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

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

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

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

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

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

Apologies, I have been on the road to a fantastic malaria training (I will post a description) and on top of that I am extremely busy! Here are some pictures to make up for my lack of writing. Let's call this Mozambican sledding. The kids cut old broken containers (the yellow thing is a 25 liter container that everyone here uses for collecting, carrying, and storing water), attach ropes as as such, and pull each other down hills. As you might imagine, this makes a terrible racket. I wish they could just once experience how fun sledding is when one person doesn't have to pull the other other rocks and holes. This Peace Corps promotional poster hangs in our office in Maputo. The sentiment of the poster is good--I hope it reached some people back in the states. Over here, however, all of us education PCVs get a good laugh out of it. If you're a teacher you may have noticed it already too. Check out the middle kid--he's totally cheating. Contrary to what I thought before joining Peace Corps, my service has not included a lot of sitting in my hut trying to pass the time. I am extremely busy this year with what is basically an administrative job. I was extremely busy the last two years teaching a normal teaching load and managing all my extra-curricular clubs as well. However, PCVs still end up with time we didn't have in the states: inside our houses at sundown, waiting for the water to boil for our baths, waiting to fill every container we have when the water only comes out every few days. So during these times we pick up some fun new hobbies. Micah, another PCV, made this woman and her large mortar and pestel, I made her clothing.

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

I wanted to teach the neighborhood kids about malaria for malaria awareness month and in preparation for World Malaria Day last Wednesday, April 25th. Anna and I also wanted to interact with the neighborhood kids in a way that wasn’t us yelling at them for provoking our dog. So a few weeks ago I lovingly created a bright blue (we had food coloring lying around the house, why not?) paper mache mosquito piñata, complete with wings, legs, a large stinger, and candy inside. Last Monday afternoon, as a lead-up to World Malaria Day, Anna and I gathered the neighborhood kids outside our front gate. We showed them the mosquito and promised that it was full of candy that they would receive at the end (yep, I’m not above bribery). I talked to them about malaria transmission, prevention, symptoms, and treatment, and we reviewed each of these points a few times. Each time a neighbor would walk over and ask what was going on I would ask the kids to explain to them. And happily a few of them would excitedly yell something about malaria or mosquitoes. A few of the older kids (probably 4-6 grade) had already learned some of the basics, like that mosquitoes transmit malaria, that mosquitoes lay their eggs in water, or that you can protect yourself by sleeping under a bed net. What surprised me was that even the kids who knew this much couldn’t name the symptoms of malaria. Honestly I’m not sure what means. Is it a classic case of aid in developing countries: bombard people with marginally useful information (for example, telling people to “always use their mosquito net” is only useful when every person has a bed net) but not tell people who malaria actually looks or feels like? (I have been told that you literally feel like you’ve been hit by a bus when you have malaria, your body aches and you can’t move, in addition to the nausea and headaches. Put this in contrast with the common PCV complaint that any runny nose or indigestion in Mozambique might be called “malaria” by our colleagues and friends.) After I made the kids repeat a few malaria basics enough times that I was satisfied they would remember even if they didn’t want to, the fun began! The youngest kids speak little to no Portuguese (kids in Mozambique often don’t learn Portuguese until they enter 1st grade), but I think they had a good time all the same! See more pictures I posted at http://stompoutmalaria-mozambique.tumblr.com/

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

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

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

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

Friday and Saturday I spent up in Chongoene, in Gaza province visiting Michelle, the PCV there. Michelle had organized an “inter-group exchange” for her JUNTOS (Jovens Unidos no Trabalho para Oportunidades e Sucesso—Youths United in the Work for Opportunities and Successes) group and another PCV’s group. Michelle’s JUNTOS group’s primary activity so, in light of World Malaria Day coming up on April 25th, they decided to focus their skits on malaria. Check out http://stompoutmalaria-mozambique.tumblr.com/ for my write up about the very successful two day inter-group exchange and see pictures of the kids performing their skits! How will YOU Stomp Out Malaria in 2012?

A source of one of the biggest obstacles I have faced so far this year as Malaria Activities Coordinator is the incredibly high HIV rate. The latest reported HIV prevalence rate for Mozambique was 11.5%, and some districts in the country still report rates in the mid-twenties (while other districts have very low rates). As crude as it sounds, HIV is definitely one of the “sexiest” and most glamorous topics in public health right now—there is so much money and attention given to the subject. PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief—comes the US Government) is all over Mozambique, whether it’s directly funding events, projects, and activities, or indirectly doing the same thing by funding partner organizations. All of the Health sector Peace Corps Volunteers are funded through PEPFAR, which means that they should be primarily HIV-prevention workers. Money talks. Since so much funding is in HIV prevention, the same amount of focus is on HIV prevention. During Peace Corps’ Pre-Service training it seems like every session can be tied back to HIV prevention. But PCVs in Mozambique only receive two hours of Pre-Service Training on the subject of malaria. All of the PCV youth projects (REDES, the coed youth group JUNTOS, Science Fair, English Theater, and Future Business Leaders) are funded by PEPFAR, so they must have HIV components. So far this year I have experienced resistance to malaria projects because the organizations are “supposed” to focus on HIV, since this is where their money comes from. HIV/AIDS is clearly a debilitating problem in Mozambique and deserves exorbitant attention and prevention efforts, but not at the expense of other life-threatening diseases, especially malaria, which is actually the number one killer in Mozambique (though this statistic itself is a little tricky because nobody actually dies from AIDS, but from the other diseases that capitalize the body’s weakened immune system. Malaria being one of these opportunistic diseases). The irony though, is that a high HIV rate should make diseases like malaria MORE of a priority. As scary as HIV and malaria are individually (two of the most fascinating and “clever” diseases I have ever learned about), together they are far more dangerous and deadly. Pregnant women and children under 5 are targeted in malaria prevention campaigns as being most at risk, as they have lower immunity than the general population. HIV (which stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus) positive people fit into this category as well. Let me attempt to explain some of the terrifying effects of HIV/malaria co-infection. HIV positive people have the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in their bodily fluids. The amount of virus (called the “viral load”) varies: it is high immediately after infection, drops for a while (months or years) before beginning to climb again (this is when the person begins to show signs of AIDS). The level of the viral load (quantity of little viruses in a drop of, say, semen) impacts the probability that HIV will be transmitted, given an exposure (unprotected sex, breastfeeding, sharing a needle/knife). The malaria parasite raises the viral load in an HIV positive person, which in turn raises the probability that this person will transmit the virus to someone else, be it a sexual partner or their baby. Repeated bouts of malaria seem to lead to faster progression into AIDS (HIV is the virus that attacks the immune system. It can remain dormant in the person’s body for months or years, during which time the person is HIV positive, but does not have AIDS yet. Once a person’s CD4 cells—immune system fighting cells—dip below a certain level, this person’s immune system is severely compromised and this person is considered to have AIDS). Also, as I said before, AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) doesn’t kill you, it is a state of compromised immunity and being more vulnerable to diseases like malaria, which ultimately kill you. HIV infection makes a person more susceptible to malaria and more likely to have severe malaria or die from malaria. In summary: malaria makes HIV worse and HIV makes malaria worse. Because of this, I hope that organizations here in Mozambique will come to realize that malaria is not LESS of a priority because of our huge HIV problem, but MORE of a priority because of it.

One of my PCV colleagues Jordan Rief recently wrote a Blog About Malaria that was featured on http://www.malariapolicycenter.org/! Read this incredibly moving account of how malaria impacts everyone's lives here in Africa. Jordan is another third year extendee like I am and you can read more about her experiences at www.jordanrief.com

Check out what PCVs are doing in Mozambique:

stompoutmalaria-mozambique.tumblr.com

and across Africa:

stompoutmalaria.tumblr.com

www.stompoutmalaria.org

to Stomp Out Malaria! And read PCVs blog posts about their experiences with malaria:

http://stompoutmalaria.org/blog-about-malaria-month/

Malaria is the leading cause of death in children under 5 years old in Mozambique. Pregnant women (who, for some reason, lose their acquired immunity to malaria during pregnancy) can be infected with malaria parasites without ever showing symptoms. The malaria parasite hides in the placenta and can cause premature birth, low birthweight, and anemia in the baby. Children under 5 years old are also extremely susceptible to malaria, since they haven’t been able to build up immunity yet, and thus have a higher malaria mortality rate, as compared to the general population (42% of deaths in children under 5 years old, 29% in the general population, which is actually still quite significant).

But the sad part about all of these statistics is that malaria is easily preventable and, when contracted, generally treatable. Malaria can be prevented through use of Long Life Insecticide-treated Nets (LLINs), yet only 7% of pregnant women and children under 5 in Mozambique use one regularly. All pregnant women in Mozambique are recommended to receive Intermittent Presumptive Treatment (IPT) during pregnancy to prevent malaria infection in the mother and the fetus, yet only 33% of pregnant women receive the recommended two doses. Rapid diagnosis and treatment of malaria is the best way to prevent death, yet only 4% of children under 5 years old in Mozambique received ACT (malaria drugs) within 24 hours of onset of malaria symptoms.

PCVs in Mozambique and across Africa are working hard to promote use of bed nets, two visits to prenatal clinics to receive IPT, and rapid diagnosis and treatment of malaria—three ways to help children across Africa live to see their 5th birthday. Every child deserves a 5th birthday, regardless of where they are born. How will you Stomp Out Malaria in 2012?

Happy belated birthday to my baby brother Buck who, in a completely puzzling turn of events, is suddenly no longer a baby.

On a sad note, Anna and I returned from our Easter weekend away to find Shenzi, our new puppy, dead. It appears as though he just died in his sleep. But it’s sad and frustrating because now we are doubting just how well the man we are PAYING to take care of our house and dogs is really doing these things. He didn’t even call to tell us, which is either an extremely strange move on his house, or demonstrates that he hadn’t been to our house in the day or so before we returned, even though we are paying him to sleep there each night. Shenzi was the runt and fairly sickly, he had a skin disease that we were going to take him in to get treated for as soon as he was old enough, so it’s possible that there is nothing that could have been done. But a phone call giving us a heads up would have been good. He was a nice little puppy.

Other than the sad homecoming it was a very nice Easter weekend, spent up in Inharrime with the girls and the sisters. I got to spend my favorite holiday at one of my favorite places on earth and many wonderful hours with girls climbing all over me. I also got to see and catch up with a number of PCVs up in that area. At one point Irmã Dolorinda, the head sister in Inharrime, told me: “You know this is your home right? You are always welcome here and will always have a place here, even if you have to sleep under my bed!”

Mozambique PCV Mac Segar drew and submitted this for a "Stomping Out Malaria in Africa" logo contest. Although it didn't win, I think it encapsulates the reality of malaria in Africa. Considering that 89% of 1 million annual deaths from malaria occur in Africa, picturing malaria sucking the blood and life out of Africa is frighteningly accurate.

Malaria is the second leading cause of death from infectious diseases in Africa, after HIV/AIDS

On my way home from the office today I ran into the approximately 7 year old child of the guy who takes care of our house and dogs when we are gone. “Let’s walk with our big sister!” he announced to his other friends on their way home from school. So we walked back together, two of them holding my hands.

I was on the street a few days ago when a man walked by. I greeted him and then he stopped and said “hey, don’t we pray together?” He does indeed go to the same church as I do, and he proceeded to chat to me a while about the work he does. Between encounters like these, the kids around the neighborhood who are learning our names, and the girls in church who sit with or on me and hang all over me afterwards, it finally feels like we are beginning to become a part of the community of Namaacha.

This morning Anna and I went for a run as our morning workout. At one point a police car driving toward us starting to pull over, right into where we were about to run. As a matter of pride I don’t give in to the cars that think it’s funny to try to run me off the road, so I held my ground. The car wasn’t able to pull over as much as it wanted, but they stopped from hitting me by about 6 inches. In Mozambique there seems to be a very strong direct correlation between the size of a man’s belly and his status in society. So just then a moderately important man began to get out of the back seat of the car. I saw it coming so put out my arm to block the door he opened into me, hitting me. “Hey! Watch out!” he yelled at me, annoyed. I turned and yelled back a string of expletives about how he should be the one watching out. He was shocked. I am sure this was one of the first times he has ever been yelled at by a woman, especially one so young.

Shenzi, the new puppy, is settling in well. He is miraculously somewhat housebroken already which is fantastic—if the door is open he will always go outside to relieve himself. Amendoim—the other dog—is a little wary/scared of him. We think that maybe he isn’t aware that Shenzi is a dog, because he isn’t territorial or anything, but mostly just keeps his distance.

I got home today and found a livid Anna in our house. She told me that when she got home she found two kids up in the tree inside our yard just out of reach of the dog’s lead, taunting him. When they saw her they ran away and the handful of people around the front of our gate somehow couldn’t come up with the names of the two kids. She was livid because she knew that everyone knew who the kids were, but were refusing to help her. I went back outside to chat with the neighbors. At first I was told that nobody knew who the kids were. I explained how incredibly disrespectful it is for kids to enter our yard without permission (which it IS in Mozambican culture) and how I needed to talk to these kids’ parents. After chatting for a few more minutes, I was able to discover a couple kids who did know who these kids had been. Turns out one of them lives directly next door to us. (Interesting that nobody was able to come up with her name before.) This girl was one of the older ones and leaders of the neighborhood gang of kids, so I thought maybe there was a misunderstanding and it wasn’t her, but either way I knew she could tell me something, so I went to her yard. As soon as she saw me, she ran and hid in her house. So much for thinking she was innocent. I explained to her mother that other kids had seen her in my tree today taunting the dog and I explained that we always let them come in and gather guava fruits from the trees when we are there, but to enter our yard without permission was completely unacceptable. She called out repeatedly to her daughter, but the girl refused to come out. I mentioned that I thought it was her shame that prevented her from coming out. The mother apologized and said she would have a talk with her daughter. Later I saw the girl’s best friend who I know is very hardworking and responsible. I explained to her that she needs to show her friend how to be a responsible and good person—she can’t allow her friend to act like that. The culture of shaming is generally quite effective here.

This morning at 1am I got a text from a woman who works for Peace Corps. Because phone service is so bad in our house, I more often than not don’t service, and so then when it returns, I will receive a flurry of text messages. This text read that I should call her immediately or check my email. As a PCV, you tend to get really nervous when you get a strange text like this at a strange hour, and your heart skips a beat when we get a call from an unknown number at a strange hour. I tried to get on my email on my phone and was able to see my inbox—the only email I thought might pertain was from my mother with my brother’s name as the subject line. My stomach knotted, had something happened to my brother? I tried to open it, but then I lost my phone service again. Finally a moment of clarity broke through my half-asleep panic, so I checked to see what time the text message had been sent. It has been sent at 3pm the previous afternoon (yes, I apparently hadn’t had phone service for the 10 hours since then). I calmed down. This wasn’t an emergency, I simply had something time-sensitive in my inbox (and she probably knew that PCVs sometimes don’t check their email for days).

There is a woman named Ofelia who has worked with REDES (Rapariga em Desenvolvimento, Educação e Saúde—Girls in Development, Education and Health) for a number of years as a successful group coordinator. She has emailed Anna a few times asking her if she knew of any job or study opportunities she could pursue. She emailed me recently asking the same thing. This is one of the great frustrations here in Mozambique—there are simply no opportunities for the extremely hardworking and deserving people we know. There are few jobs and it is difficult to get into a university unless one knows the right people or has a lot of money. The students we taught the past two years had neither. I forwarded her email to the Mozambican women who work for Peace Corps and asked if they knew of anything, because I personally had nothing to offer her. A few of them had responded with suggestions, but nothing too concrete.

When I got to the office I finally was able to read the email from the woman who had texted me (also one of the women I had forwarded Ofelia’s email to). She had contacted people at the U.S. Embassy on our behalf, and they had told her about Fulbright and Humphrey scholarship opportunities—the deadlines for which had already passed, but when she told them about this girl they agreed to extend the deadline to this Friday. Which explained the urgent text. I forwarded the information and applications to Ofelia and called her immediately to make sure she saw them and completed them as soon as possible. Cross your fingers!

Shenzi ensures that every last noodle of spaghetti gets eaten

Friday night we celebrated another PCV’s birthday with her out on the town in Maputo. It’s fun to occasionally get dressed up and go out like that. But very very occasionally—a Peace Corps allowance doesn’t cover many nights like that. At the end of the night we got a ride home with a Mozambican friend and his friend was in the car as well. He turned around and was chatting to us and asked our names. When Anna told him hers he said “oh were you in Namaacha? I did your dreds, remember?” And yes, in fact, when Anna got her hair put into dreds almost 2.5 years ago, it was this guy who did it!

At mass today the same little girl came over to sit on my lap again, this time bringing a friend with her. Last week I had asked her if she knew how to give the money for the offering and she nodded at me, so I handed her my money. But apparently she didn’t understand (and who knows if she even speaks much Portuguese) because she walked over and offered the money to her mother. Her mother was quite confused as to where her daughter had gotten so much money, but one of the girls from the orphanage who was sitting with us went over and explained and took the little one up to the front to put the money in the basket. This morning I asked her if she understood this time and she nodded confidently, so I gave her and her friend money to offer for me. As she made her way up to the front (which is just a disorderly mob every week because there is no concept of lines here), she proudly showed off her money to everyone she could with a huge grin on her face.

After mass it is customary for everyone to hang out in front of the church for a long time socializing, so in my attempt to before more a part of the community of Namaacha I did this. Though admittedly I socialized mostly with people under the age of 12—girls from the orphanage. One of them pointed out a white girl about my age who I had seen around town a few times, so I went over and introduced myself. She is Ecuadorian and volunteering for the sisters here, so we made plans to hang out sometime. One of the girls hanging all over us grabbed our hands and put them together, asking “why are you this color and she is this color?” She is fairly pale and I just came off a weekend at the beach. I laughed and asked why her hand was lighter than her friend’s. I think a couple of the girls were genuinely surprised, I don’t think they had ever realized that “white” people might come in different shades of pale.

We got a new puppy finally! We've named him Shenzi, after the hyena voiced by Whoopi Goldberg in "The Lion King" because he's kind of mangy like a hyena.

The water comes out of a tube in our yard every couple days or so. Normally it's pretty gross, but this is a picture of the water that came out Tuesday, which was particularly nasty. And this is the water we bathe with, wash our faces with, wash our dishes with, wash our hands with, and put into the water filter to drink, cook with, and brush our teeth with. Awesome.

Yesterday one of our neighbor kids cried/screamed bloody murder starting at about 5:15am and continuing on-and-off all day. In America this might have been annoying, but here in Mozambique it was actually kind of scary and concerning—Mozambican kids don’t really cry, it really takes a lot to make one cry like that.

So we finally got keys to the office and with our keys and logins we were happily working in the office every day. But then our IT guy for Peace Corps went on vacation until the end of the month and, as if on cue, things began to malfunction. First one computer wouldn’t turn on, then one internet cord wouldn’t work, then the phone stopped working, then another computer wouldn’t let us access the internet or the server, then the other phone stopped working (actually it still works to call the Maputo office, but they can’t hear us, we can only hear them). So we (the three of us who share the office) are really scraping with two computers with internet connections and one computer that has only Microsoft office until our IT guy comes back!

Two weekends ago I went to a bar with Anna and another PCV. “Can I please have three beers and…” I eyed the delicious looking samosas sitting in a container on the counter “do you have hot sauce?” The 20 year old boy waiting on us froze and a look of panic crossed his face. Following his train of thought I quickly explained, “for samosas, I want the hot sauce to put on samosas, not for the beer!” Looking EXTREMELY relieved, he nodded and served us our beer. Everyone who had witnessed this interaction, the two other PCVs and three bystanders, doubled over in laughter. They had all seen the panic in his eyes as he tried to decide whether to please his customer by giving the crazy white girl hot sauce to put in her beer, or to refuse to aid in this insanity.

This morning I was jamming out to Katy Perry on the home stretch of my run when four dogs came tearing of out a yard surrounding me and barking at me. I yelled at them and kicked two of them and after a few seconds they drifted away. If you had told me two years ago that I would one, hate and be terrified of dogs, or two, ever kick a dog, I would have thought you were crazy. But I didn’t know Mozambican dogs.

Speaking of dogs. When I took Amendoim (our dog) in to get his annual vaccines, I mentioned that we were looking for another dog, and if the people there could keep an ear open for us and call us if they heard anything we would appreciate it. The guy who works there called us last week and said he had found a dog and we should come into the district office of agriculture (and animals, I guess). When we arrived he didn’t have the puppy, but told us to come back the next morning to pick it up. When we returned the next morning he was not even in Namaacha, so the woman who works there said to return at 3:30pm to meet him. But he hadn’t returned to town by that point, so I told the woman that we would meet up again the following week (because this was right before we left for the beach). We got a call while we were at the beach that the puppy was there in the office. We explained to the lady that we actually weren’t at home (and asked her to please not publicize that fact) and we would meet Monday morning at 8am. Monday morning I showed up and—yay—there was actually a puppy there! The man gave it vaccines, filled out the paperwork, explained to me how to apply the medication for the infection it has, and I had managed to calm it down by petting it (seriously what do people here do to dogs that one can be so terrified—shaking and whimpering—of humans at only 3 months?). We were good to go. Until the man said “okay, that will be 1,500 Meticais” (about $55). I had asked other Mozambicans beforehand if I should expect to have to pay for a puppy—I didn’t want to pay, but I also wanted to be aware of what is the norm here—and they told me no. So I told him no, I didn’t want to pay for a puppy, and there was no way that I could pay something like that. He explained that it was because of the puppy’s breed that it was so expensive, so I explained that we had no interest in a particular breed, but only wanted a dog to protect our house. So then he told me of another person who had a dog for 300 Meticais. I was tempted, but Anna put her foot down, so I told him we didn’t want to pay for a dog. I told him that Mozambican dogs are always having puppies nobody wants (none of the dogs here are neutered/spayed), so we just want one of those. So he said he would keep an ear open. I was retelling this story to the woman from Peace Corps who works in the Namaacha office three days a week. She agreed that 1,500 Meticais for a puppy was ridiculous and then told me that her parents’ dog had puppies that were about 6 weeks old and she could bring one to the office with her on Thursday! So cross your fingers that that works out.

This weekend we traveled up to Xai-Xai beach to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with about 20 other PCVs. We had green food coloring for our drinks and food, two houses on the beach, almost enough sleeping spaces for everyone, the sun, and almost nobody else on the beach—it was a great weekend. It’s still weird to me that most of my closest friends are gone, and it hits me hardest on weekends like this when they don’t show up…because they are actually back in America.

When Anna and I were leaving our house on Friday the two little boys who live directly in front of us ran up to us. Normally whenever we are leaving or entering our house they excitedly scream “olá!” repeatedly until we are out of sight. They ran behind us for a while, “olá, olá!” and babbling in Changana (the local language), and then eventually held our hands and walked with us. We appreciated the attention until we had gotten a few hundred yards from our house, at which point we started trying to convince them to return home. They probably are about 18 months and 2.5 years and as far as I can tell, neither speaks much Portuguese. “Go back to your house! You can’t come with us, go home!” I said to the older one. He responded with one of the only Changana phrases I know, “nayala,” (which means “I don’t want it”) and a small stamp of his foot. We continued walking holding their hands until we reached a group of people sitting outside a shop of a woman we’re friends with. “Can you please tell them to go home? We don’t want them to get lost” I asked. Alternating between Portuguese and Changana one woman told the boys they needed to go home; they couldn’t continue walking with us because there was a big dog up ahead. The boys gave us one more smile and then turned and ran home giggling.

Today Jonathon came to visit, he is a PCV from Moz 17, the newest training group that only arrived in October and lost two wonderful girls, Alden and Lena, in the accident in December. Jonathon has been in communication with Alden’s mother who wanted to set up a phone call with Alden’s host family from training, so Jonathon volunteered to help facilitate this. We stopped by Alden’s homestay house to confirm with her host mother, and then went to the internet place to email Alden’s mom to let her know we were ready whenever she called. When she was able to call (also conference calling Alden’s sister who is currently in Berlin), we went to Alden’s homestay house and turned on speakerphone. The electricity was out and since the house is right behind a hotel, there was a large and very loud generator going, so we went inside the house where it was quieter. Since it was already evening, we lit the one candle she had and sat in a small circle—Anna, Jonathon, Alden’s host mother, her host brother, and I—with the phone and speakers in the middle. Alden’s mother had practiced how to say a few phrases in Portuguese, and we translated the rest of the questions and conversation. I had been dreading this a little, I was afraid of how emotional it might get. But though there were a few moments I had to hold in my tears, it was overall an incredibly happy two hours. Alden’s mother and sister wanted to learn more about Alden’s life during her three months in Mozambique with her homestay family, so it was really a celebration of her life during that time. It was a truly special experience that I felt honored to have been a part of.

Yesterday Anna sent me an excited text: she has just witnessed a man give up his seat on a bus for a woman with a baby! She was clearly shocked enough to send a text about it and I was shocked reading the text. One doesn’t often see here what we might call “acts of chivalry” in America—a man letting a woman walk first, holding the door for a woman, giving up his seat for a woman. Whenever I do see these kind gestures I am always overwhelmed by the desire to praise them or express how much I appreciate them! But I haven’t figured out a way to do this yet that isn’t a little strange, creepy, and disarming.

This morning when I left the house to walk to the office Amendoim, our dog, started to whine and bark, as he does every single time we leave. When I was almost out of earshot I heard our neighbor directly in front of our house call out to him, “quiet Amendoim, your mommy will be back soon!”

Last year I had one REDES (Rapariga em Desenvolvimento, Educação e Saúde—Girls in Development, Education and Health) girl in twelfth grade who had taken on a leadership role within the group, so I encouraged her to start her own group in the primary school and helped her facilitate it. She is a really fantastic girl. She was set to graduate in December 2011 and when I left for my home leave in America her plans were to attend the teacher formation institute a few hours north of Inharrime. When I returned last weekend I asked the girls from the REDES group about her: where was she, what was she doing, how could I get a hold of her. I found out that she was still at home, rather than studying as I had expected, and nobody knew how to get a hold of her. A few hours later that afternoon I got a phone beep (where they call you and let it ring once before hanging up, so they don’t use any phone credit. Then you are expected to call them) from one of my REDES girls. She said that there had been reported sightings of Marcia in the tiny village a few kilometers north where they live. I asked her to put the word out that Marcia should contact me or come to the school to see me. I have no idea what the process was, but someone eventually found Marcia and passed along the message, and a few hours later a girl from the orphanage found me to say a girl was waiting at my old house to speak to me. After a big, happy hug she updated me on her life. Her grade average had been 11, not the 12 required to enter into teacher formation institutes, so now she was exploring other options. She wanted to attend police school to become a policewoman, but when she had met with people from there, they had informed her she was too short. “What?!” I exclaimed, thinking of Inharrime’s police chief who might be pushing 5’1” if she’s lucky. “No,” Marcia explained to me, “it’s just a manner of speaking. It means they want more money.” I.e. a bribe, the popular currency of Mozambique. The police chief in Inharrime is a wonderful woman; she spoke to my REDES group during a celebration on Mozambican Women’s Day last year and she has always made sure I knew that I could call her if I ever needed anything. I instructed Marcia to go to her office on Monday morning to ask if she could help her with this process. I told her to be clear that I had sent her and that I would personally vouch for her if she needed and that the police chief could also contact any of Marcia’s former teachers at the secondary school who would agree that Marcia is a dedicated, hardworking student. The police chief is notoriously hard to get a hold of, so I instructed her to go prepared with a piece of paper and pen so she could leave a letter and contact information in case the police chief wasn’t there. I gave her money to cover her chapa ride that day to come find me in the school, and for Monday to get to the town of Inharrime and back and wished her luck. Cross your fingers.

Last month I needed to pay the rent (which is deposited into my account along with my salary), so I went to the one and only ATM in the town of Namaacha. My bank is Barclays, and there are two other main banks in Mozambique, BCI and Millenium BIM. There is no Barclays ATM in Inharrime so during the last two years I always withdrew from these other two banks’ ATMs without problems. The ATM in Namaacha is Millenium BIM, so I went one day and tried to withdraw 5,000 Meticais. It told me that those funds were not available at the time. This happens often at the end of the day when there just isn’t sufficient cash, so I asked for 3,000 Meticais and received it. The next day I returned and asked for 8,000 Meticais. It told me my card wasn’t working (which was slightly strange, I’ve never been told that before). I came back again the next day, requested 8,000 Meticais and received it. But then a few weeks later I realized my account was much lower than it should have been. I went to Barclays and requested an account statement and found that the 5,000 and 8,000 Meticais that I had requested but never received had still been removed from my account!

So today I took the chapa to Maputo (140 Meticais roundtrip) and spent the entire morning trying to recover this money. The people at the bank were nice and helpful, but restricted by a system that is less-than-efficient sometimes. At the end of the morning I was assured that they had contacted Millenium BIM to request the return of my funds and thus the process had been started. I was assured that the process should take no longer than 45 days, and was given a letter to bring back to the bank, should the funds not be returned at the end of 45 days. I was floored. 45 days?! I am currently, through no fault of my own, short 13,000 Meticais. At today’s exchange rate, this is $480, a notable sum of money for most people. And I am not most people—as a Peace Corps Volunteer this is almost TWO of my monthly salaries! Luckily I have a safety net to fall back on—money saved up, my bank account from America, friends and family who can lend me money—but what about all the people in Mozambique (the majority, surely) who don’t have these options? What are they supposed to do for 45 days in this situation?

Cyclone #4 of the year (and it’s only march) hit Mozambique over the weekend, causing many power outages in the southern region of the country and knocking out our internet for four days. Luckily it wasn’t as bad as originally anticipated to be, but there was still severe rain and wind and all PCVs in the south weren’t allowed to travel for a couple days.

Being back in Inharrime was really wonderful. People in Namaacha are getting to know me little by little—the people from my church, the guard at the gas station I walk by every day, the woman who sells produce on my way to the office, the neighborhood kids, the man we buy eggs from—but it’s still not the same as it was in Inharrime. I was a teacher there, which meant that instantly thousands of people knew who I was and why I was there and gave me a certain amount of respect. It was great to walk down the road, into the market, into the school, and into the restaurant and have tons of people greet me by name with big grins and waves again.

There are a few girls from the orphanage who didn’t return after the holidays. The littlest one from last year and her sister are reportedly living with family in South Africa now. This troubles me because these two girls were not in great shape when they arrived at the orphanage last year, the little one had a stomach full of worms and the older one was a little off cognitively and socially. I hate to imagine that they are likely returning to that same environment.

Once the baby of the orphanage, Margarida is now a proud first grade student!

My weekend in Inharrime involved many English lessons. On the left, Isaura, my star English student from last year.

Yesterday I caught a ride up to Inharrime, my old site, with the Peruvian engineer who works for the Salesian sisters in Namaacha and Inharrime. We had only gone about 60k (of the 350k) and I was starting to nod off when he pulled over. There was a hissing sound coming from beneath the hood and steam rising out. When we popped the hood it wasn’t the radiator as we had expected, but it seemed like a tube or attachment was loose and allowing steam to escape. He called the mechanic who works for the construction company, who was apparently 1.5 hours behind us on the road. We refilled the car radiator with water and cautiously drove some more. We stopped twice more to fill the radiator and then refill those water bottles before he decided we should pull over in the shade and wait for the mechanic to catch up with us. I read for a little while and napped. Eventually the mechanic and driver pulled up in a mid-sized flatbed truck and fixed the problem, though apparently we still needed something because we stopped in four construction stores along the way before we found it. I was glad to be moving again—I had people to see in Inharrime! But in the next big city we stopped to eat lunch. It was 3pm, I just wanted to go! Luckily we just got the meal that the kitchen had prepared that day (a huge pot of beans served over rice) so the whole lunch break only took about 20 minutes—the least of our worries today. We got back on the road and caught up with the guys in the flatbed, who had waited for us. We were cruising along and I was content because, although we were getting in much later than I had planned, we would be there in time for dinner. Suddenly there was an explosion and water covered the front windshield. We pulled over, popped the hood, and saw that a large tube (not the one that had been having problems before) had burst. We tried to call the guys in the flatbed who had been right in front of us but hadn’t seen us stop. They were in an area without service so it took a few minutes to get through to them, and then they had to backtrack. They pulled a long rope out of the back of the flatbed and tied the busted truck to it. I switched seats and sat in the flatbed so that the mechanic could do the steering and braking of the truck being towed. And that is how we drove the last 100k of the trip. We finally got in at 8:20pm, but I was just pleased that I got there before the girls went to bed.

It’s been wonderful being back and seeing everyone again, from the sisters and girls living at the mission, to my former students, colleagues, and REDES girls at the school. People keep asking me if I am back for good now and they are disappointed when I say no, I am only visiting. Everyone is extremely pleased (and vocal about it too) by how fat I got while back in the states. Except one colleague who took it kind of personally, “you gained all that weight there? So you eat more there than here? What’s wrong with Mozambican food that you gain more weight in America?”

Last night I walked into our outdoor bathroom. I was about a stride in when I squealed and ran back to the house yelling “cobra, cobra!” As you may have guessed, cobra means snake in Portuguese and there was a black and bright yellow striped one sitting in the entryway to our latrine. We all agreed that bright colors on a reptile are never a good sign, so we took care of it and disposed of it. Growing up in central Illinois all we had were garter snakes, and I used to catch them and play with them for fun. My mom didn’t think it was as funny. But here in Mozambique, where the national soccer team is the Mambas, I am a little more cautious.

We are logged into the computers here in Namaacha, but due to a shortage of office keys (one set, to be exact) we can only work there Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, which is frustrating. My favorite part of the office is the sign on the back of the door that informs you that it is “EXTREMELY PROHIBITED” to poop in that bathroom.

The other day Anna and I met a man who was originally a Rwandan refugee who ran away from there when he was 14 and lived in a camp in the Congo for a few years before running away to Angola and living there for a few years before running away again to Mozambique, where he has been for the past 11 years. I asked where he had citizenship and with a smile he replied “I’m a citizen of the world.” He has a refugee passport and has applied to become a Mozambican citizen, but has not yet been granted citizenship. He must be very good at some things, because he owns a small store in the town over from ours, which is a huge deal here. I’ve said this before: one of the best things of this experience the past 2.5 years is the all of the incredibly interesting people I have met and their stories.

This morning at church a bunch of the girls from the orphanage here in Namaacha sat with me. There is one little girl about two years old who doesn’t live in the orphanage, but who I recognized from church. She walked over and stood in front of me. Unsure of exactly what she wanted I patted my lap and she nodded, so I picked her up and she sat on my lap for mass. They aren’t MY girls, but it was nice and almost felt like I was back in Inharrime again.

When I went to my first mass in Mozambique back in October of 2009 I hated it. I think that I had expected mass to be the one thing that stayed constant when I left America, so I was devastated by how different it is here. I quickly grew to love it though, it wasn’t mass how I expected it, but it was a beautiful different version. That said, I was excited to go back to America to experience the mass I had been missing for two years. But when I went back to America…things were different. The priest in my hometown’s church has retired since I left, as well as the priest in the town where I went to college. And there have been some other changes. So I was left with the very depressing and possibly most frightening feeling for people who have left a place for a while—that the thing we were missing so badly all this time no longer exists.

Our resident frog (who we've named Sheldon) likes to sit in Amendoim's water bowl, just taunting him. Apparently our dog, the master rat-killer, is afraid of frogs.

Our little neighbor fights to get the baby goat, all the while making sure to avoid the horns of the mother

Namaacha has a large market area on Saturdays and Wednesday, so this morning Anna and I walked in to get some produce. As we were weaving between the stands we heard a woman talking about us say “mulungu” (the somewhat derogatory word for white people here). Anna turned to her and said “I have a name and it’s not mulungu!” Then, in Changana (the local language here and also where Anna lived the past two years. Sadly it was not the local language where I lived the past two years) Anna told her that she speaks a little Changana. All of the women within earshot squealed with delight and erupted in Changana about what Anna had said. We stopped to buy carrots and green peppers a few stalls away, so they got to talk about us for a few more minutes. As the woman handed us her change she said “tell her your name so she doesn’t call you mulungu next time.” We introduced ourselves and all we heard as we walked away was “Ana” and “Anata.”

Last week Anna and I were sitting inside our house listening to the kids torment our dog, as they often do. Finally he came inside growling and whimpering to himself and pacing back and forth, and we were happy he was able to show such self-control. Then something rolled across our floor. And then another thing. The little idiots were throwing rocks at/in our house. I threw on shorts of an appropriate length and stormed outside. As soon as I was outside our gate I yelled “who was that throwing rocks at my house?!” I was told it was some girls who had perched themselves in the window of the half-constructed house next to ours. “Where do they live?” I demanded. The neighbors instructed an adolescent girl to take me to their houses, so we set off into the neighborhood behind me house, me with the rocks in hand. At one point along the walk I saw them hiding in a neighbor’s garden, they took off when they saw me storming toward them. When I got to their house I encountered only a teenage boy and was told that the parents were at work. I stayed there for a few minutes and meanwhile the mother showed up. I showed her the rock and told her that her daughters had been throwing rocks at my house, which was not only extremely rude and terrible, but also dangerous and she needed to teach her daughters that this wasn’t okay. She said she would, but I couldn’t read her very well. In my experience, with parents in Mozambique you often get two extremes in situations like this—either the parents go all vigilante and kick the crap out of the kids, or they couldn’t care less. As I walked home a neighbor asked me what had happened. I explained that the girls who lived in that house had thrown rocks at my house. “Oh that’s terrible!” he said. I returned the following day and spoke to the father and then on the walk home informed a few more neighbors about how terrible the girls who live in that house are. I am hoping that even if the parents don’t care, the sense of public shame will encourage them to do something.

Our bathroom area is two cement rooms without doors, but configured such that you can’t see directly in. There is a roof that is not attached directly to the walls, but sits a few feet above them.

The next day I was bathing when I saw four fingers curl over the top of the wall. I didn’t completely process what they were until I saw the corn rows on top of a head begin to appear next to them. “SUCA!” I yelled. This is a word that means scram and is generally reserved only for dogs—or people you intend to offend. She did scram immediately and I called for Anna who was in the house. Anna looked over the wall but the girl was long gone or hiding. We have had no such incidences since. In this situation I am hesitant to go talk to the neighbors behind us, the property from where this girl had perched. Because I’m not too keen on reminding (or informing) people that it’s possible to peek at us while we bathe.

Another article about the boot camp I recently returned from:

http://allafrica.com/stories/201202231426.html

Things have been creeping along slowly here in Namaacha with my new job (and actually Anna’s too). When I returned from Senegal I sent to my bosses an action plan that outlines what I hoped to do this year. Peace Corps Mozambique has been hit by one crisis after another recently, so the office has been quite busy dealing with all of these. First there was the horrifically tragic accident and that was followed by many volunteers requesting to move sites and some volunteers being evacuated back to the states for medical leave of up to 45 days and they haven’t yet decided if they will return. Then Mozambique was hit by two cyclones in January, requiring the evacuation of some PCVs. I haven’t heard of any volunteer’s houses being destroyed, but I know that there was a fair amount destruction, including a REDES group’s shop that they had constructed when they won the country’s Future Business Leader’s contest. Those kinds of things are the hardest to hear. We were threatened by another cyclone last week, but luckily it changed course and never actually hit Mozambique. And last week a few men with machetes broke into a PCV’s house where four PCVs were and stole things and hit one of the boys a few times with their machetes. In situations like these it is protocol for the PCV to go on Post-Exposure Prophylaxis, in case of exposure to HIV from the cuts. It was probably a good thing too, because they heard that these men had hit a number of other houses in that night, and there could have been blood from other people on the machetes. So, needless to say, the Peace Corps staff in Mozambique has had its hands full without me to worry about. I felt that I should wait until I had their approval and support before I moved forward with my action plan, so I haven’t done much while I waited until they had time to spare to deal with me.

I was able to meet with them this morning, which was great. They were supportive of my plans, I was only cautioned not to try to bite off more than I could chew. There are still some things we didn’t have time to address that day, so we’ll need to have some follow up meetings next week, but it was a good start. One big change following this meeting though—once reviewing all of the work my malaria position will entail this year, we decided that I will be 100% Malaria Activities Coordinator now, rather than splitting my time 50/50 with the role of reviewing the HIV-prevention curriculum of the youth groups in Mozambique. I am still interested in this work, but my role in malaria activities is much more pressing. Also, I am currently not remotely qualified to be evaluating the efficacy of HIV-prevention curriculum and activities—I would need to do a lot of reading and studying of behavior change theory first. This afternoon I met with the representative from the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), who I will be working with primarily this year as a liaison between them and Peace Corps—both the administration and volunteers. There are still some questions from both Peace Corps and PMI about how my position will function this year, mostly in regards to funding, but hopefully we will be able to answer these in next week’s meetings.

And great news, I finally have a user login so I am now able to use the computers in the office here in Namaacha.