Great Thanksgiving... Minus Getting Sick

Wednesday November 25th, 2009
I know that I already mentioned some details about my Thanksgiving here in Mozambique (i.e. – my site placement), but I want to back up and let you all know what we, the PCTs, did to celebrate the occasion since it is not, for obvious reasons, a recognized holiday here. And to head off any confusion, the date listed above was no mistake. We actually celebrated Thanksgiving on Wednesday due to some PC administrative reasons.

The day started off as any other “hub day” would, with all 67 PCTs (we lost another Health PCT the other day) cramming under the open-air tiki hut outside Casa Grande and sitting through a few sessions about Health and Safety & Security. After a few hours of sessions, we were supposed to be released to play football before an early afternoon Thanksgiving day meal, during which we’d supposedly find out our site placements. We started the first session late and by the start of the second we all knew that changes would have to be made. After sitting and watching the morning’s time fly by, Rueben, the PC Moz Country Director, abruptly announced to the anxious group of football-ready PCTs that the people with our site placements were almost here and that they’d be extending the morning session a little further to allow them to arrive and let us know our site placements before our interval. Upon their arrival they built up the suspense a little, gave each one of us a sealed envelope with our name on it, and when everyone had finally received their envelope let us all rip them open to discover the piece of paper that told us where we would be living for the next two years.


Kristie, the Health Assistant Peace Corps Director (APCD) for Mozambique, and some other PC staff members getting ready to start handing out our site placements

The room was filled with joy and sorrow at the same time. Strong friendships that had formed over the past 8 weeks were geographically torn apart in a flash, while others were bound that more tightly. For me, there is no one who was placed around me that I wish wasn’t, but at the same time there are a lot of people that are being placed in the southern part of Mozambique that I will miss: Matt, Jenna, Donna, Louise to name a few. In reality I don’t know how often I’ll even be seeing the people in my own province and maybe that’s for the best because it’ll make me rely more heavily on the relationships within my community. Regardless of the other PCVs that at nearby my site though, I really like how my site sounds on paper and can’t wait to get there. To finish up the site placement session, we all gathered at the front of the room and placed small sticky tabs with our names on them in the corresponding spots on the map where we were each going to be placed. See the map covered with sticky tabs, it was a comforting feeling visualizing that almost anywhere we go in Mozambique there’ll be a volunteer not too far away. I’ll have to keep that in mind when, down the road, I get a feeling like I’m all alone in this country.

A quick look at all the PC Moz 14 volunteers (maybe a few are missing?) and their site placements.

As you can imagine, all of this significantly ate into our interval where we were supposed to be celebrating Thanksgiving by playing possibly the first game of (American) football that Namaacha had ever seen. Faced with this time obstacle, we decided to delay the game to the next day, a decision that would later have a significant impact on my health and wellbeing, and instead just have everyone run home and fetch/prepare their food for the Thanksgiving Day meal.

That said, we actually had to plan the meal several weeks in advance because so many of the foods that we take for granted as being easily accessible in the US are not widely available here in Mozambique. The PC staff agreed to provide the meat (beef and turkey), drinks, and utensils as long as the PCTs provided the sides and desserts. After much thought and a little deliberation we decided to split up and prepare mashed potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese, green beans, stuffing, beets, corn, rice, steamed squash, pumpkin pie, flan, cookies, cakes, brownies, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t even remember right now. Needless to say, the potluck Thanksgiving day meal was awesome!

Thursday November 26th, 2009
Let me qualify the last statement of Wednesday’s blog post by saying that, at the time, the Thanksgiving day meal was awesome!... A day removed from it, however, I started having muscle pains and headaches that came and went throughout the day(I’m not sure if these were directly related to the food consumption or not, but several others people had similar complaints). When the afternoon rolled around and push came to shove, I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to let those minor road blocks keep from me from playing some good ol’ fashion Thanksgiving Day pigskin. Bring it on ;-) And, you know what?, upon arriving at the field and seeing people tossing around a football, the rushing adrenaline quickly made my minor aches and pains fade away. I played alright, but my team, mostly composed of Health PCTs, valiantly fell to our rivals, a team mostly composed of Education PCTs, 10-7 in a two-hand tag game filled with plenty of “accidental” tackling (mostly by the PCT girls!). Limping home from the game, the adrenaline slowly began to leave my system and I began to realize that I definitely should not have played. I hadn’t even made it back to my host family’s house before the headache returned with a vengeance and by the time I had been home for an hour my bowels had required four separate trips to the casa de banho. L

At the end of the day, a redeeming factor to it all was receiving calls from my family back in the States right before I was about to pass out on my bed and then, the next morning, from Ricky and Chris. Thank you all so much for your support! I’m sorry I was sick at the time we talked, but I just want to let you know that, even though I probably didn’t sound like it on the phone, it was great to hear from you! J

Friday November 27th, 2009
Today should have been a day of rest. Emphasis on the words “should have”. Instead, I had to do my long-anticipated practicum with Noemi, a fellow PCT, as a sort of capstone to the whole PC training process. I woke up feeling pretty bad, but after resting up, taking some medicine, and talking to Ricky and Chris on the phone, I was able to make it out of bed, put on my best smile, and just fake it. Our practicum was geared towards people who prepare the food for their household, mostly older women, but actually drew a nice array of people including one young man and several teenage girls. During the discussion portion of our presentation, the exchange of knowledge between the older and younger generations was actually pretty encouraging, showing us that the people who came were really getting into it (a lot of the people who come to these practicum presentations are PCT host family members and are just there to be bodies in the audience). Even though there were a few mistakes here and there, I think that both Noemi and I walked away from the presentation feeling pretty good about things, especially considering the circumstances of me being sick and all.

I said goodbye to Noemi shortly after the end of the presentation and spent the rest of the day lying balled-up on my bed, decked out in winter clothes while trying to combat the chilly feeling encompassing my entire body. Near the end of the day I asked my PCT friend Roselia, who I’ve been doing Yoga with in the mornings, to come over and meditate with me to “speak with the illness”(she had suggested this for another friend ours who was previously sick). Now, after heavily studying evidence-based curriculum in areas like biochemistry and microbiology throughout high school and college, I don’t know how much of this is legit or not, but I really did start to feel immediately better while meditating and, the kicker is that, about a hour or so after we stopped meditating my fever broke and I’ve been feeling great ever since. Who would have figured?! I’m not totally convinced it wasn’t just a coincidence, but it seems to have worked/at least helped this time, and for that, I’ve very grateful! J


This is a view of the wall surrounding my host family’s yard with the sunrise in the background. Sunrises while doing yoga is a definite “high” each morning J