Palm Sunday and some YAMS!!!

FIRST---here is the website that my sitemate set up about the flooding in Guija. She is organizing a couple of different relief projects because she is still working in the area, please take a look at it (even if it is just to read a little) to find out more about what happened in January...

http://www.theguijafund.org/

Last Sunday I went to church and I'm going to tell you all about it...

Another teacher at school preaches at a Christian church in Vanduzi and for the past couple of weeks he has been pleading for me to come to a service. On Saturday we had a meeting at school and he told me he was very worried because I have not come to church yet (I've been away from site the past 3 weekends) and he also reminded me that I promised to come, so not wanting to break a promise I decided to go on Sunday.

The service was so different from any church I've attending in the states. For starts, the majority of it was just singing. THERE WAS SO MUCH SINGING. and that was cool because the singing was beautiful and fun. Everyone sang. The young people (students) sang, the women sang, the men sang...even the little kids stood in front of the congregation and sang for everyone. There was also lots of hand clapping and dancing. People were just really happy. After about 2 hours of singing the actual service began. The paster made me come to the front of the church while he introduced me to everyone and told them that I was from America but now lived in Vanduzi. He told them I was his friend, and was visiting the church, and he wanted everyone else to treat me as a friend, it was really nice.

The most interesting part of the service though was the sermon. It lasted maybe an hour and was more like watching a dramatic play. The paster walked around preaching and another younger boy (actually one of my old 11th graders!) walked around behind him repeating everything that he said in Shona (the local language) and translating it into Portuguese. The two of them were walking in circles around the congregation and they were acting out whatever verses they were reading from the bible, and using different voices and really just getting very into whatever they were saying. It was pretty cool to watch. Someone else from the church sat next to me and translated the entire sermon, so that was also very nice because I think otherwise I would have gotten bored. (My portuguese is getting better but its still hard to focus after an hour of translating...). The main message of the sermon was that even if someone isn't accepted in their community today, or if their life is hard, to remember that they are already a member of god's community, and to remember how special that is.

I don't want to get all preachy but it was just an interesting message to hear in a poor, rural village in the middle of Mozambique.

Overall, the service was 4+ hours long, and there was a meeting after the service but I left before that started. I had lots of work to do on Sunday and by the time church ended it was almost 2 o'clock!

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Story number two.

I went to church with another teacher at school, Sophia, who has become a good friend of mine. I walked to her house at 9 AM and waited outside talking to her neighbor, Beatrice (also another friend and collegue). Beatrice's empragadas were busy preparing breakfast and when I asked what they were cooking, she told me 'yams'. Well I got very excited about this because I love yams and the sweet potatoes that we have in Vanduzi are nothing like American sweet potatoes, so when I realized that I had been missing out on the real thing I was just so excited. Beatrice must have noticed my excitement because when I was walking home from church one of her empregadas came running up to me saying "Tia Haleigh, Tia Haleigh..." and then waving me to towards Beatrice's house. I walked over and Beatrice handed me a container with cooked yams, she said she wanted to share some of her food with me because she knew how much I like yams. How nice?

And guess what the yams were delicious.

This is the last week of the trimester. Next week, I'll have to give my students a huge exam (its actually the provincial exams, similar to standardized, state testing back in America) so this is very exciting but also kind of nerve-wrecking. Apparently lot of students try to cheat on these tests and even more students will fail...gah, wish me luck!

Here are some pictures!

The road into Vanduzi...



Well, this is the busiest area of town (markets and small stores line both sides of the street, and people are always out and about, this is also where I can catch a chappa to Chimoio!)


Here is the magical fruit truck (that's actually not a truck but I like to call it that) which is on the outskirts of town and sells produce from south africa. Yesterday I bought peaches and grapes...something you usually can only find in the capital way down south!



Here is a picture of my kitchen/common room! Take note of the nice little fridge that I bought last month...it cost almost my entire monthly allowance but the fact that I can now eat leftovers (after slaving away cooking on charcoal for hours) made it all worth it! Also Grace look your card is hanging up! As is your postcard but you can't see it from this picture...



And here are two pictures of my bedroom...I had to take two shots because my room is tiny and if I take just one my bed just takes up the whole shot...



Taking the expression "living out of a suite case" quite literally...



Okay I promise my next post will have pictures of people and new friends I just have been reluctant to get my camera out...but it will happen! Have a great day everyone!

Back to Site/COESAO

Well, I am back at site and things are pretty much back to normal. I went back to school on Monday and it was torture trying to get my students to speak English, but I can’t blame them, I remember after doing site visits last fall (and not speaking Portuguese for 5 days) it was impossible to speak the language…so I guess after 10 days my students complains that ‘it (English) is too difficult’ were true. So Monday was a struggle but by Tuesday class went a lot smoother. Next week I will be testing both of my classes and I am pretty nervous. I wrote up the tests already and they are pretty easy, in fact I took examples almost directly from my notes and their homework but the problem is my students don’t actually do their homework. Some of them do the homework and participate but a lot of them just sit there quietly and with a class of 50+ individuals it is easy to overlook those that just do not want to try. I offered ‘office hours’ (which I sneakily called English Club or Tutoring) but no one came for help, so that was kind of a bummer but I think they will come next week, or in two weeks, or maybe once the national exams start. One of the other teachers said my students are just kind of afraid of me because I am fluent in English, so they are afraid to ask for help or feel embarrassed. At first I was offended by this, I try to be polite and supportive when I teach and have been told that I smile the entire time I lecture but I guess it is also intimidating to ask me for help, since I am so different. We shall see what happens next week when I test them!!

In other stories, since returning to Vanduzi a million people have asked me how I am doing and if I am better. Most people think I got bit by a dog, and had to get rabies shots, while other people think I had Malaria, and a few colleagues just smiled and told me I got sick because I am new but now that I have been sick I will be used to Vanduzi and can live here. Almost like getting sick was my initiation to this town…cute huh? I tried to explain to people that I had a parasite but then they started advising me on drinking better water (I filter and bleach my water) or avoiding vegetables because they grow in the ground….it is nice though that in general, people were concerned about me and are happy to have me back. I think the most excited people though are the little kids here. They are just so cute. I know its cliché to say but they are adorable. Whenever I walk anywhere (or run) they come running out to the road to jump up and down and wave and yell “Ola, Ola, Ola Menina;” and they are always smiling and laughing and so excited. I probably should be a little concerned about the fact that I’m so amusing to them but they’re just too gosh darn cute for me to care. When they say ‘Ola’ I usually great them back in Portuguese or English…it would be pretty cool if all the little kids in Vanduzi started saying English greetings.

Two Random Stories:

There is one man who works at the school and wants to learn English. A lot of people ask me to teach them English but this man is very persistent. He is really nice and he means well but I honestly have no idea how to teach him…he knows zero English. He has come to my house twice now to ask about lessons and I just have no idea where to start. Yesterday he came to my house while I was sitting outside reading the Economist (one of the perks of being in Maputo is buying English-printed news!). Anyway he sits down on my little stove, picks up my bowls from lunch and starts eating my food that I was clearly done with…it was the strangest thing. He didn’t even ask to eat it, and frankly I don’t know what I would have done if he did. I guess I wasn’t going to eat it so at least it didn’t go to waste but it was weird. After eating my food he then asked me about English lessons and I told him I needed to get caught up with work first and think about how to teach him because I don’t know how.

Story number 2…My first week here in Vanduzi I went to a funeral with two other teachers from my school. I’m not even sure who exactly died because it was my third day in town but the teachers said I should go with them out of respect, so I did. It was so different! As we walked up to the house I could hear woman singing and drums beating---a strange mourning sound? At the house all of the women were outside on one side, some of whom were sitting quietly morning, but most of them were standing in a big circle singing and dancing. My friends told me the women will dance until the body is brought to be buried, which meant they were going to dance through the night until the early hours of the morning. All of the men were sitting on the other side of the house in a quiet circle under a tree. None of the women and men were interacting…and actually none of the men were talking. I asked why they were separated but didn’t really get an answer. Also I should mention, I was wearing a long skirt and t-shirt but when we got to the house an older woman said something to me in Shona, and one of my colleagues gave me a capulana* to wrap around my legs because even though my skirt covered my knees it was too short, or maybe just not conservative enough. A lot of the woman were wearing capulanas, which is the traditional thing to wear to a funeral, but we had walked over from school so I was in my work clothes. We sat for a good twenty minutes and then left, and that was that.

So those are my two interesting cultural stories from Vanduzi so far.

Last weekend, after coming back from Maputo, I went straight to Messica for a Peace Corps get together, known as COESAO(a blend of the work central and the portuguese word meaning together...because we all living together in central and are like one big family) with all the volunteers from the central region (Tete, Sofala and Manica provinces). It was really fun. We camped at this lodge called Casa Masika, which was right outside of town but the family that ran the lodge owned hundreds of acres of land. There was a crocodile farm, and apparently other wildlife (like giraffes and gazelles and monkeys and pythons!!!!) but I didn’t see any of those animals. We spent the weekend telling stories from site, learning about the older volunteers secondary projects and we even went for a “little” hike. The hike turned into scaling the side of a small mountain and it was kind of crazy but lots of fun. Overall, it was a great weekend, and it was really nice to meet the rest of the volunteers that live in this region.

Here’s a picture from our hike to the top of this small mountain:



To end, I am completely recovered from my parasite and back to normal. I finally went for a run on Monday night, my first run in two weeks and it felt great! So things right now in Vanduzi are just fine. Oh and I also got a front door on my house so now it is actually safe.

Bolea-ing (halfway) Across the Country + An African Health Problem

Last week, my friend Wendy told me that she was planning to travel South to go to a friend's birthday party in Southern Inhambane. I got very excited about this and told her I wanted to come too. I miss my friends that live down south, and also had TWO packages waiting for me...making the trip there is kind of exhausting but traveling with a friend is much more fun, so I agreed to tag along. Our friend Shane decided to come too.

Wednesday night I went to Chimoio to stay at Wendy's because we wanted to leave really early the next day (5 AM). We left by 5:30, caught a chapa to Inchope (took about 2 hours) and from there we set up camp on the side of the road to try and bolea (hitch hike) south. After almost 2 hours of waving down cars with no success a car stopped for us. Sadly it was just a cop car, he wanted to take our nice spot in the shade to set up a check point (to monitor speeding, check cars...etc) so we moved. A random drunk guy that Shane had befriended decided to move along with us--he was having way too much fun talking to us white people so he wasn't going to leave. We moved to a new spot farther along the road, our drunk friend got tired and left, and shortly after we got picked up by two Mozambicans who worked for Coco Cola. They offered to take us about 2 hours south to a town called Muxungue. We of course accepted their offer and climbed in to their nice, cozy, air conditioned car--where we could use seatbelts and relax a bit. That drive went by pretty quickly, we took turns napping and after about 2 hours got to our destination. We got dropped off on the site of the road, were wished safe travels and our new friends drove off to work close by.

The three of us wandered to find some snacks (we hadn't eaten since 5 AM and were kind of hungry), we bought some bread and bananas and found a new spot to camp out at to eat and try to hitchhike. We were sitting down for maybe 5 minutes (I hadn't even finished my banana yet) when we saw a Land Rover down the road, driving in our direction. Wendy and I jumped up, I remember saying 'there's no way we'll get picked up this quickly but we have to try' and we both started trying to wave the car down. When the driver actually stopped right in front of us were in shock. I remember seeing a small American Flag on the inside of the window and was just thinking, oh my gosh, a bolea that speaks English this is too good to be true. The driver got out of his car, asked us if we were Peace Corps volunteers, then asked where we were going and told us to get in. His friend who was in the passenger seat also got out and they both started moving stuff around so we could fit in the back seat.

Turns out our driver was a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from the Gambia and was now working in Mozambique, doing medical research and his friend was also a doctor in the states; he was just visiting for a few weeks. We talked a bit, and then basically got to enjoy taking an awesome bolea all the way south to inhambane city where we could stay with friends for the night and then continue our journey the next morning. At one point along our drive we stopped at a small baraca on the side of the road to get refrescos. Wendy asked the Americans if they could look at her burn wound on her leg, they happily agreed and checked it out and then offered some advice on how to keep it clean and care for it.

We'll back track a little here, so about a week ago, I noticed a small red bump on my stomach. It looked a lot like a mosquito bite but it didn't itch at all, it actually kind of tingled. After a few days though it started getting really sore, and slowly got more swollen and more sensative each day. I called the PCMO (my doctor) and sent her a picture of this bump, and was advised to keep it clean, and start taking antibiotics. We thought it was just an infected bug bite and that with the antibiotics it would go away. So this "bug bite" hadn't really gotten better but I was taking plenty of ibeuprofin and that definitely helped the pain, and after being told it was a problem that would take care of itself I decided to travel with my medical condition. I decided to ask the doctors to look at my bite too and well when I showed it to them they kind of were really surprised and told me they would take care of it as best they could when we got to a better spot for them to work but that I needed to go to a hospital.

After a lot of hours of driving we get to Inhambane City and meet up with our friends. One of the doctors cleans his hands, puts on gloves, then goes to touch my now incredibly swollen bug bite, and by touch I mean he actually just grabs it and squeezes and lots of really colorful liquid comes out. I almost passed out from shock and pain and started crying and had to sit down. The doctor continued to drain my very infected bump and then gave me some antibiotics. He explained to my friends everything I needed to do since they were in a much better state than I was was, and when I finally calmed down, we thanked them and went on our way.

This bug bite thing was no longer sore the rest of my trip but I was carefull to keep a close watch on it and to keep it clean and bandaged. After a night in Inhambane City, we left the next morning to travel to Quissico, which is thankfully just a 2-3 hour chapa ride away. Of course we wanted to bolea and figured that after bolea-ing almost 1000k another hundred should be easy right? wrong. after three boleas (one of which was a huge truck that we sat in under a tarp while it poured and then had to vacate when the driver decided to pick up a million coconuts) and a short chappa ride we made it to Quissoco and got to see all of our friends!

Catching up with friends at the lagoon. So much fun.

I enjoyed my weekend in Quissoco and had a great time catching up with my friends. On Sunday morning, Wendy and I both got up early to catch a bolea to Maputo. Some really nice South African picked us up and we spent the next 5 hours camped out in the back of their pick up truck. We joked because when they picked us up it was really hot and we figured we'd probably get sunburned in the bed of this truck but after about 20 minutes it started raining, so we used Wendy's sleeping bag to make a tent to try and stay dry. The entire drive was pretty crazy, it kept switching between being really hot, and raining, but atleast we got a nice ride with some very friendly people. We were even given some bottled water and sandwiches!

When we got to Maputo, we went right the PC office and then from there we went to see the doctor. I showed the doctor my bug bites and guess what they actually turned out to be...I'm warning you its incredibly disgusting...it was insect larvae, under my skin!!! The doctor explained that when I hang my clean laundry up to dry, there is a kind of fly that lays eggs in clothing, so in this case it laid eggs in my underware. When I wore my what I THOUGHT was clean underware, I was actually just infecting myself and made it possible for these microscopic eggs to go through my pores in be laid under my skin just below my belly button. DISGUSTING. I asked the doctor how I could prevent this from happening again and he told me I should go back to America. He laughed and then said ironing my clothes should get rid of them. So the doctor cleaned me up and now I am still here in Maputo, totally fine and feeling much better, just waiting for these wounds to heal up so that I can go back home to Vanduzi.

Wendy and I basically traveled half the country this weekend but hopefully we will just get to fly back or take a nice, safe bus all the way up to Chimoio. No more bolea's or chappas and hopefully we'll both be healthy.

The end.