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!