If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em!

Monday December 14th, 2009
Saying goodbye to my family in Namaacha was no easy task, but at the same time it wasn’t extremely emotional (i.e. tearing up) either. For one, I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before and, two, I started feeling sick to my stomach while eating breakfast the morning of our departure. Pretty soon after breakfast I was overcome with stomach cramps, diarrhea, and body aches and all of this rendered me relatively mute and introverted for the day.

“Definitely not a good day to travel!” I thought to myself. That said, I knew that I had to suck it up and stick it out for the trip up to Nampula. In between my frequent trips to my host family’s casa de banho that morning, I finished packing my bags and was thrilled to find out that my host family was offering to take me in their car to the send off. We arrived at the market and before I knew it, the chapas were sputtering off as I waved goodbye to all the host families from the barrio (my friends’ host families as well as my own) that I’d grown so close to over the past 10 weeks. It was a sad moment for sure, and one that I won’t soon forget, but my mind was elsewhere, swirling with jolts of pain and discomfort. Only seconds after leaving Namaacha I collapsed, completely exhausted, in the front seat of the chapa with my head awkwardly slumped over as I slept. A great beginning to the next two years of my life, right?!

Thinking back, the chapa ride from Namaacha to the Maputo airport is a blur. I was constantly coming in and out of consciousness and when we finally made it to the airport I don’t think I even entirely understood what was going on. Waiting in the crammed, non-air conditioned departure gate of the airport with 30+ PCVs to check in was tortuous to say the least. I took several trips to the bathroom and several more to a nearby bench to sit down and pass out, even if just for a few moments. The flight from Maputo to Nampula should have been about 3 hours, but it had an hour-long layover in Beira which seemed to last infinitely longer than scheduled. Luckily, the flight attendant took pity on me and didn’t make me leave the plane like everyone else during the layover. When we got finally arrived in Nampula, the PC driver wanted to take me to the hospital, but I insisted on just going to the hotel and resting. We had already taken my temperature and I knew that there probably wasn’t anything more that the hospital medical staff could have done for me because it was only a low grade fever (our PC medical officer should be so proud of me!). After rushing in the hotel and stumbling up to my room, the next thing I remember is waking up the following morning with my fever having broken and feeling a lot better, but still pretty weak.

I spent the morning chilling in my hotel room splitting time between the Arabic news channels (there is a heavy Arabic influence in the northern part of Mozambique) and infomercials on the one English-speaking, South African channel. When I had finally grown tired of the television and became conscious of the fact that I was missing the Supervisors Conference, I managed to take a quick shower, dress myself, and make it down to interact with my organization’s counterparts for a few hours before having to retreat to my room for the afternoon to rest up. Even though I missed out on several hours of the conference, my presence wasn’t terribly missed because the organization I’m partnered with has 4 other new PCVs working with them this year (Ethan, Josh, Katie, and Melissa) and a history with working with PCVs. Therefore, even though I wasn’t physically there, I think that my interests were represented through my fellow PCVs.

The next morning, Friday, the whole army of FGH, ICAP, and Save The Children PCVs headed down to Quelimane, where our NGOs’ main offices are, from Nampula. Even though we left early and didn’t stop that often, the trip still took all day. Part of the reason it took so long is that during a 50 mile stretch between Alto Moloque and Mocuba the road is in really bad shape which not only forced us to slow down to a crawl, but also caused us to pop a tire. Consequently, we spent 30 minutes or so on the side of road having to change the tire, but it gave us a chance to get out and stretch our legs and for that we were all grateful. During the trip we passed by Alto Moloque (my district capital) and my counterpart pointed off in the distance when we passed a side road to indicate where Nauela is (what a tease!). I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be making it back up there because my supervisor, Chire, tells me that they are currently building an indoor bathroom onto my house (it was an outside latrine for the last PCV) and it’s not quite ready yet. Patience is the name of the game…

Friday December 18th, 2009
We’ve been in Quelimane for a week now and I’m still not sure when I’ll finally be going to my site. Melissa, Josh, and Katie left for their sites yesterday, but Ethan and I stayed behind because our sites’ still aren’t quite ready yet. Both the previous PCVs who we are replacing had to use outdoor latrines as bathrooms and FGH decided that they would construct indoor bathrooms for Ethan and I because it was a point of much contention.

We’ve spent a lot of time this week at the FGH office meeting people in the organization and just getting acclimated to the new hierarchy of things. We met with Teresa (the director of FGH in Mozambique), Ruth (the director of the community outreach program for FGH Mozambique), Chire (our direct supervisor), as well as the representatives of other local organizations that we might be working with. In fact, we were also supposed to meet with governor of province, but the scheduling didn’t work out so we’ll have to wait on that one till another day.

A lot of the meetings were slow to start and not terribly interesting, but one moment from the week stands out in my mind above the rest. As our meeting with Ruth came to an end and she was getting her things ready to catch her flight back to Maputo, she decided to tell us a story about her previous experience with PC from her childhood and it goes a little like this:

When I was a child growing up in Swaziland, I frequently saw Peace Corps volunteers in their long, flowing dresses and their huge packs loaded down with seemingly all their worldly possessions. It was a peculiar site to say the least. Moreover, instead of using their own private vehicles to get from place to place, like all the other white people we would see, they were always walking and/or using public transportation. In fact, in all our interactions with them, my friends and I didn’t know much about these foreigners except for the fact that they referred to themselves as “volunteers.” At the time, my friends and I didn’t really understand the concept of a volunteer and it wasn’t until secondary school that we finally grasped their role and purpose for being in our country. In reality, up until that time my friends and I genuinely believed that these strange foreigners were simply a poorer tribe of nomadic white people wandering around Swaziland. –Oh Peace Corps :P

Sunday December 20th, 2009
So after more than a week of waiting in Quelimane for my home in Nauela to be ready, the take home lesson is: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

The ongoing joke between Ethan and I has been that Quelimane is quickly seeming more and more like our actual site and we wonder if FGH will ever actually send us out to our supposed destinations. With that in mind, and spurred on by the fact that nearly all of shops shut down on Sunday, Ethan and I made the decision this morning that it was fine time to stop aimlessly wandering around, buying supplies for our sites and start our entry and integration in the local community... of Quelimane.

Ethan and I started out by doing some of the basic tasks that any other Quelimanian might do on a Sunday morning. First, we took a bike taxi to the local market and haggled with the vendors over the price of the local commodity: the illustrious pineapple. Now, a freshly picked pineapple in the States might cost you several dollars, if available at all, but here in Mozambique you can carry a nice plump one home for only 20 metacais (~70 cents!) after some skilled haggling. Ethan wasn’t feeling so well so he ended up heading back to the hotel earlier than I did, but that worked out well for me because on my way home from the market I was flagged down by a neighbor who lives a few houses down from the pensão we’re staying in and ended up having a 30 minute conversation and exchanging numbers. Even though he knows I’ll be leaving the city soon, he said I can send him a message whenever I come back in town and want to hang out.

No community entry/integration would be complete without participating in some of the less appealing daily tasks (i.e. the household chores). For me, today that manifested itself in an hour of washing clothes in the grueling midday heat. I got a late start on washing the clothes because of our trip to the market, which might have been a problem in Namaacha if I wanted my pants to dry out completely, but not here in Quelimane! It was so hot today (over 41 degrees Celsius) that the clothes all dried out in less than half a day with sunlight to spare! Ooh the things that are impressive to a PCV…

After lunch at a local chicken shack, Ethan and I heard some cheers from a local gym while wandering around and decided to sit down and watch a volleyball game that turned out to be the championship of a small, local tournament. The game was very close and, luckily, the fan favorite won in dramatic fashion, with several people in addition to the team storming the court and dancing, so (almost) everyone went home feeling energized and pretty good about the outcome. Walking out of the gymnasium I thought and laughed to myself “How’s that for community integration!”

All joking aside about our drawn out stay in Quelimane, I can’t wait to get to site. On the other hand, I’m definitely getting a little nervous about it. In fact, I just got down listening to the Beetles song “Elanor Rigby” and the repeated line “Aaah, look at all the lonely people!” immediately threw my mind back into all the conversations I’ve been having with other new PCVs who have already been delivered to their sites. Over and over I’ve heard stories of how they’ve been struggling dealing with the persistent feeling of loneliness. For some new PCVs the experience has been even worse. I just got word from one of my close friends from training who had her house broken into and got a lot of her electronics stolen (which are not easily replaceable here in Mozambique). I think that everyone is handling the transition differently and some people are dealing with it better than others. I’ve heard whispers about new volunteers who are thinking about ETing (early terminating their service), but I don’t know how strong these feelings are. Regardless, us PCVs need to continue to reach out to each other and we need the support from those of you back at home. So if you are reading this blog and you have a friend or family member over here… call them and show them that you love them and support them!

Sorry I don’t have any pictures this time, I’ll update you all soon enough with some from my site.

One Love,
Michael