Ola minha familia e bonitos amigos!
Time flies when you’re having fun! No, seriously. With six weeks of PCV training completed, our
swearing-in date of December 4 inches ever closer. In only three weeks and three days (but who’s
counting right?), I’ll be raising my right hand and taking the Peace Corps
pledge at the ambassador’s residence.
Thankfully there’s still much work to be done – the continuation of
language classes and model school sessions remain a wonderful distraction from
the weight of what us new volunteers are about to take on. As of now, I’m in
the middle of that blissful honeymoon stage where everything is wonderful and frankly
I’m totally fine with that. Over the course of two years, I know I will
encounter incessant challenges to not only my day-to-day happiness, but also to
the reasons that motivate me to serve. I imagine it’s common to find ourselves
at points in our lives and wonder what crazy ideas compelled us to make such
big decisions. However, as of now, I still wake up and find moments to marvel
at in my everyday life, like watching the sun come up on my early morning runs
along Namaacha’s rolling green hills, or the huge thunderstorms that tear
across the night sky and whip the red earth into sticky sheets of matope (mud),
or even the simple fact that I can navigate life “mais or menos” in Portuguese
(and even tell a few jokes/poke fun at myself) - it feels so surreal to be
living in the constant beauty that is Mozambique. I am grateful.
Yet the realization of how little time is actually left
until we’re thrown into the thick of Mozambique’s toughest problems (a
struggling, under-supported school system, high drop out rates, corruption,
poverty, gender discrimination, and HIV/AIDS amongst other things), has spurred
a scrambling of sorts amongst the ranks of PCV trainees. There are soooo many
things we don’t know yet – where we’re living, how we’ll be living, what access
to other volunteers we’ll have, how large our classroom sizes will be… Juxtapose
the list of things we don’t know, to the rumors and info we’ve acquired through
the vibrant PCV grapevine and you can imagine the type of electric uncertainty
that is sparked. Undoubtedly, the “Greatest
Unknown” remains to be our site placements, and given that volunteers are
largely excluded from the assignment
process, it has of course become the hottest topic to gossip about. The fact that we’re receiving our placements on
Wednesday only heightens peoples obsession with the unknown. After all, it’s
the unknown that can prove most exciting ;) While we all love conjecturing
however, I am definitely trying to remain as open-minded as possible. Inevitably,
no matter what I think the most “perfect” site would be, essentially the next
two years will be determined by someone in the Peace Corps office in Maputo,
not me, and that’s probably for the best. Whether I get placed in the “mato”
middle-of-nowhere village and live in a hut without electricity and running
water, or am placed in a beach town and live in my own house, I’ll have to
adapt to the different challenges each scenario entails. And, it’s about at
this point in sharing my logic with other volunteers at the bar that I reach
this diplomatic conclusion for the millionth time and subsequently change the
subject and order myself another beer ;)
All this being said, the last two weeks since my last email
have been eventful ones! One major
theme? Illness (boo!). After being taken out at the knees by strep throat, only
a few days after I finished the antibiotics another nasty virus wreaked some
havoc on my immune system. It’s so
strange to feel vulnerable to illness, especially since I rarely ever got sick
back in the states. And as a side note, being sick in a county without basic
amenities sucks. There’s nothing like having a high fever and having to squat
over a bucket to pee because you were too weak to walk outside to the latrine.
Perspective man, perspective. On the
bright side, I am very lucky to have not been hit with any gastrointestinal
distress, a condition that apparently immobilizes 97% of volunteers in Moz at
least once during their two years of service (seriously, Peace Corps collects
stats on all this type of stuff and then feed it to us in endless power point presentations,
no joke!) . That being said, if any one feels like sending me packets of
Emergen-C, it’d be greatly appreciated!
For those not wanting to hear more details about the more unsavory
realities of life, you’ll be pleased to hear that there were numerous other
more palatable highlights ;)
Most recently, I escaped
Namaacha for six days to visit two active Peace Corps sites. Site visits
provide PCV trainees with an opportunity to “job-shadow” the lives of current
Peace Corps volunteers and essentially provide a short trial run for service
life. I was sent to visit two sites in northern Inhambane province – Vilankulos,
a semi-touristy beach town, and Mapinhane a very rural, rustic and dusty town
along the national highway. When we
arrived in Vilankulos after a ten hour bus ride north, a stunning view met our
tired eyes. Imagine a beautiful turquoise ocean lapping up onto white sandy
beaches, palm trees rustling in a light breeze, and a blistering hot sun. We
couldn’t have escaped Namaacha’s rain at a more opportune time (there was a
point when even freshly washed (wet) laundry became moldy because it never
dried out!), so of course, the first two days were spent lounging on the
private beach of the Baobob Backpackers hostel, drinking fresh coconut with the
locally made rum, and eating our first pizza (a rare find!) since leaving the
USA. Such luxury quickly became a bit boring however, and I was excited to be
moving on to Mapinhane, the village of our hosts Laurie and Chris.
Mapinhane couldn’t have offered a
better contrast to the indulgences of Vilankulos. It’s rural with a typical
small-town feel where everyone knows everybody, and even with new cell towers
topping the horizon (a sign of an ever encroaching globalized world), most of
the villagers live in thatch huts and cook over carvao (charcoal). Moreover, in
not having electricity or running water, the village kids or their mothers
collect water from a few communal pumps multiple times per day, carrying their
heavy jugs of water home in wheelbarrows or on their heads. It’s undoubtedly a life of continuous hard
work, from sunrise to sunset. While it
was fun to have been a part of the “Po$h Corp$” (haha!) for a few days, it was
a much needed reality check to visit Mapinhane and experience the more typical
day-to-day life of the average Mozambican (and relatedly very often the life of
a Peace Corps volunteer). Just to provide some
context: Mozambique is rated 184 out of
187 on the Human Development Index (HDI) – the lowest HDI rating of all Peace Corps host-countries. The HDI,
developed by the United Nations Development Programme, is a comparative tool
that evaluates factors such as health and life expectancy, literacy, education,
and standards of living. Thus, while Moz may be viewed as a foreign aid
“darling” receiving around $400 million per year from the US government alone,
the HDI signifies to the Peace Corps volunteer that there’s definitely
much more work to be done at the
grassroots level. That’s both a humbling
and exciting role to be in, especially when Mapinhane modeled a town brimming
with an incredible amount of potential. During our visit, we got to tour the
first newly-built public secondary school and talk with the pedagogical director
(aka, the Headmaster). He’s currently in the process of bending over backwards
to get a Peace Corps volunteer placed at his school (free, skilled labor
anyone??) – and he wants an English teacher no less!! I’m crossing my fingers…
In any case, we all
returned to Namaacha not only refreshed and ready to take on the last few
weeks, but with a healthy dose of perspective and readiness to take on the next
phase of Peace Corps service.
And now, all we can do is wait to receive our official assignments.
I’ll keep y’all posted about the big news!
