Thank God I'm Home.

There was a terrible chapa (mini-bus) accident in Gaza province yesterday that injured three volunteers and killed two others. One of the volunteers that died was going to fill my position teaching biology in the Chimundo secondary school.

It's so tragic, I can hardly believe it. It's just sickening that in Mozambique, car accidents kill more people than AIDS and malaria combined. I am grateful to have made it home safely, and almost feel guilty that this happened to the young woman that was going to replace me, that she was robbed of that experience and the innumerable others that happen throughout a lifetime. I ask that you keep these volunteers and their families in your thoughts and/or prayers.

Much love, and happy holidays.

At last, here we are; Erica and I are in Maputo, on our way up and out. Our National Science Fair was a success, my beach vacation with my brother and sister-in-law was delightful, and my last trimester disappeared in a haze of grades and goodbyes. Everything is unraveling and wrapping up, and it’s all a bit overwhelming. As it should be—I am leaving behind two years of teaching, bucket baths, latrines, Portuguese, malaria prophylaxis, unbearable heat, and unforgettable events, taking with me my memories, my souvenirs, my remembrances, my extensive capulana collection, and my… favorite clothing. (After all, I wasn’t planning on coming all the way to Mozambique and looking like a die-hard hiker/camper/REI model for two years.)

To respond to the yet-unasked question that I’m certain to hear, I can’t say that this experience has necessarily changed me, but instead, it’s made certain beliefs and characteristics stronger, like the single frown line inherited from my father that has been etched deeper by the African sun. I can probably say that I’ve become more myself, as we are all wont to do with time, and yet looking at the experiences that tie together all humanity, African, American, Asian, or Australian, I imagine I’ve also become more like everyone else. Which is just fine with me; for the most part, I’d say I’m in good company.

On Tuesday, the day before Erica and I would be leaving to put on our first-ever National Science Fair, the first words I heard upon waking were Erica's, "You have got to be kidding me." The second thing I heard in my semi-conscious haze was a low buzzing noise. And thus began Tuesday's adventures, or as I like to think of it, the first omen telling us to go home.We found a small swarm of bees congregating on our windowsill, and since Erica's allergic to bee stings, I started a small fire in our living room to smoke out the suckers. Once they dispersed and began moving more slowly, I gave them a good dousing of insect killer and kept it up until just a few strays remained. Not the most humane solution, but what else could we do? There aren't a whole lot of extermination services in the area; as a matter of fact, there are exactly zero. Thirty minutes later, reeking of a toxic combination of smoke and hazardous chemicals, with smoke-induced tears streaming down my face, I thought I could claim victory as mine, but it was not so. Within the hour, we saw a new regiment of bees entering one by one through the metal roof of our excellently-constructed [sarcasm] home. Going outside to investigate, we saw a much larger host of bees congregating on our roof, presumably building a nest there. For the next hour and a half, the dull, growing buzz grated on my nerves until they were whittled to a fragile switch, which is always a good way to start five hours of teaching [more sarcasm]. Erica and her school director hunted down a beekeeper, but he didn't make it to our house until we'd already left for Science Fair. Our empregada Luisa informed us that the bees had already moved out by the time the beekeeper came today, but we won't really know for sure until returning home on Monday. Our backup plans are either to stay at the nearby Millennium Village (a quiet neighborhood lacking shrill banshee children) or book it out of Chibuto and bum around the beaches for the next several weeks. It almost certainly won't come to that, but it's nice to have a battle plan. Flight.

The final trimester has begun! Summer is coming around again and Mozambique is slowly warming up. I'm making packing lists and getting things ready for the next volunteer. Everything in our lives is leading up to our homecoming in another two months. We will be leaving Mozambique in the third week of October and I should hopefully be home just before my 26th birthday. Words can't express how happy I will be to be home for my birthday; the prospect of spending three birthdays in Mozambique was dreary at best. After spending a weekend with family, I'm flying back to NYC to spend a week with Erica, where we'll pamper ourselves, get haircuts and buy new clothes that aren't threadbare from handwashing. These efforts will be preemptive actions to prevent hearing, "You were in the Peace Corps? I could see that."

We have a few more events to squeeze in before saying our goodbyes. I finally made it back to Namaacha to visit my host family this weekend, which was nice. Our first ever National Science Fair will take place in Beira in another week, and things are finally coming together. It will be nice to have an opportunity to make it up to central Mozambique, because with our teaching schedules, we haven't done as much traveling in Mozambique as we'd hoped (this country is huge, and I haven't made it past the southern region since training). My brother and sister-in-law will come to Mozambique in September, and I am thrilled to have one last beach vacation before heading home, especially since Erica and I were sick and didn't get to do any traveling during our week-long trimester break. Hopefully we'll get together with our nearby PCVs for one last get-together in Xai-Xai, and then we'll be packing up our things and our animals, homeward bound!

Thankfully, I think I can say that I'll be leaving Mozambique with few regrets; I wish I would have taken more pictures of my colleagues and students during the first year, I regret not eating more mangoes during the last mango season (neighborhood kids stole all of ours), I wish I would've practiced violin more often, I regret not writing letters this year (postage prices tripled), and I would have liked to spend more time with some PCV friends, particularly those that are already stateside. But, c'est la vie, assím é a vida. So it goes. On the flip side, I learned how to play guitar, did some drawing and painting, baked a cake every Wednesday, read 57 books (and counting), made several pieces of clothing by hand, and formed rewarding relationships with colleagues, neighbors, and students. After two years here, I think that's a respectable assessment.

Things I am looking forward to at home (in no particular order): hot showers and baths cheese and milk ice cream! not feeling like I've narrowly escaped disaster every time I step out of a motor vehicle white Christmas celebrating holidays with friends and family Target coffee public radio fun restaurants snack food, granola bars, and breakfast cereal not having a trail of children asking me for candy and money when I leave the house not having a group of children hollering for candy and crayons when I'm in the house punctuality and accountability playing piano (and on occasion, the accordion) having more than two friends nearby leaving the house past 6 PM having things to do past 6 PM not needing to do sweeping cockroach extermination on a regular basis watching media on something other than a 10-inch laptop screen Little things I'll miss:the occasional lost chicken that waltzes into the house and sets the dogs into a frenzy walking through the beautiful, underdeveloped matu for 40 minutes every day on my way to and from school the vibrant colors--rust sand, sky blue, verdant fruit trees having ample free time feeling comfortable with silence and utter inactivity fresh papaya, mango, passionfruit, pineapple, tangerines, oranges, coconuts, and... all of the other yummy fruits that don't even have names in English And here's a brief look back, a few pictures from the last few months that fill in some of the gaps: my boyfriend serenading Erica and the dogs on her boyfriend (he doesn't actually play the guitar); my students tearing it up with a cultural dance; a woman in the market selling papayas the size of basketballs; Erica cooking by headlamp on a night with no electricity (my headlamp bit the dust--I unfortunately dropped it in the latrine); my Geração Biz students performing their theater piece; three of my students who dropped by for a visit.

Suddenly, I have just three months left in Mozambique, and I once again have to borrow from Kurt Vonnegut, once again from Slaughterhouse-Five, to best describe the feeling. This passage comes from the extraterrestrials’ description of their reading experiences, and aside from the context, it relates pretty well to how I feel while looking back at my time here.

… There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time. I’ve been feeling nostalgic for the last two weeks, caught in a wash of moments and memories. I am typically awakened from my reverie either by an inquisitive cockroach edging towards my glass or by a small neighbor child hollering for candy or crayons in a shrill voice at our door. So while I am seeing my time in Mozambique slip away, day by day, part of me is also racing towards my imminent return home. I’ve learned and enjoyed many things here, but I’m looking forward to going home and feeling like a whole person again, a fully-functioning member of society, back in the comfort of my familiar cultural context, back in the company of family and friends.

Things are going just fine here. The second trimester is wrapping up—the exams have been given, the averages have been calculated, and we’ll have our conselhos in another two weeks. We’ll have our provincial science fair this weekend and start planning for the national fair, coming up on its heels in August. My Geração Biz students have been presenting at school events and will do their theater pieces and lectures during their biology lessons next week. When we’re not doing something with our projects or schoolwork, we’re typically just trying to keep warm—this winter has been downright chilly! Fifty degrees Fahrenheit feels much colder when it’s damp and windy and there’s no insulation or heating. I’m going to be in for a brutal shock when I face the first Midwestern winter in 3 years. Good thing I’ll be too busy soaking up everything America to notice.

With just four months to go, there is a light at the end of this “dark continent” proverbial tunnel. (I must say, I think that’s a terrible nickname for Africa, and only appropriate in reference to the widespread lack of electricity and light pollution.) This light is the beacon of reliable electricity, heralding my return to the developed world. Throughout these two years, there have been days that Erica and I have thought this experience would never end, and that we’d be suffering with our cockroach infestation in Mozambique forever. There have been other days, eating tropical fruits and basking in the sun’s rays on one idyllic beach or another, that I’ve wished the days to lengthen and multiply. But although I’ve toyed with the idea, I’ve never considered extending my service another year; I started my Peace Corps application 47 months ago now, and it’s time for something new. So as we lesson-plan, grade tests, organize Science Fair events, visit our up-and-running cultural center, and try to keep the cockroach population under control, we make plans for the future, and the focal point of our plans is entrance into graduate school. We are in South Africa right now for Erica to take the GRE and both of us are reveling in the luxury of fast, reliable internet and delighting in the ease of obtaining graduate school information that is otherwise a headache to access in Mozambique. I will be applying to Master’s of Public Health programs, getting my degree in the environmental sciences and global health departments. In the future, I’d like to work with issues of water supply and sanitation in developing countries. I am pretty darn excited. Water quality and availability have interested me since my junior semester abroad in Asia, and my experiences in Mozambique have turned that passing interest into a passion, after spending days without water where I forego a much-needed evening bath, turn a blind eye to a basin full of dirty dishes, and plan a dinner that would involve frying instead of boiling or steaming to conserve water. As far as I’m concerned, running water is the best thing since sliced bread (so to speak). And potable running water—well, that’s just too much for words. So, I’m narrowing down my school choices, working on my Statement of Purpose, and trying to figure out how to best execute the application process when I am always in Chimundo, the Chibuto suburb where you can’t even buy bread, let alone get online. It’s a work in progress (my applications and Chimundo).

In the dead of the second trimester, Erica and I had a little shining ray of light in the form of visitors from home. Four of my cousins came to visit with a friend of theirs, and we made plans to meet them in Maputo and then spend a few days at the beach. Naturally, things never go quite as smoothly as they could or should. First of all, my cousins had reserved rooms via the internet, and the receptionist had no record of this and no room for all of us, and evidently no need to be courteous or helpful (to be expected in Mozambique). So when my first cousin arrived early, we switched hotels. The next day, I spent an hour at the airport waiting for them, worrying they were being interrogated or were left stranded in South Africa. Someone mentioned that there was a group in the room for international arrivals, but it was a group of Chinese men—definitely not my cousins. As it turned out, the four of them had taken an earlier flight and had checked into the original hotel, and they’d already arranged a taxi for the next morning, so after tracking them down at that hotel, I was wildly relieved to find that my family had safely made it. Unfortunately, we all felt a little stress the next AM, when we arrived at the hostel where the bus would pick us up and did not see the last four members of our group. I tried to ask another traveler if I could quickly use the hostel computer he was using to look up the phone number for their hotel, but he looked at me as if I were absolutely crazy and after a brief pause, gave me a resolute “no.” OK. Thankfully, there was a phone book lying out, so I called the hotel and asked if my cousins were still there. The receptionist said the taxi had left almost an hour earlier and had taken them to the junta. I think I have omitted descriptions of the junta from earlier posts, so let me quickly explain what the junta is and why those ominous words struck fear into my heart. The junta is the Maputo bus stop where you can get onto a mini-bus that will take you almost anywhere in the country. At any given moment, this lot is filled with 20 or more buses and scores of people milling about, trying to sell you things or get you onto their taxi. It is crowded, smelly, and a little dangerous, particularly for foreigners, and is probably one of the last places on earth you want to be at 5:00 in the morning. I was horrified. Our bus arrived shortly thereafter, and I explained the situation to our driver, asking if he could call a driver at the junta. I told him I was looking for a group of four white people, two men and two women. He punched in a number, said a few words, and handed me the phone. I heard my cousin Renee’s voice on the other end of the line; of course, in Mozambique, you can quickly identify a group of lost-looking foreigners with minimal effort. It’s a rapid process of elimination. Our bus dropped by the junta to pick up my family and a few other passengers to pack the bus to capacity (or past, depending on who you ask). So our collective nightmare ended, and seven hours later we arrived at our resort, cramped, exhausted, and excited. I think this is best summed up in pictures, so here it is.

It was awesome, and my cousin Joshua uploaded a bunch of gorgeous photos on Facebook that do more justice to the experience. We also went on an ocean safari and weaved between jellyfish to keep up with whale sharks. They were beautiful, and large. One sort of snuck up behind me and gave me a small heart-attack; they are harmless to humans, but their mouths are still a good two-and-a-half feet wide, so I easily imagined myself getting stuck in there and did double-time to try to maintain the recommended three-meter distance between myself and the inquisitive shark. Plus, that shark dorsal fin is just plain scary, even on a vegetarian fish. Aside from our animal encounters, we did some shopping, were beach bums for several hours, and went on a sunset catamaran ride on our last evening. It was delightful.We rented a chapa to take us back to Maputo so people could have more space, and it dropped us off at the door to our hotel, where I’d reserved two large rooms for us. Unfortunately, they didn’t actually reserve them for us and gave them to other guests, and I spent the better part of an hour frantically calling ten or more hotels, looking for accommodation for seven people at 4:00 on a Saturday night. It was unpleasant and unsuccessful, and I longingly dreamed of home, the land where the customer is always right. A guest at our hotel saw our troubles, took pity on us, and gave us a number to a hotel where she’d stayed. Miracle of miracles, it was the only hotel that cost less than $400 a night that had room for all of us. We dropped off our things and went out for our last dinner together. It was sad to feel our vacation ending, but after some of our Maputo misadventures, I don’t know how much more vacation we could actually handle. Erica and I had breakfast with our group the next morning, said our goodbyes (mine a little tearful, I have to admit), and hopped on a chapa back to Chibuto. Now we’re back in school, working on our projects, and counting down until our next break. Every trip, we learn something from a new crisis, so if anybody else is still planning on visiting (you know who you are), maybe by then we’ll have perfected the formula and will have a karma payback with a smooth, trouble-free trip. Maybe. If not, well, it will be an adventure. One can always count on that here.

Erica and me with students at a ceremony to commemorate Mozambique´s first president, Samora Machel.

Kids helping us with the messy task of de-feathering chickens.

Our new sitemate!

January drag-g-ged along, and I somehow suddenly found myself in the middle of March. February came and went, and was a transient month in general: we went to Maputo for several days to have our mid-service medical check-ups (clean bill of health, no parasites that I know of) and our friend from Cape Town came to visit us for a few days. This visit coincided with a two chickens leaving their lives, ones we had purchased, butchered, and de-feathered with the help of our empregada for a tasty little dinner festa. My fan went out, a victim of certain dogs who like to chew on electrical wires. And my internet phone left my life, lifted on a chapa in Maputo. It’s almost as if with just 28 days, February is an unanswered question, lacking those last few days to punctuate the month and let it form any solid conclusions (aside from the obvious conclusion that any electronics I own in Mozambique will inevitably be stolen or broken). Mozambique is an excellent study in time and its passing. Too bad I don’t have any Proust lying around.

In the theme of comings-and-goings, I suppose I could say that March came in like a lamb, since it was ever-so-slightly-cooler for a few evenings, but those happy dreams of an early winter died as the mercury rose, and March is going out like a lion, devouring us in an unfortunate heat wave. We fled to Xai-xai for a day trip one weekend with our sitemate Vivienne and her visiting boyfriend; we cooled off in the water, bought souvenirs on the beach, and ate oysters. It was a nice day. One of our Mozambican friends just bought a car, so we’re hoping to hitch a ride with him to the beach sometime again in the near future, because it sure beats hopping aboard an overstuffed, overheated chapa, and Chibuto is an insufferable oven in this infernal heat.

School is going well. Since I’m teaching the same material as last year, I have minimal lesson-planning to do, and I have a much better grasp on how to use my classroom time. That is to say, I have realized that my students absorb precious little from the two 45-minute lessons we have each week and study less, so I teach fewer concepts and pack more practice problems into their short lessons. Classroom management has also drastically improved, thanks in part to the classes’ daily behavior grade, which I dramatically erase and re-write based on my whims and their noise levels. It’s still exhausting, with larger classes of 60-70 students this year and an inconvenient schedule that leaves me little time to run into Chibuto for internet and errands, but I’m enjoying it more. Also, we have a new director, and having new leadership is motivating other teachers to shape up a little and actually show up for class, thereby minimizing the chaos of hundreds of students running around school in the mid-afternoon. That’s always a plus.

Science Fair is starting, and since Erica and I are coordinating the project on the national level (Erica as President, me as Financial Coordinator), we are taking the backseat for our local and provincial fairs and having our colleagues plan and facilitate the meetings and fair events. Erica’s school has had volunteers and Science Fairs for the past several years, so there’s no good reason for us to get suckered into doing it when other people actually have more experience with it and would rather just sit back and watch us work. This frees up more time for me to work with Geração Biz, a Mozambican peer-education health program. A few of my more charismatic, energetic students have started coming, which has contributed to a good group dynamic, and we’ve settled on a regular schedule. They are studying the reproductive system and have learned Duck, Duck, Goose, among other things, and I’m overall very pleased with them. We’ll have a training for them in April, and hopefully afterwards they can begin planning presentations and skits to present to their peers. With Science Fair and the ongoing development of our local Cultural Center (slowly, slowly taking shape), Geração Biz is by far my favorite project and what I will be most proud of accomplishing outside of the classroom when I leave.

Now that we’re well into 2011, Erica and I are beginning to think about the end of our time in Mozambique. We are planning when we will go home (early-mid November, hopefully?), how we will get there (renting a personal chapa to Maputo for us and our homeward bound animals), what we will do when we get there (crash in the Big Apple for a few days), and what we will do in the long run (be impoverished grad students). I’ve become interested in public health for the last few years, in water sanitation and availability in particular, and am looking into different programs and thinking about where I would like to be and where I’d like to study. It’s bizarre, because with the never-ending application process, the unexpected year delay, and the idle transition months, applying for and finally joining the Peace Corps has been the saga of almost the last four years of my life, and all of a sudden, the end is in sight. “The end” is still seven and a half months away, but in the context of the last 45 months, it’s definitely approaching. I’m really ready for the next chapter in my life, but if I’ve learned anything in these last few years, it’s been to enjoy where I’m at and not wish away my time. After all, that’s the stuff life’s made of.

Captions, in no particular order: Erica and her family at Blyde River Canyon, hippo-spotting in Kruger, the Overbos, a snacking giraffe, me and Anna in a tuk-tuk in Maputo, Tofo beach, Mom looking pensive at Xai-xai beach, Anna and me bartering in Tofo, Erica and her dad at the Cape, the Cape of Good Hope, Erica and our friend, the scenic drive to the Cape, one of the vineyards. In short, scenic sub-Saharan Africa with friends and family.

With another two weeks ahead of me before classes would start, of course I couldn’t just go back to Chibuto after my family left. What a colossal waste of a perfectly good travel opportunity that would be! So I booked a spot on an overnight bus to Joburg and a cheap airplane ticket to Cape Town, where I would meet Erica and her dad. I met a kind young couple along the way who recommended a neat hostel in Cape Town and, after swapping contact info, pointed me in the right direction. I had a day to get acquainted with our snazzy hostel and most importantly, its pool, as the day I arrived was Cape Town’s hottest summer day yet. Once the hottest part of the afternoon had passed, I wandered in and out of shops on Cape Town’s bustling Long Street, window-shopping, buying things I hadn’t intended to buy, spending money I hadn’t intended to spend, and generally having a good time. I even found a funky hipster restaurant to have a gourmet veggie burger—imagine that! Oh, the delights of the sparkly, shiny developed world. Back at the hostel, I met fellow travelers and was reunited with Erica and her dad later that evening.The next day, we took off for the Cape of Good Hope with a new friend from the hostel. Along the way, we stopped to see penguins at the aptly named Penguin Beach and drove past baboons in the road (no namesake beach). It was a gorgeous drive, taking us past bluffs, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, ostriches, and yet more baboons. Since Erica’s dad was suffering from back pain, we three youngsters went out the next morning to hike up Table Mountain. For being a tourist attraction, I have to say, it was a pretty strenuous hike; although being from the Great Plains, I suppose I have a natural tendency toward laziness when it comes to hills and mountains and various slopes. Erica and I forgot to stretch out and felt that hike for days to come, but it was well worth it, and we even rewarded ourselves with slushies at the end of it all. We spent the afternoon recuperating by the pool, eating tropical fruits: mangos, bananas, grapes, papaya, grenadilla, and prickly pear. Later that evening, we went out to eat at a restaurant where the three meat-eaters of our party of four tried ostrich steak, crocodile, and warthog ribs (delicious). Day 2 in Cape Town, summed up: broke a sweat, ate like a king, slept like a log. I love vacation, and oh, do I love the developed world.Since we had to eventually drive the rental car back to Joburg, we were crunched for time, so the next day, we left Cape Town to spend a day in the surrounding Winelands. We tasted wine at three vineyards and had a gourmet picnic by the river. We arrived at the last vineyard too late for Erica and I to take its rowboats onto the nearby pond, but considering the low alcohol tolerance we exhibited, it was probably for the best. Skipping stones was much less risky activity. That evening, we barbecued at the hostel, enjoyed the wine we’d bought, passed around the hostel guitar, and shared stories. And I tried my very best not to think of the imminent end of our time in South Africa and the upcoming school year, ever-looming closer. I was more-or-less successful.We said goodbye to our friend the next day and began our two-day road trip back to Joburg. In Joburg, we took advantage of the last luxuries the developed world could offer us: fun restaurants, shopping malls, movie theaters, coffee, laundry, television, and internet. Sigh. We said goodbye to Erica’s dad, and later that evening, said goodbye to South Africa. So many goodbyes, but what naturally follows every goodbye is a hello—Hello Mozambique!Now we’re back home, starting the new school year. Of course, the schedules for my school weren’t ready on time, so I’ll start teaching next week. As much as I’ve been dreading going back to work, part of me is excited to start a fresh school year. I start this year knowing more about the culture of my school, knowing my colleagues and students better, knowing more about how to be an effective teacher, and knowing more Portuguese. While I now lack the excitement of the unknown that I experienced at this time last year, it will be a pleasure to work feeling more confident about how things work and how I fit into that system. I may be a cog in the system, but I'm an American cog, and it's good to know maybe not exactly what that entails, but what I can do with it.

Should old acquaintance be forgot,and never brought to mind?Should old acquaintance be forgot,and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,for auld lang syne,we'll take a cup of kindness yet,for auld lang syne.

Over the last few weeks, I got to enjoy the company of some of my oldest acquaintances: family. Erica, her sister, and I went to Johannesburg to meet their dad and my mother and sister so we could enjoy our sub-Saharan holidays together. Unfortunately, their dad's flight had a stop in London and was cancelled due to the "storm" that swept through Europe (note the North Dakotan scorn over the application of that word to two inches of snow), but we met up with their dad just a few days later, in time to drive through the beautiful Blyde River Canyon and to move on to Kruger National Park.During our two days in Kruger, we successfully spotted the "big five" from the safety and comfort of our rental van: lion, leopard, elephant, rhinocerous, and the unexpected fifth, the buffalo. Other notable viewings included vultures, giraffes, dung beetles, hornbills (the Lion King bird), warthogs, baboons, and approximately 644 impalas (yes, I counted). Once we'd had our fill of wildlife adventures, we drove to Komatipoort, where our families enjoyed a relaxing Christmas at a small B&B.On the 26th, Mom, Anna, and I said goodbye to Erica's family and left for Mozambique. Our bus incidentally left for Mozambique without picking us up, but one frantic phone call and one overpriced private ride later, we were ushered across the nearby border and onto our idling bus. In my opinion, adventure-filled Africa wouldn't be the same if everything worked out just as it should. The three of us spent a day shopping in Maputo and then took the 4 AM bus to Tofo, where we enjoyed two days of blue skies, white sand, and warm ocean water. Our Ocean Safari was definitely action-packed; we swam with schools of brightly colored fish, we spotted dolphins, and Anna suffered a small head wound. Here's the quick sum-up: the story involves getting a "small" cut that later turned out to be not-so-small, getting a hurried ride to the soon-to-close-clinic in the neighboring city from an artist friend of mine, nearly running over pedestrians who "are afraid of rain, but not cars," banging on the clinic door when it closed one minute early, and getting excellent care from the gracious staff who stayed half an hour past closing to give Anna stitches. This was how we spent our last evening in Tofo--again, I think life would be awfully drab without these unexpected adventures.Up to this point, we had traveled by rental car in South Africa and had taken a nice charter bus from Maputo to Tofo. Unfortunately, these nice charter buses have limited routes, so to get back to Chibuto, Anna and Mom got to experience the delightful chapa, the minibus that is crammed to capacity and then half again. Chapas generally are filled with warm bodies, crying children, and oftentimes, chickens. We arrived back in Chibuto feeling slightly cramped but without incident and took a quick walk to my school with the dogs, meeting various friends and neighbors. Since Chibuto is essentially a baking sandy oven without a beach, we took a day trip to Xai-xai the following morning. Aside from a brief wedding procession (a common occurrence on Xai-xai beach), the beach was quiet and largely unoccupied all morning. Although Xai-xai doesn’t have the fine, white sand of Tofo, it’s still a lovely beach, and the water is a bit cooler and more refreshing. We enjoyed lunch on the beach and went into town to buy capulanas and have a beer with a friend of mine, a colleague from school.We returned to Chibuto for New Year’s Eve, and after having their fill of bucket baths, latrines, and unfortunately, cockroaches (their trip coincided with a sudden infestation during our absence), we took our last chapa to Maputo on New Year’s Day and stayed with Anna’s friend Erica and her family for a few days. We did a little more shopping, a little more wandering, and after a whirlwind trip, Mom and Anna were off again, this time not by chapa, but by plane, back home to the states. After making tracks around sub-Saharan Africa, it was time to head halfway across the world, homeward bound, as I will do in just 10 months’ time.

We're back from our trip to Lesotho, and not knowing much about the trek beforehand, it was all that I'd hoped and more. Erica and I met our sitemate Gracey and two other volunteers in Maputo, where we got a bus to Johannesburg, where we rented a car to drive to Lesotho. We spent a night in Malealea Lodge and set out from there on a three-day pony trek through the mountains of Lesotho. This took us through some hair-raising passes, but our patient guides and surefooted horses never let us [fall] down. That being said, it's a good thing we only trekked for three days; by day three, my fear buffer was running low and I don't think my poor little coração could have handled too many more spikes in my blood pressure. We spent two nights sleeping in a thatched brick hut in a small, local village and hiked one afternoon to a stunning waterfall, where I swam with frog (singular) in the chilly water. Heading back to the lodge on the last day, we got stuck in the rain, and due to the loss of my rain jacket in my May robbery, I got more cold and wet than would be medically advisable, but my Viking stock did me well and, Look Mom, no hypothermia! We took our time driving through delightfully developed South Africa on the way home and stopped in Clarens, a quaint touristy town, where we appreciated art and window-shopped. Erica and I are now back home and getting ready for upcoming sub-Saharan travels with her sister and dad and my sister and mom, so from here on out, it's all downhill.

Classes are done! Maybe that does not accurately convey my immense excitement and enthusiasm—classes are OVER! Fim! Finito! Done-zo! And that makes me so-oo happy. After classes ended, we had a week to prepare students’ grades, copy them onto the various official documents, and decide who would and would not pass. Within the last two trimesters, the national stipulations for passing students changed not just once, but two times, so within one school year, we have had three different systems for passing students into the next grade. Need I say that this week of grades was more than a little confusing and messy? Well, it was. Because students fail many disciplines, but instead of making their classes easier to pass, most teachers assign grades, balk at the number of failing students, and tweak grades after writing them in ink in all of the grade sheets. This is tedious, stressful, and fraudulent work, and when the national passing criteria changed for the second time after the week of doing grades, most teachers did more artful erasing and re-inking in the official documents to help students pass. But what is to be done? The education system here is broken, in my honest opinion, with regulations that change on a whim and don’t really match up. For example, with the newest stipulations, students don’t pass into the next grade if they fail design, agriculture, and physical education. Yet officially, they can pass with failing grades in math, the sciences, and the humanities. So without talking to other teachers, I would have had only four students in my class of 40 pass into ninth grade. In the end, 15 students passed—a whopping 37.5% of my class. And as a result, because my school is fairly new and repeatedly fails its eighth graders, it has almost 1000 eighth graders, while only 500 students have trickled into ninth grade, and 300 have squeaked by into tenth grade. It almost makes me want to be a teacher in the United States for a year or two, just to be able to compare the education systems. Almost... but after this, I think I will be a little burned out on teaching for a while.

The work in school is not yet done, however. Currently, the tenth graders are taking national exams. These exams are taken very seriously, with all students in Mozambique taking the same tests on the same day at the same time. The tests arrive in sealed packets, which are opened in every classroom at the exact moment when the bell rings. Yet these elaborate anti-cheating measures are nullified when teachers responsible for controlling the exams and responding to questions simply give out answers. All I can say is, ridiculous. Again, this system is broken, and I don’t see anything changing anytime soon without major, major reform. I’m trying not to lay it on too thick, but this is the reality.

On a lighter note, Erica and I are fleeing Mozambique and these wretched exams to go to Lesotho tomorrow for a three-day pony trek. It could not be better timing for us, as we are both sick to death of school. There will be a second round of national exams in a few weeks, but this trip will give our bodies a break from the heat and give us the boost we need to keep going and not be viciously bitter towards our poor colleagues in the weeks to come. Once December hits, we’re in the clear; we’ll have family coming and will do some traveling around Mozambique and South Africa, hitting the beaches and visiting Kruger National Park to see lions and tigers and bears, oh my! (Although I’m not so sure South Africa has bears, but you get the picture.)

Meanwhile, in Chibuto and outside of school, things are good. We’re having a small fence built for the dogs so they won’t chase and eat our neighbors’ chickens while unsupervised during our vacation. We just gave our house an interior makeover, throwing out tons of junk left by previous PCVs and even fashioning a couch out of my old mattress. With the temperature rising daily, there is the purchase of a fan in my near future. It’s been a long but good year, and we’re trying to exercise some control over a few small things in our life to close this year on a positive note and carry us into the next year. With that, I leave you with these pictures: me and Erica on my birthday (note the lovely mural left by a previous PCV) and a sandwich menu that features the most delightfully terrible English translation I’ve encountered in Mozambique. When things get rough, we toast simple.

August and September have been topsy-turvy months. August brought the start of the final trimester and a string of canine-related incidents, while September brought the regional Science Fair and the dreaded arrival of summer heat. I’m holding out for October, which brings the end of classes, Halloween, and most importantly, my birthday. But first, here’s a rundown of August and this half of September.One Saturday afternoon, Erica and I were walking to a nearby shop and suddenly heard a dog yelping as we passed an empty lot. We looked over and saw a group of young boys beating a stray puppy that was hanging upside down from a tree, tied from its back two legs. We immediately began furiously scolding the children, and set out to find a knife to cut down the unfortunate creature. Within a minute of reaching the safe ground, it died. Erica wisely tried using the incident as a teaching moment to tell these boys that even if the puppy was causing problems and stealing food, there are better ways to cull animals. The boys laughed amongst themselves as we walked away. When peoples’ lives are so difficult here, why worry about a dog?That same day, our own puppy Shingove became listless and lost interest in food. He soon stopped eating altogether and was quickly reduced to a shaking frame of skin and bones. Erica’s family called several times with different tips and information, so with this guidance, we nursed our sick li’l pup back to health, giving him human medicine and food with a dropper and keeping him hydrated. Come Sunday, he was back to our romping, mischievous Shingove that attacks us as we do exercises; Monday morning, a neighbor girl came to our kitchen window to say that a car had hit our dog. Not just hit, completely ran over our dog with a velocity that should be illegal in a small neighborhood. The bizarre mix of foreshadowing and irony was almost too much, and it was certainly too much for a Monday morning.On top of the dog drama, someone stole our shampoo, face wash, sponge, and razors out of our bathroom. And one slightly-off man started coming to the school to jabber English gibberish at me, while another slightly-off man started coming to the house to jabber Portuguese gibberish at us. Evidently, we are magnets not only for canine disaster, but also for theft and mentally instable individuals. Cool.Yet just as I was beginning to slide into a jaded, pessimistic funk, a friend gave us a replacement puppy, and although it didn’t leave much time for the death of Shingove to stop smarting, our new puppy, Havu (Shangana for “monkey”), is adorable and oh-so-affectionate. One would think I’d learn to stop being so attached to cute puppies, but what’s the use? Why fight it?Science Fair should have happened during the last weekend of August, but due to a few days of unrest for rising fuel and food prices in Maputo and other larger cities, we were forced to push it back a week. (Thankfully, there were no notable demonstrations in Chibuto, so aside from a brief travel ban and fluctuation in bread prices, we were unaffected.) In the date change, we lost the opportunity to have a sound system and one of our guest speakers, but everything else went pretty smoothly. Projects ranged from making electronic doorbells and motorized cars to making coconut oil to making juice… from a package. While that last one was a bit of a stretch, we were happy to have so many participants—50 or so students from around 15 schools in Maputo and Gaza Provinces. This is nothing by American standards, but in Mozambique, nothing is as easy as it seems it should be, and nearly everything that could go wrong often does, so it was a small miracle we pulled it off. Although we were absolutely exhausted afterwards, it was worth it.As September slides downhill into October, I’m trying to get a few students mobilized to do some health presentations at school, and Erica has projects of her own at her school. We’re planning our final lessons; I’m in the midst of the reproductive system, and it is just amazing to me how students never tire of saying “vagina,” which by the way is Portuguese for (you guessed it) “vagina.” Even after classes end, we’ll have several weeks of grading national exams and the odious task of writing thousands of grades by hand that will extend into December. But since we have family coming in December and a possible venture into Lesotho in November, and since we are volunteers after all, Erica and I will be able to get out of some of it. Because volunteers without volition make for unhappy PCVs.I hope those of you back home are enjoying the fall colors and brisk air for me. Once it gets hotter here and cooler there, I’ll see what I can do about sending some of our heat your way. There’s more than enough around here.

Thank you for all of the letters and packages! Erica and I have decided to share a post office box with other volunteers in Xai-xai, so if you want to send me letters to this address, I might get them a little more quickly:Alycia OverboC/o Corpo da PazC.P. 85Xai-xai, Moçambique Please continue sending packages to the Maputo address (Avenida do Zimbabwe, No. 345). I have greater faith that packages will arrive there unopened, and also, the Peace Corps pays the fees to receive them, which works out well for me. Erica and I are well-stocked with coffee and granola bars and are happy as clams at high tide. If you’re looking for new care package ideas, different teas are nice, and reading materials like books and magazines are always appreciated, as are movies and music. And I think I previously forgot to mention my deep love for peanut butter M&M’s. But really, anything from home is a treat. Anything that crosses the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, and most of Africa that has my name on it makes me feel pretty special.

Looking back at the second trimester and trying to enjoy the last free moments of my break before the inevitable lesson planning, this seems like a good time to type up a new blog post and consequently aid my procrastination. Good news—though there is still no trace of anything lost in my robbery, a violin has come back into my life! By crazy coincidence, a nearby volunteer had brought a violin in intending to learn how to play it, but since she’s been busy lately, she kindly lent it to me. With so many aspects of my life being different here in Mozambique, I can’t even describe how nice it is to practice and feel a continuity with something that’s been a major presence throughout most of my life. All I can say is, it’s nice.Our modest science fair was a success. We had our doubts when we arrived and didn’t see another soul for another hour, but that’s just the way things go in Mozambique; eventually, the participants and other facilitators showed up, and everything ran according to schedule (adding an hour, of course). Only one student actually conducted an experiment—the others did demonstrations that involved fire, chemicals, and melting plastic bottles—but we were just glad they participated and didn’t start the school on fire. We’re working on organizing the regional fair, and thankfully have the help of an acquaintance working in the Ministry of Science and Technology. He is very enthusiastic about the project and has been an invaluable help. It works out well, because although science fair began as a Peace Corps initiative a few years ago, now that we have involvement of an individual in the government, hopefully in the future we can pass it off and it will remain a sustainable, autonomous program.My trimester wrapped up a little early because I spent a week in Maputo at a Peace Corps conference to help plan learning objectives and sessions for next year’s trainees. Afterwards, I was back in Chibuto for a few days to prepare my turma’s grades for conselhos, but [oh, darn!] had to miss the actual conselhos for another Peace Corps conference in Inhambane Province. Erica and I were pretty thrilled about that timing. We spent three days in sessions discussing project planning with local counterparts, which hopefully will have productive results; my counterpart and I discussed a model agriculture training for teenage orphans in the community and we may actually implement it. We’ll see…!When the conference ended last Sunday, Erica and I were ideally located in beautiful, coastal Inhambane for our week-long break from school, so we trekked over to nearby Barra with a few other friends. We had intended to stay for a night or two and then move on to Tofo and then meander home, but after landing on the beach and later meeting up with a group of fun, hospitable South Africans, we ended up staying for five nights. We had a great vacation—swimming, buying colorful capulana clothing on the beach (capulanas are the colorful, multi-purpose lengths of cloth that women use as skirts or to tie babies to their backs, etc.), body-surfing (which I am terrible at), and good eating, thanks to the generosity and cooking prowess of our new acquaintances. But every vacation has to end sometime, so we finally came home on Friday to be reunited with our pets and start preparing for classes this week. With memories of sea and sand behind and prospects of lesson planning and grades ahead, it’s tough to get back into the swing of things, but if nothing else, it’s nice to come back to a house of happy animals who are glad you’re home.

Our casa; Erica blowing bubbles with the neighborhood chilluns; the oh-so-photogenic Shingove; sleeping, snuggling Bea (L) and Rocksteady (R); me with more of the cute neighborhood terrors; our scenic backyard sunsets.

So just how accurate was your imagination? There will be more pictures to come someday, so work on your mental image of my school for the next test.

Now that electricity is a fairly constant aspect of my daily life, I occasionally find myself looking at photos on my computer of my past life, and although I am happy, healthy, and doing well here, I sometimes am grasped by the sudden feeling of what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here? I have now completed 9 months in Mozambique, which is encouraging and feels good, but it is inevitably followed by the requisite recognition and mathematics of the 18 remaining months, which seems daunting and impossibly long. But when I feel trapped in the amber of this moment and there is no why (Vonnegut—I cannot take credit for that pretty turn-of-phrase), I think about the few things in my life right now with forward momentum. In case you were wondering where the momentum of life is blowing me at present, here are some of the details. My sitemate and I are putting together a Science Fair at her school, which is rapidly approaching. Her school has had volunteers and Science Fairs in the past, so this year, I just invited students from my school to participate in a joint fair at her school. I’d had my doubts about the project, but seeing my handful of favorite students get excited about their lung models and physics demonstrations is a winning experience. There won’t be any earth-shaking scientific discoveries coming from my 8th graders this year at the fair, but what’s wrong with reinventing the wheel? The wheel is still lookin’ good.In other news, as of last weekend, the Chimundo PCV household has increased by one, consisting now of two American women, two Mozambican kitties, one chicken, and (new addition) one adorable puppy. Puppy’s name is Shingove, Shangana for “cat.” We think it’s an ironic little joke, but for people around here, it’s just more evidence that we’re not quite right, that we're weird Americans who talk to animals and what’s more, feed and bathe them. Shingove is a tubby little squirt, waddling around and trying to initiate play with Bea and suspicious Rocksteady (Erica’s kitty, who is not terribly receptive to these antics as of yet). We heart Shingove. The cats are reserving judgment.Speaking of our domesticated animals, Clucka has finally settled in, roosted, and started producing eggs. After wandering through the house and trying out the spare bed, our beds, and our clothing-filled shelves, she decided to roost inside of the bag of charcoal on the porch. Maybe this would be a good time for me to explain that Erica and I do not have a TV; most of our entertainment comes from our pets. But I have to say, it’s pretty funny to be on the receiving end of a death stare from a maternal chicken guarding eggs in a sack of coal. (Come to Mozambique if you want to give it a try!) School is going just fine; at my school, we’re already getting ready for our final exams (“final” meaning 4 weeks before the actual end of the trimester to give teachers time to grade and students a few weeks to slack off). In July, I should have a week off, which should be a welcome opportunity for a bit of travel and a change of scenery. In the meantime, I’m keeping myself occupied by going to my homeroom’s soccer games. While they can be little stinkers who skip out on biology on Tuesdays when it’s their last class of the day, I have to admit, they are soccer superstars. Maybe because they are, on average, one to two years older and 6 to 8 inches taller than the other players, but they do me proud regardless.Oh, and no news on the robbery. I have no hopes or expectations of recovering any of my lost items at this point. But I do have my new passport, which is complete with a badass-looking stamp saying “THIS PASSPORT IS A REPLACEMENT FOR A STOLEN PASSPORT.” Don’t you know it.Erica's family was here for a week in May, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to see Chibuto through fresh eyes and be reminded that while America may feel like another world away, family and friends are only a few plane rides away, continuing their lives until we next meet again.

After months without pizza, shopping, movie theaters, and coffee shops, Maputo seems like heaven on earth. I've been in Maputo since Sunday to apply for a new passport and was slated to back to Chimundo today, but since the consulate was too busy yesterday to sign my application, I'll have to go home tomorrow [oh, darn] . Looks like another evening of hanging out with fellow the PCVs who happen to be in Maputo and eating at fun restaurants--we all have to make sacrifices sometimes, don't we?Aside from the fact that I bought acid-washed jeans today (something I never thought I would or could do, particularly in Mozambique), that's really all the news there is to report from the last week; I mostly wanted to put up a new post because: A. I can, with the free and reliable internet at the Maputo Peace Corps office, and B. I never got a chance to upload my April post, which threw off my nice average of one post per month. I haven't heard any news yet about recovering my stolen belongings, but two things have come back into my life: our chicken ("Clucka") and a replacement internet phone. Things are on the up-and-up.

So, up until a day ago, things were going pretty darn well in Chimundo. I finished my first trimester of teaching, managed to write up 600 grades by hand, and participated in our week of conselhos, where we teachers wrote down our thousands of grades by hand in several more source documents. It was about as fun as it sounds, but surprisingly wasn´t too awful. Because of conselhos, we teachers didn´t get a break, so last week, I jumped right into the second trimester, with a slightly better grasp of Portuguese and slightly better grasp of classroom management. Slightly.I´ve been continuing to live with my sitemate, and since it´s been so pleasant to have company, electricity, someone to cook with, and someone to even do Pilates with, she agreed for us to live together and me to continue living at her house permanently. We even bought a chicken together to have eggs. But the morning after we decided this, I went back to my old house to begin organizing my belongings and found my front door ajar. And my bedroom door ajar. And most of my things gone. Someone had entered my house that night, using a screwdriver to pry open the doors, and stole my suitcases, violin, and even a drawer from my bed. Thankfully, my computer and good camera were already at my sitemate´s, and the thieves passed on most of my clothing, but when they lifted my suitcases, they got US dollars and my Peace Corps passport. I´m sure those are long gone, but I wonder how much good they will get out of my two-year supply of contact lenses, my two-year supply of ivory-colored makeup, and my violin. My guess is, not as much good as I´d get out of them. Not nearly.Oh, and our chicken ran away, adding insult to injury.I´m sure the thieves broke in because they knew that even though I returned to the house every day before and after school, I wasn´t sleeping there. I kick myself for not moving my things sooner, but hindsight is 20/20 (unfortunately, unlike my vision, when my one remaining pair of contact lenses dies on me). People at the school were great, arranging a car for me to move my things to my sitemate´s house that day so the thieves wouldn´t return and lift anything else. Other teachers have been very sympathetic and supportive, as have neighbors. Replacing my Peace Corps passport shouldn´t be too difficult, and will get me a trip to Maputo, where I can also replace my internet phone (which unfortunately fell into the Indian ocean a month ago--I estimate it´s halfway to Madagascar by now) and try to replace some of my products. And I´m going to start thinking about an insurance claim and replacing my stash of contact lenses. I think disc 2 of Pride and Prejudice is a lost cause (sorry, Mom), but ah well.Anyway, aside from the robbery, things are just fine. Bea is doing well and sends greetings. Hope you are well, too.

I knew my roommate Arlete was in the process of getting a house, so last Monday night, when she carried her last load of belongings to her new digs and said she was going to start sleeping there, I was surprised that she wasn’t going to stay for the dinner I’d prepared, but not too surprised. However, when my roommate Amelia told me the next night, “I forgot to tell you—I talked to some people and I’m getting a room of my own, so Friday night will be my last night in this house,” I was fairly surprised. That’s how within one week, I went to having two Mozambican roommates to none. Poof! They both moved to houses that have electricity, so I can’t say that I blame them.Since my roommates left with their pots, pans, and stove, Bea and I are currently lodging with my PCV sitemate. Bea likes playing with her cat, and I like this too, since his playful-yet-at-times-painful ankle attacks have decreased. It’s been a nice week to enjoy using my computer, having a well-charged phone, and having the company of an American friend. It might be hard to adjust to living alone again, but I’m excited to set up my house just how I want it. There’s a chance another Mozambican teacher will move in, but I think the convenience of being close to the school isn’t enough of a pro to outweigh the con of no electricity, so the chance is slim. Bea and I are going to do some major household item acquisition and try our hands at interior decorating; we’ll let you know how it goes.

As I write this blog post, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been teaching for a month already. Whereas I have given and corrected my first biology test, I’m still working on the names of my students. That could have something to do with the fact that teaching 11 classes of eighth graders with 55 students each, I have about 600 students. But I have learned my favorite students’ names, which is a start. (It doesn’t help that I’m not terribly familiar with Portuguese names like Boaventura, Moisés, and Calado). The students only have biology twice a week, so I end up teaching the same two lessons 11 times each during the week. It’s nice that I don’t have to do much lesson-planning, but I start to feel a little crazy after teaching the osso-muscular system for the eleventh time. And repeating myself over and over, I’ll be darned if I remember any biology words in English by the end of these two years.

Yet all in all, things are beginning to gel. I’m getting to know my colleagues a little better and getting to know the ropes. The living situation is challenging at times, being the odd person out in terms of culture and language (the roomies typically speak in Shangana to each other), but improving. I have begun doing my share of the cooking, and although black pepper is too spicy and vegetable skins are widely distrusted, French toast was a hit (syrup, however, is too sweet). You win some, you lose some.

My cat Bea is in good health and keeping me sane; I identify with him a lot, as we both share language and cultural barriers with our housemates. And although he has the habit of lying in the grass and ambushing my ankles while I’m walking back from the latrine or carting water (on my head, I might add), he’s a good cat.

My PCV sitemate is also a great help in maintaining my sanity. We are thinking of going to the beach this weekend for the first time since Christmas, and I think it will be a well-deserved break from school, Portuguese, awkward living situations, and… oh, so many more things that I don’t have the time or space to write about in this blog—things like marriage proposals, the surprising difficulty of procuring bread, days with precious little water—things to ask me about in two years. Or when you come visit me in Mozambique.

Então, ate já—passa bem, nada mão, e beijinhos!

Last Monday, I woke up early and was putzing around when I heard a knock at the door. It was a woman who introduced herself as a teacher at the school, Professora Arlete. I’ve met several neighbors and teachers who have dropped by to introduce themselves, chat, or practice English, so this was by no means an uncommon occurrence, even at 7 in the morning. As the small talk began to wrap up, Arlete said she was going to get her malas at the neighbor’s house. The word mala sounded awfully familiar, a Portuguese word I had once known but clearly forgotten, so I just smiled and thanked her for visiting. This was met by a confused look.

“No, no—the neighbor just lives over there, and I’m going to get my malas right now,” she said. It was my turn for the confused look. “I’m going to get my malas and come back to the house. I’m going to live with Professora Amelia.” And therefore, most importantly, me. At this point, I remembered what malas were: suitcases.

I tried my best to channel my shock into an overly enthusiastic offer to help with her malas, and tried to hide my expression of complete astonishment. I must have succeeded, because the friendly chatting resumed immediately. And that is how I met Arlete, Mozambican roommate #2.

Arlete is kind and warm, and lived in my house with Amelia last year. At first, I had reservations about being the odd person out and having to readjust to their existing routine, but I think it will work out well, and might actually be easier for everyone. Maybe not as easy as me moving in with my fellow PCV in Chimundo, but where’s the adventure in that?

I keep on forgetting that Christmas is coming in 4 days. It might have something to do with the 90 degree heat and lack of snow. And since I have no electricity, when I want to listen to Christmas music, my best options are to sing or whistle it. I think I will spend Christmas on Xai-xai beach, which, although is as antithetical to my typical midwestern Christmas as possible, will certainly be festive and memorable.

I´ve had requests for my new mailing address and care package ideas. The best mailing address will still be the Maputo address; mail sent there will eventually reach me, and as inefficient as that may sound, I believe it is the best option.

Alycia Overbo

c/o Corpo da Paz

Av. do Zimbabwe No. 345

Maputo, Mozambique

As for care package ideas, I would be thrilled to receive anything, but I´d be especially happy to receive wasabi soy almonds (found at your local Kmart or Target), black licorice, instant pudding mix, stickers for students, ground coffee, granola bars, books, magazines, or maybe a new t-shirt or tanktop, as excessive sweating and handwashing are together killing my clothing.

Lots of love to you all, and best wishes for your holiday season!

Life in Mozambique thus far has been fairly eventful (to say the least), but the last two weeks have been particularly noteworthy. On Tuesday Dec. 8, we trainees went to Maputo to be officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers and on Wednesday, we packed up and left Namaacha. It was sad to say goodbye to my PCV friends and host family, but after 10 weeks of Portuguese classes, medical sessions, and culture lectures, it was time for a change.

And what a change it is; after a short conference in Xai-xai to meet our supervisors, I traveled to Chimundo, Gaza province, which will be my site and my home for the next 2 years. I arrived that Friday morning with my supervisor, my bags and, much to the surprise of my supervisor, my kitten Bea, whom I successfully concealed throughout the entire trip from Namaacha. Bea and I were dropped off at the school and made a short trek to our new home, which is on school grounds. My first impressions of the house were very positive; it is quaint, with a grass bathhouse, outdoor latrine, two bedrooms, and sizeable main room. My second impressions were a little overwhelming; I quickly saw that the only furniture in the house was my bed, a small plastic shelf, and two plastic chairs. Also, the house has no electricity. However, my house has a kerosene lamp, a gas burner, dishes, and notably, a Mozambican roommate, Amelia, who is a fellow teacher at my school. Amelia has been very patient and helpful in the last week, showing me where to get rides to the nearby city of Chibuto, cooking for us, and introducing me to her family in Chibuto. Bea and I have a standing invitation there to wash clothes and take advantage of their electricity, and I fully intend to take them up on that, especially since Amelia and my other colleagues are leaving Chimundo for the holidays. Thankfully, there is another volunteer who lives in Chimundo, so I can easily visit her and her electricity oasis. Meanwhile, since school doesn’t start for another month, Bea and I will start working on furniture acquisition and try our hand at Mozambican foods. We should have plenty to keep ourselves occupied.

So… November! I’ve come to the conclusion that November is the universal month of crummy weather. For every day of sun in Namaacha, we have had five days of rain, and weeks of continuous mud. I think I’m getting all of my cold and rainy days in Mozambique upfront, so I’m trying to embrace it.

Anyway, while I was waiting for my laundry and the cement walls of my room to dry in the perennial humidity, November sneakily flew past me. In mid-November, we went to different cities in Mozambique to visit current volunteers. I traveled to northern Mozambique to visit a volunteer who coincidentally stayed with my family two years ago during training. The family was overjoyed that I was going to visit her, and gave me a bag full of cake, fruit, and special Namaacha bread for her, which I dutifully dragged onto the airplane and chapas (overcrowded mini-buses) throughout my journey across Mozambique. She was a great hostess, so my ill feelings about lugging the large plastic bag of food quickly dissipated. We traveled around the area a little bit, seeing Ile de Mocambique and Chokis, the most perfect beach I have ever seen in my life. It was informative to see another site and meet current volunteers, but it was effectively like a Peace Corps-sponsored vacation. It was fantastic, and I’d like to think, well-deserved.

It’s a good thing we had that break, because upon returning to Namaacha, there was an explosion of activity with preparations for model school. We have been teaching students biology, chemistry, and English from 7:30 AM until 11 AM for the last two weeks. School is out of session right now, so the students are volunteers who are motivated by either certificates, free school supplies, cookies, or learning. I had a particularly energetic class, which was a blessing and a curse, but a good no-stakes crash-course in classroom management before going to site. They did well on our test and were excited to receive their treats and certificates, especially because I took photos of all of them receiving the certificates. This is a huge reward here; even though the students don’t receive photos, getting to see their photo and imagining me showing people in America is “ultimo”. The students were pretty adorable today, and a few asked for autographs. I even got to sign the backpack of one of my favorite students. Aww. At times, the idea of teaching biology in Portuguese every day for the next two years is daunting, but things like that are great perks.

Where do I begin? I’ll start at 5:40 in the morning, an hour of day I never thought I’d see on a regular basis, the hour I emerge from my mosquito net. I start my day by brushing my teeth outside at the rock wastewater drain. Upon seeing the whites of my eyes, my mae boils water for my bath, either over a fire or in a hotpot, which I later carry to the reed bathhouse in my small, multipurpose bacia (tub) for my bucket-bath. After getting ready for the day, I have a little instant coffee and fresh bread with jam and peanut butter; on Fridays, I also take a little malaria prophylaxis with my morning coffee. The morning Portuguese classes are small and are held at volunteers’ host homes. This week, they’re at my house, and the other 4 biology volunteers in my class get to experience the biodiversity of my home, with the multitude of pigs, ducks, and chickens that roam the yard (I sleep well at night knowing I have Tamiflu on hand). After language class, I walk with my fellow trainees to our education classes, winding/hiking our way out of our bairro (neighborhood) along the red dusty walkways. Cross-cultural and language application classes follow, and we generally wrap up by 4 or 5 in the evening. When I get home, my sister Anina gets me a Coke and a package of cookies for my lanche (snack). (I also receive a package of cookies for my morning snack; I would say that cookies and soda compose about 20% of my diet here, so I try to share with my special lanches with my sibs or the various visiting neighbor children.) I usually do a little T.P.C. (trabalha para casa (homework)), play with my little brother Pedro, and sit outside with my sisters Anina and Atalia as they prepare dinner. I chat with them and with my brother Castro as I wait for opportunities to be remotely helpful (usually stirring, but occasionally chopping veggies). For dinner we typically eat rice, a meat or coconut/vegetable dish, cucumber salad, fresh fruit, and for me, Fanta. (Soda is cheaper than bottled water, so I just brush my teeth at the rock for a little longer to compensate for my copious sugar consumption.) While we eat, we watch “Beia y Feia”, a thinly-veiled Brazilian rip-off of “Ugly Betty”, and I’m not going to lie, I thoroughly enjoy it. Coincidentally, my host dad generally becomes very chatty around this time, but on nights when he goes to bed early, I watch with my mom and she explains things to me. By this time, it’s about 9:30 or 10, time for me to hit the sack and crawl back under my mosquito net.

Filling in the gaps from that brief narrative, my Portuguese is improving and I’m slowly weeding out my Spanish accent and replacing it with “sh” and “ao” sounds. I have already given three biology presentations in Portuguese in my education classes, so at present, a disproportionate amount of my vocabulary is related to water pressure in plants, the structure and functions of skin, and the circulatory system, but it will all even out eventually. If you want to learn a little Portuguese, the word for "thief" in Portuguese is "ninja"; we´ve been having fun with that one.

The weather is variable but great; Namaacha is temperate, being at a high altitude, and getting dressed in the morning is a daily exercise in luck and probability. Mornings are typically cool, and afternoons can either heat up past 80 degrees Fahrenheit or just hang out at 60 degrees Fahrenheit under cloudy skies. It keeps things exciting.

All in all, things are going just swimmingly. I have a phone here, so if anyone wants to give me a jingle, email me and I´ll happily give you my digits. I left out just a few details of the last month (ha!), so there is plenty to chat about.

I can never get over the strange disconnect of traveling; a person can get on a plane, watch a few movies, have a few snacks, and then land in a completely foreign place, another world. After landing in Maputo yesterday afternoon, we haven't had much opportunity to explore this new world, being restricted to the hotel for security purposes, but we're still getting exposure to the Mozambican world outside of our hotel through extensive orientations and presentations. And through our Portuguese language interview, which was effective foreshadowing to how wretched my communication will be for a while. My miming skills, however, will improve drastically.

We've essentially had a crash course on Peace Corps service in these last two days, and tomorrow, we drive to Namaacha to meet our host families. I don't think there will be much internet availability in Namaacha, so until my phone gets set up, the best way to communicate with me is probably snail mail. If a person were to write me a letter, a person might expect to receive mail in return, and if this would be strong enough incentive, mail would be sent to:

Alycia Overbo, PCV

c/o U. S. Peace Corps Mozambique

Avenida Zimbabwe 345

Maputo, Mozambique

And in case Mom is worrying, I have gotten most of my immunizations (and subsequently can't comfortably lift my arms above my head), so I'm not coming home with typhoid fever. Tudo bem, everything is good!

I've never been to Philadelphia, and my knowledge of Philadelphia is fairly limited; thinking of Philadelphia mostly brings to mind the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and cream cheese. So while I will be in Philadelphia for less than 24 hours for my pre-departure orientation on September 29, I won't need to see much to greatly increase my knowledge of the city. And since my group of volunteers will be checking out of our hotel at 2:30 AM the following morning for a bus ride to NYC and 15-hour trans-Atlantic flight to Johannesburg, I don't think I'll need to worry about losing beauty sleep in Philadelphia. There should be ample opportunity to catch up. (If anyone is wondering, we have no layover, so evidently planes can fly for 15 hours without refueling. Evidently.)

After flying from Johannesburg to Maputo, we will have a three-day orientation where we'll learn basic survival Portuguese, get our immunizations, and receive safety advice. On day three, we will travel to Namaacha and meet the host families we'll stay with throughout the 10 weeks of training. Hopefully we'll learn valuable bits of conversational Portuguese during orientation, because my Portuguese vocabulary currently spans greetings, numbers, colors, major cities, and days of the week. At least I can tell my host family that my favorite day of the week is Thursday, and that I've never been to Moscow. It's a start.

Some of my family and friends perusing this newly-christened blog may be under the impression that I have been in Africa during the last year. Some might (understandably) think I am still working in Fargo or that I am still hitting the books at St. Olaf. So to get everyone on the same page (bad pun), here is the scoop: I am leaving for Mozambique at the end of September to teach biology as a Peace Corps volunteer (and yes, I did graduate college).

I applied to the Peace Corps during my senior year of college and was accepted and slated for departure to Portuguese-speaking Africa (effectively Mozambique) in September 2008. Later that summer, the Peace Corps was following-up on my application and learned of a recent death in my family. After 12 months of applications and preparations, I was suddenly deferred due to their "major life event policy". Since I hadn't known this policy existed, it was a bit of a surprise; in short, it was time to get a job.

Thankfully, I found one. For the last 10 months, I worked as a medical writer at a clinical research facility in Fargo, which was a great experience. But when my "major life event" deferment expired, I found I was still itching to volunteer with the Peace Corps and work on my Portuguese. So here I am. Here we are. Hence the blog.

Speaking of the blog itself, in case some folks are curious about the titles of the blog and of this post, they are borrowed from Walt Kelly's Pogo (above, left). His subtle views and voice seemed appropriate, but it's mostly a nod to my dad, who was a Pogo fan and a former Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines.

So without further ado, here is alycia's will be that was, or highlights and musings from my upcoming 27 months in Mozambique. I hope you like Technicolor-inspired color schemes.