Harvest time!

Wednesday March 31st, 2010
For the past 2 months or so I have been receiving sporadic, unorganized lessons in Lomwe from some of the area secondary school students in exchange for supplemental English lessons. Wanting more consistency in the lessons, however, I recently decided to seek out the help of someone who would act more professional. As the result of a few conversations and meetings with some possible candidates, today marked the start of my local language lessons with Professor Valerio.

In the end, I choose Valerio because he is an English teacher at local secondary school (so he can explain complicated things in English terminology) and, unlike a lot of other of Nauela’s teachers, Valerio is originally from the area (Gurue) so he speaks Lomwe fluently. He even went through a training to teach Lomwe to people as a second language (an effort by the government to preserve the country’s Bantu languages). How perfect! If that all wasn’t enough, the icing on the cake was when he surprised me by actually showing up ON TIME this morning at 7am! What a good sign of things to come! I’ll keep you updated on how the lessons come along... With any luck, I should be coming home in a year and a half speaking another language (and this time I’ll finally be getting outside the Romance languages)!

Finishing up my language lesson around 8am, I took a long, hard look at my garden and realized it was long overdue for some TLC. Several crops were either ready to harvest, or should had been in the past several weeks. Many of the corn stalks’ roots had destroyed by termites and caused the plants to die before having produced large cobs. Meanwhile, I let the okra and beets grow for too long and they were both too hard and fibrous to be eaten. Although making my own garden definitely earned me brownie points with the community, I can’t help but think that letting good food go to waste by not harvesting on time is going to be talked about and looked upon negatively.




Vanessa and some other neighborhood kids helping me shuck my corn.



Look at all my corn that I’m going to let dry before taking it to the mill and making cornmeal!


In the end, a revelation I had while reflecting back on the process of my initial garden experiment was that (in all the activities I do in life, not limited to gardening) I oftentimes get caught up in the process of just doing an activity and forget all about the purpose of it. Indeed, I had been so eager to implement my recently acquired permaculture skills that I forgot all about the practicality of a home garden. I was setting myself up for failure, I mean, why do I have nearly 40 eggplant sprouts ripening in my garden when I don’t really like to cook with eggplant that much?

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but I’m learning my lessons… little by little.

Thursday April 1st, 2010 – Marks 6 months since arriving in Mozambique!
Sometimes I feel like Nauela is so far removed from the earth’s comings and goings that I need to remind myself that there are tons of things going on around the world without me even realizing it. In fact, things can start to blend together so much that I am hard-pressed to even remember what the day’s date is, much less what is going on in the U.S. some 4000 miles away. Thanksgiving, St. Patricks Day, President’s Day are all days that slip through the cracks here in Nauela... but thanks to PC admin not today… Happy April Fools Day!

The realization that today was, in fact, April Fools Day came after reading an official PC admin text informing us that Michelle Obama would be coming to Mozambique in 3 weeks and that my site was being strongly considered as one of her destinations during her time in country. Without too much scrutiny, the text seemed pretty legit and left me wondering what it would be like to have the First Lady come visit my site. The possibility seemed remote, but even as a pipe dream it was a welcomed thought. In the end, a lot of the PCVs got all excited and sent the PC admin staff members text messages outlining why Michelle should be sure to come to THEIR site. Although most PCVs had their suspicions by midday, it wasn’t till later in the afternoon that the PC admin came out and let us know for sure that we had all been duped. Although it was a little sad to get our hopes up, the joke definitely fooled us…

If waking up this morning and going through the whole Michelle Obama ordeal wasn’t mentally stressful enough, also weighing heavily on my mind was the thought that Chauchane and I had originally scheduled a Lurdes Mutola meeting today with the community leaders. That said, when I talked to him on Monday he assured me that the meeting was actually going to be on the 10th and not to worry. I tried to argue with him, but he insisted that the meeting was the following week and, since I wasn’t actually present at the meeting with him and the Chefe, I had to take his word for it. To complicate matters, the Chefe do Posto was in Alto Moloque till late last night and thus I didn’t get to confirm things with him until today, the morning of the supposed meeting.

Walking back and forth in front of the administration building several times this morning, I noticed a large crowd of community leaders gathering outside. Stealing glances as I walked, I whispered to my friend Wilson about how I hoped those people weren’t gathering for the Lurdes Mutola meeting. Slowly passing by while the Chefe do Posto addressed the crowd I couldn’t overhear the topic of conversation, but the fact that no one acknowledged me meant they weren’t talking about something I should be involved in, right?! WRONG! Just moments after arriving back home, the Chefe sent a messenger requesting my presence at his house to find out where the heck Chauchane and the LMF were. When I arrived, I told the Chefe about the date confusion and he quickly sided with me, insisting that he also understood it to be today and that he had already gathered more than 40 community leaders to attend the meeting.

Without waiting an instant, the Chefe and I called the LMF office in Gurue and, quickly realizing his mistake, Chauchane ended the conversation insisting that he’d be there ASAP. It already being 11am, assuming that he wasn’t prepared to leave immediately, and the fact that he was still in Gurue, we knew that even ASAP meant 2-3 hours of waiting (not a big deal to the Chefe and I because we live so close, but a lot of the community leaders come from FAR away on foot or bicycle). We all waited around for a little more than 2 hours but in my opinion it was definitely worth it!

The meeting went really well (Chauchane is a pretty smooth talker) and the LMF made up for the late arrival by providing a snack for everyone at start of the meeting and a lunch/dinner at the end. In about an hour’s time, Chauchane outlined who Lurdes Mutola is, the history of the foundation, and the specific project that the foundation is going to implement in Nauela. The meeting concluded with us asking all the community leaders to invite a handful of area young adults to a meeting on May 15th to talk more about a training to teach them to be youth soccer coaches … I’ll let you know how it goes.

The most memorable/flattering part of the meeting for me was when Chauchane explained my presence to the community leaders. In 5-10 minutes, he detailed all my interactions thus far with the foundation, from how we met in Gurue, getting together in Alto Moloque for my first meeting, contacting him earlier this week with the correct date/time for today’s meeting, and generally how much persistence I had in bringing the LMF to Nauela. Looking out at the crowd’s smiles, my heart melted and I was SOOO happy to have made all the effort that had gotten us to that point (maybe I am making a difference afterall!). I hope I never forget the feeling!

Friday April 2nd, 2010 – Good Friday!
Coming away from the Lurdes Mutola meeting, I was rewarded for my efforts by waking up this morning feeling exhausted and sick to my stomach. I tried to go to the Good Friday church service, but was only able to sit through a few minutes before I was forced to go home and rest. I made an extended trip to the bathroom, took a nap, and then went outside to sit with Janeiro, the owner of my house, and get some fresh air. I was starting to feel a little better (albeit still not that great), but weighing heavily on me was a nagging feeling of loneliness.
Sitting next to Janeiro with my house obstructing my view of the street, Vanessa called out to me from across the yard that Amanda had just arrived! I didn’t believe it at first, but just as I got up from the chair there she was coming around the corner of my fence with a smile from ear to ear. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so glad to see someone! Sick and alone in a foreign country you always want to be near someone you know and trust, having Amanda with me all of a sudden was so unexpected though and so AWESOME!

Although biologically I still probably wasn’t 100 percent, for the rest of the day while we chatted and caught up, I felt great, lifted up by her presence. After sitting down and catching our breathes, Amanda informed me she wouldn’t be able to stay for long (she had to leave on Sunday morning), but that we could do our best to have a great time in those 48 hours… We’ll see how it goes :-)