BIG NEWS!

Big news in the exciting world of mosquito nets and bucket baths…

Ready for this?

We received our site placements! [insert gasp] The decision written on that single sheet of paper held my entire future for the next 2 years of my life, no big deal. But yeah, I had a few nerve wracking days and sleepless nights leading up to the announcement (!!) Will I live by the coast in the south or in the mountains of the north? La out in the matu (which is portuglish for way out in the middle of nowhere) or in an urban city? Will be closest Peace Corps neighbor live next door or 9 hours away? WHO will my closest Peace Corps neighbors be? Will I work for a religious faith-based organization, a disorganized budding community organization, a structured international organization, a hectic underfunded hospital…? Will my house be in a quintal of another family (like a family compound), in a straw hut, a cement block, or a tin shed? Will I have electricity? Running water? Thousands of what ifs to consider, and if you know me then you know I’m a chronic planner (just a little bit.)

Okay, enough of the background info.

My new home town: the small rural district capital of Morrumbene in Inhambane province!! It’s near the coast which is nice because a) I’ll have access to fresh sea food and b) I’m pretty close to some dang beautiful beaches (and some awesome scuba diving!) The town is on the national highway so I should also have regular access to fresh local fruits and vegetables which is a biggie for me. I’m about 20 minute from Maxixe which is a bigger town/city where I can purchase anything not found in the smaller villages. From Maxixe I can take a 30min boat ride to Inhambane City, the provincial capital, which I’m told is a cozy beach town with a pretty ethnically diverse population. The city is 20min from Tofu beach which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the country. That’s all I’ve gathered thus far on the town, but I’m sure I’ll be able to fill you all in with some more information once I get there in 2 weeks (I leave training on Aug 8^th, will stay in Maputo for a conference for a few days, but should be all moved in by the 13^th!)

My new job: I’ll be working with an organization called Kuvuneka that runs an OVC center (OVC = orphans and vulnerable children). The organization provides home based care and community outreach for PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS), and income generation projects. I’ll be doing activities with the kids, capacity building with the activistas, designing projects, monitoring and evaluating programs, writing grants, networking, and occasionally working with the larger organization ICAP at the local hospital.

Yep. Eight more days. Eight more days until I meet the community which will become my family for the next 2 years of my life. Where will I be 1 month from today? 14 months from today?  BAHHH!

On an unrelated note: I ran the 13mi loop last weekend with my minimalist shoes, a loaf of Namaacha bread, and my nalgene water bottle. It was mostly to scope it out so we decided to take our time and walk parts of it. Took us a solid 3 hours up and down and up and back down again the mountains of the south east Africa - it was absolutely gorgeous. I wish I could have brought my camera, but I didn’t want to risk having it stolen / didn’t want an extra item to carry. I have to say, not a single Mozambican was even slightly impressed with our run. It’s probably because us telling them we ran 21 KM equals about the normal amount they’d have to walk in a day anyways. Regardless, it was an amazing experience and I hope I can keep up running along the Mozambican countryside after I lose my 5am running buddies.

And in less uplifting news, my computer has a “short-cut virus” L which is why I wasn’t able to update you all on my site placement sooner. If anyone with regular internet access and half a brain for computers has any ideas on how to get rid of it I’d be much obliged! I’ve already ran all of the free anti-virus software I have on my computer (even on safe-mode) but they haven’t been able to remove it. I’m going to try to purchase and download real anti-virus software once I get to site and can get a modem to buy secure and steady internet connections, so if anyone has any recommendations on which one to go with please send me a line!

Okay, that’s the gist of things right now. Hope everyone back home is doing well - big hugs and kisses!

Okay, I’ve got to brag a little bit.

We had our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) last week that evaluates our language proficiency based on the American Council of Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) scale. The possible rankings are: Novice Low, Novice Mid, Novice High, Intermediate Low, Intermediate Mid, Intermediate High, Advanced Low, Advanced Mid, Advanced High, and Superior. We need to reach Intermediate-Mid rating by the end of training in order to become a volunteer, and they give us one LPI mid-way through training in week 5 and then a final LPI at the end of training in week 10 in order to assess how we’re progressing and change things up if they notice anyone is struggling.

Considering the fact that I could barely say hello in Portuguese before coming here, I didn’t have very high expectations for my LPI results. I assumed that my mid-service LPI goal would be to reach Intermediate-Low, which is a pretty ambitious goal after only 5 weeks of a studying a new language. Reasonable.

Ready for this?

Advanced Low. Right??? At first I thought it was a mistake, but then I read the ACTFL blurb of what that level entails and I was shocked to realize that, yeah, I’m totally there! Granted, I still have a looooong way to go, but it was such a self-esteem boost to see how far I’ve progressed already in such a short time-frame. It definitely is a positive affirmation that I CAN do this, because if by “this” I mean go out to the middle of nowhere on my own and actually be productive/ make a difference/ help someone… then the first step I need is to be able to communicate with that person.

Okay, I’ll quit tooting my horn now.

Até logo!

“Welcome to travel in Mozambique"

Sorry for the hiatus in blog updates; things have been, well, busy. This past week had been our “site visit” week where all the current trainees go out in the field to spend a week living with a currently serving volunteer. The intended purpose of this activity is for us to get a better feel for what it will actually be like living alone in the “matu” (matu = waaaaay out there in the middle of nowhere) and working with our future organizations. It’s a reality check, a much-anticipated break/ vacation from the monotonous training schedule, and also a chance for us to figure out what is really important for us (like for example: having electricity in your home; having access to a big market; living close to a fellow PCV; working for a faith-based/ community/ non-governmental organization; being close to a beach… etc.) After the site visits we then have our site placement interviews, and thennnnnn (drum roll please…..) our site announcements!

So in some countries PC tries to send trainees to the sites where they will actually be serving, but since Mozambique is so dang BIG and so many darn volunteers, that’s impossible for us. Instead, all the trainees closed our eyes and picked names out of a hat to find out who would be randomly visiting whom. I picked the name of a girl up in Nampula province, which also just so happened to be the farthest northern site visit possible, which also just so happened to mean that I got to fly to my site instead of take a 9hr chapa (chapa = bus) like some other trainees, and to boot, it JUST SO HAPPENED that I got to spend nights in a hotel in the capital before and after my flights – pretty cool right?

I know that probably doesn’t mean much to 99% of the people reading this, but remember that the girl writing this blog entry has spent the past 5 weeks bathing by candle-light from a bucket of boiled water and a cup. Remember that this girl has had no say in her diet and has had her breakfast, lunch, dinner and every snack picked out, cooked and given to her – portions and all. Remember that she’s been living a as guest in a Mozambican family who gives her a 7pm curfew, makes her sweep her floor every-other day, scrub her flip-flops every week, re-make her bed every morning, hand-wash her bed sheets every 2  weeks…. Yeah. A flushing toilet, shower, and option in WHAT I want to eat and how much seemed like heaven. Needless to say, the rest of our training group hated me more than a little bit, but I was a-okay with that.

Me and 2 other trainees who were also flying to other sites left a day early, got to our hotel in Maputo, took our hour-long showers, and went out to a surprisingly delicious Filipino restaurant where I celebrated my good fortune with a glass of wine. Ahhh blissful ignorance.

The next morning we woke up at 4:30am to get to the airport at 5:30 for our 7am flight. And then it began:

First they said our names weren’t on the list, and that we weren’t on that flight. I showed them the printed out paper that clearly said our tickets were confirmed, and the man waived me away and told me to come back in a few hours to see if there were any free seats available after they boarded all the passengers. Now, my Portuguese has definitely progressed over this past month, but I knew it was no match for arguing my way onto a flight. I called up a PC staff to see if they could explain over the phone that there was a mistake and that I WAS on that flight, waited in line all over again, but when I got up to the counter the second time the man refused to talk to the guy on my cell phone and just ignored me standing in front of him. Fast forward a few hours when a total of 3 PC staff have all come to the airport personally to try to get us on the flight, after the first flight leaves, the second flight of the day’s boarding time comes and goes, and we’ve been sitting at the airport for 5 hours waiting. Luckily we’re able to get on the stand-by list and get on a 10:00am flight up north!

Only 3 hours late, no harm done!

Not quite. Flight leaves an hour late, has an unexpected pit stop half-way up, and then tells everyone to get off. I get off, get lost in this new airport, and eventually make my way back and flash my old ticket stub as I climb back into the plane (kind of had the feel of sneaking into a 2^nd movie at the movie theater).

Aaaaand we’re off again – whew!

Except after 10 minutes in the air the plane turns around and lands again to re-pack the luggage.

Yep.

That’s right.

So maybe an hour later we try again, and yes, eventually, by 4pm we get where we were supposed to be at 9am. Unfortunately there was still another leg of the trip via chapa to my site and by that point it was too late in the day to continue traveling so I crashed the night in a hotel (2^nd night in a hotel > 10 hours in an airport??)

The site-visit was wonderful: I ate lots of delicious food, met some lovely current volunteers, and had a great, albeit short (I got there Sunday afternoon and had to leave by Tuesday morning), visit! Only downside was that I was eaten alive at night – by what, I’d prefer to not know. I counted 29 bites on my left foot, 42 on my right foot, 12 on my left hand, 4 on my right hand, 3 bites on my left eye lid, 4 bites on my left cheek, 2 bites on my right cheek and 1 on my ear. You can just imagine what a looker I was by the time I left that village; I probably gave the poor children nightmares when they saw me. Again, not sure if they were mosquitos, fleas, spiders…. But regardless of where they came from, they itched and were ugly which was bad enough for me. BLAGH!

So Tuesday morning I make my way back to the airport, go to check in, and – what do ya know? – name’s not on the list again. Deja-vu. Same ordeal: you can wait on stand-by until a flight has room for you. So that’s what we did…. From 12:30 to 8pm, in an airport where conveniently every kiosk was magically closed and there just so happened to be no place at all in the immediate vicinity to go. Luckily I had bought a big bag of cashews earlier that day as a gift for my host family – needless to say it didn’t take very long for me to decide that I could buy them another gift in Maputo. I chowed down on those for a good few hours, walked in circles, lots of card games…. Of course the bathroom didn’t have toilet paper, running water, or soap, but it DID have a functioning automatic hand dryer!

Got on an 8:15pm flight. To add insult to injury, of the perhaps 100 seats available on that flight maybe 15 of them were occupied. Busy busy busy. I splurged and bought a 50Mt beer on the flight, and almost considered demanding seconds of the dessert to compensate me for my misery.

At the Maputo airport I almost chewed off a taxi driver’s head who wanted to charge me more than I thought the ride to the hotel would cost, and then, just to add a final layer to the cake, when I got to the hotel they didn’t have any reservations under my name. Up until this point I’d kept a relatively good sense of humor about the whole affair, but if it hadn’t been for another trainee who jumped in to help negotiate I probably would have lost my cool.

Of course, the room I was able to finagle my way into had no cold water in the shower so I took a quick scalding hot shower, and when I woke up that next morning in the hotel I had a HORRIBLE cough and sore throat L

I got back to Namaacha this evening and, let me tell you, no place looked more inviting than mai Cecilia’s house. I was SOSOSO happy for that lovely bucket bath, enjoyed every bite of rice and matapa, and am now all cuddled up warm and safe under my mosquito net. No more traveling, nope, no thank you. I’m staying put in Namaacha until I travel to my site next month (except maybe for day-trips, by land, far away from airports.)

Hopefully my next blog entry will include information on where I’ll be living and working for the next 2 years (!!!) and hopefully I’ll be bite-free and sick-free by then too… so much to look forward to eh?

Até pronto!!

xoxo