So Busy

We’ve felt pretty busy in Peace Corps so far during our twenty months here in Mozambique, but this June our service has gone into overdrive. With a REDES conference, a JOMA conference, a journalism workshop, and Mozambican Independence Day, every weekend was booked solid for the entire month. Plus we have Science Fair and family visits first thing in July to prepare for. With the days growing shorter as we approach the southern hemisphere’s winter solstice, our daylight hours are that much more jam-packed. This trimester we’ve had all our clubs related to our secondary projects running, so we’ve been meeting every day of the week except Fridays, with English Club on Mondays, our JOMA group on Tuesdays, our REDES group on Wednesdays, and Science Fair Club on Thursdays. Like always, there is plenty of non-school drama demanding whatever little emotional energy we have leftover after fulfilling our on campus duties. Liston, one of our favorite students and the leader of our youth group, was drafted by the Mozambican Armed Forces, so we might be losing him this month. It’s unclear how he would finish 10th grade, or what would happen to our club without his enthusiasm. Romão is having some sort of back issues from a bike accident he had recently, possibly aggravated from sleeping on the floor or by his exuberant live-for-the-day lifestyle. He bought some “medicine” from a friend’s uncle, which he is mixing with hot chili peppers and rubbing on his body after scratching his skin with razor blades. He says it hasn’t helped to much yet. Our student Zach returned from Tete City after another unsuccessful bid to find employment. He described his experience in a somewhat depressing text message: “I am Zach. What I was to do I did, but fruitless, because I am not well known by people in companies. My credentials are like muck in the eyes of every boss. Now I am less important than a dried blade of grass.” So we are back to our English vocabulary routines with him as we strategize about his life. He found an old edition of Cosmo magazine that a previous volunteer had left in our house where he encountered lots of new and interesting words. Another recent stress was that Luc’s email account got hacked, sending out spam to every contact he’s ever had (sorry everyone). This was probably a result of checking email on some sketchy spy-ware ridden internet café computer, which is basically all computers in this part of Africa. Since his email is linked to the blog, a similar post appeared here too. After all these activities and concerns, mostly we’ve been finishing our days short on energy and ready to curl up in front of the laptop and watch some TV. One night however, the power went out, so we took a little time out and realized how bright the full moon really is; the soft light illuminating everything in a silver hue and contrasting dramatically with the dark nighttime shadows. Later that night it was pitch black as we discovered on a latrine break, which baffled us since there hasn’t been a cloud for the past couple weeks. It turned out to be a total lunar eclipse, whose effects were all the more dramatic in the absence of electric lights.