activities for JOMA, but right now it's just an organized list. on top of that, based on a conversation the joma coordinator had with a representative from usaid (who funds the joma project), i had to write up (this time actually typing out) a gender curriculum for the conferences, to be able to hand to trained gender trainers, and then cut that down into a mini version to present to the technical trainers so they're on the same page. this may not sound like a lot, but it involved going through a lot of books, in english and portuguese, and it took quite a while. i felt like i was in school again doing a research project.

on the icap side of things, i haven't actually been doing a whole lot that's noteworthy. towards the end of last year the provincial health director trained another batch of peer educators for quelimane, so there are now over 100 of them, far too many for me to keep track of or even think about doing anything that involves all of them. i still go to the cha positivos and some of their meetings. several times lately groups have asked to meet with me to discuss doing a "project," a very vaguely defined term that usually has the expectations of receiving funds. in each of these meetings, i've talked with the group about what they want to do, always income generating projects. it's a great idea in theory, but designing and implementing an effective income generating project is a lot more difficult than most of them seem to realize, frankly it's more than i'm sure i can handle, and i have yet to have a group present me with a really strong plan or show the initiative to tackle the difficult questions. i think they have a strong desire to work to earn money, but their lack of desire to deal with questions of storage, division of profits, etc. means that i don't feel comfortable moving forward on any of the ideas i've seen so far. an idea that i've presented as an alternative is that of a savings group (or VSL, village savings and loan, the more official name). we talked about it at mid-service, and i have a few fellow pcvs working on it in various ways, and i really like the idea.

basically, a group of people choose to work together. they get together every week, and they have a minimum and a maximum amount they can save. it doesn't have to be much, whatever they think they can spare, basically those small amounts that would get spent on random whatever if they held on to them, but that they wouldn't miss if they go into the savings pot. so the group saves every week, stores it in a safe place, and once their collective savings is big enough, members who want to can ask for loans from the group. because the group is self-selecting there's a higher level of trust. they pay interest on the loans, but unlike with a bank the interest stays with the group, so that at the end of the year when they divvy up the fund, they'll get more than the amount they put in. it's very basic, but because of this groups can monitor themselves. it gives them access (in a limited way) to the services a bank would offer, which poorer people often wouldn't have access to in a more traditional setting. it gives them experience managing money in a setting where they're held accountable by their peers. and it gives them the opportunity to take out loans, which they can use for income generating activities on an individual basis, thereby getting rid of the concerns of a group not managing a project well. practically everyone does some kind of informal income generation here, whether it's sewing or farming or selling bottles of juice, and on their own, within their own experience and comfort level, they might have success they might not have if they grouped together and tried to take on a much larger-scale project.

anyway, that's the basic idea, and i'm pretty sold on it, and i know of many settings in which variations of it have worked well. and as i said, i've pitched the idea to the groups who have approached me recently wanting to do income generating activities. only one group has taken me up on it so far, i think the others either weren't convinced, or couldn't come to a consensus as a group, or said they didn't have enough money even for small weekly savings. but this one group, of 6 of the newly-trained peer educators, seem to be really into it! they started saving on their own after my first pitch, and since then we've worked together to write up the group's rules, worked out simple ways to record their savings, and talked about how to run a meeting so that things go smoothly and there's transparency with the money handling. it's still relatively new, but i feel really good about it. the only really necessary input into this type of project is a lock box that uses multiple different keys, to help ensure no one member has access to it alone. i've asked for support for this from icap, it hasn't happened yet, but i'm hopeful!

what else? i moved to a new house, about a month ago, just to the next neighborhood. my old house heated up like an oven, and i wasn't crazy about my neighbors, they were loud and not very friendly, and the neighborhood was up-and-coming ritzy so i didn't really feel like i was living "with the people." the house search was way harder than i thought it would be, and i ended up in a place that isn't very "peace corps" in many ways (although i think i still get too caught up in what peace corps "should be" and not what my life actually is), but is much better for me. it's another small dependencia behind a main house, the neighbors are friends of laras's and much friendlier. the house is tiny, but homey. has unnecessary comforts like air conditioning (the landlord insisted on putting it in!) and running water. has a nice big kitchen. and it's in a neighborhood that's more "average," some houses are really nice, but there's a wide variety of economic levels. there's a school down the street so i have small children staring at me and informing me that i'm white all the time. and there are two markets very nearby where i can go to buy food. and don't worry, there are new and different (and smellier) mud holes blocking my exits in this new house, so that all-important element of my life isn't gone. i still need to buy appropriate footwear. anyway, all in all, i'm much happier in my new home.

and i'm too tired to write any more, but we're pretty much caught up on the highlights of my life. as always, i apologize profusely for not communicating more with my nearest and dearest. i've had far far less down time than i did in the old days (when i didn't write either). there are still a lot of ideas churning and future plans and possibilities, so i promise that, at least here, i'll have something to say in a month when i remember i have a blog again, or when people start harassing me, whichever comes first. i miss you all! beijos.

hi all, is it even worth mentioning that i'm super behind on this as usual? i didn't think so.

SO, my big vacation. i went to tanzania to meet my dear brother john for two weeks after christmas. my trip started with the long bus ride to nampula (ya can't get there from here in quelimane by plane), running around there doing last minute errands (buying dollars to pay my tanzania entry visa, getting my doctor to fax me my proof of yellow fever vaccine which, interestingly, i needed to show to EXIT mozambique but not to ENTER tanzania), then flying to dar es salaam, henceforth known as dar. got to dar and my sweet brother, who had gotten there the night before, had made his way back to the airport to meet me. the taxi ride to our hotel reminded me a lot of my first ride from the airport to hotel in maputo, through the outskirts of the city, past car dealerships and industrial areas, but prettier public transport, brightly-colored "dalla dallas" (chapas) everywhere. dar is BIG - definitely bigger than maputo, so pretty overwhelming for me at first. that first day we got ourselves situated, figured out that, sadly, many restaurants don't serve beer because of the significant muslim population, and decided to head to zanzibar the next day.

getting to zanzibar is kind of crazy, the port is predictably bustling, and there are seemingly dozens of companies selling fares, and of course everyone you meet is trying to convince you to get on their boat or their friend's boat. so again, a little overwhelming, but we got a nice small, fast boat, maybe an hour and a half of a smooth ride over beautiful blue waters past spits of pristine white sand and a nice mix of commercial motor boats and traditional sail boats. our first day on zanzibar we just wandered around the main city of stone town, here being disappointed by the lack of cold drinks - apparently THE cable bringing electricity to the island had somehow been cut, so everywhere (that could it afford it) was running on generators, which were often reserved for silly things like light, and not refrigeration of beverages. and that first night happened to be new year's eve, so we were wanting cold drinks even more to get in the spirit of things, so we had a pretty lame new year's if you're judging by how late we stayed up/out. but it was still fun, that night (and every night in the city thereafter) we had dinner in this beautiful waterfront park, where tons of vendors set up stands and you can buy all varieties of meat and seafood grilled on sticks, soups, salads, falafel, pizza, and really yummy sugar cane juice with lime and ginger.

the next day we went on a spice tour, a must-do on zanzibar. a delightful little man led a group of us around the jungle pointing out plants and trees bearing pretty much every spice you've ever heard of, as well as several fruits and flowers you probably haven't. everything smelled delicious. on the tour we also saw the ruins of an old bath house built by a former sultan, had a delicious lunch of rice pilau and coconut curry, and went to a gorgeous beach.

the next day we decided to head to the "real" beach. zanzibar has several popular beach towns, and we picked one that was supposed to be a little less touristy and busy, called jambiani. we didn't have a hotel reservation, just recommendations, and the bus drivers brought us to the places they recommended, which i thought seemed like a pretty sketchy system, and probably can be, but worked out wonderfully for us because they brought us to a place that was too new to be in any guide book, only had 4 bungalows and a tiny restaurant, and was super peaceful. we spent 3 nights there, and it was the most relaxed i've been in over a year. we spent long hours sitting on the deck of our cute little bungalow reading and half sleeping and listening to the waves. we took long walks up and down the beach. we ate lunch in a different beachside restaurant every day, and delicious dinners at our hotel every night. on our last full day we went scuba diving on the reef just offshore, with a chill guy named "captain james" and his crew, and just us. they sailed us across the bay which was a dozen amazing shades of blue-green, out to the reef where we walked around, captain james kept picking up star fish and sea cucumbers and other random crazy things, and at one point he shoved a stick into a hole and killed an octopus! eventually we went back to the boat and snorkeled around little underwater coral islands, i felt like i was on the discovery channel, it's so quiet and peaceful under the water. at one point i spent several minutes waving my hands and making faces at a group of clown fish who were swimming around me curiously.

eventually we had to leave the beach, we returned to stone town for one more day, had fun wandering around windy allies, bought souvenirs from a nice masaai vendor we had met, had one last dinner in the park. the next day we headed back to hot, busy dar for one night, and the next day we got picked up to head out on a safari! this was our big splurge of the trip, john didn't want to come to africa without seeing wild animals. tanzania is home to some of the most famous game parks, like serengetti and ngorogoro crater, and they're supposed to be spectacular, but because they're spectacular and famous they're also supposed to be pretty much always crawling with tourists and tours and i couldn't wrap my mind around seeing wonders of "nature" surrounded by cars. so we arranged to go to some of the southern, more off-the-beaten-track parks. the first day we drove to the udzungwa mountains. on the way we drove through mikumi national park - the highway goes right through it - and there we saw our first big animals, elephants, some zebra, a lion guarding an elephant that had been hit by a car. i'm used to spotting deer, skunks, and turkeys from the car, but it's pretty wild to think about elephants along the highway not being noteworthy! the place we stayed the first night was a lovely little camp, called "hondo-hondo" (the swahili name for the hornbill, which were flying all around), on the side of a hill right at the edge of the national park. we were the only guests there, we stayed in a little "banda" (hut/bungalow), ate outside, and at night sat by a campfire and tried to communicate with the camp staff, who didn't speak any english, about the elephants ("tembo") we could hear trumpeting and rustling in the trees down the road! it was super peaceful, and wonderfully cool.

the next day we took a long drive to ruaha national park. we felt like we were in the park long before we actually reached the gate, because it was so isolated. and once in the park it was still another 15 minutes drive to the camp. the park was beautiful, rolling green hills, and awesome, quirky baobab trees everywhere. it was dusk as we were getting there, and as we drove in we saw some elephants right by the car, and some giraffes on the top of a nearby hill lovely-ly silhouetted against the darkening sky. it's hard to explain the sense of wonder at seeing large animals in the wild that are almost mythical to me, in the sense that i always thought of them as far away and not part of my world. john said he felt like he was in jurassic park in the scene where they first see the dinosaurs, and i think that really captures the feeling. consequently, i had the theme song from jurassic park rolling around in my head for the remainder of the trip! at this camp we slept in a round tin banda, the camp was quiet, right along a river, and guarded by an armed guard which made me a bit nervous to go outside to pee at night!

the next morning we left early for a game drive around the park. the game drive is the focal point of a safari, up until now we'd really just been driving to destinations. we drove around for about 5 hours in this beautiful park. it was kind of hazy and misty, which made it hard to take good pictures, but gave it a sort of mystical, surreal feeling. we could go for long stretches without seeing animals, but we saw tons: elephants, giraffe, zebra, lions (including one with a freshly dead zebra), impala, gazelle, hippos, baboons, storks, ibis (and i'm sure other birds whose names i'm forgetting), water buck, giant lizard, warthog, dik-dik (tiny deer) and some fast little rodent that looks sort of like a ground hog but apparently is a close cousin of the elephant. this was all pretty incredible, but the best thing for me was that we only passed 1 other car the whole morning, no other humans in site until we got back near the camp for lunch. in the afternoon we went on a "walking safari," just me, john and an armed guard. we walked for about an hour and half along the river, it was unbelievably peaceful. we saw alligators, hippos, baboons, and giraffes.

the next day we drove back to mikumi. once we had settled in there, at a campsite at the base of a huge baobab tree, we set out for an evening game drive. we saw some lions pretty near our camp (unsettling!), and were headed to another part of the park when our car got stuck in the mud at the bottom of a dip! not a big deal, we missed the game drive, but kind of enjoyed just sitting there letting the world go on around us. it started to pour, making it more impossible for the car to get out, and sometime after nightfall a park car came to get us, and we had to take a long route back to our camp in the back of a pickup truck, in the pouring rain. john said it was his favorite part of the trip! we got dry and warmed up and had dinner and went to bed early. the next morning we had one last game drive. we avoided the mud this time. mikumi is pretty, tho not as pretty as ruaha for me, it was a flat open plain, and in the morning covered in mist. it was pretty cool to see long graceful giraffe necks appear out of the mist, and we saw tons of them that morning. saw elephants, hippo, crocs, impala again. and water buffalo, and some new birds, and on the way out of the park, one lonely wildebeest. the we had our long drive back to dar.

we spent one last day in dar before leaving. we finally knew our way around the area of our hotel, so we just wandered around, looking for craft shops and places to buy gifts, tried some new restaurants, and went back to some old ones. it was a good last day, tho i, at least, was tired and ready to go home by that point. of course my going home was dragged out by having to spend another night in nampula then a long bus-ride home and i was thoroughly exhausted by the time i got here. it was a really great trip tho. i definitely recommend tanzania, it has great food, beautiful sights, and very friendly people. if you want ok pictures of all these wonders, mine are already up on webshots. if you want professional quality, contact my brother.

for once, i'm not hard-pressed to answer this question, i know i've been busy! and to change things up a bit, i won't be doing a play-by-play month-by-month (i know several have gone by), but instead will organize this thematically.

first, one thing i've done a lot of is more permaculture. this has, apparently, become my thing. in october i helped my friend charlotte, another icap volunteer, plan and run a training for her peer educators. we used basically the same format i'd used in the past, with a few notable and interesting exceptions. first, the town she lives in is near the malawi border and although many people speak portuguese, not all speak it 100%, but everyone speaks chechewa, the local language. so she worked with some of her peer educators to translate a lot of the materials into chechewa. i'd love to get this done for chuabo, but it hasn't happened yet, i'm spoiled by almost everyone around me speaking portuguese. another big difference was that she thought it didn't make sense to use power points to show pictures, so we had some pictures with good examples printed on large paper to show instead. we did the classroom part of the training in a small mud-house, and it had a much more home-grown feel to it, which i really enjoyed. it was also a good experience to be able to remove myself a few steps from the process, since they weren't "my" people we were working with, i didn't get as stressed out worrying about the way things were going, and i think it went well.

in the beginning of november i helped another friend and fellow icap-er, jimmy, do a training with his peer educators. we had a nice big space to dig behind the hospital, and a really gung-ho group. they kept digging through their snack time in awful heat just because they wanted to finish (and anyone who's worked in moz knows how big a deal it is to voluntarily skip "lanche")! after the two days in nicoadala, the participants were super thankful, and gave gifts of food and capulanas to me and the other trainers as thank yous. it was very moving, as was jimmy telling me that was the most excited he's seen his peer educators about anything in the two years he'd been working with them.

at the end of november i did another training here in quelimane, for more of my peer educators together with some high school students. this collaboration was the initiative of one of my peer educators who had participated in the first training we did. her daughter goes to the high school, and she's a "mother" of the school, meaning she's very involved and respected there, and i thought it was a great idea and she helped make it happen, so she and another female peer educator were the trainers for this group. icap supported it because it also included other peer educators, and was a sort of community outreach in one of the neighborhoods where there's a hospital that icap supports. because we were combining peer educators and students, this training was a lot bigger, 31 people including the trainers, so it was a bit overwhelming because of that. also, because a lot of the participants were teenagers the group got a bit unruly at times. but all in all i think it went well. we got permission from the school director to dig on school property, so the garden really "belongs" to the school; a teacher participated and was very into it and will help them keep it going; and it was actually really nice to see the interactions between the young students and some of the older peer educators. even though the kids were really energetic and gung-ho, they sometimes would dive into a task without really knowing what they were doing, and the older, parent-aged peer educators would take the hoes away from the kids and show them how to do things, which i got a big kick out of.

the last of my recent spate of permaculture trainings was in early december, also in quelimane, this time just for peer educators. this time we got permission to dig in the yard of the sister of a peer educator, right next door to one of the hospitals. the location was great, but because the land had years of hospital trash in it (syringes, glass vials, who knows what) we could only dig in a much smaller space than we'd anticipated, so we ended up getting done with work more quickly and people got a little antsy. i really like doing these permaculture trainings because i can tell that it's a topic that people are genuinely interested in and will use, but this last training in particular highlighted all the things i don't like about doing trainings, mainly i don't like having to control a group (i'm not a teacher!), and i don't like having to worry about logistical headaches, like the food not showing up on time or keeping things on schedule. every time i do these i get really stressed out, and every time it all works out one way or the other, and i know i need to just let go and let things happen. i'm working on it. one reason why i think the stress hasn't decreased is that i've been changing my trainers every time. i'm doing this to let lots of people get the experience (and the pay) of being trainers, which i think is good, but it means that every time i'm still guiding the process more than i would be if it were always the same trainer. and i'm sure i'll have plenty of opportunity in the new year to try and work out all these kinks, because there are still tons of people interested in participating who having had the chance yet.

the other main thing that has been occupying my time and my thoughts these months is the changing of the guard - the group of pcvs who were here when i got here (moz 12) all left one by one, and the new group (moz 14) has recently arrived. so i had to say goodbyes to a lot of friends and colleagues, the most difficult of which was alison, my site-mate and co-worker who i saw almost every day, and was a good friend and mentor. she was in the very first group to leave. and in the interim stage, we remaining icap volunteers (moz 12 and 13) spent a fair amount of time talking about what we do, what we should do, what we shouldn't do, and how to help the new generation of icap pcvs transition in smoothly. so i helped with and participated in several different meetings, some with just pcvs and main icap staff, one with representatives from all the districts that have pcvs. i was working on this mainly with my boss juliana, who's amazing and very supportive of volunteers, and who has also recently left! another big change for me. so i'd already been thinking alot about the icap-pc relationship, and how to talk specifically to new icap volunteers to help them in their first months. and then my pc boss, kristie, invited me to help her at the supervisor's conference in nampula, a one-day event for the new pcvs for zambezia, nampula, and cabo delgado provinces to meet their supervisors and for everyone to hear a little bit about peace corps, and suggestions for how to help the volunteers settle into their new lives, work, communities, etc. so i traveled to nampula to help with that as well, which was a good experience. i had, truthfully, been sort of dreading the arrival of the new volunteers - i didn't know any of them specifically, it was more the thought of new people "invading" my "territory" and "replacing" people i loved, respected, and, most importantly, knew how to work with. it was the thought of having to start over from scratch that was overwhelming, when i just barely am starting to feel like i really have a good handle on things. but it all went fine, of course. icap zambezia has gotten 3 new volunteers, all really nice. no one is moving to quelimane, so even if they weren't nice i wouldn't have to worry about seeing and dealing with them on a daily basis. icap brought all the new volunteers to quelimane for an extra few days, to give them a chance to buy stuff for their houses, get to know the organization, and to meet more representatives from each of their districts. all those meetings we'd had before the new volunteers arrived had been to plan what to do with them when they arrived, and what we did with them was have a meeting (which was supposed to be 2 days but turned into 1) with them and a team from each site (doctors, peer educators, etc), to talk more specificially about what a pcv with icap should and shouldn't be doing, what their options are, what each side should expect from the other, etc. it's a weird thing, meetings like this. i've lived through them. i know they can seem pretty boring for all involved. and you'd think that, living through them, i wouldn't want to inflict them on others. but the thing is, i do think they're necessary and, ideally, helpful. not perfect, but what is? i know the first group of icap pcvs had a lot of confusion and very little information about what they should be doing when they first got to site. my "generation" had more of an idea, but still not real clear. so we're trying to improve things for the next lot. i think, hope, it was all worth it, because i definitely spent a lot of time and energy on this subject over the last few months!

aside from permaculture and changing of the guard, some other things i've done over the last few months include: visiting maganja da costa to celebrate a friend building a new house; visiting mexixine and macuzi to see where my boyfriend lives and works during the week; visiting the beautiful rural site of my friend denys to celebrate the opening of a new project; celebrating world aids day here in quelimane, which mostly involved sweating and fighting over t-shirts; taking my joma group to nampula to perform during the celebration of 25 years of U.S.-Mozambique partnership.

and now the new volunteers are at their sites, everyone here in the city is winding down for the holidays, and i am ready for a BREAK - which i am getting! i'll spend christmas here in quelimane, with my friend gina, my boyfriend laras, some pcv friends, and my christmas music on endless repeat on my ipod. and after christmas i'm heading to tanzania for vacation with my little brother! even tho it seems, to the blog-reader, that i just had a "foriegn" vacation one little post ago, and i probably haven't done a good enough job in this post of conveying how much work i've done and stress i've gone through in the last few months, i feel i'm ready for a vacation and i'm getting one whether i deserve it or not!

i hope that everyone reading this is enjoying the cold (i hate you all just a tiny bit for knowing what cold is....it's consistently in the 90s or higher here these days, and i'm dying). i hope you all have a peaceful, relaxing break from whatever it is you're doing with your lives, and that you enjoy time with friends and family during whatever holidays you celebrate. i will be missing the cold, the holiday food and drink, the music, the friendly spirit, the bustle of christmas retail, and most of all the people.

boas festas.

In Africa, 3% of the world’s health workers struggle to combat 24% of the global disease burden with less than 1% of the world’s health expenditures.

(World Health Organization. World Health Report 2006. World Health Organization 2006. Available at: http://www.who.int/whr/2006/chapter1/en/index.html. This is based on a threshold of at least 2.3 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 population.)

yup, i finally had a vacation...it was surreal and wonderful. jeff came to visit, and he gets 1000s of bonus points for being the first person i know brave enough and willing enough to make it all the way over here! we met up in maputo, which was a bit overwhelming to me as i hadn't been there (or any big city) in almost a year. just the fast pace, the number of cars (instead of bikes!) trying to run me over, having to worry more about pickpockets, etc. but it was fine, i shockingly knew my way around more than i thought. we had fun, jeff indulged my desires for thai food, macaroni and cheese, coffee, and other things i can't get in quelimane. we walked around the city, did some souvenir shopping, saw a really bad (but new!) movie. it was fun. only spent about a day and a half there, then we came back to quelimane. here jeff got a whirlwind tour, and because he declined to experience the wonders of bike taxis, we did it all walking! we saw the city, bought capulanas, made him some capulana pants; he met my pc friends, and we made dinner with my neighbor and good friend gina. jeff got along fabulously well with his spanish, he learned how to take a bucket bath, he ate zambezian food. i think i showed him a good time!

from there, we took the LONG bus-ride from quelimane to maputo. we chose this option a) so jeff could see some of the countryside and b) so he could experience the wonders of the mozambican public transport system. now, his report will probably differ a bit from mine, but this was by far the NICEST public transport i've been on in this country: new, comfortable seats; no trash on the floor; no farm animals; no people in the aisles. it was truly incredible, and i thought that long trip was going to suck a lot, but it actually wasn't that bad with a friend. i'd do it again. the only downside was that we made SUCH good time that we got to maputo at like 1 am, and had to wait at the bus stop (a place i saw another pcv aptly describe as several football fields full of buses) til dawn, so that was kind of a drag. but we headed out of there bright an early, got to downtown maputo to catch a chapa to namaacha, where i'd done my home-stay during training.

it was really cool, but weird, to go back over roads and into a town that was so familiar but that i'd been gone from for so long. it was made a little weirder by the fact that when we got in my family wasn't home (they were all at school). but i gave jeff the short tour of the town, and when we went back to the house the girls started coming home one by one and it was SO awesome to see them - the little ones especially have grown so much! they were so sweet and i was so comfortable with them, it was almost as if i'd never left. they were really wonderful to let me just drop in, with a male, non-portuguese speaking friend, and it made me feel even more than i already did like they really are family. it also made me sad i'm so far away; i love zambezia, but volunteers further south get a chance to drop by more, something i wish i could do. ah well.

the real adventure started after our night in namaacha! we walked to the border of swaziland, negotiated that without too much hassel (travel note: highly beneficial to travel with a hiking backpack, customs guys almost never want to take the trouble of digging into them!), and caught a bus to manzini, the second-largest town in swaziland. the landscape was beautiful, understandably similar to namaacha, and although we didn't partake of any tourist activities there, the newspaper we picked up said it's full of hostels and safaris and all kinds of cool things, so i'd really like to go back there. in manzini we had lunch, and we were supposed to meet up with a friend from college who lives there, but that didn't work out. so we had to figure out how to get from there to joburg on our own. the bus lot there is not as big as the one in maputo, but possibly more crowded and confusing, and after jeff struck out finding transport i went to give it a try. as i was asking around for buses to joburg (in english, very odd), a guy volunteered his services to help me, which i accepted because we really needed to get on a bus that day, although i was a bit wary because, well, life has taught me to be wary of strange men offering to help obviously foreign women. but he was super nice! he walked me all the way across the maze of buses, found a kombi (chapa in swazi) going to joburg with a company he knew, made sure i was all set and they weren't ripping me off, and wished me luck and went on his way. amazing! so jeff and i made it to joburg fine, and there we had our second it-could-have-been-sketchy-but-people-were-nice experience. through a planning error on our part (and trouble figuring out the swazi cell phone system) we didn't have a hotel in joburg, and we got in after dark, in a strange city known to be less than safe, so we were a little nervous. but our kombi driver offered to help and walked us to the door of a safe, clean, cheap hotel right by where we needed to be the next day. amazing!

the next day we went to the train station and got on a train to cape town! the train was really fun, it felt very romantic (in an old-fashioned movie sort of way). we had our own room with a bench, a drop-down table, a tiny sink, and an upper bunk that folded into the wall when we weren't using it. a porter came around to offer us coffee and tea, and to take our meal orders, so 2 meals we ate in our room, and one we opted to eat in the dining car. the scenery was beautiful, and we (or at least i) got a great night's sleep. it got amazingly cold! the next morning the scenery was even more beautiful, and i could totally see why europeans settled here, low green rolling hills, perfect for farmland, probably looked a lot like where they'd come from. we rode through vineyards, passed ostriches, cattle, and sheep, i even saw a baboon from far away! and there were gorgeous rainbows to top it all off.

we got to cape town, managed to get supremely lost walking to our hostel, but checked in and all was well. our first afternoon we had mexican food (yay!), and just walked around and saw different parts of the city. i'm having trouble remembering the order of the rest of our adventures, but we did the rest of this stuff too: we went to the district 6 museum, a museum dedicated to the former residents of district 6, a black neighborhood that was cleared out for whites to live in during apartheid. (a new movie, district 9, is based on this story, although with aliens....i need to see this movie.) it was an interesting museum, with a concept that i'd never heard of before: it's intended just as much for the residents of the district to tell their stories and connect with each other as it is for outsiders to visit and learn, so it had a very home-grown feel to it. we went to the top of table mountain, a cape town must-do. this impressive mountain sits, ridiculously, SMACK in the middle of cape town. it's known for being moody, from minute to minute it can change whether it's under a cloud or not. we went at the only time it really made sense for us, and unfortunately it was pretty cloudy, but we got a few breaks in the clouds with some incredible views of the city and the bay. we went to robben island, the site of the prison where nelson mandela (among many others) was imprisoned during apartheid. we took a bus tour of the island with a really smart, funny university student, then a tour of the actual prison with a former prisoner. it was very interesting, although made me wish i knew more about the history....i want to get my hands on nelson mandela's autobiography that he wrote while in the prison. our last day in cape town we took a tour of the cape peninsula. we drove down through beautiful, sea-side villages and windy mountain roads, into the national park that covers most of the cape. it was gorgeous, i loved it, reminded me of maine a bit. we went to cape point, where you could actually see where the atlantic and indian oceans met. we had lunch in a cute little town in the wine-making region, and ended the day with a (slightly disappointing) wine-tasting.

all-in-all, it was a good trip. it was great to get away, to spend time with a friend i hadn't seen in a year, to just remove myself from all of my realities for a bit. but honestly, i didn't love south africa that much. yeah, it was beautiful, but to be perfectly honest their harsh, and recent, racial history makes me uncomfortable, and being in super-white super-wealthy cape town didn't help. seeing prices that i know were cheap in dollars but outrageous in meticais was very weird. and cape town is the only place on the trip i felt unsafe, as we were approached by a lot of disturbingly aggressive panhandlers. so, i suppose in the best of both worlds, i enjoyed my vacation, but by the end was homesick for quelimane and ready to come home.

and yes, now i've been home for about another month, and, as usual, i'm going to remain behind on this blog cuz i don't feel like writing more right now. sorry! i've been trying to put up pictures as well, but the internet is not my friend today. i hope everyone is well. you are all hereby ordered to go out and enjoy at least one of the following for me: a nice walk in crisp fall air, rolling in the leaves, hot apple cider, hay rides, pumpkin pie. it has definitely started getting hot again here, so i'm back to complaining about the weather. don't worry, there will be more of that to come i'm sure. until the next time, abraços all around. :)

and another month is over. i donºt know how this happens. you know why this blog is a good exercise (apart from keeping my readers happy)? i often end a week/month/whatever feeling like i havenºt really done much, but when i come here to try to sum it up, i see that i at least did SOMETHING.

at the beginning of august alison and i ran a few mini-trainings for the icap office and medical staff. the first was on hiv and safe sex. we did this at the request of our boss, partly because she believes that many people in the office either donºt know what they should, or arenºt practicing safe sex, and partly as part of an initiative from the provincial director of health to have all employees of health-related ngos knowing something about the health topics the ngo works with. so on a saturday morning (much to the consternation of many employees) we ran a training using the same slide presentation we had prepared for peer educator trainings. we talked about how hiv acts in the human body, how treatment works, various means of transmission, and prevention methods. it was really interesting for a number of reasons. we gave a pre and post test on the material, a way to see what people know before and after a training. the evaluations were anonymous, but we divided them between medical and non-medical staff. the non-medical staff learned a lot, which was great. the medical staff got clarification on a few points, but for the most part their understanding remained the same, which is actually good, because it means they didnºt have a lot of misconceptions in the first place. but the thing that was really interesting (and also kind of annoying) was that during the parts about safe sex, the people who got the most giggly and jokey were the male medical staff! c'mon guys, youºre supposed to be talking about this stuff for a LIVING, and you canºt talk about how to put on a condom without giggling and making jokes, and you hold a female condom with the tip of a pen as if itºs going to get you dirty or something? yeah, i know, boys will be boys, but i was still kind of disappointed by that. if the medical personel canºt deal with talking about this stuff, itºs no wonder that the people theyºre supposed to be helping donºt always have good information. some of the non-medical male staff, on the other hand, asked tons of really good questions so you could tell they were actually getting something out of it, so that was good.

the other training alison and i did was a tech training. the icap office is a pretty "modern" looking place, computers and technology and whatnot. all office staff and many doctors have company computers, and thereºs a copy machine, fax machine, and scanner for everyone to use. but many people only know how to use this equipment on the most basic levels, and people are constantly asking us for help. after seeing our power point presentations (complete with lots of animations) people were really interested in learning how to use that program well too. so we planned 2 afternoons worth of trainings. on the first day alison taught people the basics of power point, how to make a presentation aesthetically pleasing, and the fun stuff like animations. on the second day i showed them a program to learn how to touch-type, and how to use the scanner and fax machine. teaching people how to use this technology, i often notice a similarity in talking about technology stuff with family members of other generations. depending on how long youºve been using certain types of technology, youºre more comfortable and adept at playing around to figure out new stuff. for instance, i had no idea how to use the office scanner, but i figured it out in an afternoon, but many people have only been using computers, etc. for a very few years. if you think technology has changed/improved rapidly in the us, itºs changed at lightening speed here. another difficulty a lot of people have is that almost all the equipment and programs are in english, so that even if they did feel comfortable playing around, theyºre severly limited by language. anyway, it was a pretty minimal tech training, but we covered some basic things people had shown interest in, and made some staff who arenºt around us a lot aware that weºre here and available to help if they have other questions. and because our boss was supportive in allowing people to get out of work to attend these trainings, iºm sure we could do similiar activities in the future if there was more interest.

on the second day of that tech training, with only about a days notice, i signed up to participate in a bike ride to nicoadala, the next town up the highway from quelimane. the story behind the ride and my participation in it is kind of complicated, some other pcvs had been trying to organize a bike-a-thon across the province in collaboration with a local youth activist organization, and although it looks like that project has fallen through, through those contacts we were invited to bike with them on a different outing. there were mixed messages as to the reasons for the ride. everyone who participated was given a t-shirt which comemmorated the "day of youth and sport" or something like that, which was the day after the actual ride. but when we got to nicoadala there was a big event at the secondary school, and i was told that a local group was kicking off a month-long testing campaign. so either way, 3 other pcvs and i (and about 50 other people) biked from quelimane to nicoadala. itºs 37k which is 23 miles according to my cell phone converter, which is almost without a doubt the farthest iºve ever biked. luckily for me itºs all flat, and it wasnºt super hot, and even still i almost died. the group included professional biker guys and a lot of bike taxi drivers, in short people in MUCH better shape than i am, and they were going a bit faster than i would have chosen and not stopping for water as often as i would have liked. to top it off i swear the wind was blowing against us the entire way. a couple of times 2 of the professional biker guys grabbed the back of my bike to push me along to help me rest a bit and catch up with the group, and if it wasnºt for them i might have fallen behind. but i made it! not really dying to do it again any time soon, at least not when i canºt control my pace, but it was something different, nice to be able to appreciate some pretty countryside in a different way, and definitely a feeling of accomplishment!

on another saturday in august i went to participate in the first "feira de saude," or health fair, in quelimane. the purpose of the day was to promote healthy practices, all the local ngos had booths set up with information and were doing various screenings (HIV tests, breast cancer, blood pressure, etc). there were singing groups and skits with themes of non-discrimination, etc. some outstanding community health workers got prizes. all really nice, right? well it would have been, but my day started by meeting the icap car and my peer educators at a point on the other side of town from the fair to hand out t-shirts. thatºs nice, right? peer educators and icap staff were all supposed to get t-shirts that said icap and "feira de saude" and walk together in one happy group to the fair location. except that t-shirts are like gold here. every event, every commemorative day, every organization, etc. makes a t-shirt and they are coveted prizes which people will wear for years, and when i got to the meeting point there was already a full-scale war going on, all 90+ peer educators were in a mob around the icap car scrambling and screaming that they didnºt get a t-shirt, or they wanted a different colored t-shirt, or the person next to them had taken 2, or that another person wasnºt even a peer educator. it was RIDICULOUS, but i should have known, thereºs always a guerra (war) when ANYTHING is being given away, money, t-shirts, food, whatever. i blame the ngo culture for making people believe that they need t-shirts to be taken seriously, or that they have the right to expect something free when an ngo car shows up. but it is still such a spectacle over something that SO isnºt worth it, it always puts me in a bad mood. it is an unfortunate part of my reality here.

to round out my month, towards the end of august my joma group put on a training. the kids who had gone to the nampula conference had really wanted to do a full-on training for the rest of the group, for them to experience well the material that they had learned. so we wrote a grant, got the money, and finally did it this month. theyºre really motivated, smart, organized kids, so i was lucky that i had to do relatively little prep work. i gave them the money to buy supplies, and a little guidance, and they ran with it. they did a 7-day training (their choice). 5 afternoons after school and all day saturday and sunday. i went every afternoon during the week. the first day started pretty late, and i was starting to get annoyed, but i decided that it was their project, and that as long as they accomplished something and they were happy with it, iºd let it be, and it all turned out ok. every day they started more on time and more people showed up and the training went better. they divided up the training into 2 days on leadership, 2 on gender, and 3 on theater, with different people in charge of leading each day. the associationºs president (one of my best peer educators) ended up running a lot of the sessions, and sometimes their leadership styles or management skills werenºt necessarily how i would have preferred, or what i thought was the "best" way to do things, but i let them go with it, and again, every time i thought something wasnºt going well, it ended up ok, and i was really happy with my decision to stay out of most of it (even though they complained) because i think it was much better for them to learn how to do this on their own. as reading my blog will probably indicate, trainings are a major part of the ngo/activist life here, and as these are all smart, dedicated kids many of them are likely to end up working or volunteering in some capacity where knowing how to put on a training will be a very useful skill. anyway, the training had low points (more kids than weºd budgeted for showed up on some days and there were fights over food; some of the kids got into an argument about each othersº behavior and the group was pretty tense as a result) and high points (the peer educator who did a session on gender explained sexual orientation in a way that i thought completely correct and respectful but also sensative to the fact that the ideas are uncomfortable for a lot of people here, making me really proud; the groupºs final theater piece in a local market was really interesting and well-received) but overall i was happy with the way it turned out.

with all that, i still manage to feel unproductive a lot of the time. things like fights over t-shirts and whatnot, lack of attendance and participation in peer educator activities, and inability to get answers to what i see as simple questions because of ngo beurocracy, can get really annoying and disheartening, and certainly contribute to my feeling of uselessness or lack of accomplishment. but as this blog proves, i have been doing something. and iºm taking a 2-week vacation starting next week which iºm SUPER excited about, and which i think will really help me relax and reenergize. and this week i have meetings every day with people to talk about a variety of different potential projects, so iºll have something to work on with all my new energy when i get back.

oh goodness, i don't know if i'm ready for this. ok, here's what happened in july:

i went to the city of Chimoio for a weekend for the JOMA transfer meeting. JOMA is the youth organization, run by peace corps volunteers, whose conference i went to in april with some of the youths i work with. this meeting was for outgoing PCVs who ran the conferences last year to impart their wisdom to this my group of PCVs. the prospect of being handed this huge project was more than a little overwhelming, but it all went ok. there were about 10 of us "newbies" there who had participated in the 3 siumltaneous conferences (northern, central and southern regions). we chose new positions/jobs (i'm going to be working on improving the content of the curriculum, especially the gender aspects), and talked about some changes to the conference and program structure. JOMA is still a relatively young program and every year the new group of volunteers has made some significant changes. for instance, it started out as a boys only program (the point being that there are lots of groups working to empower women, but unless you get the guys on board it's going to be difficult if not impossible to achieve real widespread change), about 2 years ago they decided to let girls be invovled in the school clubs, and this year was the first year they allowed girls to come to the conferences. it has also varied year to year the number of conferences, locations, and timing. but the main changes we talked about, in addition to vastly improving the curriculum, were downscaling the conferences a bit. they're a lot of fun for the kids, but they're a lot of work, and older volunteers have attested that the vast majority of their time, energy and budget went into a 5 day conference, meaning that activities for the rest of the school year weren't well supported or organized. we decided to have smaller, more local, more frequent conferences, and have separate ones for gender/sexuality and communications areas (theater, journalism, etc). the smaller conferences mean more kids will be able to participate (i could only bring 4 from a group of almost 20) and they'll be easier for volunteers to plan because they'll be more local (a lot of on the ground planning for the past conferences has fallen on whoever happens to live in or nearest the city it's held in, whether or not they were the person best suited or most interested). there were a lot of LONG discussions because of course everyone has had different experiences at the conferences and in their groups, but by the end i felt ok about the decisions we made. still a little freaked out about the huge responsibilities of the new undertaking, but i figure if the last groups managed it, we can!

about a week after i got back from the JOMA meeting, alison and i ran a couple of trainings for our peer educators, both supported by icap. the first was a 2-day permaculture training. i did most of the planning, using the information from the training i'd participated in, and planned a similar training, with the mornings doing theoretical work talking about the ideas and the advantages of permaculture, and in the afternoons putting the ideas into practice. i was a little stressed out going into it, but it went really well. instead of me giving the training, it was mostly run by the peer educator who i'd brought to nampula and another mozambican who had participated in the peace corps training. this was a huge advantage, not only for my stress level, but because they are much more fluent in portuguese farm-language than i am, they both speak the local language fluently, and i think that pretty much any information is received better when it's being given by a peer and not an outsider. so these two guys ran the training, i tried to keep them on track with the program and jumped in when i had a point i thought was important to emphasize or whatever, and alison helped with the logistics, things like making sure the food showed up on time and we had copies of the documents we needed, etc. the land we dug up was a short walk from the classroom site, in the backyard of one of the icap doctors. unfortunately the doctor left recently so no one will be there to see if our garden is growing, which is a shame because it came out beautifully! it was sometimes a bit chaotic having 20 people digging, weeding, seeding, whatever at the same time, but they all seemed really excited about the new techniques. i was actually pretty surprised, because they all have machambas (gardens or small farms) so i figured they would know a lot about gardening, but it seemed like a lot of people just do what they see other people doing and had never really talked about techniques, or the reasons why their gardens did or didn't produce well. so not only did it go well logistically, but i actually felt like people got even more out of it than i had originally thought they might. only time will tell how many of them will actually use and benefit from the techniques (unfortunately it was alreay in the middle of a growing season so most things people couldn't start right away even if they wanted to), but the materials i prepared (power points, handouts, schedule, etc) can be used by other volunteers, one group of peer educators has asked to start a garden at their hospital, and another icap volunteer in a neighboring district has asked alison and me to do a training for his peer educators, so this was definitely an overall positive experience.

the other training alison and i ran was on project design and management (PDM), or how to come up with a strong project idea and write a grant proposal to be able to realize it. this one alison did most of the planning and i just helped with logistics and stuff, but it also went well. we invited peer educators who are also part of other legalized organizations, because in order to apply for most grants you have to be part of a legalized organization. the process can be really hard conceptually, because you have to evaluate ideas on multiple levels, not just what's the most exciting or interesting, and because there are a lot of detailed steps to the process, which are really important in terms of securing funds, but can seem kind of silly otherwise. but they got through that training as well, going through all the steps in a big group to design a fictitious project, and some of the peer educators who participated recently asked me if we could work together to prepare a proposal for a similar project for real, so i mark that another success.

my last big event for the month was another training in nampula put on by peace corps. the topic this time was behavior change communication, or BCC. the theory is that many programs seek to solve problems by giving people information, but when the solution to the problem requires some major changes in people's behavior, this isn't always enough. there are myriad cases here of people who can talk the talk, they can answer questions all day long about how to prevent HIV transmission, how to use a condom, why to use a condom, how to take their medication, etc. but then go home and do all the "wrong" things. obviously having correct information is hugely important, but information education communication (IEC) alone doesn't solve problems. so the hope is that BCC will. the conference, while put on by peace corps, was led by people from an organization called global health communication (GHC). over the week they taught us 2 techniques. the first was a game called pathways to change, which looks a lot like chutes and ladders. you would play the game with a group, and you start out with a specific case or question. it can be imaginary (jose is 15 years old and having unprotected sex and....) or real (our group wants to achieve x). and as you move along the paths you land on either facilitators or barriers to the goal, which can be personal, societal, or environmental. the goal is to look at the big picture, to help people understand all the factors that influence their situation, both positively and negatively, so that the ultimate outcome is more logical than just reactionary to certain factors. it was an interesting exercise, and took shockingly long for a board game. my favorite element of it was that you present people with a problem (be it real or imaginary, at least applicable to their life) but then instead of telling them how to solve it, you open up a discussion around it. the goal can still be to solve the problem, but i think most people probably react negatively to just being told what to do and not being told why, especially if it's coming from an outsider or someone they feel doesn't understand their situation, and the purpose of this game was to create a situation in which people could come up with their own solutions which are within their own frame of reference. i haven't yet tried the game with any of my groups, although i have explained the concept to some peer educators. my idea was that they could sometimes use a variation of it, instead of their morning palestras (talks) at the hospitals they could just present a situation and start a discussion. the second technique that we learned was a process for sitting down with a group, talking about a problem or a goal, brainstorming factors that influence that problem, dually prioritizing those factors in terms of importance and feasability of change, then coming up with a final proiority and designing a project that reflects that. i think it's a very valid process, but one that closely resembles several things we've learned in peace corps (among them the PDM curriculum alison and i used in our recent training), so i found this aspect of the conference a little less useful and captivating. but overall, i definitely agree with the idea that people need to be allowed to evaluate their own circumstances and come up with their own ideas for how to do things. and there were many representatives from icap at the conference, 4 volunteers, 3 peer educators, a psychiatrist and a pscychologist, so we had a really interesting array of opinions and ideas on how to use the new techniques. we haven't yet had the chance to sit down and discuss ways we might want to implement them formally, but i think many of us are already using the ideas informally.

ok, that's that month. i realize that another month is just about over that i haven't even touched on, but these posts are so long, they tire me out, they probably tire you out as well. i'm going to put up some links with JOMA info. and i've put up some more pictures at a new site, that i'll add the link to. my computer died recently, and i'm daily realizing things that were on there that i've lost - most importantly some work documents and MANY of my pictures (tho not all) so even tho it's going to take 1000 years, i'm going to start trying to upload all of my pictures instead of a select few so they'll be more secure. i hope everyone reading this (are there any of you out there anymore, or did you get tired of waiting?) is doing well. i'm doing fine, although getting a little burnt out, but i'm taking some vacation next month which should help cure that! i'll try to update about my august before i leave. beijos:)

ok, i'm probably going to have to do this in installments cuz it's been FOREVER since i've posted. i know. i'm sorry. i suck. ok...

in JUNE i helped run a training of about 45 new peer educators for quelimane. it was run by 3 of the newly trained trainers from way back in my last post, one of whom is one of my favorite peer educators, and i was really impressed with how well it went. there were some snags of course, because the 3 trainers had never run any sort of training before, let alone with the specific material, so at times it was frustrating to think "this could be going better," but they got through all the material, no catastrophes, and i think in the long run that was much more important than it going "perfectly," because the whole point was to make the program more sustainable and not need icap or other ngos or ex-pats to run a training, and all that icap really did was the logistical stuff (materials, food, etc), none of the training. so it was pretty cool. i had to do a lot less work so even tho i was busy every day, it was a lot less stressful than some previous trainings i've mentioned!

towards the end of june i took my first real vacation here (i know i travel quite a bit, but if you look back every other travel experience has been work related, either icap or peace corps)! my pcv friend luke is dating a mozambican woman named dinha. they work together, and several of us zambezia pcvs have become friends with her (she's awesome) and she invited us to go to her brother's wedding in inhambane (city, capital of the province of the same name, south). so her family rented a chapa (just as uncomfortable on your butt as any chapa, but at least way less crowded, and full of friendly faces) and we drove down. it took about 18 hours. yeah, exhausting. but i got see even more of mozambique (i crossed the Zambezi river!), and got to have some hilarious times with my friends and dinha's aunts drinking whisky and singing and joking basically the whole car ride down. when we FINALLY got to inhambane, we all stayed at the house of the the groom's "padrinhos" or god-parents. it's the same word as god-parent in a baptism, but in the case of a wedding they are people who almost stand in for your parents, have to make vows (legal and religious) to help the couple, and help out financially with the actual wedding. so i spent 5 days surrounded by a CRAZY conglomeration of various family members and almost 24-7 food production, and had basically a 5-day slumber party with several of my best friends. as for the actual wedding stuff, it was pretty complicated. i've only been to one wedding in the states and it was VERY low-key (just my style) so the only US weddings i have to compare this to are the ones in movies. there is a lot of variety in weddings in the us, to be sure, but to me the most common usually involves a legal contract along with some sort of ceremony. well, as i discovered, in mozambique there are 4 different ways to be married.

so...the day before the wedding was the lobolo, a traditional ceremony usually translated as "bride price." everyone from the groom's side of the family (except the parents) goes to the bride's house with a car laden full of stuff to give to the bride's family. we got there about 1 minute late, and in punishment the bride's family made the groom's family dance and sing outside the gate to the courtyard and they had to pay a fee (everyone emptied small change from their pockets) in order to be let in. when we finally got in, the padrinhos of the groom went and had a long pow-wow with the bride's family in another room, while most of us sat around in the living room and waited. at one point we got shushed, cuz the bride's family said they'd charge another "fine" if we made too much noise! after awhile the groom showed up, and he was greeted at the gate by all the old women in the bride's family, and the tiniest (and one of the oldest) grandmas picked him up and carried him into the house on her back! i never got the significance of that explained to me, but it was hilarious. a little while later we all got invited out to the courtyard where the bride's family was. the two families sat on opposite sides of the space, and they were very specific that men had to sit in chairs and women had to sit on the esteiras (straw mats). there were 2 exceptions: the bride and groom were both in chairs, and in the middle of the circle the oldest male representative from each family sat on the esteira facing each other. (one of my favorite observations of the day was that the grandfather on the groom's side looked very sharp in a suit, but if you looked closely you realized his shoes were brown, his pants were grey, and his jacket was navy blue. but they both took their shoes off (custom when sitting on the esteira) and the other grandfather, also dressed nicely, had on holey socks with giraffes on them.)

what followed was a LONG ceremony, mostly conducted in dialect so i couldn't follow everything (and it wasn't an appropriate space to ask someone to translate for me) but it was clear that there were very set rules for every action. there was a pre-made list of items that the bride's family had asked for, and representatives from each family had a copy. they went through one by one, with the grandfather from the bride's family asking for a thing, and the grandfather from the groom's family presenting it carefully, then the bride's grandfather verified that it was the right thing, or good quality, or whatever, and then everyone clapped and they went on. there was a large sum of money handed over, painstakingly counted out bill by bill. there were capulanas and kerchiefs for many of the older aunts in the bride's family. there were a lot of food items, enough for a feast for the entire wedding party: rice, oil, vegetables, some other stuff, and a live chicken and live goat (who had ridden all the way down with us from zambezia, poor thing)! towards the end of the ceremony the groom's padrinhos presented a full new outfit to each of the bride's parents. and my friend dinha, as the sister of the groom, took the bride out of the room and dressed her up in a new outfit and brought her back, and then had to place a ring, earrings, and necklace on her, each symbolizing her being handed over from her own family to the new family, and to encourage her to be a good wife. when the ceremony was over, everyone got up and sang and danced (even the goat!).

seeing the lobolo was really interesting. it's a "traditional" ceremony, so it's easy to think of it as something that perhaps more modern/educated families (as both of these are) wouldn't do. traditionally, the lobolo is the most important part of a wedding. if the groom's family doesn't pay up, or the bride's doesn't accept what they offer, that can cancel the whole thing right there. i asked around, and everyone sort of said "no, it's not that serious, it's just tradition....but it's VERY important." i'm not sure anyone was ever really concerned that the wedding wouldn't happen, but everyone was VERY concerned that every little detail happen right. after the lobolo we ate (for some reason the families were separated again for this part), and then there was a sermon, which i wasn't a fan of because the preacher kept on repeating and repeating that a woman's job was to obey her husband in EVERYTHING, and that she shouldn't have opinions of her own but should have her husband's opinions. apparently the bride's family is significantly more religious than the groom's, because dinha had just as hard a time listening to the sermon as i did! so after that night, the couple was already married traditionally (way to be married #1), and i guess in a lot of cases that would be the end of it. but not for these families.

the next day was "the big day" of the "official" wedding, which had two more parts. first thing in the morning everyone went to some government office (mayor's office, town hall, what have you) to sign the legal contracts. hearing about it i figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal, just signing contracts, right? but the whole wedding party and all the guests went, everyone was decked out in their finest, bride and groom already in white gown and tux, there was singing and festivising. the official gave a short speech about legal obligations, and then the couple and their padrinhos had to swear to abide by these obligations, and all had to sign a register book. then the wedding party filed outside and all the guests greeted them/congratulated them in a receiving line. and now they were legally married (way to be married #2).

after that we piled into a parade of cars and wound around town to the church (methodist), which to my surprise was a small church in an outer neighborhood of the city, where apparently the bride's family used to live. it was a small, simple church, with wide open doors, plain wooden benches, and the only decorations were paper chains. there didn't seem to be any ceremony about where people sat, so we all just piled in. the padrinhos sat up front, and the bride and groom both walked in, down 2 separate isles. there was a relatively brief sermon (thankfully without a reprise of the "women are inferior" theme), the bride and groom said vows pretty similar to the vows we've all heard 1000 times in movies, and the padrinhos had to promise again to help out the couple. then they all had to sign the church book to prove they were married, and there was a special song for the signing, as one by one they danced across the room waving a bic pen in the air. and now they were religiously married (way to be married #3).

after the church wedding the entire party returned to their vehicles for a parade around town, which stopped in places of the bride and groom's choosing (a park, along the waterfront, etc.) for them to take pretty pictures. when that was all over everyone went to a big banquet hall for the reception, which was about what you'd expect. lots of food, festive atmosphere, a ceremonial giving of gifts (but not from the immediate family, we had a separate gift-giving party the next day), dancing. at the end of the evening the bride threw the bouquet and the groom threw one of his socks (yeah, ew?). the next day, as i said, the groom's family gathered at the house we were at and we gave our presents. we ate some yummy zambezian food (i'd been missing it for several days!), and late that night we headed back north. the groom came with us, they didn't even have time for a honeymoon.

and way to be married #4? that would be just living together and having children. obviously this is a living option for couples in the us, but i don't know of people who cohabitate but refer to each other as husband and wife. and especially having children "out of wedlock" is still at least something to comment on. but here it's totally common. as you can imagine, those other 3 weddings cost quite a bit of money, and not everyone can afford that, and who wants to wait to have children? so, for instance, my friend and neighbor gina, who lives with her husband and 4 children and is building a second house, has informed me that she and her husband are hoping to be able to get married next year.

ok, i don't think i have the energy to write more right now....until later!

that's portuguese for trainings, and it's the reason i haven't posted in so long, trainings galore! i warned of some of them in my last post, oh so long ago, but more have appeared to occupy my time since then.

in mid-April i went back to nampula for a week for the JOMA (youth for change and action) conference. i brought 4 members of AJOCS, the youth theater group i've been working with that includes several peer educators, 3 as students and one as a counterpart. the JOMA conference was a lot of fun - it felt a little like summer camp. we were at a "hotel" a little outside the city, with extensive grounds, and lots of separate buildings like cabins (really, like summer camp). there were 16 groups from 16 high schools (well, minus my group which isn't school-based) from Zambezia, Nampula, and Cabo Delgado provinces, doing activities in theater, journalism, photography, and community art (murals). every day in the morning there were gender sessions for the boys (which i unfortunately can't comment on because i wasn't allowed to attend, boo!) while the professors and the pcvs went to sessions on leadership. in the afternoon were tech sessions in the four areas i mentioned above. in the evenings there were group activities - they split the boys into two groups, the pirates and ninjas, and every evening there was a different competition. they got really into it, and it was crazy and fun. did i mention it was like summer camp? i really had no idea what to expect from the JOMA conference, but i was very pleasantly surprised. it was very well organized (all pcv planned and run, so all the more impressive), and my kids (as i refer to them, tho i really shouldn't, 3 are 19 and one's 23!) were awesome. i was the envy of all the other pcvs, because my guys were all really well behaved, super enthusiastic, good participants, just awesome. and all 4 of them were involved in the final production. all the different tech groups worked towards a final project, and the theater group chose a theme (oppression of women), planned out a story, made all the props, and practiced all week, and they did a fabulous job. it was definitely a feel-good, feel-productive week.

i didn't come home after nampula, but went straight to milange (after 6 hours broken down by the side of the road and an overnight stop with some other pcvs). in milange i and 3 other fellow icap pcvs helped our bosses to train a new group of peer educators to work in the local health center and community. this training was more tiring to me. although i did less running around and had less responsibility, it was more mentally taxing to have to work to explain difficult concepts (HIV, volunteerism) to a group of people with a wide range of experiences, education levels, and languages (there were 3 being spoken!). but it was also really great to finally see how a peer educator training was run. there is a set curriculum that icap uses, but of course things change, people have questions on things the trainers think are simple, and we were always getting off schedule, so every night, after spending the whole day on our feet explaining things we'd go back to the hotel to re-hash the current day and plan the next, eat dinner, and then pass out. most days the pcvs just helped make sure people were understanding directions in group work, helped pass out materials, serve food, etc. but one day we ran the session on prevention, ie: we taught a group of 50 people to properly put condoms on bananas. it was pretty hilarious, and it went well.

after the long week in milange we got a little bit of a reward, we pcvs stayed an extra day and crossed the border into malawi! we just did a little day-trip to blantyre (about a 2 hour ride). it was a really interesting experience to compare malawi, however briefly and superficially, with mozambique. while some things seemed identical (same stuff being sold by the side of the road, same-looking women in brightly-patterned capulanas carrying things on their heads, same tiny houses, same gorgeous mountains), in many ways malawi is like a whole different world. not only do people speak english (in addition to the local language), but the second you cross the border the roads are wide, well-paved, and pothole-free, buildings look less dilapidated and there's less trash, and the chapas were comfortable and NOT overcrowded! it was surreal. we just went to blantyre, had "city food" (chai tea, ice cream, burritos, yogurt), and wandered around. we discovered, to our disappointment, that capulanas are more expensive there, so we didn't get any. and we discovered a nice craft market where for the first time in my life i haggled for earrings in english...so weird. and then we came home. it was a good day. which was followed by an awful day, after waking up at 3am to catch a chapa back, the road from milange is AWFULLY bumpy and dusty, our chapa was in terrible condition and very crowded, and when we finally got to our next stop and got out we discovered we were COVERED in fine red road dust. we looked like hell.

so after that i made it home, finally, and took a few weeks to re-settle into work and whatnot. then the second week of may i went back to nampula for another training, this one in permaculture (permanent agriculture). peace corps put it on for interested volunteers, and we all got to bring counterparts, so i brought one of my peer educators. it was only two days, but it was a really good training. the first day the trainer (an ex-pcv who now works for peace corps in tanzania) talked a little bit about the main concepts of permaculture and why it makes sense in so many ways for people here. in essence, the idea is that if you "double dig" (dig twice as deep as people usually do) then roots can go down instead of out to the sides and you can plan a lot more food in the same amount of space, and if you build good ditches and burms (dirt walls) to control the water flow, in times of little rain the ditches hold water in, and in times of too much they funnel it off so the garden doesn't get washed away. those things combined with good fertilization and management can lead to an up to 400% increase in production, which means you need to farm a lot less land to feed your family, or if you farm the same amount of land you can have a lot more production and have extra to sell, and you'll be more inclined to vary your crop (instead of planing all corn and rice cuz those are the staple foods and you can't afford to not have them) and have a healthier diet. anyway, after talking about that stuff for a little bit, we went on a little "nature walk" around the grounds of the hotel (same summer-camp place where JOMA was) to see things that were well or poorly planted, and things that grow wild that are really healthy. then, over the next day and a half, we built a garden. we cleared an area (i'm horrible at estimating areas/distances, but roughly around 15x30 feet), built a compost pile (way more complex than i'd originally thought), designed the layout for ditches, berms, and beds, and started digging. that was the first day. the second day we "double dug" to almost a meter deep (hard work!), fertilized with charcoal, ash, and manure, and planted corn, beans, pumpkins, lemon grass, and papaya trees, and learned a cool way to water tomato plants underground. and i'm going to stop writing about this cuz it's probably boring, anyone who is into gardens can ask me more about it. i'm not sure i ever knew i was into gardens, but i had a lot of fun, and i felt like it was a really worthwhile training, and my peer educator loved it and now we're talking about how to transmit the information to the other peer educators here in quelimane. and i'm trying to figure out how dig up any land in my teeny tiny courtyard to try it out for myself. and i discovered that there's lemongrass growing in my courtyard already so i can have yummy tea all the time!

SO, that was permaculture. if you think i'm done talking about trainings, you're wrong! a while back i mentioned that alison and i had been working on revising a slide presentation on HIV to use during the peer educator trainings? well we used it during the milange training, and it went well, which was pretty exciting. but the other slide presentations from the trainings, the existing curriculum, were pretty dry, sometimes hard to understand, and not very aesthetically pleasing. so we took it upon ourselves to make them better, which turned into a LONG process. so i've spent the past few weeks working on that, in addition to trying to get back into the swing of my peer educator activities, again. then at the end of last week we found out that, before icap ran the training for new peer educators in quelimane, they were going to run a training of trainers (TOT in the lingo) to train mozambican health workers and peer educators to train other peer educators in the future. an awesome idea, but not a lot of warning. some icap big-wigs are up from maputo to help run the training, and they want to give the newly formed trainers a complete manual and cd with the slides on it at the end, so alison and i have been working overtime this week to get them done, including a lot of sessions of people critiquing our work. it's not done meanly, and it's hard to argue with health professionals and mozambicans if they tell you it's better to do something a different way, but it can still be frustrating after putting so much effort in. but it's also really awesome to think that these things that we've been working on will go on to be used by others. so this training is probably going to go through saturday, then next week we're having the training of my new peer educators which i'm definitely excited about. i think some of the newly trained trainers might help run it, and all of my groups have seemed a little run down and tired lately, so hopefully the reinforcements will do us all a lot of good.

whew! and that's basically my life. the rain has pretty much stopped, the mud and puddles are gone, the nights are so cool i can sleep in pajama pants and sometimes a hoodie. i'm pretty happy there. and despite being happy about the training, i'll be glad when it's over and i can get back to other work - observing peer educator activities, trying to convince them to show up for meetings, doing gender and theater activities with my JOMA, working on writing a grant to help them do some activities, and planning a mini-permaculture training for my peer educators. that will take up my month of june at least, and i know i have some other activities planned for the months after that. it's crazy how time's flying! i constantly go back and forth between feeling super productive and like i'm doing nothing, between feeling like i have tons of time and no time left. and between being busy and then soaking up what little down time i have, i've become completely negligent with regards to email and snail mail, and for this i apologize. it doesn't mean i don't love you, i swear. hope everyone on the other end of this blog is doing well! oh! and your prize for having read this ridiculously long entry is some new picture on the picasa site! enjoy! :)

Hi folks, sorry it’s been, I dunno, 1000 years since I’ve posted. What can I say, I’ve been busy (and yes, lazy). Ok, so in the past (gulp) 2 months here’s what I’ve been up to:

In February they celebrated Carnaval here. Quelimane is often called a “little Brasil” and part of that is their huge carnaval celebration, it’s by far the biggest one in the country. Carnaval here took place on two weekends, Friday-Sunday. There’s one part of the city where there’s a small roundabout, really a plaza, and they set up a stage there with a live band playing samba music. Groups of youth from all over the city (some organized by neighborhood, some by corporate sponsor) had been practicing samba routines for months, and they danced around and around the roundabout all night long, 3 nights in a row, I got tired just looking at them, but it was fun to see the different costumes, routines, etc. around the edges of the plaza and down the side streets were tons and tons of barracas (small booths/stands/bars), all basically the same, selling beer and spicy chicken on a stick. You could tell they’re striving to be like brasilian carnaval, which is a complaint of many people, that they don’t make it more their own, but I enjoyed the home-grown feel, it wasn’t fancy and flashy, but it was fun. Some of my American friends complained that the public doesn’t really dance, just the people in the groups. The public (ie: me) just stands and watches the dancing or sits at barracas and hangs out. Again, I thought it was fun! I went with different people every night, sometimes American friends, sometimes Mozambican. Every night I ran into people I knew (for being a city, quelimane is a small place), and most nights I made new friends. I just really enjoyed the atmosphere, the whole city enjoying itself together.

Shortly after that I had to go to a peace corps conference in Nampula, the capital of the next province (also called Nampula) to the north. The trip was about 10 hours on a medium-comfort bus. i got to see a lot of zambezia that I hadn’t seen yet (every inch of it is gorgeous), and at every stop the bus was overwhelmed with people selling fresh fruit and nuts and wooden toys and carvings and god knows what else, all for really cheap (I bought a bag full of guavas for 5 meticais, like 20 cents). Nampula is the 3rd biggest city in moz, so a pretty big deal. My first reaction when I got there was “this place is big,” (not overwhelmingly big, just significantly bigger than quelimane), the second was “they even have stoplights!” that pretty much summed up my impression of the city, because I really didn’t get to see much of it. Peace corps put us up in a nice hotel with great Indian-ish food at every meal and kept us busy for most of the day. The first few days were IST (in-service training), for just the moz13 group. We talked about how our first 3 months at site went, difficulties, frustrations, successes, etc. then we had two days of training on project development (essentially choosing and designing a project with community members, and applying for grants), and positive prevention (keeping hiv-positive people healthy is a prevention strategy because not only are they able to work and lead good lives, but if they’re healthy then their viral loads are lower and they are less likely to infect others). The next few days of the conference were Regionals, for all the PCVs in the region. There we basically caught up on policies, goings on in the pc-moz world, gave feedback about our projects (health/education) and training, and the like. The break from “reality” was nice, and it was good to see some people I hadn’t seen since training, and to meet more moz12ers. One night one of my friends had a birthday and we took her out dancing and had a great time. And I was lucky enough to be offered a ride back in an icap car (my boss took pity on all her icap babies), so I got to ride back in comfort, and see some other new parts of the province on the way back.

Since then I’ve been back at the work thing. Right before the conference, and then again a few weeks ago, I had meetings with my “big boss” as I refer to her (because she’s the head of the office as opposed to my direct supervisor), about the types of projects I could be working on, her expectations of me, etc, which were really helpful. As a result of those meetings, one new thing I’ve been working on is working with the digitadores (data entry guys) at the hospitals to check on their procedure for creating lists of abandoned patients to be searched for by the peer educators. The system was never fully implemented because of some technical and political hang-ups, so I’ve been learning how the system is working in reality, and explaining how it’s supposed to work, and where there are problems helping to answer questions or come up with solutions. It’s been really interesting to be involved in a different side of the work that the peer educators do (without these lists being done properly and on time, the peer educators can’t do their job), and to see more of the behind the scenes at the office level (coming up with ideas for training the digitadores in the system, etc). I’ve also been working with Alison to improve a presentation explaining HIV in basic terms to future peer educators during their training. It’s a really good exercise in changing my thinking patters, because the way that I might explain HIV to an educated American is not the way I can or should explain it to a Mozambican with sometimes only a few years of schooling. Anyway, those two projects have been occupying most of my time the past few weeks. I’ve also still been going to the health centers to watch the palestras (speeches), going to meetings with the peer educators (including one attempt last week to bring all the groups together to give my observations on things they can improve on), I’ve gotten to go on a another busca and another outing to visit patients, and a trip with some peer educators to give a lecture at a small hospital in an outlying neighborhood of the city, a very different experience from their normal work because this hospital doesn’t offer ARV treatment, they don’t even have HIV testing, so the knowledge level of the patients was very different. So I’ve been much busier at work, which is awesome.

Another thing I’ve been doing is going to meetings of a youth group called AJOCS (association of youths in the fight against AIDS), several of whom are peer educators. This group does theater pieces about HIV-themes, and they sing as well. I’ve been meeting with them because I am going to be taking a few of them to a conference in Nampula next week. The conference is for JOMA (youths for change and action), a group started by pcvs in moz in schools all over the country for adolescent boys to learn about some communications medium (art, music, theater, journalism or photography), get technical training in it, and tie it in to discussions of gender inequality and HIV, with the goal of reducing HIV transmission among their peers. There is a similar group for girls (REDES), and JOMA groups can also include girls now, so I’m bringing 3 boys and a girl to the conference, then we’ll come back and share what we learned with the entire AJOCS group. I’ve seen several of their theater pieces, and they’re really good, but almost none of them have ever had formal training, so this will be a good opportunity for them. So I’ll be back in Nampula for a week, and right after that I’m going to Milange, over on the Malawi border, for a training for some new peer educators from that area. We’ve been waiting for quite a while for these trainings to happen, so I’m excited one is finally nailed down! The training for new peer educators for quelimane should happen sometime in may.

The other major activity in my life these days is avoiding mud and puddles. It’s been raining a lot more (at least a little almost every day, some days utter downpours), and many parts of the city, including my neighborhood, are majorly flooded. The entrance to my road has been under water for weeks, so to get out I have to cut through a neighbor’s yard to the next road, which is super muddy and some days has puddles. Then my whole walk into town is on dirt roads which are mud roads if it’s rained in the past day. The main road to town has always had puddles, but there used to be a small path along the edge I could walk along. Those puddles have become lakes so I’ve been using a detour around that intersection. Now the detour is under water. I cannot get out of my house without walking through mud or water. Many days I can be seen doing ridiculous things like hanging onto a fence and inching along a tiny ledge trying to avoid the water. I feel like I’m on some adventure reality tv show. Not I’m not afraid of water, or mud, although it’s nice to get to work not completely covered. But the water here, well, it’s cholera season….so I try to avoid the water, but some days I just have to say screw it and wade through and scrub the hell out of my feet when I get home. So yeah, a significant portion of my life these days is spent mapping out routes into and out of my neighborhood and walking gingerly through muddy areas trying not to get completely mud-covered.

So that’s me! How is everyone back there? Sorry I’ve been lamer lately at the email and letters, but please keep them coming cuz I love hearing about how people are doing, or just how life is going over there. I hope everyone is well, and I promise to those threatening me that I will try to update in a more timely manner next time!

here's what i've been doing: i've been going every morning to one of the three hospitals icap works in. the peer educators give palestras (lectures) about various health topics to waiting patients, and i'm trying to observe them to get an idea of how their work goes, what kind of information they're spreading, etc. they start between 6:30 and 7 (am!) so i have to get up FAR earlier than i'd otherwise opt for, and it's unfortunately often already hot at that hour. and, also unfortunately, they often either don't show up on the days i go, or have already given their talks by the time i get there. the few times i have gotten to see the talks they have mostly been given in echuabo, the local language, which i only know one word in so far (manguana, means tomorrow). after the palestra i tend to just hang out with the peer educators and other hospital staff to try and get a better idea of the work they do and the process the patients go through. each of the three hospitals has a different setup, different levels of staffing, and different roles for the peer educators, so i'm still learning the system in each place. because of the nature of the agreement between peace corps and the moz government i'm not allowed to work with patients directly because i am not a trained health worker, but i have been able to observe many steps in the patient process, from registering new patients, to accompanying them to various appointments, to counseling sessions, to picking up their medications. as i said, the peer educators' role varies from site to site, but they are basically supporting the patients by explaining the process to them, walking them to their different appointments within the hospital, and answering questions and providing moral support. this also is a huge help to the hospital staff as the hospitals tend to be overcrowded and understaffed. the staff and the peer educators work very hard under very hectic, stressful conditions, and i get tired just watching them do their work!

one of the other activities the peer educators do is called busca (search) for patients who have abandoned treatment. they find out why the patient has abandoned (often has to do with the distance and/or cost of transportation, because they don't have enough food and they don't feel strong enough to continue treatment, because of fear of or actual discrimination within their family or community, or because of a misunderstanding of how often they are supposed to take their medication or visit the hospital), and provide moral support and try to convince them to return to the hospital. i have only gotten to go along on one busca so far, and the patient was actually at the hospital that day, and hadn't abandoned, there was just a mix-up with the data collection! but it's a really integral part of the peer educators' work and one i'm looking forward to participating in more. another activity that the peer educators do is called cha positivo (positive tea), which are meetings open to everyone (positive and non-positive patients, hospital staff, family and friends, etc.) to discuss issues surrounding hiv and aids, transmission, prevention, treatment, adherence, discrimination, etc. they happen once a month at each of the three hospitals, and so far i've attended two. they involve theater skits, speeches, and open discussions about all these issues, and provide a safe space for people to ask questions or talk about their experiences. afterwords there's a little snack (hence calling it a tea). it's a really interesting activity. between the two i've attended there was a large disparity in the amount of participation of non-peer educators and in the level of interest in the discussion, but helping the peer educators improve the format of future chas to be more participatory is one of my projects/goals, so we'll see how those go in the future.

so as i said i'm almost always at a hospital in the mornings, i often go home for lunch in the middle of the day, and then i have often come into the office in the afternoon to catch up on internet, catch up with Alison and my bosses, and do things to help the peer educators like make photocopies, turn in requisitions, remind staff of things they said they'd do for them, etc. Alison and i have also started offering informal english and computer lessons to interested office staff a few afternoons a week. there's been a lot of interest (although not always a corresponding attendance!), and it's a nice way to get to know some office staff better and to be able to support them in a small way.

so i've definitely been doing work, at least in the sense that i've been going places and talking to people every day, but so many days i feel i'm never going to figure out exactly what i'm supposed to be doing here! i think it's taking longer because i have 3 groups to work with, so it's taking 3 times as long to get to know people, develop relationships with them, and figure out what things i can help with. but it is going......slooooowwly. later this month icap is going to be training some new peer educators in quelimane to help reinforce two of the groups that have fewer people, and i'll get to participate in that training, which i'm looking forward to because it will give me a better idea of what type of work the peer educators are trained to do, and what areas i can work with them on.

let's see, in non-work news, i got my furniture and it has changed my life and made my house SO much homier. i have made several good friends in my neighborhood and am meeting new neighbors all the time. i've been cooking and baking (in a dutch oven, aka a small pot inside a larger pot) up a storm which is really fun, but it's a good thing i walk a lot! i discovered i like pineapple, then discovered that if you don't eat it fast enough it ferments, and therefor discovered how to make a pineapple upside-down cake! i bought a bike, which made getting around to the different hospitals much easier, but it got stolen from one of the hospitals last week (boo!). but i'll replace it soon, and buy a lock! between city traffic and GIANT and FREQUENT potholes, biking can be a bit terrifying, but it also gave me a sense of independence, and as much as i like walking sometimes it's good to be able to get places more quickly, and i certainly didn't mind the extra exercise! it's been raining more so it's cooled off a bit so i'm MUCH happier temperature-wise. and one of my favorite new things that makes me smile is the fact that bike taxi drivers, when they want to get around someone and they don't have a bell, yell "bee-beep" at whoever's in their way!

as always, i apologize for the delays in posting, and i hope everyone reading this is doing well. other than being hot (although less so) and tired from getting up early and running around all over the place, i am doing fine. beijos (kisses)!

This is my house! I've put some other pictures up on the Picasa website, I have tons more but uploading is slow. Hope everyone's doing well! I promise more written updates soon!

oh my goodness, where to begin. i know it's been a thousand years since i've updated, but i swear i've tried! every time i've gone to the internet in the past few weeks it's been closed, not working, or with a wicked long line and people cutting.

my province trip was good. for people who like looking at maps, i got to see the cities of mocuba, milange, and gurue. most of the trip was on "highways" of hardpacked dirt, so it was quite an adventure. zambezia is beautfiul, i got to see green fields, huge craggy mountains, boulderish hills, and tea plantations, and i can't wait to travel around it more and do some hiking!

my holidays went well. i hope all yours did as well! i spent christmas eve at alison(the other icap volunteer in quelimane)'s house with some other volunteers. we ate yummy food and drank gin and watched movies and decorated a small christmas tree with pipecleaner ornaments. on christmas day we watched a ridiculous bollywood movie in a hot sweaty theater full of screaming children. interesting thing about christmas was that businesses were closed and the streets of quelimane were empty - except for hordes of children running around unsupervised! i felt like i was in a sci-fi movie where all the adults have disappeared. for new years i traveled to mocuba and spent time with 6 other moz13 friends. we had a grand old time hanging out, sweating together (mocuba's hot!), cooking, eating, drinking, reflecting, etc.

so i'm now back in my city and my house and the holidays are over and i'm finally starting to settle in. i'm an easy 30-ish minute walk from town, so most days i walk into town to run errands or just poke around and find out where i can get stuff. when i need to get somewhere fast or i'm too hot or tired to walk (or trying to beat the rain!), i take a bike taxi, an exhilarating/bumpy ride on the back of a bike. on the home front, i've comissioned a table and bookshelves to be made so i can stop storing all my stuff on the floor. i've bought a two-burner gas stove but can't use it til i get the wooden table to put it on (i have the feeling it would melt right through my plastic table!) so i've been cooking on my one-burner coal stove outside every night, pretty successfully.....with one burner and only one pot at the moment i've been eating a lot of pasta, but i love pasta, so it's all good! my landlord, oscar, has been really helpful in showing me around my neighborhood and helping me get stuff, like the furniture, and he's nice and worries about me if i come home late. i made friends with a woman who works at a market in town and hung out with her yesterday. and i've made preliminary friendships with some other neighbors. so all in all things are good. and i start work tomorrow, in some capacity or another, so i'll have more to update on the work front soon.

but i wanted to get some updates up, and also get out my new address!

Sarah Farnsworth, VCP

ICAP Columbia C.P. 395

Quelimane, MOZAMBIQUE

so anyone who sent me mail to the old address it will get to me eventually when someone from pc comes up here from maputo, but this address should be good from now on!

i also wanted to let the world know that due to flash drive issues i have managed to lose maybe 8 emails from various people, sent in the beginning-middle of december, so if i don't reply to any emails from that time frame it's not because i don't love you anymore, it's just that i'm techonolgically impaired. and if i don't reply to emails from other time periods, it's just cuz i'm lazy.

that's all for now. as always, if people have specific questions feel free to post them. when everything's new and there's so much going on around me it's hard to know what to focus on on here! and i do respond to emails (eventually), and i've actually been shockingly good at responding to snail mail (except to my immediate family, sorry!), so feel free to send questions/messages/hugs in any format you like. até a próxima (until next time)!

hey folks, sorry i haven't posted in a while. it's been a busy couple of weeks. i had to write up my practicum, repack all my stuff, get sworn in (i'm now an official peace corps volunteer!), and say goodbye to my family and friends. and now i'm in quelimane! it's a small city, very walkable, with enough stores to get most things i could need but without feeling too big. there are more bikes than cars on the road!

right now i'm staying in a hotel with the other zambezia health volunteers because our organizations have planned an orientation to help us get to know them and our jobs. it's nice to have the time to get to know them a little better, and a great show of the support we're going to have, although by now we're all itching to get to our sites! i'm itching a little less because i got to see my house today! it's outside of town, in an area with sand streets and small houses that feels a little more rural. my house is a dependencia, which means it's behind another house, like a guest house. it's small, and yellow, and really cute. i didn't move in because the owner is putting some finishing touches on it, but i'm looking forward to buying household things and fixing it up. that probably won't happen til next week, because i'm going to be going with my organization to deliver the other icap volunteers to their sites, so i'll get to see a lot more of the province and how my organization operates in the various districts, which i'm really excited about.

i promise the next post will have more details (and hopefully some pictures!), but i just wanted to let my readers know i was alive and well in mozambique! I hope to get to the internet again before the holidays, but if i don't i wish everyone a peaceful christmas/hanukkah/solstice/new year.

so this was a big week! first, all health volunteers had to do their practicums this week. practicum is a chance for us to practice some of the skills and ideas weºve learned about imparting health information to people. so we each had to find a group of people in the community, meet with them to sort of figure out how they operate, what they know, what they want to know, and then develop some sort of activity to do with them to impart some knowledge. many people worked with siblings or neighborhood kids. because i havenºt been doing portuguese class for awhile, iºve been meeting with an activist and going with him to meetings of a group of people living with HIV, so i did my practicum with this group. iºd been to several meetings and talked to the people (all but one are women) about their lives, problems, and what kind of information i might be able to bring them. these people are all taking ARVs, which is great, but one major side effect of ARVs is that they make you hungry, and they can make you sick if you havenºt eaten. and these people are poor, so they donºt have a lot of money to buy food, and thereºs been a drought here so they havenºt been able to grow as much food as they normally could (which would normally be a source of income as well). so they said that they would like more information on nutrition, so i prepared a talk on nutrition. i made a poster of food groups, but instead of using the traditional food pyramid i made a chart with "main foods" in the middle, and then "protective foods" (fruits and vegetables), "energy foods" (fats and sugars), "growth foods" (protiens), and "extra foods" (coffee, soda, cake). i liked this model because it put more of the emphasis on what foods are available (rice, bread and potatoes are all main foods which are relatively cheap and available here and do provide energy and some nutrients) and also grouped foods by what they do for your body. so i made this poster and then had pictures of lots of foods cut out, and had them stick foods on the poster in the right group, talking about why foods go in different groups, and how some foods are good because they fit in more than one group (like dark green leafy vegetables provide vitamins and protien and iron, or peanuts because they provide protein and good fats). then we talked about what foods are easily available, either in nature (you canºt go 5 feet without passing a mango tree), or cheaply in the market. we took off all the foods that were too expensive or unavailable, and they still had lots of foods that they found accessible, which was nice to be able to show because when i asked them before they said they couldnºt find anything. then i also told them about some tricks to add nutrients to their diet, like grinding up eggshells for calcium, or putting an iron nail in the cooking pot to add iron, or drinking the water they cook vegetables in to get the nutrients. they seemed pretty intrigued by these ideas, and overall i felt like it was a pretty successful practicum. iºm going to keep meeting with this group for my last two weeks here, and continue to bring them any other information they ask for. the experience of the concentrated practicum, as well as the experience of meeting with these people twice a week and talking to them about their lives and their problems, has been heavy and stressful at times, but also really instructive, thought-provoking, and hopeful in some ways. (i would like to note here that i didnºt come up with any of this stuff on my own, PC has given us a mountain of manuals, and most of the info i used for my practicum activity came from Where There is No Doctor by David Werner, awesome book).

the other big deal this week was that we all found out our site placements! they drew it out as long as they could, calling us up one by one in groups by province (so i found out first that iºm going to zambezia province), and handing us a folded sheet of paper that we couldnºt open. only once all 57 of us had done this did we open our packets to see what cities and what jobs we had gotten. it was ridiculously nerve wracking. so.....iºm going to quelimane, the capital of zambezia province. i will be living in a house, by myself, in a neighborhood in the outer part of the city. i will be working for ICAP (International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs), an NGO funded by Columbia University. They have several focus areas, but the one that i will be most involved with is treatment adherence, making sure people on ARV treatment stay on it, and finding people who have stopped treatment and getting them back on. ICAP trains peer educators (HIV positive activists) to do this work, and i will be supporting a group of peer educators by being their link with ICAP. this is exactly the job i wanted (a current volunteer was visiting a few weeks ago who works for them and i heard about it from her), so iºm really psyched. thereºs still a lot i donºt know, but thereºs another volunteer visiting this week who works for ICAP also so iºll keep picking her brain, but iºm sure a lot will remain a mystery until i get to site (december 15th!). my job is also not set in stone, so there are a lot of possibilities for what kind of projects i could be working on, and that will just get figured out as time goes on. i feel as impatient as a 3 year old because i want to know as much as possible about my house, the city, my job, etc. but i only have 2 weeks left to wait!

so last weekend we all went on site visits, which is a chance to visit a current PCV living in country and working in our field, to see how they live and work, and of course to experience a different part of the country and more of the awesome public transportation system. itºs also a nice break in the middle of training.

so i went with one other health trainee to vilankulos, a small city on the coast at the north of inhambane province. we had to leave namaacha at 2:30am in order to catch a bus (machibombo) from maputo. i had thought a bus would be better than a chapa. it sounds better, right? well i guess it is in some ways, you get more choice of who you sit by and arenºt quite as squished in, and the seats are taller so you can lean your head back (at least if youºre short like me you can) but thatºs about where the benefits end. the seats were hard, there was even less leg room than on a chapa, and the aisles were stuff with standing people and luggage so it was still hot and squishy and hard to get out. also it was raining and my window was leaking on me a bit. but i was with a bunch of friends going to the same area, and it was fine. our driver seemed to be in a hurry and was ignoring peopleºs requests to stop and pee (it was an 11 hour trip, so stops were definitely needed), and the most memorable moment of the trip up was when a woman screamed at the driver for about 10 minutes about how everyone had to pee, how it was a human right and a biological necessity, how we were paying customers, and that there were women, children, and foreigners (!) on the bus and they all had to pee! it was kind of tense, but also hilarious, and effective! the driver stopped soon after and about 90% of the passengers got off to pee on the side of the road. the word for pee in portuguese is xi-xi ("shee-shee"), and this happened when we were just past the city of xai-xai ("shy-shy), so we dubbed this the xai-xia xi-xi incident!

despite discomforts and shouting incidents, the trip was great to be able to see different parts of mozambique. the scenery change considerably, from mountains and red dirt around maputo, to flat and gray, to lush green. in inhambane province there were palm trees everywhere, as well as mangos, and the dirt turned to sand. we passed through a couple of dencent sized towns/cities (xai-xia, mexixe), drove by some beautiful coastal views around the city of inhambane, went through a lot of rural villages, and passed about a million goats. i mused out loud that the goats could probably take over the country if they wanted. my seat-mate will told me i needed to drink more water (we were all limiting ourselves due to the infrequent bathroom breaks).

we got to vilankulos a little after 5 pm. my two pcv hosts were really nice, they are both just about the complete their two years of service so they had a lot of experience to share, and two of the people from my health group will be replacing them so everything about their site was especially important to notice. vilankulos is a city, small enough to walk around, but big enough to have lots of ammenities, like hotels, restaurants, and well-stocked grocery stores. itºs right on the beach so itºs also quite touristy. there are lots of foreigners visiting, and expats working for ngos and escaping. between the size of the city and the tourist factor, i feel like it would be hard to integrate into the town and make friends because it would be hard to not be seen as a tourist. the two pcvs i visited seemed to like it fine, they have made friends (both mozambican and other foreigners) and had a good time, but salvador, where i lived in brazil, was also very touristy, and despite having had an amazing experience there, i know that i would not prefer to have that experience again. however, if i got that site, or one like it, i know iºd be fine. after all, being able to go to the beach and buy nutella whenever i wanted wouldnºt be all bad!

so both the volunteers i visited work for CARE, an international NGO. they have a really nice office, lots of resources, itºs pretty much the top of the heap in terms of moz health placements. one of them worked "mainstreaming" HIV, adding it into the program for a variety of income generating projects. she did a fair amount of field work, visiting groups in various parts of the province. the other worked with OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) programs doing a lot of monitoring and evaluating. she didnºt do much field work. as much as the office setup was impressive and the jobs really interesting and well-defined, i donºt think the job would be my top choice either. thereºs still a lot we donºt know about possible job placements (like everything) but i would prefer a job where i get to do more hands on work with people, and that has less of an office focus. for instance these girls worked 8-5 five days a week, but a lot of health PCVs work for organizations that operate only a few hours a day or a few days a week in an office setting, and do more field/community work in the other time.

so i still donºt know where iºm going, but i filled out a survey about my preferences for all kinds of site placement variables, and next monday i have an interview with the health area coordinator, so things are moving along! iºm really so excited just to know, so that i can stop imagining and wondering and start thinking concretely about what the next two years will be about!

ok, so, as you the reader may have gathered, travel here is interesting to say the least. and my trip back was no exception. instead of the long bus we came back in two days by chapa. day one i took a chapa from vilankulos to mexixe. on this chapa i was sitting on the crack between seats for half the ride and over a large metal bar for the other half so my butt was killing me by the end. in mexixe we switched chapas. less than an hour into this chapa ride the driver and the cobrador (money taker) started arguing with a few of the passengers. it was in the local language so i didnºt understand anything except the phrase ten meticais (like 40 cents) repeated over and over, so apparently some confusion over payment. finally the chapa stopped, and they kept arguing, and drew a crowd. then they got out and went behind the chapa and started to fight! it didnºt amount to much, no blood was shed or anything, but it was pretty wild. so we spent the night in xai-xai (a town larger than vilankulos but not touristy, nice, tho i didnºt see much of it), and the next day caught a chapa back to maputo. the chapa we caught was probably the nicest one in the country: brand new comfortable seats, and a dvd player! they were showing a south african movie called mr. bones (pretty ridiculous, look it up on imdb), and instead of playing the sound there was brian adams hits blasting on the radio. all things considered, it was great. but just as i was settling in for an unbelievably comfy chapa ride, we pulled over and our driver started talking to another chapa driver. eventually they started telling us to get out, and we didnºt understand why, but we went to the other chapa, and who should be there but 7 other fellow trainees on their way home....i was actualy pretty unhappy about being thrown into a huge group against my will, and the new chapa was seriously less comfortable than the one iºd been forced to leave, but oh well. the rest of the trip was uneventful. but i think thatºs eventful enough! public transportation here is so funny, i simultaneously love and loathe. the vehicles are the farthest thing from comfortable, theyºre hot, smelly, awkward, and of questionable safety, but theyºre endlessly entertaining, and such a great way to witness so much life....

one other anecdote, then iºm off. last night it POURED for real for the first time since iºve been here - which is awesome for them cuz they really need the rain, although i bring several pounds of red mud with me every time i come home. but i woke up at about 11:30 last night and the rain was pounding so hard on my tin roof, i donºt know if the noise woke me up or the resulting desire to pee. anyway, i laid there for over an hour listening to the rain and thunder and seeing my room light up with lightening, and the sound was so loud i could feel it, like when youºre at a concert near the speakers, my whole body was almost shaking. it was pretty awesome.

and lastly, i would like to say a big thank you to all those of you who sent me mail! i got a postcard, a five-part letter, and a package today, and it made me so so happy, so thanks! and to let you all know, timing wise, letters seem to take a little over two weeks, packages 3-5 and counting....but never lose hope!

hello readers, sorry itºs been a while, posting is hard because not only do i have to find time to use the internet (and find a time when thereºs not a big line), and have enough money to pay for the internet, i have to be in the the right frame of mind to gather my thoughts and write. but iºm going to try and do that now for you!

so last saturday i went back to maputo for the first time with my language class. we took a chapa, the most common form of transportation here, which is a van about the size of a vw bus, which is supposed to seat 18 plus the driver but almost always ends up holding more (there were 22 plus the driver plus a baby on the way there). the highway between namaacha and maputo is pretty good, and it took just over an hour to get there. the purpose of the trip was mainly to teach us to use chapas, and to get a sense of maputo. we didnºt have a ton of time there, but i got enough of the sense of the city to feel like i would like to go back and explore some more! two things that are very clear though: 1) that maputo is the most (and really the only) "cosmopolitan" place in mozambique. for instance, we went to a cafe and had yummy pastries and lattes and watched cnn. 2) (which is really just a continuation of 1) you can find "everything" in maputo. people bought cell phones with internet. someone bought a basketball. people visited a nike store. people bought peanut butter, honey, diet soda, clothes hangers, basil (all things that are either unavailable or VERY expensive in namaacha). a variety of ethnic restaurants can be found (as can KFC and dominoes). the things that made me the happiest (besides the latte) were the bookstore and the "feira de pau" or wood market, really just a huge craft fair that we only touched the surface of. those of you who know me well will not believe that i resisted buying earrings, but itºs true. but i canºt wait to go back! things i got in maputo: a pretty capulana (cloth to be used as a skirt/shawl/almost anything), whole grain bread, dark chocolate, and a good map of mozambique.

i made two other trips this week with my health group. on monday we visited a hospital outside of maputo that serves people living with HIV and AIDS. it is funded by an italian organization called DREAMS, and it was really impressive. it was a small space, but they are really well organized, have an integrated computer system, offer counseling, labwork, ARVs, and food, all free. they are unfortunately the exception rather than the rule, and at this point are so full that they can only take 60 new patients a month, and the need is immensely greater. so it was really interesting and inspiring, but at the same time disheartening because i know that that is not the situation i am going to find in other places i go here. but it was presented to us as the ideal that all programs could/should strive for.

the other trip was friday to casa do gaito, a catholic-affiliated organization that takes in orphaned boys, or boys whose families canºt care for them. it was also a very impressive facility - they house up to 150 boys from infants to mid-20s, give them counseling and health care, run a school for them which is also open to people in the community, have a church on site which is also a community church, and teach them all kinds of skills (like cooking, metal and wood work, agriculture) that help them take care of themselves and their site, can help generate income for the organization, and gives the boys skills for later in life.

i also visited two other health posts this week. because i have studied portuguese before i no longer have to go to daily portuguese class, so i have been assigned to help and work with my health tech trainer and visiting health PCVs. this week, with PCV melissa, i visited a family planning clinic and an HIV testing center here in namaacha. the familiy planning clinic has funding from planned parenthood international and offers a variety of birth control options, pregnancy testing, and counseling on family planning and sexual health. it also is a food distribution point for people recieving ARVs at the local hospital (funded by the world food program). and itºs also a meeting point for activistas (volunteer community health activists). itºs a pretty impressive array of services for a center in a small town, but in contrast to the other places i visited it is small, run by 2 people, has little technology, and is underfunded. the HIV testing center is called a GATV (voluntary counseling and testing center) run by the government/ministry of health. they offer free and anonymous rapid HIV testing and counseling. it is a great and necessary service, but it is also understaffed (one person that i know of) and underfunded. it is also underutilized due to the stigma of getting tested in your community. i write about these health places iºve visited because they represent a significant part of my present and future jobs here. as a PCV my "job" will be to work with an NGO or community organization in the area of public health, and specifically HIV and AIDS, doing work on prevention, testing, counseling, treatment, services, or some combination thereof. so my job now, as a trainee, is to learn as much as i can about HIV and AIDS and other health issues, how they affect and are perceived by people in mozambique, and how the public and private sectors operate in the field of health. it is a complex and daunting topic, and one i am not yet prepared to discuss in depth on a blog, but it is worth noting that HIV and AIDS and public health are topics that i learn about, discuss, and think about every day, both in class and out. i am going to add links to some sites that have info on HIV and AIDS in general and in mozambique to the blog so people who are interested can find out more on their own.i hope everyone reading this is doing well! donºt forget iºd love to hear how youºre doing too, email, real mail, call, text!

ok, so i'm going to try to answer some questions people have asked. things are still going great in week two.

i love my family more every day. my mom is a math teacher at the catholic school here, and all the girls go to school, in about the grades you would expect for their ages. she explained to me last night that she's essentially separated from Mariazinha and Isabelle's dad - he took up with another woman (very common here, not taboo, and totally legal in traditional marriages), and she didn't like that, so that's why she's alone. Jussara and Dani have different mothers, I just found out, but Dani's mother died, and their father is brother to my mother's husband, so that's the family connection. and if that confused you, you ain't seen nothing yet. every time i find out more about family connections it gets more and more confusing, and that's pretty typical.

They all speak portuguese fluently (all our families do, although some speak more than others). The local language is Shangana (which i don't know how to spell, sorry), and they all speak that as well. I have learned a few phrases but not too much yet. I want to learn a basic structure, like people and basic verbs to form sentences, but i haven't worked on that much yet. But since my portuguese works with no problem that is my next goal. so my portuguese works fine, the accent isn't too hard to understand, there are some pronunciation differences from brasilian portuguese, and i've had a pretty easy time dropping the "weird" brasilian pronunciations but a harder time picking up the new weird mozambican ones, but i'm trying. everyone understands me though, even if i speak "brasilian," because they watch so many brasilian novelas here!

so Namaacha is considered a city. i haven't been able to get any official population stats but some people estimated in the 20,000 range which i would believe. but it could also easily be described as a village. there is one main paved road, and all other roads are dirt - idyllic rural/pastoral trails of red clay (red dusty dirt that gets all over everything but is washable), and most are barely wide enough for one car, which is fine cuz most people don't have cars anyway. so it feels very rural and underdeveloped in the sense of infrastructure, and everyone knows each other and is related to each other like in a small town. it's an interesting mix.

my house is pretty nice, i think because it's old - it belonged to the parents of my mom's husband. i have electricity, which obviously surging currents because the lights brighten and fade all the time, and i am lucky enough to have an indoor bathroom. that means there's a toilet, tub and sink, but no running water, and all pipes lead to a storage tank underground. so i have to flush my toilet by pouring water in it, and i bathe by bringing heated water into the bathroom and mixing it with colder water and pouring it over myself. we also have an outdoor bathroom, which is more common, which is actually two rooms, one for bathing, which is just a stall with a hole in the ground, and the other for going to the bathrom, which has a toilet to sit on instead of squatting over a hole (also common). we have a gas stove which we use a lot, but the oven doesn't work so no baking :(. there's also an outdoor charcoal stove which we use for things that take longer, which is also really common. i have to prove i can light the charcoal on my own before i can leave here. i wash my clothes outside in a basin with a washboard (i have the scars on my knuckles to prove it). washing by hand is a LOT of work, especially with the red dust, but they are so good at it, my white capoeira pants and sneaker socks are the whitest they've every been! so that's a little of my setup. while picturing this, keep in mind peace corps puts us with relatively well off families, so my description of my house is definitely not true for all people in namaacha. many people live in tiny houses made of stones, mud, or sticks.

ok, i have to share one funny store then get off. today i was eating lunch with my mom when a chicken hopped into the window. this wasn't anything major, there are animals wandering around all over the place. but it then proceeded to squeeze between the burgler bars and climbed into the living room! i thought this was pretty crazy in and of itself, but my mom wasn't phased, she just said, "yeah, that chicken likes to come in and lay her eggs on that chair over there." the chicken hopped from chair to chair all though the rest of my lunch, squawking and turning around and sitting down to check out how comfy different places were. she was still there when we had to leave, and my mom said not to worry, that she'd climb back out again when she was done! it was the funniest thing, and yes i have pictures, and no i'm not going to try to load them now because this internet isn't terribly slow, but it isn't all that fast either. hope everyone reading this is doing well. keep sending questions/emails/LETTERS, and i'll respond when i can!

Hello all! I have now completed almost a week of my homestay and training, and so far am having a wonderful time. My family is all women (this seems to be my lot in homestays, and Iºm totally cool with that!). My mãe is 39 and is super happy and smiling all the time. She has two daughters (Antionetta/Mariazinha, 15, and Isabelle/Doadona, 11-ish) and also two nieces who live in the house (Jusara/Sara, 13 and Daniella/Dani 8-ish). They are all super cute, very friendly and inquisitive, and I am having a great time hanging out with them every night. I am slowly learning how to do things like washing and cooking their way, and will hopefully learn a lot more this weekend. I do have to take a bucket bath twice a day, which is nowhere near as weird as it sounds, itºs actually pretty simple, and the thought of not wasting gallons of water every time i bathe is pretty satisfying. Every meal my family has cooked has been really yummy. Favorites so far include xima ("sheema"), which is somewhere between grits and polenta, made from corn meal, that you eat with your hands and dip in yummy sauce, and matapa, a green goopy sauce made of yucca leaves, peanuts, and coconut mushed up and poured over rice. Delicious!

My days here are pretty busy. I have Portuguese class in the morning in the house of one of my classmates (we're going to switch every week), then most days have health tech class and/or cross cultural class, then a break for lunch, then in the afternoon sometimes more tech or language practice time, like going to the market and talking to the vendors. It's a lot of walking around, up and down tiny red-dirt paths, but it's a really good way to get to see more of the city. Another favorite funny thing so far: there's the everyday mercado, then there's the twice a week feira where women from swaziland come (we're really close to the border) to sell clothes and stuff. The first is in a fixed building, the second is just a collection of ramshackle wooden stalls. The first they call the mercado; the second is "ShopRite" cuz that's the fancy supermarket they have in Maputo. This probably doesn't translate at all, but I thought it was hilarious.

Ok, I'm almost out of money, so i have to get off! If there are specific things people want to know about please let me know, cuz thereºs so many things to talk about itºs hard to know what to focus on.

hello all, writing really quickly during my last few minutes at the hotel in maputo. sorry i haven't written sooner. things have been great. lots of training, lectures, questions, getting to know people. we split down for the first time into our project groups and it was really great to see just the 18 health people together, a much more manageable group, and to start to talk about what we'll be doing. and we had our first portuguese classes, which i know many of you were curious about. there are actually 5 other people in my group who have portuguese background, and all but one of us are doing health so we're in the same portuguese class and it's nice to be around other people who can comiserate w/ me over the funny accents and the fact that they don't use the fun brasilian phrases i love. oh well. it sounds like i should be able to improve a lot of my portuguese, and then after week 5 i can hopefully start learning the local language! so i'm off in like 10 minutes to my homestay! we''re all in the same city 2 hours outside of maputo, but split up in different neighborhoods, with all the health people together. we have classes planned for like 8 hours a day, it's gonna be really intense and tiring, but i'm really excited to start learning everything! i'll update when i can, but i guess internet is pretty sparse there. i do, however, have a cell phone! the number is: 011-258-82-8198136, so feel free to call/text, keeping in mind that i'm 6 hours ahead of east coast time, and i can't answer/respond when i'm in class. k, i gtg for now. hope everyone is well. send emails!!

i am currently 2/3 of the way through staging here in philly, and it's going well. the getting to know each other and informational activities are relatively painless as those things go, and everyone is really nice. it's pretty amazing to be in a room full of people and know that you have a shared purpose and are like-minded in many significant ways, despite any differences in background.

so, a little about my group: we are 58 (one person couldn't come at the last minute due to health reasons); we are about 2/3 female and 1/3 male; we are approximately 1/3 health volunteers and 2/3 teachers (english and science); we range in age from 21 to 29; we come from all over the country (there's even another vermonter!); and as far as i can tell to this point, we are all really interesting, friendly, thoughtful, committed people (assuming i can count myself in those categories!).

the more i talk with people the more excited i get about getting to know them better, getting on that plane and getting to mozambique. although i have to admit, i am still largely in disbelief that this all is happening. i've been reading about these steps of the process for so long that it feels almost routine....

i have no idea what my communication will be like after i leave here tomorrow morning, so don't worry if i don't post or email for quite a while. but do send me messages!

Sarah Farnsworth, PCV

Corpo da Paz/U.S. Peace Corps

C.P. 4398

Maputo

Mozambique

tips: padded envelopes are better than boxes for things bigger than letters; write "par avion" on the envelope; possibly write "educational material" or "religious material" on the outside so people are less likely to steal stuff; don't send anything expensive/important; number your letters so i can know if i'm getting them out of order

hello to all the people who have an interest in this blog. i am soon running off to meet with some people who have done missionary work in moz to check out their pictures, but to explain the title of this blog: soon after i got my invitation to pc, i wrote to a bunch of current volunteers to ask them their advice on some packing issues (of which there are so many). the first one to respond was named Mark and he told me that Mozambique is a bottle of awesome sauce, and i loved the description, so i'm using it. thanks Mark! multiple people have also referred to moz as "the jackpot." not a bad note on which to head into two years of the unknown!