Site Delivery

Our site is far away from the rest of Peace Corps, so we were delivered by one of the Peace Corps vehicles. On the day of site delivery, we got up early and ate a big breakfast at our luxury hotel´s sumptuous buffet. We had a long day in front of us and probably wouldn´t eat again until supper, so we stocked up on bread, peanuts and bananas for the car, our favorite travel snacks in Africa. Our Peace Corps Project Director, our school Director, and the Peace Corps driver all accompanied us in the Peace Corps Land Cruiser, full of all of our Peace Corps stuff, mostly books. We were very glad we didn´t have to haul all this stuff on buses! We left around 8:30am and basically spent the whole day in the car, with some delays due to bridge repairs. The landscapes from the windows were varied and striking, beginning with the green hills of Chimoio, with huge rock mountains (iselbergs, if you´re interested in the technical term), and continuing to the flat, dry plains of Tete province, spotted with massive baobab trees (this is probably the type of African semi-wooded savanah landscape you would imagine from National Geographic). We had to wait a long time in Tete city because the suspension bridge across the Zambeze is only open in one direction at a time. We got very lucky because they closed traffic in our direction three cars after we passed. Once we crossed the bridge it was less than two hours to site. The last stretch started in the hot, coal-mining region of Moatize, and got more and more green and fresh as we climbed in elevation to our site, near the Malawi border. Our Land Cruiser tried to drive us all the way to our house on a narrow footpath, but after smashing several corn plants in our neighbor´s yard, we realized it was not feasible. Luckily there was a large contingent of youth waiting to carry our stuff the final distance to our home. We said our goodbyes to our Peace Corps staff and there we were, in our site finally! Fortunately the school has arranged a nice lunch/dinner for us at a local restaurant overlooking the valley and mountains. The views are astonishingly beautiful and we felt very fortunate to have two years in this beautiful place.