Team JOMA

Enjoying a pinapple popsicle

The JOMA crew hanging out after the meeting

Our friend Ethan attacking a gazelle leg

As if we weren't busy enough with our primary assignment as full-time teachers here in Mozambique, we also have all of our secondary projects, like our youth groups, filling up our lives with meetings, at times stress, but also laughter and fun. We are now on the national JOMA team. JOMA, Jovens para Mudanca e Accao (Youth for Change and Action), is a type of club for young men and women who want to use communication skills, like community theater, art, or music, to share messages on HIV/AIDS and gender issues. We have already written a lot about our own highs and lows with our JOMA theater group, but now we're helping to plan the project on a national level. This weekend we had a big meeting at Gorongosa, down in Central Mozambique. This did involve multiple 3am alarm clock mornings for the ever annoying 4am bus between Tete and Chimoio and the need to sleep in various random locations, including with a friendly Zimbabwean family in Tete City our friends recommended. In Gorongoza we got to see Volunteers from across the country, including some we hadn't seen since swearing in over a year ago! We spent most of Saturday and Sunday planning out our 2011 strategy for training counterparts, organizing student workshops, getting our youths to put together community projects, and designing our JOMA T-shirts. All the logistics for these activities are exponentially more difficult in a country with transportation and communications ranging from unreliable to non-existant, but that's part of the Peace Corps challenge. Plus, we still had plenty of time in the evenings for relaxing, barbequing a gazel, and having a good time with our friends. Janet actually had a little too much "fun" the last night and spent the next morning sleeping it off on our various motley modes of Moz transport back towards site.