good friends, cave art and english theatre.

I’m finally kind of busy at site and it’s awesome!

Although nothing is set in stone or very established yet it’s pretty exciting. Since returning to site I’ve been trying, really trying, to be more involved in my community. I have a few more weeks left for this school semester and then it will be summer vacation. Most teachers and students travel during this break (and just about every PCV I know is returning to the states for the holidays) but aside from a week or two of traveling I am planning to stay at site. I know most of my students and colleagues will be gone but the community members will still be around so I’ve been trying to find things to do to keep me busy when I don’t have school next month. This has resulted in:

-Forming an English theatre group. (finally!) Although it was like pulling teeth to get all of the interested members to actually show up for a meeting at the same time, last week they finally did and we got to work and it was awesome! I now meet with these students twice a week to practice a theatre piece (they wrote in English!) which they will perform in two weeks at a provincial competition that’s being sponsored by the U.S. embassy. I think that this group will morph into my English club/juntos group because the students seem to enjoy theatre and want to continue with it even after the competition AND since working with them, many of the students have started asking me for extra homework help/tutoring or just stopping by my house to practice their English. Its been so great.

-Tutoring random people in Vanduzi (who aren’t students). This group includes my alfaiate (tailor), who wants to write his own English-Portuguese dictionary, along with a 10-year old boy from Zimbabwe, whose father is adamant about teaching his son English.

-Working with one of the primary school teachers to lesson plan/better prepare her students for secondary school AND just helping her practice her English and hang out. Yay for making more friends that are around the same age as me!

-Finally, although this project has not started yet I am just so excited I need to write about it. I recently met a Somali man in my town who owns a small halal restaurant (its also the only restaurant in Vanduzi that has beans and rice (popular market food) without meat in it!) anyway, I am hoping that I can meet this man for lunch one or day days a week and that he can tutor me in Swahili! As a side note, when I got my post in Mozambique way back in January of 2012 I was so excited because I thought I’d be able to live in the north of the country where I could learn Swahili and then after Peace Corps I could move to Kenya and get a job dealing with Somalia/current events in the horn. Well, I didn’t get sent to the north and my dreams of learning Swahili were temporarily put on hold BUT now I might have a tutor and I am so excited! I haven’t actually met with this man yet for lessons but I am sure if he isn’t too busy he’d be happy to teach me.

Aside from getting excited about projects one of my good friends from training was visiting last week. I got to show off my site a bit (and he helped me brainstorm some of the above projects) and we also hung out with some other volunteers that were in Chimoio for the week for a conference.

(here's to hoping its not another 6 months until I see you again!)

A few of us went to the town of Manica one day to see this old cave art drawings, which are apparently really really old and date back from a tribal war that caused villagers to flee into the caves up in the mountains for safety. Although some of the drawings looked pretty neat there was also a row of drawings that looked almost stenciled in. regardless of whether the drawings are actually real, the hike to the top was fun and the view was fantastic. We spent the rest of the day in manica, which was a nice little town about an hour away from my town, Vanduzi. Here’s some pictures:

The mountain we hiked to get to the caves....

The cave drawings...

Our guide? For lack of a better title, this woman is the daughter of the either the village elder or the old tribal queen...I actually don't quite know her exact title but she is the only one that could take us up the mountain to see the drawings.

What better way to cool off after hiking up a mountain in the middle of the day than to enjoy a MANICA beer in the town of MANICA in MANICA province. Cool eh?


I'm trying to be better with this blog so hopefully I'll write again next week, until then have a great week everyone!

Eurotrip.

A PCV’s trip back to the “developed” world = CULTURE SHOCK.

I’m sitting in my bed writing this blog post and playing music and I can hear giggling…lots of giggling. My bed is pushed up against my window and as I peer out around my capulana sheet/curtain I see 4 little criancas laughing and trying to listen to the wonderful sounds of Wagon Wheel (yes Shane, I know you’d be so proud). So I am back in Vanduzi and it is nice to be home but let me tell you all about my trip!

I left site on a Saturday morning, met up with old sitemate from Guija in Maputo and the two of us spent the weekend at a friend, Mindy’s house before I headed out to Europe. Just a side-note, this was my first time back in Maputo after 7 months and boy was it weird! Driving from the airport into the city was more than overwhelming, I forgot how weird a city skyline looks like…and there were so many cars! Luckily, Mindy lives on the outskirts of the city, near the fish market (a quieter area) so aside from a walk in town to the craft market for some souvenir shopping I was able to avoid the chaos of the city. Although I forgot how crazy it can be just to physically be in a city again it was cool to be in Maputo right before my trip because I could compare European cities to it, and it also helped lessen the initial culture shock of seeing buildings that were more than two or three stories tall.

After a weekend in Maputo I set out on my journey to Europe. I flew to Johannesburg and from there got a direct flight to Paris. In Paris I spent one day alone wandering the city, shopping, going into beautiful churches, sitting in random parks/squares people-watching and of course eating some delicious food (yes I did in fact go to the chipotle in Paris for my first real meal!) I ended my first day in Paris with a “picnic dinner” of a mozzarella, tomato and basil on a baguette, a delicious peach and a glass (or two!) of cheap, good, red wine on the balcony of my hotel room where I sat watching the busy train station and reading the most recent issue of the economist. After the sunset (around 9:30 PM) I collapsed in my bed, which felt like sleeping in the clouds, and slept so wonderfully!

The next morning I met up with my family (and the Muhlenberg basketball team players and family members) and we embarked on an 8-day trip through France, Germany, Belgium and the Nethlerlands. In the course of 8 days I got to see so many historically important/famous tourist spots I stopped keeping count of them. In Paris I marveled at the size of the Notre Dame, in the louvre I admired works by Luise Jaques David, I watched the sunset from the Eiffel tower, stood under the triumval arch and was essentially star struck by the amount of detail/beauty and gold that went into constructing the Palace of Versailles. I also did some shopping, drank red wine with my mom and got lost in the endlessly changing, winding alleyways of Paris. It was wonderful.

(jacques louis david aka one of my favorite artists!)

After 3 days in Paris, we traveled to Valkenburg where we would stay for the next 5 days. From this small border town in the Netherlands we did day trips into Germany and Brussels, as well as towns in the Netherlands. Although I loved Paris this part of the trip was much more enjoyable to me. Aside from Amsterdam and Brussels (both of which I loved!) the towns we visited were smaller, and there was a significantly less amount of tourists which is always a relief when you’re used to living alone in a small African village :) Instead of detailing all the places I traveled to (you’ll just have to check my pictures on facebook) I will write about my favorites. In Cologne, my family and I sat in a beautiful, open square and ate lunch while people-watching and enjoying the local craft beer (which was likely my favorite brew of the trip!). I also found a tiny hole-in-the-wall Lebanaese restaurant and bought falafel. After lunch we wandered to the more touristy area and I found a DUNKIN DONUTS. So excited, I got real iced coffee.

(hanging out at a bar in Vaalkenburg with my dad and Morgan)

Also in Germany, we went to a small vineyard, which was adorable. The vineyards are so neat in Germany because the grapes are grown on these huge hills that are so steep they almost resemble a cliff. I wondered how it was possible to actually pick and harvest the grapes, but the wine was good and the view was magnificent.

We also went to a small town called Aachen, which had the most beautiful church (in my opinion) out of the whole trip. Outside the church resembled any other large, medieval cathedral, but inside it was covered in mosaics reminiscant of Byzantine culture/similar to the style in Istanbul. It was so pretty!

(family picture in front of Charlemange's castle in Aachen)

In the Netherlands, we traveled to another town, Maastricht, where although it was rainy and cold it was also probably one of my favorite days. it was the one day, where we were not with our tour group for the entire day. We had no schedule and could do whatever. This of course resulted in shopping and some really great food. Also in the Netherlands, we went to Amsterdam and that city was just so cool! I wish I had more time there because it seemed like such a neat, fun, free-spirited place but even a few hours in the afternoon were better than nothing. We ended our day there at the Heinekin brewery where I teased my dad for not finishing his beer fast enough (which resulted in me getting his second beer) and us both agreeing that the Heinekin actually tastes good when you drink it at the brewery.

In Belgium, we just spent a few hours in Brussels, which I’m really glad we got to do. The city has a beatuful square, with buildings trimmed in gold and decorated with intricate designs and statues. We ate delicious Belgian waffles and also drank some good beer at the delirium café. Yum.

So overall, I know it sounds like all I did was shop and eat and look at pretty historical things…and maybe that is true but because we were with a large tour group it was difficult to do things outside of the allotted schedule. This was frustrating at first, being myself, I wanted to wander aimlessly in every city and go into every possible museum/historical building but that of course wasn’t possible, there simply wasn’t enough time. A few days into the trip I decided that instead of being frustrated with the lack of time to see all these things/places, I should view the tour part of my trip as a preview of Europe; a quick taste of each city so I could decide if I wanted to return one day…and instead of focusing on the lack of time to do everything and see everything I just enjoyed the time I had with my family and it was wonderful! It was so nice to tell stories, hear about home, drink beer with my dad, giggle and shop with my mom and gossip with Morgan. I still can’t believe it will be 16 or 17 more months until I see them again—sure you guys don’t want to visit me here? And Nikki, believe when I say you were definitely missed.

After 8 days with the family I said my goodbyes and traveled to Bologna in Italy to meet up with a good friend from college, Joanna, who was starting her first year of graduate school (at SAIS) abroad. Traveling to Bologna was exactly what I needed in-between the eurotrip and return to moz because it was so much more relaxed. I got to enjoy all the amenities of the developed world without feeling guilty for sleeping in, or going for a run because it would mean I was missing out on doing something else. Joanna and I explored her city (which is awesome! Bologna is an old medieval town that somehow missed out on the architectural revolution of the renaissance, resulting in lots of small, narrow winding alleyways, plenty of arched, built up buildings that you can’t see over into the next street, and lots of old churches) maybe I didn’t do justice to how cool the town is but there are plenty of pictures to prove it. So Joanna and I explored town, went hiking in the hills outside of town, and traveled to Venice (which was so cool!!!) we also ate really good pizza, plenty of gelato and drank wine that was made right there in Bologna. We also got to catch up and swap stories from our past year in Africa (Joanna was in Benin so it was neat comparing West Africa culture to Moz). It was really fun.

VENICE.

(the old streets of bologna!)

After two whole weeks in Europe, I packed my bags (full of new clothes, non-perishable food, and some cool gifts from my family) and boarded the plane back to Africa. I spent another two days in Maputo and then traveled back to Vanduzi. At the Chimoio airport I was reminded of the culture here when my Mozambican friend who agreed to give me a ride back to site arrived 2 ½ hours late (even though when I called him to tell him my flight landed he said he was just arriving at the airport) and while waiting for my friend to come I couldn’t buy water because the guy at the airport had no change….I was definitely sad to leave Europe so soon and was not feeling too excited to return to site but as my driver pulled up to my house there were 5 kids jumping up and down yelling “OLA AMIGA!!!!” and shortly after I was greeting with a warm welcome from some colleagues at school and a student who ran up to my house to shake my hand and welcome me back. Teaching my first lessons in 3 weeks yesterday also reminded me how much I enjoy living here. I won’t stay here forever but I am happy that I have another year left in Vanduzi. After a very much-needed break in Europe I am ready to jump back into school and try to do some good work in my wonderful little village in Mozambique.

The most surprising things from my trip back into the west (as culture shock)
-how beautiful every single building is. In Europe people construct things that are aesthetically pleasing…in Africa they just build them
-how nice it is to walk around at night and feel safe (note-its safe in my village but walking around at night is a huge no-no)
-that people can drink in public in a casual way…and not be wasted by 2pm
-how pretty, no wait, beautiful and well-fed the dogs are
-how peculiar Americans are about drinking bottled water
-how “skimpy” some people really dress
-how frustrating it is NOT to know how to greet people in their native language; in Paris this wasn’t much of a problem because most people didn’t stop and acknowledge you when you were walking down the street but in smaller towns it was so frustrating! I resorted to just greeting people in Portuguese while I was in italy---hey it’s a romance language I think they got it?
-similar to that previous post, how wonderful it was to finally BLEND IN AGAIN and not be stared at (and yelled at and noticed) by every single person everywhere…it was fantastic!
and just how wonderful it is to have delicious food (and real coffee) available at any hour of the day in pretty much any town I traveled too regardless of how large or small it was!

And there are probably more but those are the most memorable aside from the fact that I thought every single person’s outfit was fashionable and cute and I wanted to buy everything in ever store, so much for not caring about fashion?

Sorry this post was so long…but it has been 4 weeks?!

Ihla de Mocambique

I don’t know where to start.

After PDM, I traveled north to meet up with some friends at Ihla de Mocambique—and it was absolutely wonderful.

(Some of the group standing at the pier in Ihla--Lisa get's photo credit for this one!)

The trip to Ihla took 2 full days. Two weeks ago, Kristen (another PCV) and I left Chimoio at 5AM in a chapa that took us to Inchope, the crossroads between north, south, east and west (north to Nampula, south to Maputo, east to Beira and west to Chimoio). This cruzamento is where central volunteers go to start our hitch-hiking. Well, by 7AM Kristen and I were camped out on the side of the road, optimistic that our early start would bring us some luck from the bolea [hitch-hiking] gods. We could not have been more wrong. In the first few hours just 4 other cars drove by, one of which stopped and tried to charge us $20 to go a couple hundred k north. We declined, we didn’t have the money, if did we would have taken a bus, so we waited, and waited and waited. After 5 hours, feeling pretty desperate and not wanting to return to Chimoio, we waved down a semi (a large truck) who stopped and agreed to take us all the way to Zambezia for approximately $6. We agreed and go in the van. So begins my 10 hour journey in a truck with little water, no food and no bathroom breaks (we did pack snacks but we ate them all on the side of the road.) After 10 hours we rolled into Mocuba, Zambezia around 10PM, our driver dropped us at bridge, which we crossed on bikes to meet our friends on the other side who had been waiting for us all day. Thankfully, PCVs are kind of awesome, our friends had waited up for us and had dinner saved for us to eat when we arrived disheveled and exhausted at their house.

(Kristen and I started in Chimoio, and finished our journey at Ihla...it doesn't look to far on the map but it was "la!")

We slept maybe 6 hours that night then woke up to continue traveling north. We got a little luckier that day and got a bolea to the cruzamento for Gurue (a beautiful area in the north I will return to visit!) From there we got picked up by a wonderful French man who drove us all the way to Nampula City. In Nampula we ended up taking chapas/open-back trucks all the way to Ihla and we finally arrived at our destination around 8PM that night. After 2 full days of travel we were beat, but also really excited we made it to the island and were reunited with our friends, some of whom we hadn’t seen since last December.

(A window to paradise, mom and dad are you sure you don't want to visit?)

The next 3 days were just wonderful. Ihla de Mocambique is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it served as the original capital of the Portuguese empire in the region and was a major trading port between Portugal and India. Aside from having pristine beaches with beautiful, turquoise water, the town itself is pretty magical. Unlike most of the country, the Island has a clear Portuguese influence. The roads are narrow and cobblestone, the buildings perfectly white (or faded colors from long ago) and although most of the architecture appears to be crumbling it really is beautiful.

We spent those three days exploring the old Portuguese fort, wandering town and spending lazy afternoons on the pier that extends into the Indian Ocean. At night we ate delicious food (the cuisine is easily the best I have had yet in this country; incredibly fresh seafood, coconut rice and curries seasoned with Indian, Mocambican and Portuguese flavorings, it was truly to die for). And basically just enjoyed our time on the sleepy island of ihla.

The trip back took another 2 full days of travel but I can happily report is was definitely worth it and I can not wait to travel back north and visit this island and the rest of that region again.

(Fresh Fish)

So now I am back at school, starting the third (and final!) semester of the year but I can’t focus much on teaching because I am leaving for vacation THIS SATURDAY and will get to see my family (and some friends) after 11 months away from home! I could not be more excited. So apologize ahead of time if I don’t update my blog until I’m back, but I’ll be traveling without a computer…but I promise to return with pictures and stories!

PDM

(Does anyone actually know what this acronym stands for?)

I attended PDM with 9 other Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts, in Garuso (about 15k from Vanduzi). The purpose of the conference was to learn about secondary projects that volunteers can start/continue in their communities. We each brought a colleague from school, who ideally we would work with on these projects, and who could continue them once we finish service and return to the states. Overall, it was incredibly successful, and was the exact forum I needed to show a colleague of mine what Peace Corps really is, and the potential I as a volunteer, have to start projects in our community. It was also great to finally learn about grants that are available for volunteers.

At the last minute I asked another English teacher, Simao, to come along with me to PDM and he agreed almost immediately. The weekend before the conference he insisted on meeting up and discussing potential project ideas-because he only had a few days notice to prepare, he was worried others would think we were weren’t prepared (note: there was no required prep for this conference). Still, his desire to prepare made me even more excited that I was bringing him along. During the conference Simao and I brainstormed a number of different ideas for projects we could start in Vanduzi. We made a list and then decided to focus on one of the easier/more short-term projects, and agreed to return to our list at the start of the next school year, when there would be more time.

We decided we will form a student group at school and together will teach them more about HIV/AIDs. These students then, will have the chance to educate their community about HIV/AIDs through theatre, dance, music and poetry. This group will be very similar to JUNTOS—a nationwide group that many volunteers are involved with in Mozambique. We set meeting dates and agreed to talk to other teachers about our group when we returned to Vanduzi. We also agreed to form an English club and really get started with our English theatre group (today I got a list of interested 8th graders who want to participate!)

Overall, the conference was a huge success. For me, I was able to share with a colleague more about what Peace Corps is, and because the conference was so professional, my colleague was able to trust or understand better what kinds of projects would be possible if we worked together. More importantly, I was able to chat with Simao about what he thought was really needed in Vanduzi, and through these conversations gauge a better idea of what the community wants and needs.

Now that I’m back at site, I’ve met with Simao and we are still planning to meet with our colleagues---it’s the first week of the semester and unfortunately very few teachers, and students have returned to school. I’m excited though I think our student group, along with our English club, is going to come along great. Simao is well-liked as school and the students really respect him, so I think together we will be able to get more participation and excitement from our students. Wish me luck!

Peace Corps Friendships

When I applied to Peace Corps two years ago one of the things I did not think about was the friendships I would make with other volunteers. I always imagined myself living in a rural, African village, teaching high school students and hopefully making some friends along the way. My goal was (and still is) to learn more about international development from the grassroots level, and I simply didn’t consider the role other Peace Corps Volunteers would play in that learning experience. Since arriving to Mozambique, and first being thrown into training-where 67 other volunteers-in-training became my immediate family, and then being placed at site (first in Guija, then again in Vanduzi) I have come to depend so much on the other volunteers in country. So although I am happy to say that I have made friends here in Vanduzi (mainly my collegues at school, my neighbors and their children, and the random, yet curious people in town who want to be my friend because I am different,) I will admit that my closest friends here are my fellow PCVs.

So my blog post is not just to write about how great my friends are here, but to comment on how strange it is when one of your closest friends finishes their service and leaves the country. I no longer have that one person who I can text when I have had a really frustrating day at school (or even better, a GREAT day). I also no longer have that close friend who I cook with on the weekends, and enjoy a cold Manica with at 4 PM on a Saturday. These are also the people who you turn to for advice with teaching, secondary projects, or just to talk to when your lonely and alone in your village. In Peace Corps, you become friends with your fellow volunteers almost immediately, and those who live closest to you become your family. It’s kind of a weird social experiment because throughout your service these friends change (as you move from training, to a new site, and then as volunteers finish service and are replaced with new ones) and almost immediately you become friends with the new people that replace your old closest friends, it really is quite strange.

This post doesn’t really mean much, but while passearing (walking aimlessly around town) the other day in town, thinking how weird it will be when I go in town to visit another volunteer but my old friend will be missing, and basically feeling sad about all of this, I realized that I can sit in my house all day reading, cooking or doing whatever passes the time or I can get out and be active in my community. Sure I don’t have a lot of work right now (its actually the semester break and I won’t teach again for 3 more weeks) but every time I walk outside my front yard I am reminded that people are happy to see me, and grateful that I have become a part of their community.

On Sunday, I stopped to visit a friend, and she, and her neighbor were so happy to see me that after talking for a good twenty minutes they each gave me some produce from their farms. Then today, while walking back from the market I was followed by 3 criancas (small children) who just wanted to skip next to me and repeat everything I said to them because they didn’t understand Portuguese, and I guess I’m just their daily entertainment because I am different. I’m not really sure where this post is going but I think it’s a reminder to myself (and other volunteers who read this) that although we do depend on one-another, the worst thing to do is be a hermit in your community, because the people here really do appreciate us, and if you are having a bad day my advice to you is to take a walk and see how many smiles you get from strangers who are just happy to be greeted, or see how many children just want to walk with you because they’re bored and you’re exciting and fun.

Although I’m pretty bummed that one of my site-mates, and closest friends has finished service and will be returning to the states soon, I know that I will be okay because I have a wonderful support system in the rest of my fellow volunteers, along with an incredibly grateful (and warm) community who will continue to look after me until the day comes in a year and a half when I have to say my goodbyes.

As previously noted, I’m about to be on break for the semester, and I won’t start classes again until August 6. A lot of volunteers travel over this long break but I haven’t decided yet if I want to leave site. For one thing, my dog will be terribly depressed if I leave but on a more serious note, I’m lucky to be going on a 3-week long hiatus to Europe mid-August. So I can’t decide if it is a good idea to leave my community for a week now, when I’ll be leaving for so long next month. I have a conference next week with some other fellow PCVs so I’ll have to see how good they are at convincing me to travel. Staying at site during the break might be exactly what I need to be reminded why I am here and why I am truly happy in my community.

We shall see, until the next post, be well!

Tchao and Boa Sorte Shane, you will be missed in COESAO but I am so excited to see what great things you do in law school....and also just excited to laugh over your adjustment to nyc life. Ate America!

Teaching, Hiking and wait I'm 24?

Not much is happening right now in Vanduzi but here are some photos…

Teaching superlatives to my 8th graders (this might be my favorite class).

They got really excited about the camera…when the bell rang to signal that class was over, no one wanted to leave so I told them we would take one group photo and then they had to go (because I wanted to go home!) This is the picture that resulted:

Also the kid right in front is one of my favorite students-he always participates and is asking questions. When everyone got together for the group shot he was telling me it was bad because everyone was jumping and yelling and they needed to sit down. When it was clear that I wasn’t going to try and control them he literally jumped right in front of the camera so that he could be the star.

Over the weekend I celebrated my 24th birthday in Chimoio with some other PCVs. The weekend included a home-cooked Mediterranean meal in Vanduzi complete with movie watching and just relaxing (thank you shane!) a  nice “family” dinner Friday night  (with birthday cake!) a hike on Saturday morning followed by a cook-out at a friends house, and then a night of festajaring with some cool British ex-pats we recently met. It was a really fun weekend.

Hiking outside of Chimoio 

Hanging out at our friends house in Chimoio celebrating my birthday and just having a good time.

Like I said not much is happening right now. School seems to be going well but I still have way too much free time and can’t figure out what to do with it yet…but in time I’m sure I’ll figure it out!

Also-I found a teacher to work with as my counterpart, we'll attend a conference together mid-July and I think taking her to learn about potential projects/available grants and what other PCVs are doing for their schools will be a great way to brainstorm what I can do here in Vanduzi!

Secondary Projects?

Hello! I’m sorry it has been so long since I’ve updated this thing but honestly it’s been difficult finding things to write about. My hours recently got cut at school, so I am now just working 2 afternoons a week and it’s a serious bummer. The district essentially made a new rule that all teachers needed to teach a total of 24 hours, well because I am not a paid employee (I’m just a volunteer) every teacher was assigned 24 hours and I got the leftover, measly 9 hours a week. It stinks, it really does. But after talking to some colleagues I realized that most of them wanted to work even more than 24 (some had been working 30+ hours before) and because everyone gets paid based on the amount of hours they work, if I request more hours it takes away from another person’s salary---clearly not something I am trying to do. So this means that I have just been incredibly bored. And when I say bored I mean I’ve actually started watching TV episodes on my computer and re-reading old magazines I collected when I was in Maputo last January-it's that bad.

Initially I thought all this free time wouldn’t be that terrible because it would give me more time to work on secondary projects (any type of project outside of professional teaching). Well, starting secondary projects is not an easy task-especially when you live in a village that has never had another volunteer. People are justconfused when I try to offer tutoring or any sort of extra volunteering activity. So far my attempts at secondary projects have included:

-Helping organize our school library; re-arranging an old textbooks by subject (and grade) and then cataloging every book in the library so that when students borrow them we can trace where they’ve gone. This was a fun little project but I finished in about 3 days.

-Helping out at a colleague’s orphanage. Now this was a very exciting potential project for me. Another teacher at school mentioned that he helps out at an orphanage and after expressing interest in going he took me one morning. When I expected to walk to an orphanage in town, I was wrong. He led me on a 20-minute walk into the matu (farmland area) until we got to a very large field. He explained to me that the government of Mozambique donated 10 hectares of land to his organization, but gave them no funding to actually build an orphanage-all that has to come out of pocket. Some women met us at this field and he passed out some cove (kale/collard greens) for the women to plant in there homes. The plan is for these women to start their own small farm at home and use the cove when they cook to add more nutrients to their meals and thus help fight malnutrition (a huge problem here because everyone just eats carbs!) So that little piece was cool but overall I was kind of bummed out. I thought there was an established orphanage where he was helping teach/take care of kids but the fact is it hasn’t been built yet. The children are living with foster families. He was hoping I could help him get a grant or some type of funding to start building. That sucked. This teacher is a really genuinely great guy, and luckily he speaks some English so when I explained that I can’t just donate money to him because I have none he was just curious to learn more about what I can do, which is basically volunteer when the orphanage is going, and I also offered to help clean up some of the land but I don’t think he took me seriously at that offer.

-Finally, I found out another colleague at school wants to start a pre-school. Apparently there used to be a pre-school in Vanduzi that was volunteer run by some NGO but it stopped a few years ago and now there is no pre-school. Arguably worse, there is only one primary school in town, so children that aren’t fortunate enough to go to this school go to your stereotypical, African children sitting under a tree, drawing in the dirt trying to learn kind of school. So basically there is no preschool and limited primary school education available, which helps to explain why when students get to the secondary school (where I teach) they’re abilities are all over the place. I told this colleague if she starts a pre-school I will happily teach there in the mornings. I love kids and seriously need to find something to do to fill up all this free time! But things move SO SLOWLY here and I would be shocked if the pre-school starts up by the end of the year…

-I am also really going to start an English club. I’ve been talking to some other volunteers for advice on how to get it started and plan to really jump in with it in the next week or two so hopefully that will fill up some time and branch into other new projects!

That’s really it for now, I will say that even though I am just teaching 9 hours a week I really value my teaching time and think I spend a lot more time lesson planning, giving assignments (and grading them) and essentially just give my students more attention because I have less of them now, so that could be a good thing!

I’ll try to post again in the next week or two if there’s any new news, but hey, in my case I think no news is always good news :)

And here are some pictures:

Last weekend I went to Chimoio and hiked Cabesa de Velho with another volunteer. The “mountain” is maybe 3k outside of town and the hike to the top isn’t too tough. It’s really neat though, from the top you can see the entire town of Chimoio on one side, and then on the other side its just open fields/trees, a pretty cool contrast! Here’s a picture of me from the top of the mountain.



Two weekends ago a bunch of the PCVs that live in the central region of the country traveled to Vanduzi for a get together. It was a ton of fun, even though it rained all day for the one full day that volunteers were there we still had a great time cooking good food, telling stories and festajaring. Some wonderful person in America sent a box with peach rings in it to another volunteer so we ate those, along with some other great care package food! Here’s a funny shot of mostly everyone crammed into my kitchen posing with their peach rings:)



And I still can’t decide who had more fun that weekend, the volunteers or the kids that live in my bairro (neighborhood). They stood outside my porch watching us all weekend, even when it was pouring. They danced and sang outside, occasionally asked for food, but for the most part were just happy to watch us (and talk to whoever came out to say hello to them)


About a month and a half ago the country director came to visit me at site in Vanduzi. He took me, and two other volunteers out for lunch to talk about teaching/site...etc. Here's a picture of us in front of another PCVs house in Messica.



And I will add another quick story. I wait to bolea (hitch hike) out of site from the same spot everytime I leave. There is this house right on the outskirts of town that has a big tree in front that offers great shade to wait in while I try to flag down cars, and the family that lives there is really friendly too, which is always a bonus. Well today when I got to my spot, the teenage girl who lives at the house waved me over and said she wanted me to come into her house to meet someone. I followed her inside her incredibly small one room hut (which had a straw mat on the floor and then stacks of corn filled the rest of the house) anyway she had just had a baby boy, he was just TWO DAYS OLD. She insisted I pick him up and meet him but he was sleeping so I told her next time I visit I will hold him but he was so tiny! She also asked me to give him a name, at this point I told her I don't know any Mozambican names and that she should name him but she said she wanted to give him an America name...so i gotta start thinking. She invited me back for dinner next week and I think she is hoping that I will have a great name by then-any ideas?

The end.