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

“I’m as African as African can be…”

Wednesday November 18th, 2009
“…and I’ve never seen a traditional dance like THAT!” Caroline (the PC Health Program Trainer here in Mozambique) explained to the group of PC health trainees as we discussed our observations regarding some sexual references during a local dance performance we had just witnessed. In fact, what had caught people off guard was not the repeated pelvis thrusts that occurred throughout the dance (typical in many traditional African dances), but rather the culmination of the song where the lead dancer put his hand down his pants and stuck his finger out of his undone zipper. Even though some of the moves were notably influenced by African culture, the show resembled a hiphop dance scene from the movie “Step Up” more than anything else. The performance by the group of young men, as Caroline pointed out to us, actually gave us a lot of insight into the generation of young Mozambicans that we will be working with who are currently experiencing a huge transition of cultural influence in their society.

Even though many European countries carved up and forced themselves upon most of Africa in the 1800’s and 1900’s, I believe that the western cultural influence which is now penetrating African society is arguably greater than ever before. While colonialism forced new languages and social structures on many African tribes, the local languages and customs persisted and were highly prevalent in everyday life. Now, on the other hand, although the current generation of Mozambican youth continues to get certain aspects of their culture from their Zulu and Shangana (here in Namaacha) heritage, there is a huge amount of influence from foreign sources that extends beyond the realms of government and economy to profoundly influence family life. This influence, in the case of my host family for example, most often comes in the subtle and seductive form of Brazilian and Portuguese television programming, American and European movies and music, and a general influx of ideas from organizations and individuals from all over the world who set up camp in foreign countries. Although one might argue that this influx of knowledge and culture greatly benefits the upcoming generation of Mozambicans, it has a detracting side to it as well. Of all the 6 children in my host family, for example, only one, my oldest brother Lissaio, can actually speak Shangana. To combat this trend the government has implemented programs to revitalize local culture by teaching native languages in schools, but these programs are few and far between.

On a personal note, after having been in Mozambique for a little less than 2 months, I’ve already started to question the presence and motives of international NGO’s and ex-pats (not excluding myself) who come to Africa to help build infrastructure and/or address public health problems, but who often bring with them their own agendas and end up causing a lot more problems than providing solutions. I am not saying that we should stop offering aid to people in developing countries, but instead I am trying to make it one of my foremost goals to not push my agenda when serving the people of my future community. We’ll see how well I hold true to that one…

Friday November 20th, 2009
I have a blog entry for this day that I'll be sending out to people on an individual basis because of its sensitive content. If you would like to see this entry, please email me at mtudeen@gmail.com and I'll try to email you the entry ASAP.

Saturday November 21st, 2009
It was only slightly drizzling (a significant improvement in recent weather patterns) as I stepped out of my house and started up the hill towards the city center of Namaacha. It had been raining the night before though, so the roads were pretty muddy and it was battle with every step I took, having to tug on my sandals just to get them back out of the matope (shangana for “mud”). I was running a little late and wasn’t sure where I was going exactly, but I knew that PC had scheduled a visit with a curandeiro (a traditional healer) somewhere in Namaacha so I was pretty ready and willing make the early morning trip, even in less than ideal conditions, to have the new experience.


A look at the mountains from Barrio 25 during a quick lull in the rains.

After the initial confusion, I found myself with my language group being led down a wet, rocky mountain side, whose dirt had been scrapped away by the wind and rain, towards the curandeiro’s house. Although the path looked especially daunting, the rocks were actually not very slippery, surprisingly easy to walk on, and sort of functioned like an paved, albeit uneven road for the barrio.

When we finally arrived at the house of the curandeiro, another PC language group had just started their visit so we had to stand outside the consultation room (a circular mud-block hut, about 10 feet in diameter, topped with thatch roofing and completely separate from his actual house) under a crammed covered patio and make small talk while waiting our turn. When the other group finished their visit after 30 minutes or so and we were finally able to enter the consultation room, the curandeiro asked us to take our shoes off before entering and then sit on the straw mat stretched out on the floor in front of him. The curandeiro was a middle-aged man, probably somewhere in his early 30s, whose dark black skin dramatically contrasted the white and red capulana that he wore around his waist. Luckily for us, he spoke Portuguese very slowly and clearly and I was able to understand most, if not all, of what he told us.

Our visit with the curandeiro started with him explaining to us the preparation that goes into a consultation and how a typical consultation happens. As we sat there star struck, he rapidly pointed out items hanging from the walls of the room that play important roles in the consultation: differently designed capulanas he wears in accordance to the type of consult, head dresses that that patient must wear, various jars of herbs and animal skin, etc. He then went on to tell us how, when a patient arrives for a consult, they are not supposed to tell the curandeiro what’s wrong. Instead, the curandeiro takes a small cup filled with coins, shells, and other materials, shakes them, and the releases them onto the floor to make a pattern. He didn’t explain exactly how he reads the patterns that they make, but apparently it tells him why the patient is visiting and they move on from there with the appropriate ritual or herbal remedy. On a normal day, he guesses that he’ll see anywhere between 10-15 patients. And to me that’s very interesting because here, in a relatively urban area (like Namaacha) where access to the hospital is relatively easy, the cost to find transportation to the hospital is minimal and the care at the hospital is, most of the time, free. On the other hand, a curandeiro always charges a fee. So even when almost everyone in the area is strapped for cash, you know that money isn’t the most important factor in many people’s health decisions.

According to the curandeiro we visited, between 60-70% of Mozambicans have visited/still visit a curandeiro for medical treatment. People seek out medical treatment from curandeiros for various reasons. Even though the public health care system here in Mozambique is free of cost, there are still plenty of barriers to entry and oftentimes a visit to the local curandeiro is the more practical option. For example, with over 20 million people in Mozambique and less than 900 doctors, compared to over 15,000 curandeiros, it is safe to say that there is a significant deficiency of health care professionals, resulting in very long wait times at the hospitals. Additionally, hospitals are only located in district and provincial capital cities, so if you need to receive treatment, you may need to travel very far just to wait in those long lines. Another important aspect of visiting curandeiros is the emphasis on spiritual and emotional healing which oftentimes the official medical system tends to put less emphasis on or ignore completely. Discussing it a little more, some PC friends and I have hypothesized that maybe paying something for health-care services gives the patient a sense of comfort in knowing that the service rendered is “valuable” and the patient literally and figuratively has bought into the treatment method.

The curandeiro we met with is the district secretary of AMETRAMO, Association of Traditional Healers of Mozambique, and thus he was very sensitive in the wording of his explanations regarding the struggle between traditional healing and western medicine. While sidestepping some of the more direct questions regarding this struggle, he portrayed the current health care situation as one with shared responsibilities between both entities. He recognized that some problems are indeed biologically based, but that curandeiros have many herbal solutions that they can use to treat them. He also conceded that there are some diseases are biologically based that curandeiros haven’t yet figured out how to treat them (ie HIV) and instead they refer these patients to the area hospital. However, he was insistent that many physical illnesses are actually rooted in emotional and spiritual issues that curandeiros can best treat through particular rituals.

One must take all of that with a grain of salt though, because a patient doesn’t typically walk into a curandeiro with a hospital diagnosis. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, the curandeiro usually won’t even permit the patient to tell him what’s wrong with him. Instead, the curandeiro relies on their collection of shells, coins, and other spiritual items to help determine what the patient’s illness is. In the end it’s tough to say if a curandeiro will always refer a patient with a biologically-based problem that they can’t treat to the hospital. An omnipresent force of conflict in western medicine is the influence of money. It’s no different in traditional healing. Curandeiros are not typically ultra-wealthy members of the community and thus they need to earn money just like everyone else. As one can easily infer from this situation, there is a significant incentive to holding on to patients instead of referring them to the hospital.

That all said, there is a saying back in the States among general practitioners that 70% of acute patients will get better without the intervention of the doctor. Yet, not only do we continue to still see all of these patients, but we even encourage most people to go to the doctor more often. This seemingly insinuates that the illnesses stopping are directly related to the doctor’s interventions, but this is not always the case. So I ask, in this instance, is western medicine and traditional medicine really that different? Just a thought…

Sunday November 22nd, 2009
Since arriving back from site visits over a week ago it has been overcast and rainy every day, minus a 3 or 4 hour interval one afternoon. It’s been so bad that I’ve actually been called out by my host family for acting sad or depressed. And you know what? They were right! I’m a Florida boy and I was pretty bummed out by the weather. To give you a better picture of how intense the rain has been, two days ago it was so bad that 3 houses in Namaacha actually caved in and were destroyed because the rain eroded the mud “mortar” that held the houses’ stone exterior together. (As a side note, it’s amazing that I didn’t even notice the collapsed houses until my brother pointed it out to me! I can be so absorbed in small things that I notice the huge ones.)

That all said, after a week of rain, I woke up this morning singing to myself, finally…. it’s gonna be a bright (a bright), a bright, a bright sun shinny day! I took the opportunity to wash and dry clothes (I had been getting a lot of jabs from my host family about having worn the same pair of pants for the past three days), get mud off shoes, and, most importantly, get out and have some fun!

Check out the photos below from my long anticipated hike to the waterfalls with my PC friends and our host families:


Walking in the shade to the waterfalls just outside of Namaacha.


A better look at the scenery while walking to the waterfalls.


Yokho, Roselia, and Noemi with our host brothers and sisters at the upper waterfalls.


Me joining in on the photo action in front of the upper falls.


Josh feeling me up from behind in front of the big waterfall.


Roselia and my brother, Ramadaan, chilling on a rock in front of the big fall.


Amanda's brother and my brother, Ramadaan, climbing a tree in front of the big fall.


Yokho, Noemi, Roselia, and Josh with our host family members enjoying the sunset as we walk back to Namaacha.

Wednesday November 25th, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I miss you all! I’ll write more about my Thanksgiving experience and such later, but I just wanted to let you all know what my site placement is! **drum roll please** I will be spending the next two years in the rural town of Nauela in the northern part of the Zambezia province partnered with the international-NGO Friends in Global Health working with People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). My site is located in northern part Mozambique, close to the Mt. Namuli (the second highest mountain in the country, I think). Go check it out on google maps or something J! Now I know where I’m going and what in theory I’ll be doing, but once I get to sight we’ll see how everything pans out. Either way, I’m really excited!

Site Visit to Nicoadala and Border Hike

Wednesday November 11th, 2009
Staring at the beads of sweat quickly forming and running down the back of his shaved head, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the young bike-taxi “driver” who was taking me across Quelimane to catch my flight back to Maputo. It had taken me about 5 minutes to balance myself on the bike’s rickety, improvised backseat and, now that I could stop worrying about falling off, my mind was quickly being flooded with thoughts. It had been a crazy past few days during my site visit, but it was finally coming to an end. I was exhausted. While simply trying to hold on to the bike-taxi with my loaded backpack weighing heavily on my shoulders and a bag of books in hand, I had moments where I was too encompassed in my own struggles to even appreciate the fact that someone was actually biking me AND all my baggage miles across town on uneven dirt roads. “I need to suck it up!” I thought to myself silently, pushing back my shoulders and trying to force a smile. The action didn’t get rid of the pain in my back or even the general exhaustion I was feeling at the moment, but it helped me make it the next few blocks until I was finally dropped off in front of the airport. Thinking back on it now, this realization, making the best of the situation at hand, was one of many overarching themes of my site visit to Nicoadala.

During my time Zambezia (1 of Mozambiques 11 provinces) I had the PLEASURE of staying with Jimmy Schneidewind, a PCV who is about to do his Close Of Service, or COS, with the PC. He has spent the past 2 years in the community of Nicoadala working for ICAP, an international NGO working with people living with HIV, as a co-trainer of HIV peer educators in the local hospital. Although his primary work has had its ups and downs, he’s become really involved in his community by competing on the community soccer team, co-facilitating a local youth theater group that promotes sexual health and HIV awareness, and being the national PC leader of JOMA (Jovens para a Mudança e Accão). However, for the past several weeks he has been slowly wrapping up his role in the community activities and thus we didn’t have too much official work to do during my visit.

Instead, this gave me a lot of time to “chill” and reflect on a lot of bottled up emotions that have accumulated over the past several weeks of training (I use parenthesis around the word chill because Zambezia was actually incredibly hot, with temps up around 100 degrees!). During the first day at site I found myself lying down on the impromptu bed in the house’s common area and staring up at the zinc roof while my mind wandered. Sweat accumulating on my forehead and chest did little good to cool me down as it quickly rolled around my sides and off my back, soaking into the bed that I’d be sleeping on later that night (enticing, right?). With Jimmy quietly reviewing some of his job’s final paperwork on his computer, the silence made it easy to imagine that I was actually by myself at my own site. It was a cool thought, but also a scary one. Here I was, “alone” lying down in “my” house in the middle of the day with nothing holding me back, but at the same time lying there motionless with thoughts like, What should I do now? Where could I start? Would my Portuguese be good enough for people to give me the time of day? and Do I REALLY have to go out in weather like this wearing pants and a nice shirt every day?

The thoughts of action vs. inaction quickly gave way to the heavy reality of being alone. I wasn’t feeling so good about myself and yet I couldn’t just go and meet up with any ol’ “mulungo” (the Mozambican word for white people) and cheer up by cracking some jokes in English. In that way, I finally got to see how the PC experience is not like a study abroad program (or PST) where a community is flooded with foreigners and one always has that safety net when venturing outside of their comfort zone. The “real” PC experience is more of a slap in the face, making you realize that you may very well be the only person in your village, or even within hours of traveling, who speaks English. I am alone (and will be for 2 years). Now the only question left is: How am I going to not feel lonely?

It took me some time to get over all my initial negative reactions to the down time that I was experiencing, but after I had time to process my feelings, I began to realize all the possibilities my down time gave me. I had already spent a day or so talking with Jimmy about his activities both in the community and with ICAP and that gave me a good start for my own ideas. My mind quickly turned to Permaculture training as I began wondering how my vegetable garden back in Namaacha was doing and how I might go about starting a personal garden in Nicoadala if it turned out to be my permanent site placement (it’s a lot hotter, drier and the soil does not seem nearly as fertile… in fact, the word Nicoadala means “dying of hunger” and I assume that it was named so because of agriculture problems at some time during its history). Pretty soon I was churning out ideas that would keep me occupied during my down time and provide more opportunities to make an impact in the community (a lot of them are things that I almost never make time for in the States) like going to local plays/performances, playing guitar, reading, gardening, cooking new recipes and coaching/playing sports (to name a few). Exciting stuff!

Backing up a bit and trying to recap exactly how the site visit went chronologically, 13 PC trainees flew up from Maputo to Quelimane on Saturday where we met up with most of the Zambezia PCVs at a local restaurant on the water. Although we had met several of the volunteers during PST in previous weeks, it was so different seeing them all together “in their element” outside training. The restaurant was really chill and the whole scene reminded me a lot of Florida. It was easy to imagine, while drinking some sodas and watching the sunset over Quelimane’s ocean inlet, that I was actually back in New Smyrna, hanging out with Bryan and Co. at Inlet Harbor.

The next day Matt, 2 PCVs (Sara and Luke), Sara’s Mozambican boyfriend, and I took a chapa to Zalala, the closest beach, for a day beach trip (Jimmy was playing a soccer game in Quelimane and couldn’t come with us). The chapa was really more of a pickup truck and, as we quickly discovered, the driver didn’t even have a license to carry passengers. Thus, the truck spent the better part of the next hour taking the backroads to the beach to avoid police checkpoints on the main road. Once we finally got outside of the city, however, we eventually made it back on track and got to the beach without incident. The beach was really beautiful, but what really caught my attention was the fact that wind-bent trees, not high-rise condominiums, lined the beach front in both directions as far as the eye could see. I enjoyed the nice, peaceful afternoon on the beach, but what made it even more memorable was that it was my first time getting to swim in the Indian Ocean! I read a little, swam and talked with Matt and Luke, and topped it all off by making a pretty high-quality drip sandcastle before packing up and heading back into Quelimane. Later that afternoon, I met back up with Jimmy and we took a short chapa ride out of the provincial capital to Nicoadala before calling it a night.

Now if I didn’t describe more about my experience with Jimmy you might finish reading this blog post and think that I didn’t have such a great time during my site visit. The fact of the matter is, however, that it went GREAT! Despite the fact that it started out slow, Jimmy and I ended up walking all around Nicoadala (it’s not actually that big) doing little things here and there. After spending the morning and early afternoon in his house on the first day, we later visited the hospital, high school, and soccer field where he does some of his PC projects (most recently a Permaculture training just outside the hospital). The next day we went and talked with the administrator of the district and then got to go have lunch with a couple who are both peer educators who work with Jimmy at the hospital. They served us the Zambezian version of Matapa (complete with potatoes and Shrimp) and topped it off with a locally-grown, freshly cut up pineapple. Amazing!

That sentiment specifically referred to taste of that pineapple, but also mirrors how Jimmy and I felt about our own cooking creations. Every meal we took it upon ourselves to try and outdo the previous one. As a matter of fact, for our last dinner together we ended up preparing 3 medium size pizzas (two decked out with grilled chicken and sausage) and a banana cream pie made from scratch, without a conventional oven mind you! I could go into the gloriousness of the invention of the double-dutch oven for hours right now, but instead I’ll just tell you what it is (I had never even heard of it before the site visit): one small pot inside a larger covered pot with rocks/sand separating them on the bottom so that the stove’s heat transfers to contents of the small pot like an oven would. Take home message: when in Africa, double dutch it!

On my final day, we headed back to Quelimane early to do a few things (buy some hair clippers and eat a Zambezian-style grilled chicken at a famous local fast food restaurant) before I had to catch my flight. Jimmy and I were about to say goodbye when he gave me a final farewell present: a jar of Black Cat peanut butter (a precious commodity typically only available in bigger cities in Mozambique)! It was a really nice gesture on his part and added to the many things he had already given me (i.e. a Southern Africa travel guide book, a gardening/permaculture book, answers to all my questions, not to mention simply a great time). I feel like we really got close during our time together and I’m bummed that he’ll be heading home before I get a chance to come back up to Zambezia and visit L…

Before I knew it, we had said goodbye and I was holding on tight to the back of the bike-taxi, backpack full and books in hand, meandering through the dirt streets towards the airport. It was an abrupt change arriving at the airport and being welcomed back into the world of PST filled with fellow Americans. It was a bittersweet moment, happy to share the stories, but also feeling ready to leave training behind and get started already. So what did I learn from all of this? I guess the biggest thing was probably the fact that I now know that I not only CAN do it, but I really WANT to do it and am excited about it J

*A quick note: One PC Trainee from the Moz 14 group (we are the 14th year of PC here in Mozambique) decided to leave PC and go back home right before site visits. So now we are only 68…. I hope that we don’t lose any more trainees from our group, but at the same time I hope that everyone makes the right decision for themselves and doesn’t feel too much pressure from other trainees to stay if they are really unhappy with the experience.

Sunday November 15th, 2009
“Are we in South Africa?!”
Yesterday, 4 PCTs and I set out to hike up to the top of a mountain right outside Namaacha where Swaziland, South Africa, and Mozambique meet. After hiking down from Namaacha for 30 minutes or so and crossing through a relentlessly sunny prairie, we came upon a nice shady area next to a quaint, rural farmhouse where we quickly all decided to sit down. Before the 5 of us could relax, however, 3 huge purebred dogs saw us and quickly came running. After the initial shock of having 50+ pound dogs running at us, we discovered that they were actually pretty friendly and just wanted to play. A few moments later we were startled again when we looked up and there was a young, pale girl with strawberry blond hair watching us. We were all unsure what to think. Where are we? Who the heck is this girl? and Should we introduce ourselves in Portuguese or English? She eventually said “hello” to us in a queer accent and we quickly responded by asking her where she was from. She told us that she is from South Africa and, confused by all of this, my PC friend Anna innocently blurted out “Are we in South Africa?!” The girl got a mystified look on her face, but then recovered to respond condescendingly “No, you are in Mozambique!” In the end, the little, mouthy South African girl, Naomi as it turns out, actually played a key role in our journey by directing us back on the path to the top of the mountain. It was a long hike and I definitely feel it in my legs today (and my head where I got a little sun burned), but it was definitely worth it.

Check out the photos from the trip below:


A nice picture of the biggest catholic church in the district located near the center of Namaacha right before the hike.


Yokho getting excited about the fruit (called Jaca)... so huge!


Yokho, Anna, and Lisa posing on a scenic road outside Namaacha.


Yokho, Anna, Lisa, and Ethan resting after hiking halfway up the mountain.


Me perching on a rock with the city of Namaacha in the background! Photo courtesy of Yokho...


The hiking group at the marker where South Africa, Swaziland, and Mozambique come together.


Me doing the Gator Chomp at the 3 country marker! The gator nation is everywhere...


Hiking down the mountain... you get a glimpse at the beautiful farmland that surrounds Namaacha.


Yokho throwing up a peace sign as the sun sets in the distance. Good hike!

Permaculture training, putting it to practice, and getting ready to travel north!

Thursday October 29th, 2009
So for the past two days we’ve gotten a welcomed break from our normally scheduled classes in order to go out to the fields and learn about an agriculture technique called “Permaculture.” The term comes from the union of “permanent agriculture” and is called such because the method tries to achieve small scale, sustainable agriculture success for families with a very limited space to plant. As we found out over the past two days, the technique is thousands of years old, but has just recently been popularly promoted by people all over the world as an effective method of farming. In fact, this was the first time that PC Mozambique had decided to devote time to it during PST and I’ll go ahead and say that the overwhelming consensus was that it was time well spent!

With this training behind me and with the resources that the PC is going to provide us regarding agriculture, I’m really confident that I will be promoting this technique in my community. Not only will it hopefully give my community members a better yield of crops, but it likely will also provide an opportunity for people in my community to better relate to me and give me a chance to broach several health topics regarding agriculture and nutrition.

That said, Permaculture is different from how most Mozambicans do their agriculture and I suspect that there will be a lot of resistance to change. The technique has a few key pillars to its implementation and some are significantly more labor intensive than the traditional agriculture technique here. Our permaculture training instructed us that a “double dig” (literally digging once, then pushing that dirt out of the way and digging again) and mixing the soil with compost ,among other things, will significantly enrich the soil and easily allow the plant’s roots to grow deep into the earth so the plant can grow tall and healthy. Both of these techniques, the double dig and adding compost, put air into the soil and thus it is essential to keep people off of the plant bed once dug. However, this is easier said than done here in Mozambique because you have to worry about the whole neighborhood’s children and animals running around in your yard and having to construct a fence around the plant bed is just another barrier keeping people from changing their current agriculture practices.

Thinking about all this, I want to get my family to try it out, even though they have comparatively a lot of land, just so that I can get some practice explaining the rational to people in Portuguese and have some actual experience planting things outside of Farmville (that one’s for you Mariah, Mom, and Ricky)! We’ll see how receptive they are to it…

Sunday November 1st, 2009
I’ve realized over the past several days that even though Mozambique doesn’t choose to readily acknowledge four seasons (usually they only refer to winter and summer A.K.A. the dry and rainy seasons), that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a period of time where it is still cold, yet periodically rains (i.e. this whole week!). Today, however, is a warm day with no rain and hopefully it is just a sneak peak of what more is to come…

So after writing about my experience with Permaculture on Thursday night, I fell asleep just as my body was beginning to feel the effects of 2 days in the cold, wet fields (or as they say here in Mozambique, in the cold, wet “Machambas”). I was feeling pretty achy when I woke up the next morning, but decided to try and tough it out through the day of classes. Bad idea! The morning went by without incident, but I didn’t make it too far into the afternoon’s classes before I started feeling horrible and ended up having to go home early and rest. I passed out on my bed early in the afternoon with my t-shirt halfway off and my jeans still around my knees and could very well have made it through to the next morning like that if it wasn’t for my host mom’s thunderous knocking letting me know that, sick or not, it was time to take a shower and eat dinner. Despite my moans and groans, the shower really did feel pretty good and it was a tasty, filling dinner. It also gave me a chance to call up my friend Matt (previously shown in a lot of my pictures, most recently crushing up peanuts with his mother during the Mozambican luncheon with my language group) and he quickly came to my rescue with a bottle of ibuprofen that really helped me make it though the weekend’s Halloween festivities.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling better, but knowing that I was still pretty weak and wanting to test out my strength before the Halloween party later that night. I remembered that the capulanas (a traditional Mozambican cloth that is typically wrapped around a woman’s waist like a skirt) which I bought and dropped off to be made into shirts were ready, so my brother and I walked across town to pick up the shirts and test out how I was really feeling. Although the trip was tough on my body, I decided that, sick or not, I had been talking up the party for a while with my host brothers and I really didn’t want to let them down by backing out at the last minute.

The party went off without a hitch and I actually continued to feel better and better as we went through the evening. Walking from my host family’s house to the party was quite the spectacle. My host brothers knew that I had been planning on dressing up as the Chiquita banana woman for some time, but when it came time to head out for the party they couldn’t believe that I was actually going to walk all the way across Namaacha in the dress. Consequently, my host brothers both chickened out at the last moment in joining me as Chiquita banana women and instead left for the party without costumes. When we got to the party, however, we ran into a PC friend of mine and his host brothers who had bought several rolls of toilet paper and were wrapping themselves to dress like mummies. My younger brother, Ramadan (the serious one), immediately decided that he also wanted to be a mummy and we made quite the couple at the party together (hopefully I’ll be able to get a picture of this for you all soon). After the family oriented portion of the party ended around 8:30, I walked my brothers back home, changed clothes, and then headed back out for Palushas after a quick dinner. The Halloween dance party at Palushas was really fun and didn’t run too late into the night (we had to be home by midnight). Getting a bunch of Americans together to celebrate the occasion really made Mozambique feel a little bit more like home and lessened the reality that we are so far away from our friends (I miss you all!).

This morning I went to church as usual, but switched things up a little by singing “I’ll fly away” in front of the congregation with my host mom (even though I wrote out the lyrics for the song for her, she still mostly just hummed the tune while I sang) since all the other volunteers flaked out on coming to church the morning after the Halloween party. The whole church service I thought about how in a few hours my family would be going to church in Gainesville for All Saints Day to remember Memom, my grandmother who recently passed away, and thus I spent a lot of the service thinking about her (I wish I could have been there).

Later in the day, I ended up running errands with my brother Ramadan trying to get ready to make my small Machamba in front of my host family’s house. We went around the neighborhood buying manure, gathering small pieces of char/ash, and getting seeds before finally heading back home to start digging. With the help of my brothers, we completed the first dig today and tomorrow we should finish up with second dig and possibly plant the seeds.

Monday November 2nd, 2009
Today my oldest brother (Lissaio) and I finished digging the two plant beds (it’s a lot harder when you don’t have 3 or 4 people helping you) and then planted and watered the seeds. I don’t think that I’ve mentioned this before, but the PC trainees are going on “site visits” this weekend to give us an idea of what it might actually be like once we get to our sites in December. I am not exactly sure about all the details, but when I come back next Wednesday, hopefully the seeds will be germinating and the ground won’t be compacted by the neighborhood’s roaming chickens or my youngest brother (Eunicio) and his gang of 5 year old friends.

On a small side note, I cut my hair really short after planting the seeds this afternoon and now it feels so cold! I can’t wait for my hair to grow back or for the weather to warm back up a little (whichever comes first!).
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
It’s official! I’m going north to the province of Zambezia for my site visit. I don’t know too much about the details, but a group of us are flying out of Maputo to Quelimane (the capital city of Zambezia) on Saturday and won’t be back in Namaacha until Wednesday evening. I am really looking forward to breaking up the routine of training in any way possible and I can’t wait to get out and see what other parts of Mozambique are like. I’ll post again later next week after I get back from my site visit…

One Love,
Michael


Me and my brothers getting ready to go to the Halloween party! I'm supposed to be the Mozambican Chiquita Banana Woman


My brother watering our newly planted Machamba!


Me sporting my new hair cut and new Mozambican shirt made from a calpulana.

Living the Life

Friday October 23rd, 2009
Today we met up with our language groups to cook several traditional Mozambican dishes for lunch. It took a while and we didn’t really know what we were doing most of the time, but luckily our host mom’s were there to help us along (it was actually sort of funny seeing them constantly bumping heads over the different ways to prepare these dishes that each of them make on a daily basis in a slightly different manner). I don’t know if I’d be able to prepare any of the food by myself tomorrow if I tried, much less in 3 months or so down the road, but it was a lot of fun and gave me hope that I MIGHT be able to survive when cooking for myself after I leave my host family at the end of Pre-Service Training.


My language group taking a second to pose for a picture. Look at the beautiful mountain scenery in the background.

My host mom and me taking a moment to laugh together after preparing the food.

We cooked three sauces (Matapa, Cove, and Cacana) and prepared two base carbs (Xima and Rice), which are covered with your sauce of choice. I had already eaten all these foods before, but this was the first time that I was able to try them in a short span of time and really compare their tastes, ingredients, and consistencies. Even though I liked them all, I discovered that I liked Matapa the best (for now), although I think that Abóbora is pretty similar and I might like that more (we didn’t fix that sauce this time).

The three sauces we prepared all had crushed peanuts and coconut milk in them, but are distinguished according to the final main ingredient. Their ingredients look like the following:

Matapa: ground Matapa leaves, peanuts, coconut milk, onion, tomato, salt, garlic, and stock chicken powder
Cove: diced Cove leaves, peanuts, coconut milk, onion, tomato, salt, and stock chicken powder
Cacana: Cacana leaves, peanuts, coconut milk, salt, and stock chicken powder


Matt grinding up some peanuts with the help of his host mom.

Me striking a pose as I'm getting ready to break open a coconut by smashing it against a big rock.

As you can tell, I relish the small successes... even in grating out a coconut.

To clarify, Xima is a staple Mozambican food that is loved by all here, minus a lot of PC volunteers (Note - I prefer rice, but I don’t dislike Xima). To completely describe its majesty would take a Mozambican a short novel, but my best attempt is that Xima is a finely ground cornmeal mix poured into hot water and stirred until it produces a thick, paste-like final product that sits heavy in your stomach… for hours. Although I’ve stuck with utensils thus far, my whole family eats xima (and the sauce that accompanies it) with their hands and my host mom is adamant that it just tastes better that way (sounds like some advice from Ronak, eh?).

Anyways, near the end of the cooking session we were adding tomatoes and onions to the Cove and Matapa, but while I was cutting one of the onions I let the knife slip and slightly cut my left thumb. It seems like all is good, but I don’t have any antibiotic ointment, so I’ll just have to keep it as clean as possible and hope that everything will be okay for the weekend at least.


My friend Yohko with the entire lunch spread laid out behind her.

Chowing down on some Xima and Matapa.

The entire lunch crew with all the PC trainees and their host family members

After the 4 servings of lunch (!!!) and then cleaning up our mess, we celebrated the end of the week by going out to “Palusha’s”, a bar/hangout spot near the edge of the town to grab some drinks. It was pretty fun to see so many PCTs together at once without having any training to worry about, not to mention the fact that the venue is pretty balla’ for Mozambican standards. Not only does it have a pool, it even has a flushing, western-style toilet!

I am excited looking forward to going back to Palusha’s and I know I won’t have to wait long because on Halloween the PCTs are going back there to party it up American style (minus the skanky costumes)! I don’t know exactly what my costume will be yet, but an earlier leader is the Chiquita banana woman. I’ll keep you all posted…

Saturday October 24th, 2009
So today was a pretty big day… It started off with a written Portuguese exam that went… mas ou menos. I finished up early, came home, washed my clothes, and hung them up to dry (I’m getting better at it) before eating lunch with the fam. After lunch, my host family and I went to Namaacha’s flea market, called Shoprite by the locals (which is a Mozambican chain equivalent to Wal-Mart). At the market I bought two capulanas to make into t-shirts and my brothers bought a bunch of lightly worn clothes with English words on them (which kept me wondering if they had possibly come from some household in the US and if so, how cool it would be to “know their stories”). Before leaving Shoprite my mom made sure we bought 4 live chickens so that I would get plenty of practice at killing and preparing them to eat. We had to carry them home from Shoprite and, even though chickens weren’t that heavy, they get to be quite a burden after walking for over a mile with them. Today was a really hot day and against my better judgment I took my brother up on his offer to buy me a freezypop from a streetside vendor on the way home from Shoprite. The cherry-flavored ice tasted/felt amazing while it lasted, but I’m not sure if I’ll still think it was worth it when I am plagued with diarrhea for the next 2 weeks (btw, thank you for the immodium Mariah)!

When we finally got home from Shoprite we had to wait around for 20-30 minutes before we could kill the chickens while we heated up some water on the stove. It gave us a nice chance to relax after the long walk home. The chickens were dazed from being carried most of the way by their feet and just sat there, unaware of what lay ahead. When the time finally came around to do the dirty work I had already had a long time to try and rationalize the killing of the animals and felt a lot more at peace with it than I thought I would have… weird, I dunno… After having actually killed the chickens, I can definitely see why so many spiritual rituals have developed in so many cultures around the world regarding the killing of animals for food and/or sacrifices. To say the least, it is a very intense moment to realize that you are taking the life of another being!

I’m constantly going back in forth with this in my mind and I’m not entirely sure where I stand on it. I think that when I get back to the US I could very easily become a vegetarian, but I’m not sure if my stance is even that firm on the matter. I think that killing of animals in the US is largely unnecessary because there are plenty of options for other nutritional substitutes and it is such a waste of resources compared to other sources of nutrition. Before killing the chickens today I guess I reasoned that it’s important to the diet of the Mozambican family because they have very limited options to select a variety of food and I know that my family in particular really doesn’t have many other sources of protein in their regular diet besides the occasional meat.

At the time I guess I felt I had it figured out pretty well in my head because my brother showed me how to kill a chicken and after the first one I think that he was surprised when he saw that I was willing to continue with the other three. One thing going through my head was that since I’d be eating the other three chickens at some point during my homestay here, I’d be lying to myself by saying that I didn’t really participate in their killings just because I wasn’t the one actually using the knife. After the decapitation, I had to hold the chicken’s main body still for several moments before it stopped moving. At that point we brought out the piping hot water we had to wait for initially and dunked the chicken’s body in to it to loosen the feathers from the skin so they could easily be plucked. After all the feathers and skin on the feet were removed, I had to cut open the chicken’s belly to remove the organs, being careful not to accidentally cut into the intestines and let feces spill out (Note - I was doing all this with my left thumb having a gash on it from yesterday’s cooking lesson that I was supposed to keeping clean. Oh well! It’s PC Africa!). Finally, the feet were cut off at the knees and at that point the chicken pretty much looked like something you’d find at Publix. Yummy!

Actually, as I finish typing this up, I’m about to go in to the dining room and guess what we’ll be having for dinner… you guessed it! Talk to you later.

One Love,
Michael

Sunday October 25, 2009
I went to church again today and since I had already done my laundry on Saturday I was able to relax around the house until we went to the service at 10:30. The majority of the service, as normal, was in Shangana, but a lot of it was translated for me by a young man visiting from South Africa who speaks some of the local dialect and a good bit of English.

The topic of the sermon was “Jesus Cristo é Salvador” (Jesus Christ is the Savior). The pastor put a lot of emphasis on the miracles performed by Jesus during his ministry (ie the woman who was a hemophiliac and the blind man who were both healed by faith in Jesus). Although a lot of the scripture was translated very literally (with the emphasis being that faith can heal you physical ailments more so than the way I usually think of it healing my emotional/spiritual issues), not all of the metaphorical language was lost. The pastor briefly talked about how our faith in Jesus can heal our souls, but really harped on the potential for physical improvements. Dovetailing perfectly with the sermon, there was a time for people who were sick or injured to come forward and have hands placed on them while being prayed for (this always happens, but was particularly notable because of the sermon topic today). I think that the sermon and the prayerful healing afterward at least somewhat reflects the health status of the average person in Mozambique. People who are sick here really do rely on small miracles to make it through because oftentimes getting treatment is too expensive (even though a lot of the actual treatment is free, someone still has to pay for transportation and other incidentals involved with traveling to receive care).

Over the past 3+ weeks during PST, guest lecturers been telling us a lot about the health issues that people in Mozambique are facing and I’ll spend the next paragraph giving you all some background just so you can get a sense of the situation. It is estimated that 1.7 million people, or 16% of the population, are living with HIV/AIDS in Mozambique. However, this is not evenly distributed throughout the country because there are actually provinces where nearly 3 out of every 10 people are infected (crazy huh?!). In addition to HIV/AIDS, the prevalence of Malaria is known to be extremely high, but is hard to pinpoint exactly because many people who have been previously infected by the parasite are asymptomatic carriers. That said, a study of children under 5 (a population that has little immunity to the parasite) showed that about 65% of the population in the northern region were infected. In addition to these two issues, general health is hard to maintain because malnutrition and adequate access to sanitary a water source are also huge concerns.

That all said, I can just begin to understand how someone feels in this country based on their health status. As I said earlier, I cut my hand on Friday and continued onward the next day by killing several chickens and removing their insides with an open wound on my finger. I am pretty sure that I’ll be able to get medicine to treat the wound, but I can tell it’s already become slightly infected even though I’ve been very vigilant about washing my hands over the past several days (how sad is it that I’m comparing the cut on my hand to Malaria… pathetic, I know).

Anyways, the point is that I’ve grown up in the U.S. covered under my dad’s insurance plan and have never felt in danger of not being able to receive treatment for even little injuries, much less big ones. Now I find myself in a country where huge public health concerns are prevalent and some people, even relatively wealthy families, might not be able to get treatment simply because of lack of health infrastructure and staff.

Even though my church here in Namaacha seems like it can’t get any farther away from what I’m used to in the states, it is crucial for me to appreciate the different draws to Christianity/religion due to people’s perspective. I have only just begun to adjust my perspective from that of college-educated, white, middleclass American and thus I know my opinion will continue to change with time. Taking a step back and thinking about it, the fact that Jesus is able to appeal to so many people on so many different levels is incredible. Although we in the U.S. may tend to focus on Jesus’ philosophical appeal, it’s important to note how Jesus provided his followers with their basic needs as well (curing illnesses and providing food/drink) and how that is just as important, if not more, depending on what your current needs are.

If I don’t get another blog up before Halloween, have a great time everyone and be safe (especially if you are going up to Jacksonville for the game… Go Gators!).

One Love,
Michael

Check out the new photos of my family:

My host family!

My host family... with me in it!

The End of the Party

Saturday October 17th, 2009
I found out yesterday that, because of a series of events, my language group of 5 doesn’t have class today… so this weekend we actually have 2 days free! Well, actually, I know that I’ll be staying busy doing things around the house and such, but it should give me at least some extra time to reflect on my experience thus far and what I have to look forward to.



My language group mid-session outside under a mango tree

Here in Mozambique, today is first day of consistent rain (last weekend in Maputo was more off and on), which signals that the summer (rainy season) has started to overtake the cool, dry days of winter. Even though I’m surrounded by my host family members who are running around the house washing dishes, cleaning clothes and sweeping the concrete patio, the scene is sort of eerie. With the coming of the rainclouds, the mountain town of Namaacha has been encompassed by a thick mist that barely lets you see the outline of the neighbor’s house. People walking by on their way into the city center come and go, disappearing in to the fog as they pass our house. Adding to the effect created by the mist is the presence of the water/clay mixture streaming through the eroded dirt streets. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Blood Diamond” with Leonardo DiCaprio you might remember the part where the characters are transfixed in the dark red color of the clay that omnipresent across most of Sub-Saharan Africa. Well, the clay really is everywhere and with the coming of the rain, it is all quickly turning to mud. The clay is only able to absorb so much water, however. The rest of the water, meanwhile, is sent streaming down the mountain side, picking up clay residue along the way, making it appear like a steady rushing stream of blood coming from a recent puncture wound that Mother Nature dealt to the mountains high above... overly dramatic? I know… but eerie nonetheless!

So with 2 ½ weeks in Mozambique under my belt, I believe that the country is more westernized than I thought it would be. From my limited interactions with Mozambicans so far, I’ve taken note that most people like to watch TV (from Mozambique, Portugal, and Brazil), listen to music (from Mozambique, Europe, and America), cell phones are prevalent, and even computers with internet access are available in most small cities. Even though the country is very poor (I read somewhere that it is considered to be the 5th poorest country in the world), you can tell that there has been a significant influx of western thoughts and values, especially through advertisements. I’m not entirely sold, however, on the fact that the advertisements depict the mindset of the country. For example, one concept that still hasn’t changed much despite the influence of western cultural ideals is beauty. Even though skinny and midsized women are frequently idolized on TV commercials, all the Mozambican women that I’ve met keep telling me how much fatter they want to get. In fact, full-figured women are held in such high regard that if you are an overweight American who comes to this country, don’t be surprised when a Mozambican women loudly declares how much she wishes she could be fat… like you!

Looking ahead, the Peace Corps trainees who are health educators (like myself) will be completing a practical experience in the next few weeks where we interact with our host families and community members to outline community resource maps (highlighting the strengths, weakness, threats and opportunities in the community), design daily and seasonal calendars (to see what events are regularly affecting our target populations), conduct needs assessments (to see what needs the community has) and finally planning/executing a series of health education sessions. Basically, we will be acting like the next several weeks are our first weeks at our actual permanent site placement and trying to navigate through all the hoops and see how it goes. We are supposed to get a sense of the important places and people in the community, attend a few community meetings, and ultimately hold a series of polestras (informal lessons) in the community on our subject of choice. I’m a little nervous about the presentation, but excited. Now that I’m actually looking the experience in the face, it makes me wonder how big, if any, of an impact I’ll be making on my future community. Hopefully, things will go well over the next few weeks and I’ll feel energized going into my service!

Sunday October 18, 2009
Mozambican lesson 1: ALWAYS check your room for rodents, bugs, and other critters!

I had been told by family to clean my bedroom floor every weekend, but last weekend I was busy going to Maputo, washing my clothes, helping prepare dinner, etc and never got around to it. This morning when I started taking things off the floor to wipe it down finally, all was going well until I moved my camera backpack from the corner of the room and found, literally, thousands of ants piled on top of each other reaching more than a foot off the ground. I let out a small shriek and then mumbled something about “homigas” and my host mom came running. Only a few moments later, with a few calculated moves with our kitchen knife, she scooped most of them into a bowl and quickly took them out of the house without any more incidents. We later discovered that the ants had made their way into our house from a small crack in the house foundation and proceeded to fill it in with cement. I’m optimistic that they won’t come back, but I might be sleeping with one eye open for the next week or so!

*Note to self: the lone kitchen knife that my family has is a very useful, multipurpose tool! So far, I have seen it used for cutting various foods, decapitating a chicken, removing ants from my room, and (most recently) used to shovel wet cement into a hole in the floor. Don’t worry though, we wash it between uses ;-)

Tuesday October 20,2009
WARNING: Some parts of this blog describe the killing of a chicken in semi-vivid details. Please do not read the text below if this might disturb or offend you…

This past Sunday afternoon Donna, a PC friend from SoCal, threw a small party at her host family’s house to have an excuse to cook up some authentic Mexican cuisine to share with her fellow PC trainees and host family. Donna had already started preparing the food by the time I got there and I knew right away from the smell that it was going to be an awesome meal. Even though I think the party was supposed to be small and low-key, the group of Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) kept on pouring in as the food got closer and closer to being ready. In fact, by the time the food was actually served we were worried whether we’d even have enough food for everyone. It was a close call, but when ended up having just enough.

After everyone had been served and people were getting ready to head back home, all of a sudden Donna’s host sister pulled out a live chicken that they were going to eat for dinner that night and pandemonium broke out when we found out that Donna was being asked to kill it at that very moment. Although several PCTs had already killed a chicken, or at least heard gossip about the killing of a chicken, everyone quickly gathered around to watch the spectacle. Looking back on it now, the killing of an animal that I eat on a regular basis was sobering to say the least.

I believe that we, in the US, often forget the fact that meat that we regularly buy neatly and cleanly packaged in the grocery store down the street is actually from an animal. My generation, especially, has grown up daily eating hamburgers, fried chicken, bacon, etc and yet I doubt that even 5% of people my age have killed any one of those animals with their own hands. The death of the chicken was gruesome and yet slightly quicker, easier, and less climatic that I thought it might have been. The chicken didn’t fight that much, not that its efforts would have likely been very fruitful, and once its throat was slit it quickly lost consciousness and went limp. Donna cut the chicken’s neck until she reached the spinal cord, but at that point the bird’s twitching reflexes kicked in and scared Donna. She dropped the knife and sank back, but without missing a beat Donna’s host sister stepped in and finished the job by completely decapitating the chicken. Even then, we had to continue to hold down the chicken by its legs for a minute or so as the body continued to twitch and convulse on the ground as blood poured out from its freshly cut neck. As the recently decapitated bird’s movements lessened and the plucking began, somber PCTs began to file out of Donna’s yard and back home. It wasn’t until the next day that I discovered that, for many of us, this deflating event was the capstone to the end of a tough weekend for many PCTs who realized that the party (our honeymoon experience where everything seems new and good) in Mozambique was now over.

Speaking about the passing of the honeymoon phase, I arrived to the Health Tech classes on Monday and Tuesday hearing several stories about PCTs crying, having second thoughts about committing the next 2 years to PC, and just generally not enjoying themselves. I think that we are all trying to stay positive, but it’s tough! The PC staff is doing a good job at helping us with the transition process, but there is so much going on in training and a lot of people are feeling overwhelmed. I think most people are getting to the point where they know they are committed to PC, but just want a few minutes/hours back with their friends so things can just be “normal” again, even if for only a moment.

While all the PCTs here are great, we are all still feeling each other out and trying to find a group of close PC friends that we really can connect with. This is especially difficult though, because all the while we know that our permanent site placement will limit a lot of interaction between groups of friends formed during training.

Obviously, Peace Corps is not all about making friends with other Peace Corps volunteers though! I think that we are all feeling a little vulnerable right now and thus we are reaching out to each other. In this effort, however, I think that some people (myself included) aren’t doing a great job of balancing the friendship aspect of PC with professional aspect. Of course there are a lot of job benefits to having connections with other PCVs in other parts of the country who we can call up and talk to as colleagues to pick their brains, but we need to be diligent in reminding ourselves about why we are here.

If you are reading this blog and thinking of me, please pray for me to remain determined, have patience, and continue to keep focused on the reasons why I am here.

One Love,
Michael

Week 2 Training Update!

October 12th, 2009
I just kicked my brother Lissaio out of the room because I was exhausted and about to pass out, but then I went outside really quickly to brush my teeth and got a second wind. So here I am now, sitting down to type out a few thoughts before nodding off for the night…

So after all the hype, our chapa ride from Namaacha to Maputo on Saturday morning turned out to be slightly anticlimactic in the end. All 65 Peace Corps volunteers ended up at the same spot, at the same time to take some chapas into the city. So instead of us being broken up into our small language groups and mixed intermittently with Mozambicans, we ended up completely filling 4 chapas (still sitting 4-deep on 3-deep seats mind you!), but we didn’t get the authentic chapa experience for sure. I mean, there wasn’t even a single person standing! That said, we all had a lot of fun on the ride into the city. In fact, as we were entering the city, I led the whole chapa in singing “Wagon Wheel” and “Country Roads” and I couldn’t help but think of the times I’ve sang those songs with you all back at home while strumming my guitar… sigh…

Anyways! The day in Maputo was a success for one reason: I got a cell phone! In case you want to call me sometime via skype, give me a shout at 82-294-8201. I don’t know the country code, but I think that you can look it up on Wikipedia and/or I think Skype will automatically figure it out for you if you tell it to call Mozambique (I’ve been told it only costs you 16 cents a minute from Skype). Other than coming back to Namaacha with a cell phone, the day in Maputo wasn’t too great. It rained the whole time we were there and we had a lot problems at the cell phone shop and ended up wasting a lot of time. Another highlight, though, was the food (nod yes now if you feel like that last sentence reminded you of every entry on Ricky’s Europe blog ;-)). We went to a pizza place for lunch and even though the pizza isn’t comparable to Hungry Howie’s… it was more than sufficient to meet my needs!

Following up the busy day in Maputo, yesterday was the first “free day” of the weekend since we actually “had” to go to the city on Saturday. Sunday morning church not starting till 11am in the States is usually a great opportunity to sleep in. Not so here in Mozambique! My entire family was awake and working outside the house by 6am and I finally realized that God also really wanted me out of bed when the neighbor’s rooster meandered over and decided to make camp under my window at 6:30am. When I finally stumbled outside my house on my way to the bathroom, I barely had time to say “Bom Dia” to my family before my mother jumped in front of me and informed me that she was going to be teaching me how to wash my clothes this morning. Still dazed and sleepy, I had to think quickly to struggle to communicate to her that I HAD to go to the bathroom. While lingering in the bathroom, I hoped that she had gone and continued her morning routine and that I could possibly get away from doing my laundry at that moment, but when I came out a few minutes later I saw upon exiting the bathroom that she had been patiently waiting… like a lion ready to pounce! I’m not going to go into the process of how to wash clothes by hand (it actually pretty complicated and a lot harder than it looks), but I’ll say this: after all the pain that it took to get the dirt stains out of my clothes(literally my knuckles rubbed raw), I now know why people really didn’t want to get their clothes dirty back in the day… it’s a LOT of work to get stains out of clothes… especially white ones! On that note, why did I bring so many white shirts again? GAH!

Finally, after washing my clothes, taking a quick shower, eating breakfast, and ironing my clothes, I made it to church just in time for the start of the service. The service was pretty quick compared to the previous’ week, just as beautiful with the songs but with less of an incomprehensible sermon in Shangana. Sitting in my seat and enjoying the service, everything was going smoothly until I realized that as the service was coming to an end the pastor was, in fact, asking me to close the service with a prayer (luckily I got to do it in English). I’m not going to lie… The prayer started pretty rocky and anyone who could speak English probably would have been confused by the haphazardness of it, but in the eyes of the congregation the prayer went off without a hitch and everyone seemed happy with my contribution even though I’m not sure if they understood more than a few words here and there… Note to self: never make a foreign exchange student say a prayer for the congregation at his second church service, even if it is in his own language… it’s just awkward!

The church service got out a little after 12 and I still had to go home to eat lunch with my family so I knew that there was no way I’d be able to meet up with some of my PC friends who were taking advantage of the free day by trekking out to Namaacha’s legended waterfall around noon. I got a text from another friend, though, who was trying to get together a game of Frisbee at 2pm and, even though my host mom and several people from the church had invited me to go to a local church coral competition that afternoon, I make the executive decision to get some exercise and play some Frisbee instead. The one big problem being that only two people showed up to play Frisbee, including me! So here I am, out in the middle of a field, missing out on the awesome trek to the waterfalls, ditching my mom’s coral competition, and looking like someone who is really out of place, decked out in gator gear, with a Frisbee in hand. Even though it was well after the time the event was supposed to start, I could hear people in the distance warming up for the coral competition and felt an extreme sense of anguish at the idea of missing out on my host mother’s singing. And at that moment, I realized that I should make it a point to take better advantage of the cultural opportunities which present themselves to me while here in Mozambique with Peace Corps. With only a few words of goodbye to my fellow Frisbee friend, I jolted for my house to change my clothes to go to my mom’s competition and as it turned out, the coral competition had been delayed so that I only missed the very opening act. In fact, in the end, the whole afternoon worked out for the best because not only was I able to make the concert, but the lack of rainfall had turned the waterfall into more of a trickle and left all the trekkers relatively deflated when returning home… That said, I know that I really want to go to the waterfall later on once in starts raining and I’ll make sure to post some pictures!

October 13th, 2009
Today I went hiking along the Mozambique-Swaziland border with my language group and afterward, feeling inspired, I decided to take out my camera at home tonight and snap a few shots of my brothers and sisters. Check the out the photos below!



My language group and I out near the Swazi border


Ramandane, Eunicio, and Abu lounging around


My family sitting around playing UNO in their livingroom