Malawi Wowie

Unlike most volunteers in country, we’re allowed to cross into Malawi because of our proximity to the border and our isolation from the rest of Mozambique. So far we only ventured just across the border to shop and visit our PCV buddy, but this time we wanted to go to Lilongwe to preview the small capital city, which is the closest international airport for our upcoming visitors, Janet’s mom and step-dad. Transportation luck favored us again, just are clearing the immigration control a car stopped and offered to give us a ride. It happened to be the friends of our fellow Tete volunteers: a mother/daughter duo from Angola/Portugal on their way to Lilongwe for a day of shopping. They volunteered to show us all of their favourite stores. The capital city is very spread out, so it was lucky we were in a car. We visited various grocery stores catering to the ex-patriot crowd, one of which felt like a mini Whole Foods with beautiful displays, whole grain bread, bacon, feta cheese and other foreign products. Malawi has a substantial international aid community with people mostly from Great Britain, the US and other European countries who live in relative opulence. This became clear when we visited a small boutique center set in a professionally manicured garden, complete with water features and exotic fish and plants. The high-end boutiques featured couture clothes, jewellery and furniture made from precious ebony and hardwoods. We also met some Peace Corps Malawi volunteers, another married couple, who were closing their service the next day. They were celebrating with an ice cream Snickers bar dessert which we shared. They also gave us tips on PC discounts and general Malawi tourism. Although Lilongwe is mellow and great for shopping, it doesn’t have much to offer in terms of scenic or historic landmarks. But the people are friendly and we enjoyed our time there.

Hitching with the Priest

We often hear stories from our Peace Corps buddies about how they get free rides whenever they travel from foreigners zooming around in fancy cars. Said foreigners are scarce in our part of the country. Most of the hitchhiking we do is in big semi trucks slowly ferrying good on our road to and from Blantyre in Malawi, and we usually have to pay for the rides. This weekend was different. While waiting at a junction to travel to our PCV Tete buddies we spotted a pick-up with the insignia of a Catholic mission near our friends’ site. The friendly priest gave us a ride on top of a large pile of agricultural goods with great views of the countryside passing by, and invited us to lunch. Priests here always have elaborate meals of delicious foods, including meat, so it was a real treat. The mission happens to be a site where Peace Corps is hoping to place a teacher next year, so we enjoyed previewing it. The mission dates from the Portuguese era so the architecture is reminiscent of our home in Spain. The mission residents are an eclectic mix from Spain, Portugal, Brazil and some local as well. Like many missions here, it has a large boarding school and agricultural projects. Afterwards they drove us in to town and dropped us near our friends’ house

Staff Visit

When you’re a Peace Corps volunteer you periodically get staff visitors from the country office. This usually entails cleaning your home to make it presentable and getting invited out to dinner. In our case our house is usually decent and our site has no real restaurants, so we did neither. Instead we prepared a home-cooked meal. It had been four days without a power cut, so we weren’t surprised when it failed right as we were toasting our garlic breads and bringing a pot of water to boil for our spaghetti – we just quickly transferred everything to our barbeque and finished cooking outside. We ate a lovely dinner by candlelight, which our guests complimented as very healthy, since it featured a tomato-based sauce and salad instead of the usual variety of fried items and oily sauces typical in this country’s cuisine. We originally expected both our project director, Custodio Langa, in charge of education volunteers, and the County Director, Ruben Hernandez, in charge of all Peace Corps Mozambique, and their driver Miambo, but the big boss cancelled after the national airlines rescheduled his flight at the last minute (something that happens frequently here). We got good news though… Custodio told us he plans to expand the Peace Corps’ presence in Tete next year, meaning more neighbors, and he brought us chocolate and cheese, which was also very exciting. The rest of our visit consisted of a delicious cinnamon roll breakfast, a treat our guests had never had before but loved and devoured, and a tour of our school, where we had our youth group perform our premature marriage play to our visitors, the entire student body, and our school teachers and administrators during an extended 25-minute passing period, so as not to interfere too much with classes.

Inflation Nation

Our local currency, the Mozambican Metical (Mt), has taken a serious slide since our arrival. When we got in country we could buy a dollar for just under 30 Mts, but our money’s value has fallen, pushing the dollar all the way into the mid-30’s. The last time we asked the money changers that hang around the border control they wanted 37 Meticais to the dollar. This would be great news if we had dollars, like everyone assumes we do, but we receive our stipend in the depreciating local currency, just like Mozambican teachers. It’s unclear how much of this change is due to Obama’s stronger dollar and how much to Mozambique’s own financial shortcomings, but the net result for us has been continuously rising prices in site. Sugar for example just jumped from 25 Mts a kilo to 30Mts, it’s hard to find eggs for 5 Mts anyone, everyone wants 6, and our bread keeps getting smaller, reflecting the climbing price of wheat flour. Even Malawi’s currency has appreciated. We could buy 1000 Kwachas for 175 Mts and now we need to spend 200 to get the same amount, so all our cheap deals across the border, like peanut butter and toilet paper, are that much more expensive. Luckily we don’t really have to worry since we’ll always have food to eat, but our neighbors feel the pinch and national estimates show already high levels of hunger and malnutrition on the rise.

Delicious Cheese

Anyone who has lived abroad for an extended period of time knows that food cravings are an ever-present reminder of how far away from home you are and how different your host culture is. Although we’re fairly creative with local ingredients and we benefit from the Portuguese cultural legacy, enjoying things such as lettuce, olive oil, tuna, spaghetti and fresh bread, there are some things we just can’t get or make – most notably chocolate, liquid milk, and Janet’s favourite food… cheese. She was therefore particularly sad when a package from home containing parmesan failed to make it to us due to post office drama (see Christmas in May post). Our missionary visitors had heard the story and searched the city finding a kilo block of mozzarella to surprise us with. This has expanded our culinary horizons dramatically over the past 2 weeks. We have made pizza, lasagne (with homemade noodles), cheese bread, and cheese veggie burgers. Sadly we only have a small piece left, but we’re contemplating making a quiche tonight). You can probably guess what Janet will be searching for on her next trip to the city!

Double the Elders, Double the Fun

We now have 4 missionaries here in Tete instead of 2, and they all
came up to visit us this week. We have one extra bed, which they
lotteried. The rest slept slumber party-style on whatever pillows and
blankets we could find. We put together a big spaghetti dinner,
anticipating big appetites, and the missionaries didn't disappoint,
polishing off 2 half-kilo packs of pasta, an amount that would get the
two of us through 8 meals. Chocolate chip cookies for dessert were a
rare treat. The semi-sweet morsels we got in a package had melted into
one large mega-chip, which we had to re-chip with a knife. We laughed
into the night, especially playing our Battle of the Sexes trivia
game. Our guests claimed that learning about accessorizing,
exfoliating, and differentiating Louis Vuitton from Hermes Paris will
make them better husbands in the future. The next morning after some
delicious cinnamon rolls we hiked to the top of our mountain. We took
pictures in silly poses on the cement monument that demarcates the
border between Malawi and Mozambique, while eating snacks and enjoying
the beautiful panoramic views of both countries. Tropical vegetation
hampered our progress at times but luckily the missionaries came
prepared with a machete and we had our neighbor Romao to keep us from
losing the path like last time. We made it back just in time for Luc
to teach his afternoon English classes while the rest of us ate lunch
under the shade of our mango tree. Janet was particularly happy with
the lunch because it included mozzarella cheese from the large block
the missionaries brought us, something we haven't had at site before.
Tomorrow we're making pizza!

Task Master

Here in rural Africa, if your school needs any maintenance or new
construction you have to do it yourself. That means that our physics
teacher has been rewiring our fluorescent bulbs and our history
teacher, who is also a preacher, convinced his congregation to
rehabilitate the student latrines and build new ones for the teachers.
Since Luc is the director of one of the eighth grade terms, he
organized a student work day on Saturday to transport a mountain of
over 1000 bricks that our school bought from our landlord across the
neighborhood to the latrine construction site on campus. Since African
teachers can be fairly persuasive, we had close to 200 students show
up to work. Luc stood in the shade of a tree to document which
students actually delivered the required 6 bricks and which tried to
shirk their responsibility. Some kids carried all 6 of the large
bricks stacked on their heads in a single trip. Others tied the bricks
to bicycles or just carried them two at a time. A few crafty students
tried the trick Luc by rubbing brick dust on their hands and head,
claiming they were done with their part, but Luc cracked down, like a
good overseer. Students expect to perform physical labor on a regular
basis, so with surprisingly few complaints about having to sweat in
the morning sun, we finished the job within an hour and a half.

Seasons in Mozambique

In tropical countries you don't really get spring, summer, fall or
winter. It's always warm and the main differences are in the amount of
rainfall. It's cooled off a bit so we are finally using our blanket at
night, but during the day it's still sunny and warm with really blue
skies and cool breezes - the kind of weather that makes you happy to
be alive. Our main indicators of seasonality are the availability and
prices of fruits and vegetables in our market. Right now we're awash
in sugar cane so handshakes are extra sticky. We had to crack down on
students trying to sneak sugar cane into class but luckily the large
grass stalks are hard to conceal. Tangerines seem to be tailing off...
Since we each eat about 5 a day it's sad to see them go. Onions and
tomatoes were scarce and pricey for awhile, but they're back and
lettuce season is peaking, so we're enjoying European-style salads (as
opposed to more African ones with cabbage and cucumber). Bananas are
always avialable and it seems like papaya is starting to ripen. People
keep warning us that winter is coming and we're going to be cold, but
we don't believe them - just like they don't believe us when we tell
them that in the US ice forms naturally outdoors!

Christmas in May

Mail in Africa is different than in America. There are no postmen and
there are no deliveries - you have to go to the nearest post office
and pick it up yourself. In our case that post office is over 100km
away and that's not even the most inconvenient part. Since we share
our box with the rest of Peace Corps Tete, another volunteer picked up
the package slips, but then she got sent to Maputo, so she gave them
to another volunteer to give them to us in Nampula, but she forgot
them at her site in Manica until just now at the youth conferences. I
(Janet) don't have class on Mondays yet since computers haven't
started, so I volunteered to go into the city and attempt to retrieve
our packages. The process involved taking the slips to get a stamp at
the customs office on the opposite side of the Zambeze River as the
post office. When I got there I was told the person with the stamp was
working at the airport that day. Luckily they offered to drive me
there. We spotted the customs guy at the jet fuel depot entering the
airport. I then switched into the stamp guy's truck and he drove me
across the river on the semi-closed rickety bridge to the post
office. I was thinking this was all working out grandly, when I
learned that two of our four boxes had disappeared. Apparently they
sent them back to America since they had been there so long. Still, we
did receive two boxes of Christmas presents from my family, so we
celebrated Christmas in May while opening 'How the Grinch Stole
Christmas', Elvis carols and fudge ingredients. Our neighbor's
favorite was the snowman ornament, which he thought was some sort of
bling bling to be worn around the neal. Fortunately our mailbox in
Tete expired so now we'll use our Peace Corps neighbor's post office
in Malawi. Hopefully it'll be less dramatic!

Black Smoke

Friday afternoon, Luc was finishing up the week of teaching and I was at the tailor shop with my friend, Pasqua, dropping off a piece of fabric to make a skirt, when Pasqua noticed a huge column of black smoke rising from the other side of town. With fumes that dark, we knew it had to be a car or truck burning its gas tank, sadly a common occurence (we often seen charred carcasses of semis along the highway). Our curiosity got the better of us so we walked briskly across town to see what was going on. We joined a huge crowd of people watching a massive fire burn the remains of a truck in the middle of the highway directly in front of the border control building, basically the busiest intersection in town. Every few minutes something exploded in the flames, making a boom. When Luc finished with class he went for a run down to the site to check things out. The fire was almost out, and brave/stupid people were grabbing crates of beer, bicycles and other household goods from the still-burning remains of a general store delivery, while cans of paint were still blowing up. The word is that the driver got out safely and traffic was already circumventing the wreck, so no major harm done luckily and lots of entertainment for the locals.

Back to School

Usually we get two weeks off between the trimesters, but since Mozambique is trying to increase school hours, this year we only got a one-week break. However, since information dispersal here is as ineffective as in the kids’ game ‘telephone,’ lots of people did not know we had school this Monday, plus it was raining, which always depresses attendance. I showed up to teach my first period class on Monday and found just 6 students, I combined terms A, B and C to make a class of about 20 and gave the lesson realizing how much easier it is to teach a group of this size than the normal 50. Since most teachers actually showed up on Monday (which wasn’t the case in many communities around the country), word got out and attendance was back to normal by mid-week. Unfortunately during our week away, Romão may have unwittingly introduced some flea-like parasite into our domestic environment while he was watching our house for us, and Janet has been waking up with miniature red bites all over. Our mattress and linens are currently out in the sun, hopefully baking out the bed bugs!

Earth Day

Here in Mozambique we don’t have Earth Day. Most people are too busy trying to survive to focus on the larger issues facing our planet. Since I had just finished my obligations with JOMA, I wanted to do something to celebrate April 22. A couple of my PC buddies and I decided to climb the large rock outcropping on the outskirts of Chimoio called ‘Cabeça do Velho,’ because the profile resembles a human face. We made our way up the steep rock slope to the top of the nose where we found Janet with about 50 female volunteers, teacher and students from the REDES conference. They had climbed the promontory as a self-esteem boosting empowerment exercise for the girls whole conference theme was ‘Anything is Possible.’ After taking some pictures and lots of yelling and dancing, the girls headed back to camp and we had the top of the hill to ourselves. We just relaxed in the cool breeze, enjoying the panoramic views of the city on one side, with evening fires beginning to send up small columns of smoke, and open fields, trees, and greenery on the other. Just as the sun began to set, a large troop of baboons emerged, the youngest enthusiastically scampering up and down the rock faces chasing each other and playing other monkey games. None of us had a camera, so we just enjoyed the scene and reflected on how lucky we are to live on this marvelous Earth and to serve as volunteers here in Mozambique.

REDES Conference (Janet)

Raparigas em Desenvolvimento, Educação et Saude (Young Women in Development, Education and Health) is also a national young group project started here in Mozambique by Peace Corps Volunteers. I took 2 8th grade girls to this year’s conference, to join representatives form REDES groups all over the north and center of the country. The content of the sessions was similar, although more focused on women’s empowerment, with professional female guest speakers, women’s health and pregnancy sessions and self-defense. The conference was all-female, creating a rare environment for young women here and opening up our girls to be more confident and ask more personal questions. It was a lot of work for all involved and left me pretty sleep deprived by the end, but I got to see my girls blossom and that made it worth it. The highlight of the conference was an outing up the ‘Cabeça do Velho’ mountain outside Chimoio. Most of the 60-some girls had never climbed a mountain so it was very thrilling for them to reach the top and look out in all directions.

JOMA Conference (Luc)

Jovens para Mudanca e Acção (Youth for Change and Action) is a coed group, so our conference had boys and girls ranging from age 13 to 20. We brought 2 boys and 1 girl as well as a counterpart teacher from our school. Our conference center was really nice, on the outskirts of Chimoio, with lots of grass and a large meeting room which unfortunately had poor acoustics. Our daytime sessions focused on self-esteem, leadership, gender, puberty, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, violence, and our youth’s role in bringing about community change. The chance to speak into a microphone made our already eager students even more keen to participate and hear their voices amplified electronically. At night we played camp-type games like three-legged races, chubby bunny, and an egg drop. Unfortunately we learned Mozambicans are way too competitive to play musical chairs, and smooth concrete floors can get really slick when wet (we had some pretty nasty wipe-outs during our relays after our water balloon toss, and had to send one teacher to get his chin stitched up in the hospital). Since it was a coed group, we had to make sure the boys and girls didn’t get too friendly after hours, but they were pretty good for a large group of teenagers. I had a small group of five boys to lead during the conference, and learned a lot about being a Mozambican young man. Even though these kids are the best students at their high schools, they feel very uncertain about their futures, given the general lack of jobs or college opportunities in this country; sadly they doubt their prospects for building their own homes and creating healthy families. The conference ended with a diploma ceremony (delayed almost 2 hours while we waited for the representative from the Ministry of Education), several choreographed group lip-syncs to Michael Jackson, and a dance party, followed by a 3am wake-up call to make sure our group was on the 4am bus back to Tete. I stayed behind to clean-up and help with the REDES conference, which was a couple day longer, although I had to do so very discretely so as not to upset the all-female atmosphere.

No rest for the weary

So we made it through the first trimester and now get to enjoy a week off of school. However, since we’re Peace Corps Volunteers we never really have vacation – there’s always something for us to do to help our community. In this case it’s taking some of our students and a local teacher to the national Peace Corps youth conferences in the regional center, Chimoio, about 10 hours from our site. Although it’s a lot of travel, and putting on a large youth conference isn’t exactly rest and relaxation for us, it’s nice seeing our friends, which is a rare treat given our site’s isolated location; having catered meals and eating meat and drinking soda; and enjoying a break from the routines of life in site and at school. It was difficult selecting just five participants, since all of our kids wanted to attend, but monetary and logistical constraints meant it was impossible to take everyone. The students we did take really enjoyed the experience; for most of them a week-long event like this is a once in a lifetime treat.