Steady Trickle of Visitors

As we quickly approach the end of service, volunteers eagerly attempt to notch up travel to those last few dream destinations like Victoria Falls or Lake Malawi they’ve postponed during the past two years. Since Tete province serves as a gateway to both Malawi and Zambia, we’ve benefited from some spill over visits. Others really feel a need to visit all 11 Mozambican provinces, and often times Tete is the last one for people to scratch off the list, so that’s drawn some visits. We also have the Cahora Bassa dam, which justifies the trek for some volunteers, and one volunteer, our friend Bao, came all the way to Tete just to see us, no other side agendas. As our once seemingly endless two year tour winds down to the last couple months, people are dashing around to say their good-byes, and check off the last few items on their “must see” lists, so even living on the very edge of Peace Corps Mozambican, we’ve received a steady trickle of visitors. The latest two were our buddies Matt and Lisa heading through our site for some fresh water diving at Lake Malawi.
Living in such a peripheral site we’re always trying to catch up on Peace Corps news, so we really appreciate any tid-bits of gossip our visitors bring along. At this stage of service the juiciest stories are about how people are dealing with amorous relationships which have flourished during service, but which face a difficult transition. Lots of volunteers are just calling it quits, especially for those with Mozambican significant others, but plenty of volunteers dating other volunteers are going to see if they can keep the relationship working back in the States and several volunteers have gotten engaged. Even for those of us without relationship drama, there are plenty of other anxieties concerning reentering life back in America to talk about, or on a more pleasant note, its always fun to hear about what kinds of exciting close of service trips people are planning. Although most of us are racing to make it home in time for Christmas holidays, most volunteers are still trying to tie in a few of those exciting African destinations in countries we would already be flying through or over like South Africa, Ethiopia, or Egypt. So everyone is trying to swap Lonely Planet travel guides and get last minute tips and recommendations. Our own close of service trip will involve a few days in Cape Town and then, since the cheapest tickets we could find were on Turkish Air, a brief visit to Istanbul to break up what would otherwise be 30+ hours of airplane and airport time.