From December 1st

Happy December 1st to All!

Today marks exactly 6 months since I arrived in Mozambique.  The past month or two have been an even more pronounced roller coaster than usual with a trip down to Maputo (Supermarkets! Taxis! Hot showers! Cheese!), a downturn in activity in the workplace ("vacation is next month, so we really shouldn't start anything right now..."), excessive heat, fresh basil aplenty, and ongoing GI problems.  Some of these were awesome, some not.  I got into a funk about the less awesome ones, and my bad mood was not getting any better.  

Then, yesterday, I literally stepped in a river of shit. In the central mareket. With, like, 25 people watching.  Remarkably, it was not as humiliating as I would have though it would be.  Some nice young man, declaring himself my husband, led me to the nearest water pump, borrowed a bucket from some bewildered lady, and dumped water on my feet until they were marginally cleaner.  Observers encouraged me to use my hands to get them even cleaner, so I then had to explain that I was not going to touch my poopy feet with the hands I was about to go use to pick out my lunch's salad ingredients.  Once I got home, I washed feet and flip flops both with a a progression of bar soap, laundry detergent, then bleach.  My feet fared just fine, sadly I must bid adieu to the flip flops i bought while travelling through Chile in 2006.  The missing bits of sole were pardonable, the pervading smell of poop is not.

I was temporarily put out by my stinking feet, and was on the verge of sinking deeper into a funk, when I realized the young man who helped me wash my feel, the bewildered bucket lady, and the woman who brushed off my knee (just dirt, not feces) were all reasons to smile, not get funky.  The impromptu visit to the police station later that day to help sort out a messy situation for an out-of-town friend threatened my new-found good mood, until a my friend's landlord accused me of single-handedly dismantling and relocating a large, solid wood, double-doored gate.  Even the exasperated policemen rolled their eyes.  I raised my eyebrows, shook my head, then grinned.  

So, today I am off to Cuamba to join some fellow PCvs in celebrating a belated Thanksgiving.  It will also be a celebration of 6 months in-country (perhaps a 'Moz'eltov will be in order?), one of the volunteer's last day at site, and I will be adding to the list of things to celebrate: my self-declared End of Funk!

Happy December Celebrating!

End-of-the-Year photo splurge

The whole crew on our trip up to Meponda on Lake Niassa

Moz 18ers!

Birds nests

Activistas practicing a song for when the Vice-Minister of Health visited

Roofing the house that Irmaos Unidos is building for a family of orphans

Kids who will live in the house Irmaos Unidos is building

Overlooking the neighborhood where the orphan's house is. The mountains in the background are in Malawi.

Miga is growing up

A home visit with Laurinda (left) to a woman in the Pre/Post-Partum program

Election party

With Monkey

Home visits with the Nurse Supervisor, Mama Angela

Purchasing Roadside Bush Pig

My attempt at a permagarden, 1/3 beds complete! Chard, okra, lettuce.

Flying

Time in Mandimba seems to be flying already.  The activistas have continued on their mission to prove to me just how badass they are by taking me on 15km uphill bike rides without even breaking a sweat.  No, really.  The other week, Lourdes took me to a town called Lissiete (which is actually the official administrative post of the district, but for all intents and purposes, Mandimba is where business happens).  We biked 5km uphill on a paved road, and then turned off to the right to continue another 10km on a sandy, still uphill, path.  She had pity on me, and we walked our bikes up the worst of it.  We got back on our bikes when the slope was less steep and the sand gave way to red dust.  As I was still puffing away, she proceeded to tell me all about the history of the abandoned farm that we were biking past – how it was owned by a Portuguese couple before independence, how it gave jobs to a lot of people in town, how, in those times, there was much less fome (hunger).  

Lourdes is one of the oldest activistas, with a mild goiter, a serious need to see a dentist, and the faint tattoos common here on the women of three parallel lines between the eyebrows or right in front of the ears.  She likes to wear of pair of earrings from which dangle little white plastic high heel shoes, and she has the air of someone who is not opposed to beating people up, but I’ve never seen her get confrontational.  She is also the activista that has the most patients she visits on a regular basis, and her plot in the association’s garden is particularly vibrant.

After arriving in Lissiete, Lourdes introduced me in the administration building, the hospital (they have a doctor AND a PA!), to the neighborhood boss (the old one just died, so some kid took his place and seemed pretty clueless), to a previous patient of hers that she had discharged, and to two of current patients.  On our way back out of town, we caught up with one of the international NGOs that does a lot of community health work in Niassa province, stashed our bikes in the back of their truck, hopped in front, and caught a ride back to Mandimba.  Thank goodness, I was out of water.

I’m nearing the end of my home visit regimen – of the 26 neighborhoods and communities that these activistas work in, I’ve already visited 16.  I’ve been prohibited from visiting 6 of them because they are even further away, and I think my bosses are afraid of breaking their brand new Peace Corps Volunteer.  I would like to think that I can do it if the activistas can, but honestly I think the possibility of me keeling over, 20km away from Mandimba, under that hot Sub-Saharan Africa midday sun is pretty high.  Yet again, proof that the most of the activistas are way more hardcore than I am, despite being HIV+, having suffered and recovered from full-blown AIDS in the past few years, and experiencing serious side effects on a daily basis from their ARVS.  Again, they are beasts.

The remaining 4 communities and neighborhoods are on the schedule for the next week, but there is yet to be discussion of what will happen after I finish the list.  I tried to gently approach my supervisors about it, and they give happily vague answers. So, again, I am being patient and will just wait and see.  That is very normal around here, but it makes sense.  For example, the other day the electricity was out.  Electricity in Mandimba comes from the Malawi power grid, and I guess they occasionally go on a “power trip” (ha… excuse me.)  So, they cut of energy from 7am until 6pm.  If I had plans to do anything productive in the office, they would have been made moot by the lack of energy, because most office work happens on computers.  Instead, because there were no plans to mess up without energy, the whole plan for the day just shifted.  

The Activista's Horta

I started the day going to visit the orphanage that ESTAMOS is building, and then going to Irmãos Unidos to pick up a head of lettuce someone had brought me from the garden.  Then my supervisor suggested I go back home to put it in the fridge, even though the fridge wasn’t on, due to the lack of electricity.  After putting my lettuce into a warm fridge, I stopped by and chatted with a local shop owner for a while, and got some town gossip.  I went back to work to check in, and ended up talking with two of my supervisors for a very long time about Mozambican politics and economics.  They are very interested in outsider’s opinions on the foreign investment that is happening in Mozambique’s natural resources, and what it means for their population.  Then, I went back by the shop to chat and gossip some more.  Then I went home, and waited for the electricity to come back on to cook dinner.  See?  If I’d had plans, they would have been messed up because there was no electricity, then I (probably) would have been a typical Westerner and got bent out of shape because of messed up plans.  Instead, I had a lovely, laid back day full of unexpected conversations. 

I think Mandimba has power outages, on average, 1 to 2 times per week, but they usually don’t last all day.  Regardless of power outages, I do end up with lots and lots of free time.  I like this very much.  I have found good ways to fill up my free time.  I have started some little seedlings (mint, thyme, cilantro, peppers, basil, cherry tomatoes, and dill), I have an adorable puppy, I have been reading more books than I have had the time and motivation to do for many years (about one per week), and I sit in my plastic lawn chair in my kitchen and just think for long periods of time.  When I finish a good period of thinking/sitting in my solitary chair, I go outside, do some gratuitous plant watering, pick some fleas and ticks off my puppy, then perhaps I’ll go to the market and see if they have the good kind of bananas.  They rarely do.  However, green mango season is in full swing – I’m just not sure what to do with them yet.  I then may go by one of the shops in town – one has better gossip (and a generator, which is good for getting cold drinks on those electricity-free days), and the other one will usually give me free chocolates.  Jackpot.

Miga!

So, yes, time is flying in Mandimba.  I am pretty sure it is because I am having fun.  I think a lot of people might not find the above-mentioned series of events fun, but I am very lucky in that I do.  It is probable that my schedule will not be this loose for all of the next 22.5 months; I’ll probably have some times when I feel like time is crawling by, and when work gets busier.  Maybe I’ll get sick of extraneous shopping trips around town down the road, but I am really pleased that, for now, I’ve got things to do, places to be, and people to see – even if they aren’t that important in the big picture, they make life a lot better for now.

P.S.  Speaking of flying, I biked down my town’s airstrip the other day.  This is because it is just a spiffied up section of road to outlying communities.  However, the view from the airstrip of the surrounding landscape is exceptional.

Airport

Home-Based Care: Extreme Edition

The Bike Brigade

This morning I had planned to meet up with 3 activistas to shadow them on home-visits and get to know one of the communities outside of Mandimba.  Of course, no one showed up until a half hour after our planned meeting time at 7am, and then it was only one of them. It turned out that one had backed out of our trip to the campo in favor of attending the inauguration of the new district finance office, and the other had misunderstood our meeting place – not unusual when plans are getting made in 4 different languages.

The "before" picture - there is no after, but it would have been me looking seriously worse for the wear, and the other two looking exactly the same.

Our destination was a community about 7km outside of Mandimba.  Both of the activistas I went with, Laurinda and Fatima, have current and recovered patients living there, so the plan was to go introduce me to the chefe informal  (informal boss) of the community, and then check in on some patients.  Almost immediately I realized my bike had a couple flaws: the seat was far too short, and it wasn’t screwed on well, so it tipped backwards until I was leaning out over the back wheel.  After not having ridden a bike much more than a couple blocks in the past few years, I thought these might be problems I just needed to deal with.  However, after a couple kilometers and an already aching crotch, I had enough.  Laurinda was incredible and switched bikes with me until we got to a roadside handyman who was able to screw down the seat – unfortunately it was still tipped back a bit, but it was much better than before.

Road-side savior tightening up the bike seat.

After finally arriving at around 9am, already sore and with thigh muscles the resembling jello, we started to make the rounds.  The first stop at the casa de chefe informal was interesting.  As we sat down and shook hands, the smell of liquor wafted off of him.  It then became clear that not only were we there for the purpose of introducing me, but also because he and his wife were in and out of the home-based care program.  The reason that they hadn’t recovered as well as other patients?  For a reason that Laurinda did not know, they wouldn’t each get their own ARVs – so they shared with each other, and were periodically getting severe malaria and needing care. 

We next visited a woman who had just given birth at home, and had some sort of skin condition that was started on her scalp and reached her left eye, which was quite swollen.  Laurinda and Fatima decided that they would tell someone at the hospital the next day so that they could see her and the baby, but there was no decision on how transport would happen.  The rest of the visits were to women who were almost recovered or had already been officially discharged from the program.  They all told stories of having been so sick they couldn’t get out of bed, then having been tested for HIV and starting ARVs.  They are now are doing well, taking care of their children, and are even healthy enough to capinar (a vague verb relating to agricultural activities: weeding, hoeing, cutting down straw, etc.) 

Our last visit was to some woman who didn’t end up being home, but en route to her house, I “met” the malouca (crazy lady) who has been hanging out in that community recently.  I didn’t really meet her.  She chased after me, grabbed my backpack as I furiously peddled away, and didn’t let go until I stopped.  At that time, she demanded money, and when I refused, she took off her clothes and kicked over one of the activisita’s bikes.  She eventually wandered off, and when we passed her on the way out, some man was holding her back – she had apparently just tried to poop in the middle of the community’s mosque.  They were not happy.

Getting ready to head back to Mandimba. One of the recovered patients and her daughter insisted on walking my bike partway down the road for me.

We started our trek back just after 10am – and then I found out why they usually try to leave at 6am instead of 7am: the sun is brutal.  In preparation, I quickly drank some water and reapplied sunscreen, but it was to no avail.  When we arrived back in town after another 7 kilometers of brutal bumpy dirt roads with the added peril of sand and dust patches, I was sunburnt, terribly dehydrated, and could barely walk.   Fatima and Laurinda were completely unphased – they chatted with the folks at ESTAMOS, and then declared that they were off to go home and cook lunch and perhaps rest a little.  I, on the other hand, could think of nothing but drinking water, bathing my grimy, sweaty, self, and taking a nap.  The two people who serve as ESTAMOS groundskeepers, Malicio and Violeta, fed me delicious papaya while I recuperated, and offered me hot tea, which I declined.

To say the least, between 7am and noon today was the most mentally tasking 5 hours I’ve had in many years.  The few moments when I was able to take my mind off the pain I was in while bike riding, I would look up to see beautiful mountains in the distance, tropical fruit trees everywhere and picturesque mud houses with straw roofs strung along the road.  The recovered patients I met were an excellent way for me to understand what the smaller organization I work with – Irmãos Unidos – is all about.  Chatting with the activistas along the way gave me insight into their lives and work, and that excruciating bike ride itself that they make several times a week reminded me that I know nothing.  

So, like every day, there were ups and downs – today was just a little extreme.

Transition mode: PCT to PCV

Training ended a week and a half ago, but it already feels like it was months ago.  Training activities themselves started to wind down a good month ago, so the rest of the time in Namaacha, for me, was mostly centered around social time with other trainees, thinking about the end of training, and spending time with my host family.  By the end of those 10 weeks, most of Moz 18 was simply itching to get moving, and the only thing I felt sad to leave behind was my Mãe, dear Elisa Lucas.

Mama - grinding and sifting corn to make xima

The whole family! (Who lived at home)

At the waterfall, a few km outside of Namaacha

My capulana collection as of the end of training - it has already changed!

The morning of the swearing-in ceremony on Thursday, we were bused to a very fancy hotel in downtown Maputo.  I took a hot shower with running water.  I hadn’t done that since leaving Philadelphia at the end of May, and it felt incredible.  We got all fancied up in our matching oufits, and promptly got bused over to the swearing-in.  We were sworn in by the brand spanking new ambassador – he had just presented his credentials to the president of Mozambique that morning, so our ceremony was his first act as ambassador.  Although that was very exciting, we had heard that Hillary Clinton was in the area and had sworn in PCVs nearby, and were pretty bummed she didn’t decide to drop by. 

The Niassa Crew

Moz18 with the US ambassador, the PC country director, and the director of one of the ministries.

The next morning we were picked up at 5am and flew up to Nampula City, and put up in another unnecessarily fancy hotel with some of the most disjointed décor ideas I’ve seen in Mozambique.  We were each joined by at least one supervisor from our site.  I was joined by one of the guys who runs the ESTAMOS office in Mandimba, Silva, and the secretary from Irmãos Unidos, Afonso.  The next two days were rapid fire sessions about  the Peace Corps health program in Mozambique, site integration, supervisor and volunteer roles, and things to be done over the next three months.  We left the hotel early on Sunday morning to make the trip to Mandimba.  I was soon to find out that it is entirely dirt roads ranging from almost acceptable to conditions, to completely stomach-heaving.  Most of it was somewhere in the middle.  It is apparently possible to do the drive in 7 hours, but because of stops made for various reasons, I didn’t get there until 12 hours later.  I was exhausted, nauseous, grumpy, and entirely sick of traveling.

Bedroom

Kitchen/ living room/ work-out room/ guest room/ anything else room

The office

The Dollhouse

Our well

The next day, I was in a much better state to meet my new town.  It is a very dusty, kind of dirty, friendly, bustling border town.  It is also the halfway point between the “cities” of Cuamba and Lichinga, so all the transport going between the two stops here.  My little cement box of a house shares a quintal (fenced in yard area) with a friendly middle-aged couple and Miguel, who is in his late teens and very helpful.  My house has apparently been dubbed by other PCVs as "The Dollhouse" because it is so tiny.   I’m lucky in that my water source is a well about 30 feet away from my house, and Miguel often snags my water buckets and fills them up for me. 

The main market is right on my street, about an 8 minute walk away, and the offices for my organizations are about a 15 minute walk away.  The previous volunteer, Kyla, overlapped with me for the whole first week.  She was an excellent guide and showed me around town, introduced me to many people, showed me the best food vendors, and gave me some key life-in-Mandimba tips. 

My organizations - ESTAMOS and Irmãos Unidos - share activities and Community Health Workers, or activistas, to do home-based care for people in the community with chronic diseases.  So, a lot of effort is geared towards HIV/AIDS, but there is a good bit of work done with TB, diabetes, and maternal health.  I still haven't gotten a good understanding of the lay of the land and how everything works, and it will probably take me a few months to figure it out.  The first week of work was a re-training for all of the activistas on a range of topics related to home-based care.  I was in and out for most of the week, trying to participate and understand most of what was going on, but also needing a lot of time to do errands and rest.  This week is dedicated to home visits and getting to know the different neighborhoods and outlying communities.  

So things have been hectic but productive, and enjoyable but confusing.  There is much to learn!

PC Training, Part II

Cooking over carvao

 little sister - Caro

 Mama (on her way to sell at the market) and other sister, Mahone

 Finishing up our permagarden

 Final product

 Baby Moringa tree - look it up!  They are awesome.

Mama and me went to catholic church this morning!

All is still well, love to all.

PC Training, Part I

Classes out on the varanda with our Profesora, Amelia.

Our improvised gym - one volunteer used to teach circuit aerobics and is passing along his skills. Its awesome.  I've been running a lot of mornings with a few other volunteers and my host brother at - gasp - 5:30am.

Namaacha is wonderful!  Family is incredibly educational, and soooooooo patient.  My host mae sells food down at the Swazi border, so lunches and dinners usually come out of that.  I've eaten a lot of delicious peanut-coconut-y sauces, chicken, salads, potatoes, rice.  She cooks over coal, so I'm learning how to do that.  Showers are bucket baths every morning, and it is "winter" here, so the process can be very chilly.

We've been starting class at 7:30am 6 mornings a week, and usually go until about 4.  We usually head out to a bar for a beer for a dinner to do some decompressing, then dinner happens about 8, and I'm in bed and asleep by 9.

More to come!

2011 Part 2

The rest of 2011 and beginning of 2012 have been both exciting and unexpected.  John and I traveled through Thailand and Laos, and it was incredible to see bits and pieces of a region that was completely unfamiliar to me.  The people were absolutely amazing, the countries were gorgeous, and the vacation was entirely too short. At some point towards the end of the vacation, I suddenly decided that instead of returning to the states for the rest of 2011, I would return to Beijing to teach one more semester at the Korean International School.

After the vacation, I went almost straight to Vancouver Island (via Beijing) for Anna's Wedding Part I.  Seeing family was a treat, my grandparents' place is astoundingly beautiful, and the day of wood splitting and stacking  (followed by a few days of painful back) was just right for staying humble.

I got to spend a few days in Chapel Hill to regroup - my wardrobe and my wits - before heading back to Beijing to teach my second semester at KISB. The second semester there was easier in the sense that I already knew the system, but I became increasingly frustrated with the way the school was administered, and ended up feeling completely exasperated by the time the semester ended.  Thankfully, Anna had Wedding Part II in October, so I had a very good reason to return to the US for a few days.

I moved back to Chapel Hill at the very end of December, promptly had a beautiful getaway to Puerto Vallarta for a few weeks, spent some time with the Yentes-Quinns when they came down, road-tripped up to MA with Anna and Ada, and have started a Portuguese class.

Why Portuguese?  Why, I'm going to Mozambique, of course!  My Peace Corps assignment finally came through (for Honduras), was promptly was cancelled (safety), and then I was reassigned to Mozambique!  I will be leaving at the end of May, so I have a few months to cool my heels, get loose ends tied up, and embark on a few more adventures.  

Thailand 

Momma and baby in the elephant nursery 

 Laos

Stop Arguing Buddha 

 Back to Thailand

Thanksgiving

Toaster Oven Pumpkin Pie

The Kitchen

The Living Room

China

Lucky Bell

Silver Pagodas