Arrived at Site, Passing the Holidays, and Starting on Community Integration

Wednesday December 23, 2009
“Finally we’re leaving for our sites!” I thought to myself as the FGH minibus slowly pulled away from the pensão in Quelimane. We’d been displaced in that shady, nameless bed and breakfast for over a week and a half while waiting for the finishing touches to be completed on our houses and strangely enough it had grown to feel like a home away from home in some ways. That initial moment of excitement when leaving Quelimane slowly melted away during the long, bumpy car ride to northern Zambezia and seemed like a distant memory when we finally pulled into Mugulama in the early afternoon to drop Ethan off at his site.

After stopping by the local hospital, unloading his luggage, and saying a few words to the owner of his house, the FGH workers (basically) abruptly shoved Ethan out the car door on our way out of town. With the doctors chuckling amongst themselves, I looked back at Ethan as the car went sputtering away. For the first time since I’d met him, Ethan, the epitome of a self confident, knowledgeable, worldly young man, looked a little caught off guard, a little unsure of what to do next, and, dare I say, a little vulnerable. As the minibus turned the corner to get back on the highway, I saw Ethan look to his left and right, take a deep breath, and timidly take the first steps of the next two years of his life as a PCV.

Needless to say, the whole scene was quite a bit disconcerting for me. Luckily I had a few more hours before I got to my site to process what had just happened and realize that, even though I wasn’t at my site yet, I was already the only American around.

We had to make a quick stop in Alto Moloque to change cars (the minibus can’t make it on the dirt path to Nauela) which gave me the opportunity to eat lunch and meet up with Rocha, my local counterpart, and Joakim, the Alto Moloque FGH driver, who were accompanying me to Nauela. After some initial resistance, a post-lunch carb crash combined with the mental/emotional exhaustion of the day’s events eventually gave way to a short nap on the way to my site and made the 50km trip from Alto Moloque to Nauela that much quicker. It really seemed to go by in a flash! In fact, the only thing I can remember about the trip is the dirt road lined with Mango trees and sporadic breathtaking views of distant mountains (Julia, a PCV in Gurue, sent me a message when she got to this area about a week ago saying it was God’s country. I was a little skeptical when I got the message, but after only 2 days I’m a believer!).

When we reached my site, I hadn’t even realized we had arrived in a town before we had pulled off the road in front of my house. Indeed, my house is on the very eastern edge of town and Nauela isn’t exactly what you’d call a metropolis, so there aren’t a whole lot of notable buildings in the city. To be fair though, the house is nearly a 1 mile outside the city center where the market is. Even though my house is far from the town’s stores, it is only a stone’s throw from the health post, school, water pump, administration building, and (most importantly!) somewhere I have cell phone service.

FYI, there are two places (that I know of) where you can get cell phone service here in Nauela, 1) a quarter mile down the main throughway, standing on the side of the road or 2) 30 feet up a mango tree in front of my house. I prefer using the tree so far, but that’s just because it sounds so much more hardcore. Either way, when it is raining (we’re just now getting into the rainy season), it will be hard to get out and make phone calls.

When I got out of the car and approached my house, the construction crew was literally just finishing up their work inside the house. My house owner, Janeiro, who had been helping with the work, was sitting on my front veranda as we pulled up and seemed pretty surprised to suddenly see me arrive with little or no warning (communication is very limited in Nauela because almost no one has a cell phone and there are no landlines). Recovering from his initial surprise, Janeiro and I actually hit it off right away as I was very impressed with the condition of the house and he was very proud and eager to show me the fruits of his labor. As it turns out, Janeiro (along with his wife, Verlosa, and youngest daughter, Dulce) lives directly behind me and I have a feeling that we will be very involved in each other’s lives because I know I’ll be spending a lot of time on the back veranda which overlooks his house.

After completing a quick tour of the house, Joakim, Rocha, and I jumped back in the FGH truck to go to the market and buy some provisions to help me make it through the first night at site: some candles, pasta, tomato sauce, potatoes, and onions (you know, the essentials!). When I got back to my house, Dulce was waiting on my front porch offering her services to help me get my water from the neighborhood pump. Even though I initially told her that I could do it myself, when she insisted I didn’t put up too much of a fight. Before I knew it, night had fallen and there I was taking a shower, brushing my teeth, and getting into the bed that will be mine for the next two years. Crazy!

I spent the whole next morning, starting at 5am, just cleaning and organizing things in and around my house. Even though I’m not totally done, I can already tell my set up is going to be awesome! In fact, let me try to give you an idea of what my house looks like… Approaching the house from the outside one of the first things you might notice is that my house is surrounded by flowers that the previous volunteer, Laura, planted (which really brightens things up). To make it even better, the house has both a front and back entrance with covered verandas that give you the opportunity to sit back, relax, and enjoy the cool breeze and mountain views. Inside, the house is basically a large square that is divided up into 4 rooms: a big living room and a small bathroom to the left and a bedroom and a spare room to the right. The previous volunteer left a 3 piece sofa set, coffee table, and cupboard behind which are filling the living area pretty nicely. In my bedroom I have a full-sized bed, a 6 level shelf for books and clothes (that I bought from the local monastery), and an improvised clothes rack that is made from some string and a stick of bamboo. The bathroom has a toilet (YES!), sink, and a partitioned off portion for taking bucket baths (no running water) all of which tie into some sort of waste water plumbing system. Right now the spare room only has a desk and chair in it and I think I’m going to use it as a study/yoga/guitar room. “What about the kitchen?” you might be asking. Well my kitchen is actually on the back veranda which looks out at one of the most spectacular views ever. Definitely a feather in my house’s cap!

During the afternoon, Tefane, the nephew of my house owner (from here on out my new “host family”) walked me over to the center of town and then some to show me around and buy a few things at the market. Even though I won’t be seeing that much of him, he lives in Alto Moloque and is just visiting, it was a really nice gesture by him.

BTW, tonight there is electricity! Not having it, even if just for one night, makes you realize how nice it is to have. One good thing about arriving during the holidays is that the town is letting everyone get some electricity for the next several days as a sort of Christmas present. After just one night I can see how big of a difference electricity makes. Life’s so much easier with even just lights, forget appliances! Never thought I’d be so happy to see light bulbs turn on!


Friday December 25th, 2009
I saw the clouds in the distance this morning while walking home from the Christmas morning church service. It didn’t concern me though until I felt the wind rip through my house and saw a rainy mist slowly creeping across the fertile valley towards Nauela.

Unsure of how long the rains would last, I made a quick dash to the water pump with my bidões, a kind of large water bucket, in tow. Predictably I wasn’t the only one with the idea, as there was already a long queue at the pump when I arrived. I took a breath and tried to make conversation with the neighborhood mothers and children who were also waiting their turns to pump water as I anxiously watched the wall of rain inch closer. Just as it was my turn to fill my bidões, I began to feel the raindrops against my outstretched, pumping hands. The other mothers looked on in amusement at my hurried pumping motions while a few of the older kids jumped in to help me pump faster. By the time I finished filling the two buckets the rain was already rapidly falling in heavy clumps. In a whirlwind of events, before I even knew what had happened really, 2 kids loaded my bidões on their heads and started on their way back to my house. I quickly ran ahead to open the door and turned around to help them get the heavy 20-liter bidões off their heads. They knelt down so I could relieve the weight of the full buckets from their heads and, without saying much else, ran off. I bid them farewell, carried the water inside, shut the door, and, in a flash, was by myself… on a rainy Christmas day… in a dark house with no electricity.

After consoling myself with a few spoonfuls of peanut butter, I began to look around the house for things to do. “I still need to clear out those papers that the previous PCV left…” I reasoned. I began to leaf through the mountain of papers and books she had left behind, and before I knew it I was totally engrossed in them. The previous PCV, known to me until then as simply Mana (sister) Laura, began to take shape before me. Right or wrong, I don’t know, I read through all of her old notebooks, searching for information that might be relevant to my work here. But pretty soon I found myself engrossed in her tiny notes to self, letters from friends back at home, family photos, even going through and noting the well-worn books, all just to give me better insight as to who this mysterious Laura really was.

I don’t know how much time had passed, but suddenly I noticed that the rain had lessened and was soon going to be coming to an end. At the same time, I became aware of the fact that I didn’t feel so alone anymore. In fact, everywhere I looked around the house was the presence of my new “friend” Laura in the things she left behind: the map taped to the front door, the window curtain now hanging in the bathroom, and even the empty nail holes where her wall decorations used to hang. Sitting at the desk she left behind, in the chair she once sat in, I thought of the Streetlight mantra back at home: We get to carry each other. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet Laura face to face, but I feel as if she just spent all Christmas afternoon alongside me with her arm wrapped around my shoulder, sharing her PC experience and letting me know that it would be alright. Indeed, she had already spent two successful years in Nauela… I can do it too!


Wednesday December 30th, 2009

(This journal entry has been transcribed from my writing pad during my trip to Quelimane for New Years)
The paper I’m writing on is spattered with mud. It’s the same burnt orange mud that is caked on my tired, shaky hands. My finger nails are painted with that mud and touched up with the remnants of peeling skin from my sunburned forehead. The words I just wrote are now being attacked by the sweat pouring down from my chin onto the paper below. It’s so hot and it’s only going to get hotter… It’s been a mentally and physically exhausting week to say the least and now it’s being capped off by this long chapa ride to Quelimane for New Years. No wonder they say you age so much here in the PC.

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Now I’m on a bus headed to Macuba in route to Quelimane. My right leg is being scorched by the rising sun to our left. The bus is hissing like a thousand agitated snakes as we climb up and down the rolling hills of northern Zambezia. Hopefully that’s normal?! My discomforts are mediated by the beautiful views of the flourishing countryside filled with fruit bearing mango trees, acres of corn and cassava plants, and endless acres of lush unattended land, all encompassed by the distant mountains rising up out of nowhere. To give you an idea, these mountains are a nice blend of the subtleness of the Smokies and the grandeur of the Rockies. It’s abrupt and rocky in some spots, but also smooth and rolling with plenty of trees throughout. All things considered, the trip is actually going pretty well. At least I’m not being asked to stand! In fact, they gave me a front row seat it to it all.

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We just hit the 50 miles stretch of bumpy road between Alto Moloque and Macuba. I hope that I’ll be able to read this later. My pen is leaping back and forth and up and down with abandon. Not for the faint hearted this road…

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One, two, three… twenty-six people we just passed in the last minute biking down this highway. Here it almost seems normal for bikes to make up the majority of the highway’s traffic. I mean, really, when we pass a car I think to myself “What the heck are you doing here?!”

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Random thought: getting on public transportation is sort of like a small miracle of interactions that influence one’s life. We make up such a random collection of people, gathered together, participating in the same common goals if only for an hour or two. I mean, who would have thought that some kid born in Gainesville, Florida would have his life affected by a farmer from rural Zambezia?


Sunday January 3rd, 2010
I just got home from my trip to Quelimane for New Years. I’m so exhausted from traveling again, but happy to be home. I’m actually not quite home yet. I’m actually at the hospital in Alto Moloque sitting in an FGH car, waiting for a ride to Nauela. Every few minutes my eyes dart up at the car’s dashboard clock. 7:48am. The day has just begun, but the heat is already pretty overwhelming and everyone is moving around me with a certain sense of urgency, trying to get the morning’s tasks done before the sun’s full force is upon them. Can’t believe how much cooler it is in Nauela, just an hour away! Country roads take me home to the place where I belong :)…


Tuesday January 5th, 2010
Bugs, bugs, bugs! Staring down at the blood smeared across the small writing pad in my fungus infected hands, I am seriously debating whether or not to write this blog entry or not. It’s been a draining day and it seems that, with the setting of the sun, every winged insect, spider, and misc. bug has decided to try and make my comfy, calm living room their home for the night. Meanwhile, here I am battling them back with only my trusty light blue, Short Hand, 70 Sheets strong writing pad, but, needless to say, I’m not doing such a great job. If I take a break from swatting at them, even for a second to sit down and write a sentence, I know that I am doomed to be dive-boomed by the flying termites that buzz around my head a few times before running into my face, falling to my lap, and inevitably getting tangled up in my arm hair. That said, that’s not nearly as disturbing to me as the numerous 4-5 inch spiders scurrying across the floor. Honestly, right now I feel like I’m the little Dutch boy trying to plug the growing number of holes in the dam and there are only so many fingers and toes that I have left to use before the dam breaks and the bugs just flood in. I mean, really, where are all these bugs even coming from?! The one redeeming thing about all of this, however, is that as of yet none of these bugs are mosquitoes or anything that bites. A big plus that definitely makes it more bearable :-)

Sitting down tonight I don’t know what to write! I feel like I did nothing all day today and this is the first time that I’ve felt that way. Let me clarify. It’s not that I did nothing today. It’s just that I didn’t do much outside my house. Looking into the near future I still have plenty of chores around the house to keep me busy from today to the next month, but stepping up and moving my efforts outside my house is another issue all together.

Not to bore you too much, but just to give you an idea of how things went, today I woke up, ate breakfast, heated up water to be able to drink it later, went and pumped water from the well, washed my clothes, scrubbed the back veranda, did yoga, practiced the guitar while cooking lunch, then felt sick and had to take a nap, woke back up, got my clothes off the clothes line, prepared potatoes to be planted in the next few days, got more water from the well, and here I am typing up this blog getting ready to cook some dinner, take a shower and then head to bed. It might sound like a lot, and it was an busy day, but I’m just frustrated that very little of that was outward action. It’s crazy how consuming the simple everyday tasks can be. Maybe I’ll look into getting a maid for a few days a week so I can concentrate on things outside the house on those days. That said, it’s nice that I can afford a maid with the PC monthly salary, but most of the people I’ll be working with can’t afford one and thus their lives will always be consumed by these household tasks. I need to keep this in mind when asking for help and participation in my community activities.

I’ve only been at site for about 1 ½ weeks now and but I’m still a little frustrated that I haven’t gotten involved with anyone in the community or found anyone who might be a regular counterpart for some health projects. Gah! That said, I have gotten pretty close to the owners of my house, my new “host family”, and they are SO great! Both of the parents live and work at home/in the nearby field so they are almost always around. Their youngest daughter, Dulce, is 13 years old and still lives in their house. She always seems very interested in my daily activities and tries to be helpful when she can. She helped me cook today always offers to help me pump and carry water.

I hope that my attitude will continue to be positive and I’ll continue to do good work. Thank you for your prayers.


Thursday, January 7th, 2010
On my way back from Quelimane for New Years my chapa made a long stop at a fruit stand where I got a little carried away and ended up buying 7(!) pineapples and some bananas. It was definitely a good purchase to share with others as a late Christmas present, but definitely way too many for me. Anyways, after 4 days of cramming pineapple down my throat and giving it away just as generously, I was ecstatic yesterday to finally be cutting up the last pineapple for a late afternoon snack. The pineapple had been slightly leaking its juices that morning and by the time I was ready to cut it up, it was covered in small ants. I didn’t pay too much attention to them and just started cutting up the pineapple figuring that as long as they were on the outside, which I would be cutting off, it would be fine. When I made the cuts along the pineapple, however, the ants charged into the pineapple core in a euphoric stampede only to be stopped dead (literally) in their tracks by the overwhelming sugary juices.

How often does this happen to you and me in our everyday lives? I feel like I oftentimes find myself wanting something so bad and devoting so much time trying to get it only to find out that not only did I not really want it, but as it turns out it is actually something very bad for me. Food for thought 

Anyways, today was an awesome day! I did sooo much! I woke up to the sound of someone hammering away at my wall only to realize that the carpenters had returned to put the final grate around my bathroom window. Even though I left for New Years and nothing happened, it still feels so much better to know that I can securely lock up my house and leave with very little to worry about.

Since I was already awake and wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, heck it was late anyways (5:45am!), I decided to get up and dig some more in my little machamba (garden) outside my house. The clouds kept the weather nice and cool for most of the morning so I ended up working in the garden later than I had originally anticipated. When I was done digging for the day I sat down on my front porch and sipped on a nice cup of water as I admired my work in the garden. It’s so much fun and I think/hope it’s going to turn out well :)

The carpenters finished up with the house by 10am and left a whole big stack of bamboo and tree limbs in my front yard that Janeiro, my house’s owner, is going to make into a fence over the next several days. I’m excited about the fence because it will keep the kids trying to knock down mangos from nearby trees out of my machamba, but I’m also a little worried because I don’t want to appear too cut off from the neighborhood. We’ll see how it works out…

I took a quick bucket bath and was all ready to do some yoga when I heard someone come up to my house asking for “licença” (permission) to speak with me. I wasn’t expecting anyone and didn’t know who it could be. When I answered the door it was a familiar face but I struggled to get the name on the tip of my tongue before the man helped me by chirping in with “Sou Alfonso.” Turns out he was the man I met randomly while walking home a few days ago. At any rate, we started up some small chat about how things were going and the conversation eventually turned to what he was up to at the moment. He informed me that he was going to go pick up his wife and their new baby from his mother-in-laws house and had just stopped by to say hello. As the conversation died out, Alfonso invited me (maybe without thinking that I’d actually take him up on it) to come with him to see his wife and new baby and, without missing a beat, I quickly agreed.

On the walk over to his mother-in-law’s house the conversation mostly centered on his new baby (it was born on December 31st so it was just 1 week old!). As I found out during the walk over, the baby doesn’t even have a name yet and, when he saw that I was intrigued by this, Alfonso promptly offered the baby’s naming rights to me! (Wow! Surprising huh?! Especially since I was trying my best to remember HIS name just moments early when he arrived at my house…) I politely declined his offer, but I was so intrigued by the proposition that for the rest of the day I contemplated what I might actually name a kid if I had to... humm!

The visit wasn’t too long. After only 45 minutes or so my stomach was telling me that it was lunch time and thus I made a quick exit back towards my house. On the way home I ran into Ne Abdul, the local administrator (sort of like the mayor), and ended up having an impromptu meeting with him about working to identify people in the community for me to partner with. The meeting was very positive/upbeat and ended by scheduling another meeting for next Monday with all the community leaders in order to present me to them and get me on my way to meeting those elusive local counterparts.

If the morning sounded busy, the afternoon gave me little time to catch my breath. I ended up running around calling and sending messages to PC staff members back in Maputo and was greeted by a neighbor when I got home inviting me to come over to her house and hang out. I brought my guitar with me and wound up performing a spur-of-the-moment concert for her family and neighbors. They were so grateful for the entertainment that they insisted on me taking a pound or so of beans home with me. I tried my best to politely decline, but I could tell from their insistence that they weren’t going to take “no” for an answer. Instead, I bowed my head, thanked them profusely, and went home with a huge smile on my face.

When I got home from my guitar extravaganza I saw that Wido, my neighbor across the street in front of me, was actually home (for once!) and ran over to speak with him about a few things before he could disappear doing one of his many things he does. Thus far, Wido seems a very interesting community member who’d I’d like to grow close to and work with. To make things convenient, he lives so close to me and our front porches face each other so we are always interacting. But what really makes our relationship appealing to me is the fact that he is seemingly very knowledgeable about agriculture and one of the local bread makers (so I don’t have to go all the way to the market to get my bread!). So he’s definitely someone to stay on his good side. Additionally, he’s also a devout Muslim and someone I’d really like to work with to make ins with the local mosque/Muslim community. At any rate, Wido has a several papaya trees and was very willing to oblige when I started asking him if I could take a few papaya seedlings to use for the edge of my machamba. He even came over and helping me plant them. He’s so nice! In the end, we even ended up talking a little bit about things I could possibly do with people in the mosque and in the community in general...

Such an awesome day! I’m feeling great about things today! I hope always remember this feeling :)