Close of Service Conference

Now this is not the end, but it is perhaps the beginning of the end. It was 22 months ago that 69 of us flew from USA to Africa to serve as teachers and health workers here in Mozambique and now with just over 4 months left of service, Peace Corps brought the remaining 59 of us down to the capital to start the close of service chapter of our sojourn. Its an emotional time for volunteers. Arriving in the lobby of our fancy hotel we bumped into colleagues, some we had not seen since our swearing in ceremony in December 2009. The hotel is shwanky, especially when something as simple as running water is such a luxury to us now, so a bathtub with hot water in our room is almost overwhelming and oh so enjoyable. Unfortunately the pool is being rennovated, but the meal service has kept everyone happy and full including Luc, who has a weak spot when it comes to buffets, especially ones with four kinds of dessert. We also have our own TV with ESPN and got to watch the Giants edge the Philies in the first baseball transmission we've seen on this continent. We saw the bill when we swigned for the room, each day here is the cash equivalent of an entire month in site! But we're not dwelling on that desparity, this is a celebration of making it through this at times very trying, but always amazing Peace Corps ordeal together. As far as the content of the conference is concerned there is plenty of bland paperwork and formalities to occupy our three days, like specifying how we would like to receive our readjustment allowance, learning what our medical care will look like post service, and filling surveys quantifying our experiences. There's also a psycological and emotional component. Peace Corps staff wants to prepare us as best possible for the stresses of saying good-bye to our communities that have been our homes for the past two years and how not to freak out if our friends start asking us for our bed or our shoes or anything else that might be hoping we'll leave behind. Plus there will be the reverse culture shock when we reenter America. Apparently some of us will suffer from "Supermarket Syndrome," which basically means having an anxiety attack when we come face to face with US consumer culture after our spartan existence in rural Africa. Janet is anticipating Luc will be susceptible to this condition. We'll also have a two year gap in technology and pop-culture to deal with open arrival. Most of us don't know exactly what we'll do once our Peace Corps lives are behind us and the state of the world economy is disheartening, but those of us who have made it this far are a resiliant bunch, so I think we'll be ohkay. So after the emotional reunion came the even more emiotional good-byes as we return to our scattered locations across this vast country to complete our service. Because of our flight schedule we had an extra day in the city, so we spent it soaking in everything this cosmopolitan African capital has to offer, snacking on gelatto and pastries at sidewalk cafes, strolling the wide Acacia lined avenues, and visiting the lively taxidermies in the Natural History Museum, which has the worlds most comprehensive collection of elephant fetuses representing the full 22 month gestation of the gargantuan animal. But we're not done yet. We are just on inter-trimester break, and still have all of third trimester and organizing our provincial English Theater competition left to do, so there is no rest for the weary here in Peace Corps service! We can catch up on sleep in December when we get back to America.

Bye Bye Visitors, Don't mind the Fuel Shortage

So we sent off all our American visitors. We were a little worried for a while because they were using nearby Lilongwe airport in Malawi, and that country has been experiencing some extreme fuel shortages. Cars and buses have been queuing up around the block in what we imagine to be reminiscent of USA during the 70s immediately following the OPEC oil shock. Lots of public transit has been canceled and prices are surging. Here in Mozambique we still have plenty of fuel, but in Malawi people are resorting to exorbitant prices on the black market. Luckily we sent our loved ones with our driver Alfonso who stocked his vehicle with a couple spare drums of diesel before crossing the border. Jet fuel has not been affected by the shortages, so planes are still flying. The situation in Malawi has gotten to the point that people are taking to the streets, protesting and rioting. It's hard to get good info, but apparently about 18 people have died in the ruckus. Don't worry if you've read any scary headlines in the Africa section, we are not in danger. Even though we're right on the border we're far from all the violence which is confined mainly to the big cities. Still we are hoping for a more peaceful resolution to this situation for our African neighbors.

Another Romão Story

Another story from Romão illustrating what life is like when you're a care-free teenager here in Africa:

-"Luc, this head hurts"
-"Okay Romão, tell us what happened."

So he proceeds to tell us:

-"Its ecause of beans."
-"What?"
-"I was up there in my classroom, and I really had to go, but we have no latrines up there, so I ran behind the Vodacom tower to take care of my needs. I wasn't really controlling what I was doing until I realized I was running through crazy beans [a local plant here which produces pods covered in irritating hairs similar to stinging nettles]. Now my entire body itches. I was scratching so much they almost kicked me out of class during finals. So, that's why my head hurts."

Student Safari

In contrast to our all expenses paid five star safari, we later had the chance to accompany our Peace Corps neighbor Jordan's wildlife club on a more local type safari. No Land Rovers were involved, we just cruised around with about twenty students and a counterpart teacher in two mini-buses; any motivated elephant could have easily punctured our tin-can-like walls with their ivory tusks. Luckily safari animals categorize vehicles as large rocks, that move, so they had no need to attack us. We stayed in bunk beds at the park youth hostel with no electricity and cooked all our own food, which meant plenty of nsima (bland corn mush) and goat. Although some parks do a good job here in Africa, some leave a lot to be desired to sensitive enviromentalist concienceses, like food waste disposal (just feed it to the monkeys) or fire wood collection (gather whatever you want, we're in a forest) and litter was everywhere despite the signs. Even though our students have lived their entire lives in Africa, most of them have never seen any wild animals, except for the occassional monkey. Contrary to popular belief, zebras and lions don't just stroll around town here, and are pretty hard to see outside of the big safari parks. Everyone really wanted to see elephants, and we saw plenty. We saw two herds converge, flaring their ears and trumpeting at each other no more than ten feet from our windows. During the wrap up session in the campfire circle everyone effused about how they would remember this day for the rest of their lives and that makes us feel really good as Peace Corps volunteers. At ten PM as Luc tried to get his boys to put out their candles and go to sleep, but they just kept recounting all the animals they had seen and repeating their favorite facts our park scout had taught them (they seemed particularly interested in the exact number of female partners a male impala could have).

Safari!

We couldn't have family come all the way to Africa and not go on safari. Plus after a long second trimester jam packed with extra curricular activities, administering finals, grading, and hosting family and friends from the USA here in site, we felt like we deserved a little vacation. Traveling in Africa is not really relaxing, but we did not rough it on this trip; we had a safari company do all the work and we just enjoyed the ride. We cruised to the relatively nearby South Luangwa National Park in Zambia in a fancy private vehicle. It was still about 10 hours away, but that's not bad for this big continent, public transport would have been at least twice as long and even more bumpy; the dirt road still managed to break one of our shock absorbers. We stayed in a lodge right on the river, with views of crocs and hippos from the swimming pool and periodic elephant visitors. Food was gourmet, and meals happened five times a day (calories don't really count in Africa since we usually just eat leaves during the rest of the year) breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner. The Land Rover we took our game drives in definitely had us all humming the theme song to Indiana Jones (it felt just like the ride in Disney Land), and James, our burly Zambian guide, loved offroading, and testing the vehicle's limits speeding over gullies and dry river beds with no fear of catching some air. We saw plenty of animals, including elephants, buffalo, lots of impala and puku, plenty of giraffe and zebra, birds galore, a heyena, and even a pride of lions on the very last night. The highlight was when a leopardess tried to eat Janet and her buddy Rebecca. Apparently she had been trying to mate and our safariing was cramping her privacy. Janet's dad's accidental flash possibly set the big cat over the edge and she let us know with a mighty growl and false charge. Luc still maintains we were totally safe in the safari truck, but James did mention that this was only the second time in 14 years that he's had this happen.

Everything is New

Having Janet's family and best friend here in site is like experiencing everything anew. Unfortunately it also means going through culture shock all over again. Rolling around town in a 7 person azungu posse generates so much more attention than what we are used too. After a year and a half here we've become so integrated into our community that people normally treat us like any other teacher. The constant stares, spontaneous applause, and the overall superstar effect has slowly diminished during our stay, so its effect had dimmed in our memory, but this week we got it fullforce! Everyday is a party in our front yard when visitors are staying with us. Neighborhood kids materialize as soon as we emerge to dance, sing, play games, or just patiently observe what we are doing. A camera makes it an especially exciting party and kicks up the enrgy level a couple notches whenever it appears. Even when we stay inside, little faces appear in the door or any open window. Our family also reminds us about all the annoying noises we tend to subconciously tune out, like the continuous loud music, crying babies, and ubiquitous roosters that start cacadoodledooing well before sunrise. We hadn't even noticed all the trash littering our yard until our guests starting picking it up. But its great, ever tree and bird is beautiful again when you are seeing it with people new to this part of the world and the sunset light is so fresh! Young people have been especially interested in Janet's 9th grade brother and sister, they don't often get to see real teenaged foriegners. Sammy built a wire bicycle with our neighbor Seni, Annie got a couple of marriage proposals, and despite minimal communal language to facilitate communication, everyone got along fine, reinforcing the notion that kids are just kids everywhere, even in faraway Mozambique. Everyone's effusive greatings reminds us how lucky we are to be amongst such friendly people. And the power didn't go out a single evening during there stay! Despite all the craziness, it is so amazing to share our little town with family, we are so gratefull they could make it half way around the world to experience it with us!

5th of July

With an infinite reserve of unpredictable variables to complicate our plans, Africa routinely thwarts even our most calculated efforts to pull off a smooth event. Ironically with our latest effort to stage a complex operation, picking up Janet’s family at the relatively nearby international airport in Lilongwe (~250kms from our house, but a lot closer than Maputo, 1500kms away), it wasn’t any of the typical African things. The driver we hired was on time (we got started at 4am, you've always got to start early in Africa!), his vehicle didn’t have any major mechanical trouble, crossing the border was smooth, we were prepared for the fuel crisis in Malawi picking up some reserve drums of petrol while still in Mozambique, no trouble with the police or road blocks, the Malawi SIM card we got from our PC neighbor across the border gave us good cell coverage, no natural disasters. What threw a monkey wrench into "plan recieve family" was our visitors’ flight from London to Johanesberg, which arrived two hours late. They spent the night in a fancy South African hotel while waiting 24 hours for the next connection to Lilongwe; we got a call over 200 kms from home, and just 15 minutes from the airport, informing us that they wouldn’t be there. Then the craziness. Janet had to find a place to stay for herself, Alfonso (the driver), and Arturt (our Mozambican teacher counterpart who we had invited to come greet our family). Luckily Alfonso didn’t mind the last minute improvising and agreed to spend the night and drive everyone the next day. Luc had to race back to school to give English finals the next day, and with no regular transport it was a crapshoot. In the end, Janet worked everything out on the transport side and was at the airport with a car to greet her family, and Luc just made it back home just after sunset hitching a ride on the last semi truck crossing the border. So our best efforts at a 4th of July feast for our visitors, all the bean burgers and potatato salad had to wait in the fridge as we postponed celebrating our nation’s independence a day. But July 5th was great, with a full house and plenty of food. Patience and flexibility are indispensible to life no matter what your circumstances are, but here in Africa, as Peace Corps volunteers, these virtues are all that keep us sane.

Visitors to Africa

Part of our Peace Corps mission is to share Mozambican culture with Americans back home. This blog is an effort to do that, also last winter we gave 15 school presentations while we were on vacation in America, but what better way to share Mozambican culture than having visitors here to experience life in Africa for themselves. Today we are recieving part of Janet family, her Dad, stepmom, and twin brother and sister, as well as one of her best friends Rabecca. We rented a private mini bus so they're not getting the 100% Africa experience, but its just too crazy with a big group to deal with public transit here. Luc's older brother Noah will also be in our site for a couple of days on his way back to America from Zambia, where he was volunteering through his company to support the health sector there. So, our little house will be jam packed, luckily we have a tent to accomodate overflow. Janet's brother and sister have never left the USA before, so we are excited to see what they think of the bigger world. They are just starting high school, so they are the same age as the students we teach here. Our living conditions are primitive, but we're hoping everyone can adjust to bucket showers, squat latrines, new foods, and occassional power outages. Noah says he reserves the right to stay at the hotel if things get too crazy. Since it also July 4th, we are going to try to recreate a USA style Independence Day barbeque celebration; with no meat we're making veggie burgers instead.  We feel lucky to have family and friends willing and abel to travel so far to share the Peace Corps experience with us!

Bamboo, The Wonder Grass

Romão just came over to ask for a hammer.  He dropped the bucket down the well and now wants to nail together two long bamboos to fetch it out.  People here use bamboo so much.  Rooves are usually made of long bamboo beems, and small construction projects, like shower rooms, can be made entirely of bamboo covered in grass.  In more tropical parts of Mozambique we have volunteers that live in homes with walls made from slender bamboo reeds tied together in thick bundels.  Furniture, like tables and chairs, can be made of bamboo; we have several examples serving usefully in our home.  At school it's not uncommon to assign students to bring bamboos to build fences or other school projects, so at most times there is usually a large pile somewhere around campus.  Almost all fences are made of bamboo, including what's left of our own.  Unfortunately bamboo makes a great firestarter, so on occasion we've had small portions of our fence disappear just before dinner time under the cover of darkness.  Bamboo can be used to protect young trees or gardens from animals.  Bamboo is essential for all kinds of kids' entertainment. They use it to make little cars or toys, or use it just to fight with.  Bamboo can enhance almost every aspect of life.  Getting fruit out of tall trees is a lot easier with a long bamboo, especially papaya trees which are so hard to climb.  Our grass mats for relaxing in the shade during hot summer days are made from split bamboo.  People use bamboo for fishing poles. Bamboo can be used to build extended luggage racks on the backs of bicycles for transporting bulky items like bags of charcoal, mangoes or goats.  Also popular are portable bamboo chicken coops, known here as capoeiras (the Brazilian martial art inspired by cock fighting got its name from these bamboo cages).  The best thing about bamboo is that it grows so abundantly here.  Plus every year new shoots will replenish previously harvested material, making it a renewable resource, unlike our old growth trees which are rapidly disappearing and take hundreds of years to return after harvesting.    

The Never Ending Electricity Drama

Despite our efforts to be good customers and pay our electric bill regularly, our drama with the power utility continues.  Last week some men from the district power office showed up at our house and informed us they wanted to cut our power.  We had just paid,  so luckily we were present when they came by so we could show our receipt.  After seeing our documentation they confessed that their list was incomplete, and that we could be spared this time.  No one else
in our neighborhood was that lucky, and come nightfall, every house was dark
except ours, so folks congregated in our front yard, taking advantage of the dim
illumination cast out by our little front light bulb, which was more light than
anyone else had.  The especially dark sky made great star watching, but Luc seemed to be the only one appreciating that bonus. Apparently there have been some irregularities with our local office. Rumor has it that money has been disappearing, which is why the main office sent out these henchman.  Not even our school was spared with the electricians simply cutting the line wiring our school.  Luc was typing a document, but our computers have a five minute back-up battery since power is so irregular here, so he could still save his work and close down.  Our local utility usually extends the school some courtesy on late payments since cutting power means canceling night school, but these guys from the city were really no-nonsense.  Our vice principal had to get a dispensation promising we would pay as soon as the district office transferred the funds, which were late as usual, so we are back on the grid.  Even so, power has been cutting out more frequently, with three outages this past week, including one during the governor's visit, which local officials were happy about so he could experience what they have been complaining about.  People just blame it on Malawi, which is where our power comes from, and keep bringing up the governments promise to connect us to the Mozambican grid, and the neighboring Cahora Bassa dam, the largest hydro-electric power station in Sub-Saharan Africa which ís Mozambican.  I don't think we'll still be around to see that day.

July 4th for Mozambique

This June 25th marked 36 years since Mozambique gained independence from Portugal. Basically its July 4th for Mozambique except no fireworks or barbeques. Since it feel just 3 days after the Governor's visit, the biggest holiday of the year was left mostly unplanned. The plaza ceremony was supposed to start at 8, but didn't start until 10. Our mayor showed up at 9 and was upset that he had to wait for the population to show up, instead of the other way around. He said he preferred to go into the villages for holidays where people always show up because they have no other excitement. After the ceremony, which was quite short because it only had three official speeches, we all paraded to the other end of town for the cultural events, which were only our two student groups, who did a great job. The mayor was also upset because his friends hadn't planned a party for him, so he had to put one together himself. To our great surprise, the 'party'was just us and two colleagues and the mayor. Even more surprising was that his cook was sick, so he cooked us dinner himself while we drank endless sodas and watches music videos on his TV. His menu featured Portuguese delicacies that we love like olives and fried chorizo. We're pretty sure he was honoring us by cooking, but the whole thing was kind of awkward, mainly for us because we weren't quite picking up on all the cultural cues. When we finally left the sun was beginning to set. A huge Nyau performance was happening just outside his yard, making it difficult for us to exit. The majority of the spectators were Malawi peasants from surrounding villages who
came in for the festivities. We could tell they were foreigners because they were gawking at us instead of the elaborate, costumed spirit-dancers covered in feathers and mud (local townspeople got over our novelty last year). We wanted to walk the streets to soak in the holiday atmosphere, but we found so many drunken students and colleagues and kids asking for holiday treats that we retreated back to our home, and, you guessed it, watched another Glee.

Governor’s Visit

This last Wednesday we received a visit from the governor of Tete province.  In
the highly hierarchical African society we live in, receiving the "Big Chief"is a huge deal, and everything in town for the past two weeks has focused on preparing for this event.  At school we had our first faculty meeting of the
trimester to strategize.  Our director divided up all the tasks needing completion, and assigned manual labor to every student cohort.  8th grade was in charge of mopping all the classrooms, cleaning the chalk boards, and removing
spider webs; 9th grade was to cut grass and sweep all the dirt patios, and clean
the student latrines; and 10th grade was to bring trees and bamboos.  This year, Presdient Guebuza has rolled out a national campaign, "one child one tree," requiring every student to plant and care for a tree.  Unfortunately after the initial push at the beginning of the year, our school slacked, and at least two thirds of our 800 plants were dead or missing, so now we had a frantic push to replace all of them in the next few days and build little bamboo fences to protect them from all the cute baby goats who would love to forage on tender saplings. Our vice principal made the students know how important this project was telling them, "Anyone caught vandalizing a school plant will get the Bin Laden treatment."  Everyone who missed the work day was required to haul sand to help in constructing the community hall project our town was trying to complete for the governor's visit.  After the big projects were completed, attention turned to the details. Our vice principal called out several girls with half-braided hair during morning assembly, saying that their unorganized hair extensions were unacceptable for the big visit.  He also told all of the school employees that we needed to be more careful when using the teachers' latrine. He gave instructions on how to pee directly into the urinal, surprisingly no one else seemed to think this was  hilarious, so we tried not to laugh. The puddles of liquid which regularly accumulated from people peeing haphazardly had to stop for this special day.  In the final build-up to the visit there was some controversy over a goat.  All teachers were ordered to pitch in and buy a goat for the governor.  There was lots of murmuring about exactly how much each individual's financial contribution should be and questioning of the justice in forcing the hard working teachers to make sacrifices for the governor, who already lives a luxurious lifestyle. We as volunteers without salaries were exempt from this
sticky situation.  When the VIP visit finally took place we had all the confusion we've come to expect from this type of event.  The governor was behind schedule so he didn't even visit our school we had spent so much time sprucing up.  Luc was the only one teaching class, and the only teacher on campus, but about half the students were in the classrooms, because they hadn't been informed on where to go or what to do.  The meeting with civil servants, for which we and our colleagues walked all the way across town to attend, was postponed.  No one knew if we were supposed to be on the field to greet the governor, but eventually that's what we did since it seemed like most people were walking in that direction.  Our kids had been preparing a theater, but it got cut at the last minute, so someone had to go off into the bushes where they were changing into costume and tell them not to bother.  The governor spoke at length on general education and health messages.  We thought the teachers might enjoy some official acknowledgment of their contribution to society, but none of them where listening.  They were sitting at a distance chatting and typing on their cell phones, out of range from the dust cloud the Nyaus lifted during their convulsive dance moves.  After the speech some common citizens were allowed to voice complaints directly to governor, and we heard all the general concerns like access to healthcare or a school with 11th and 12th grades, along with some more direct requests, like "governor, please give us cows" or "we need gas for the ambulance". The mass assembly began to end around sunset and teachers we were required to go to another meeting afterwards, but no one could tell us exactly when.  We were expected to wait outside the assembly hall until the governor called for us.  We were tired and hungry, so we just went home, as we were suspecting many teachers must also be doing.  We heard the next day that attendance was very low, and that the meeting hadn't started until 8pm, by which time we were already curled up in bed watching one of the new episodes of Glee we just got from our Peace Corps network during Janet's birthday weekend.