what have i been doing for the past several months?

for once, i'm not hard-pressed to answer this question, i know i've been busy! and to change things up a bit, i won't be doing a play-by-play month-by-month (i know several have gone by), but instead will organize this thematically.

first, one thing i've done a lot of is more permaculture. this has, apparently, become my thing. in october i helped my friend charlotte, another icap volunteer, plan and run a training for her peer educators. we used basically the same format i'd used in the past, with a few notable and interesting exceptions. first, the town she lives in is near the malawi border and although many people speak portuguese, not all speak it 100%, but everyone speaks chechewa, the local language. so she worked with some of her peer educators to translate a lot of the materials into chechewa. i'd love to get this done for chuabo, but it hasn't happened yet, i'm spoiled by almost everyone around me speaking portuguese. another big difference was that she thought it didn't make sense to use power points to show pictures, so we had some pictures with good examples printed on large paper to show instead. we did the classroom part of the training in a small mud-house, and it had a much more home-grown feel to it, which i really enjoyed. it was also a good experience to be able to remove myself a few steps from the process, since they weren't "my" people we were working with, i didn't get as stressed out worrying about the way things were going, and i think it went well.

in the beginning of november i helped another friend and fellow icap-er, jimmy, do a training with his peer educators. we had a nice big space to dig behind the hospital, and a really gung-ho group. they kept digging through their snack time in awful heat just because they wanted to finish (and anyone who's worked in moz knows how big a deal it is to voluntarily skip "lanche")! after the two days in nicoadala, the participants were super thankful, and gave gifts of food and capulanas to me and the other trainers as thank yous. it was very moving, as was jimmy telling me that was the most excited he's seen his peer educators about anything in the two years he'd been working with them.

at the end of november i did another training here in quelimane, for more of my peer educators together with some high school students. this collaboration was the initiative of one of my peer educators who had participated in the first training we did. her daughter goes to the high school, and she's a "mother" of the school, meaning she's very involved and respected there, and i thought it was a great idea and she helped make it happen, so she and another female peer educator were the trainers for this group. icap supported it because it also included other peer educators, and was a sort of community outreach in one of the neighborhoods where there's a hospital that icap supports. because we were combining peer educators and students, this training was a lot bigger, 31 people including the trainers, so it was a bit overwhelming because of that. also, because a lot of the participants were teenagers the group got a bit unruly at times. but all in all i think it went well. we got permission from the school director to dig on school property, so the garden really "belongs" to the school; a teacher participated and was very into it and will help them keep it going; and it was actually really nice to see the interactions between the young students and some of the older peer educators. even though the kids were really energetic and gung-ho, they sometimes would dive into a task without really knowing what they were doing, and the older, parent-aged peer educators would take the hoes away from the kids and show them how to do things, which i got a big kick out of.

the last of my recent spate of permaculture trainings was in early december, also in quelimane, this time just for peer educators. this time we got permission to dig in the yard of the sister of a peer educator, right next door to one of the hospitals. the location was great, but because the land had years of hospital trash in it (syringes, glass vials, who knows what) we could only dig in a much smaller space than we'd anticipated, so we ended up getting done with work more quickly and people got a little antsy. i really like doing these permaculture trainings because i can tell that it's a topic that people are genuinely interested in and will use, but this last training in particular highlighted all the things i don't like about doing trainings, mainly i don't like having to control a group (i'm not a teacher!), and i don't like having to worry about logistical headaches, like the food not showing up on time or keeping things on schedule. every time i do these i get really stressed out, and every time it all works out one way or the other, and i know i need to just let go and let things happen. i'm working on it. one reason why i think the stress hasn't decreased is that i've been changing my trainers every time. i'm doing this to let lots of people get the experience (and the pay) of being trainers, which i think is good, but it means that every time i'm still guiding the process more than i would be if it were always the same trainer. and i'm sure i'll have plenty of opportunity in the new year to try and work out all these kinks, because there are still tons of people interested in participating who having had the chance yet.

the other main thing that has been occupying my time and my thoughts these months is the changing of the guard - the group of pcvs who were here when i got here (moz 12) all left one by one, and the new group (moz 14) has recently arrived. so i had to say goodbyes to a lot of friends and colleagues, the most difficult of which was alison, my site-mate and co-worker who i saw almost every day, and was a good friend and mentor. she was in the very first group to leave. and in the interim stage, we remaining icap volunteers (moz 12 and 13) spent a fair amount of time talking about what we do, what we should do, what we shouldn't do, and how to help the new generation of icap pcvs transition in smoothly. so i helped with and participated in several different meetings, some with just pcvs and main icap staff, one with representatives from all the districts that have pcvs. i was working on this mainly with my boss juliana, who's amazing and very supportive of volunteers, and who has also recently left! another big change for me. so i'd already been thinking alot about the icap-pc relationship, and how to talk specifically to new icap volunteers to help them in their first months. and then my pc boss, kristie, invited me to help her at the supervisor's conference in nampula, a one-day event for the new pcvs for zambezia, nampula, and cabo delgado provinces to meet their supervisors and for everyone to hear a little bit about peace corps, and suggestions for how to help the volunteers settle into their new lives, work, communities, etc. so i traveled to nampula to help with that as well, which was a good experience. i had, truthfully, been sort of dreading the arrival of the new volunteers - i didn't know any of them specifically, it was more the thought of new people "invading" my "territory" and "replacing" people i loved, respected, and, most importantly, knew how to work with. it was the thought of having to start over from scratch that was overwhelming, when i just barely am starting to feel like i really have a good handle on things. but it all went fine, of course. icap zambezia has gotten 3 new volunteers, all really nice. no one is moving to quelimane, so even if they weren't nice i wouldn't have to worry about seeing and dealing with them on a daily basis. icap brought all the new volunteers to quelimane for an extra few days, to give them a chance to buy stuff for their houses, get to know the organization, and to meet more representatives from each of their districts. all those meetings we'd had before the new volunteers arrived had been to plan what to do with them when they arrived, and what we did with them was have a meeting (which was supposed to be 2 days but turned into 1) with them and a team from each site (doctors, peer educators, etc), to talk more specificially about what a pcv with icap should and shouldn't be doing, what their options are, what each side should expect from the other, etc. it's a weird thing, meetings like this. i've lived through them. i know they can seem pretty boring for all involved. and you'd think that, living through them, i wouldn't want to inflict them on others. but the thing is, i do think they're necessary and, ideally, helpful. not perfect, but what is? i know the first group of icap pcvs had a lot of confusion and very little information about what they should be doing when they first got to site. my "generation" had more of an idea, but still not real clear. so we're trying to improve things for the next lot. i think, hope, it was all worth it, because i definitely spent a lot of time and energy on this subject over the last few months!

aside from permaculture and changing of the guard, some other things i've done over the last few months include: visiting maganja da costa to celebrate a friend building a new house; visiting mexixine and macuzi to see where my boyfriend lives and works during the week; visiting the beautiful rural site of my friend denys to celebrate the opening of a new project; celebrating world aids day here in quelimane, which mostly involved sweating and fighting over t-shirts; taking my joma group to nampula to perform during the celebration of 25 years of U.S.-Mozambique partnership.

and now the new volunteers are at their sites, everyone here in the city is winding down for the holidays, and i am ready for a BREAK - which i am getting! i'll spend christmas here in quelimane, with my friend gina, my boyfriend laras, some pcv friends, and my christmas music on endless repeat on my ipod. and after christmas i'm heading to tanzania for vacation with my little brother! even tho it seems, to the blog-reader, that i just had a "foriegn" vacation one little post ago, and i probably haven't done a good enough job in this post of conveying how much work i've done and stress i've gone through in the last few months, i feel i'm ready for a vacation and i'm getting one whether i deserve it or not!

i hope that everyone reading this is enjoying the cold (i hate you all just a tiny bit for knowing what cold is....it's consistently in the 90s or higher here these days, and i'm dying). i hope you all have a peaceful, relaxing break from whatever it is you're doing with your lives, and that you enjoy time with friends and family during whatever holidays you celebrate. i will be missing the cold, the holiday food and drink, the music, the friendly spirit, the bustle of christmas retail, and most of all the people.

boas festas.

appalling statistic of the day

In Africa, 3% of the world’s health workers struggle to combat 24% of the global disease burden with less than 1% of the world’s health expenditures.

(World Health Organization. World Health Report 2006. World Health Organization 2006. Available at: http://www.who.int/whr/2006/chapter1/en/index.html. This is based on a threshold of at least 2.3 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 population.)

férias (vacation)

yup, i finally had a vacation...it was surreal and wonderful. jeff came to visit, and he gets 1000s of bonus points for being the first person i know brave enough and willing enough to make it all the way over here! we met up in maputo, which was a bit overwhelming to me as i hadn't been there (or any big city) in almost a year. just the fast pace, the number of cars (instead of bikes!) trying to run me over, having to worry more about pickpockets, etc. but it was fine, i shockingly knew my way around more than i thought. we had fun, jeff indulged my desires for thai food, macaroni and cheese, coffee, and other things i can't get in quelimane. we walked around the city, did some souvenir shopping, saw a really bad (but new!) movie. it was fun. only spent about a day and a half there, then we came back to quelimane. here jeff got a whirlwind tour, and because he declined to experience the wonders of bike taxis, we did it all walking! we saw the city, bought capulanas, made him some capulana pants; he met my pc friends, and we made dinner with my neighbor and good friend gina. jeff got along fabulously well with his spanish, he learned how to take a bucket bath, he ate zambezian food. i think i showed him a good time!

from there, we took the LONG bus-ride from quelimane to maputo. we chose this option a) so jeff could see some of the countryside and b) so he could experience the wonders of the mozambican public transport system. now, his report will probably differ a bit from mine, but this was by far the NICEST public transport i've been on in this country: new, comfortable seats; no trash on the floor; no farm animals; no people in the aisles. it was truly incredible, and i thought that long trip was going to suck a lot, but it actually wasn't that bad with a friend. i'd do it again. the only downside was that we made SUCH good time that we got to maputo at like 1 am, and had to wait at the bus stop (a place i saw another pcv aptly describe as several football fields full of buses) til dawn, so that was kind of a drag. but we headed out of there bright an early, got to downtown maputo to catch a chapa to namaacha, where i'd done my home-stay during training.

it was really cool, but weird, to go back over roads and into a town that was so familiar but that i'd been gone from for so long. it was made a little weirder by the fact that when we got in my family wasn't home (they were all at school). but i gave jeff the short tour of the town, and when we went back to the house the girls started coming home one by one and it was SO awesome to see them - the little ones especially have grown so much! they were so sweet and i was so comfortable with them, it was almost as if i'd never left. they were really wonderful to let me just drop in, with a male, non-portuguese speaking friend, and it made me feel even more than i already did like they really are family. it also made me sad i'm so far away; i love zambezia, but volunteers further south get a chance to drop by more, something i wish i could do. ah well.

the real adventure started after our night in namaacha! we walked to the border of swaziland, negotiated that without too much hassel (travel note: highly beneficial to travel with a hiking backpack, customs guys almost never want to take the trouble of digging into them!), and caught a bus to manzini, the second-largest town in swaziland. the landscape was beautiful, understandably similar to namaacha, and although we didn't partake of any tourist activities there, the newspaper we picked up said it's full of hostels and safaris and all kinds of cool things, so i'd really like to go back there. in manzini we had lunch, and we were supposed to meet up with a friend from college who lives there, but that didn't work out. so we had to figure out how to get from there to joburg on our own. the bus lot there is not as big as the one in maputo, but possibly more crowded and confusing, and after jeff struck out finding transport i went to give it a try. as i was asking around for buses to joburg (in english, very odd), a guy volunteered his services to help me, which i accepted because we really needed to get on a bus that day, although i was a bit wary because, well, life has taught me to be wary of strange men offering to help obviously foreign women. but he was super nice! he walked me all the way across the maze of buses, found a kombi (chapa in swazi) going to joburg with a company he knew, made sure i was all set and they weren't ripping me off, and wished me luck and went on his way. amazing! so jeff and i made it to joburg fine, and there we had our second it-could-have-been-sketchy-but-people-were-nice experience. through a planning error on our part (and trouble figuring out the swazi cell phone system) we didn't have a hotel in joburg, and we got in after dark, in a strange city known to be less than safe, so we were a little nervous. but our kombi driver offered to help and walked us to the door of a safe, clean, cheap hotel right by where we needed to be the next day. amazing!

the next day we went to the train station and got on a train to cape town! the train was really fun, it felt very romantic (in an old-fashioned movie sort of way). we had our own room with a bench, a drop-down table, a tiny sink, and an upper bunk that folded into the wall when we weren't using it. a porter came around to offer us coffee and tea, and to take our meal orders, so 2 meals we ate in our room, and one we opted to eat in the dining car. the scenery was beautiful, and we (or at least i) got a great night's sleep. it got amazingly cold! the next morning the scenery was even more beautiful, and i could totally see why europeans settled here, low green rolling hills, perfect for farmland, probably looked a lot like where they'd come from. we rode through vineyards, passed ostriches, cattle, and sheep, i even saw a baboon from far away! and there were gorgeous rainbows to top it all off.

we got to cape town, managed to get supremely lost walking to our hostel, but checked in and all was well. our first afternoon we had mexican food (yay!), and just walked around and saw different parts of the city. i'm having trouble remembering the order of the rest of our adventures, but we did the rest of this stuff too: we went to the district 6 museum, a museum dedicated to the former residents of district 6, a black neighborhood that was cleared out for whites to live in during apartheid. (a new movie, district 9, is based on this story, although with aliens....i need to see this movie.) it was an interesting museum, with a concept that i'd never heard of before: it's intended just as much for the residents of the district to tell their stories and connect with each other as it is for outsiders to visit and learn, so it had a very home-grown feel to it. we went to the top of table mountain, a cape town must-do. this impressive mountain sits, ridiculously, SMACK in the middle of cape town. it's known for being moody, from minute to minute it can change whether it's under a cloud or not. we went at the only time it really made sense for us, and unfortunately it was pretty cloudy, but we got a few breaks in the clouds with some incredible views of the city and the bay. we went to robben island, the site of the prison where nelson mandela (among many others) was imprisoned during apartheid. we took a bus tour of the island with a really smart, funny university student, then a tour of the actual prison with a former prisoner. it was very interesting, although made me wish i knew more about the history....i want to get my hands on nelson mandela's autobiography that he wrote while in the prison. our last day in cape town we took a tour of the cape peninsula. we drove down through beautiful, sea-side villages and windy mountain roads, into the national park that covers most of the cape. it was gorgeous, i loved it, reminded me of maine a bit. we went to cape point, where you could actually see where the atlantic and indian oceans met. we had lunch in a cute little town in the wine-making region, and ended the day with a (slightly disappointing) wine-tasting.

all-in-all, it was a good trip. it was great to get away, to spend time with a friend i hadn't seen in a year, to just remove myself from all of my realities for a bit. but honestly, i didn't love south africa that much. yeah, it was beautiful, but to be perfectly honest their harsh, and recent, racial history makes me uncomfortable, and being in super-white super-wealthy cape town didn't help. seeing prices that i know were cheap in dollars but outrageous in meticais was very weird. and cape town is the only place on the trip i felt unsafe, as we were approached by a lot of disturbingly aggressive panhandlers. so, i suppose in the best of both worlds, i enjoyed my vacation, but by the end was homesick for quelimane and ready to come home.

and yes, now i've been home for about another month, and, as usual, i'm going to remain behind on this blog cuz i don't feel like writing more right now. sorry! i've been trying to put up pictures as well, but the internet is not my friend today. i hope everyone is well. you are all hereby ordered to go out and enjoy at least one of the following for me: a nice walk in crisp fall air, rolling in the leaves, hot apple cider, hay rides, pumpkin pie. it has definitely started getting hot again here, so i'm back to complaining about the weather. don't worry, there will be more of that to come i'm sure. until the next time, abraços all around. :)

august (subtitle: doing SOMETHING)

and another month is over. i donºt know how this happens. you know why this blog is a good exercise (apart from keeping my readers happy)? i often end a week/month/whatever feeling like i havenºt really done much, but when i come here to try to sum it up, i see that i at least did SOMETHING.

at the beginning of august alison and i ran a few mini-trainings for the icap office and medical staff. the first was on hiv and safe sex. we did this at the request of our boss, partly because she believes that many people in the office either donºt know what they should, or arenºt practicing safe sex, and partly as part of an initiative from the provincial director of health to have all employees of health-related ngos knowing something about the health topics the ngo works with. so on a saturday morning (much to the consternation of many employees) we ran a training using the same slide presentation we had prepared for peer educator trainings. we talked about how hiv acts in the human body, how treatment works, various means of transmission, and prevention methods. it was really interesting for a number of reasons. we gave a pre and post test on the material, a way to see what people know before and after a training. the evaluations were anonymous, but we divided them between medical and non-medical staff. the non-medical staff learned a lot, which was great. the medical staff got clarification on a few points, but for the most part their understanding remained the same, which is actually good, because it means they didnºt have a lot of misconceptions in the first place. but the thing that was really interesting (and also kind of annoying) was that during the parts about safe sex, the people who got the most giggly and jokey were the male medical staff! c'mon guys, youºre supposed to be talking about this stuff for a LIVING, and you canºt talk about how to put on a condom without giggling and making jokes, and you hold a female condom with the tip of a pen as if itºs going to get you dirty or something? yeah, i know, boys will be boys, but i was still kind of disappointed by that. if the medical personel canºt deal with talking about this stuff, itºs no wonder that the people theyºre supposed to be helping donºt always have good information. some of the non-medical male staff, on the other hand, asked tons of really good questions so you could tell they were actually getting something out of it, so that was good.

the other training alison and i did was a tech training. the icap office is a pretty "modern" looking place, computers and technology and whatnot. all office staff and many doctors have company computers, and thereºs a copy machine, fax machine, and scanner for everyone to use. but many people only know how to use this equipment on the most basic levels, and people are constantly asking us for help. after seeing our power point presentations (complete with lots of animations) people were really interested in learning how to use that program well too. so we planned 2 afternoons worth of trainings. on the first day alison taught people the basics of power point, how to make a presentation aesthetically pleasing, and the fun stuff like animations. on the second day i showed them a program to learn how to touch-type, and how to use the scanner and fax machine. teaching people how to use this technology, i often notice a similarity in talking about technology stuff with family members of other generations. depending on how long youºve been using certain types of technology, youºre more comfortable and adept at playing around to figure out new stuff. for instance, i had no idea how to use the office scanner, but i figured it out in an afternoon, but many people have only been using computers, etc. for a very few years. if you think technology has changed/improved rapidly in the us, itºs changed at lightening speed here. another difficulty a lot of people have is that almost all the equipment and programs are in english, so that even if they did feel comfortable playing around, theyºre severly limited by language. anyway, it was a pretty minimal tech training, but we covered some basic things people had shown interest in, and made some staff who arenºt around us a lot aware that weºre here and available to help if they have other questions. and because our boss was supportive in allowing people to get out of work to attend these trainings, iºm sure we could do similiar activities in the future if there was more interest.

on the second day of that tech training, with only about a days notice, i signed up to participate in a bike ride to nicoadala, the next town up the highway from quelimane. the story behind the ride and my participation in it is kind of complicated, some other pcvs had been trying to organize a bike-a-thon across the province in collaboration with a local youth activist organization, and although it looks like that project has fallen through, through those contacts we were invited to bike with them on a different outing. there were mixed messages as to the reasons for the ride. everyone who participated was given a t-shirt which comemmorated the "day of youth and sport" or something like that, which was the day after the actual ride. but when we got to nicoadala there was a big event at the secondary school, and i was told that a local group was kicking off a month-long testing campaign. so either way, 3 other pcvs and i (and about 50 other people) biked from quelimane to nicoadala. itºs 37k which is 23 miles according to my cell phone converter, which is almost without a doubt the farthest iºve ever biked. luckily for me itºs all flat, and it wasnºt super hot, and even still i almost died. the group included professional biker guys and a lot of bike taxi drivers, in short people in MUCH better shape than i am, and they were going a bit faster than i would have chosen and not stopping for water as often as i would have liked. to top it off i swear the wind was blowing against us the entire way. a couple of times 2 of the professional biker guys grabbed the back of my bike to push me along to help me rest a bit and catch up with the group, and if it wasnºt for them i might have fallen behind. but i made it! not really dying to do it again any time soon, at least not when i canºt control my pace, but it was something different, nice to be able to appreciate some pretty countryside in a different way, and definitely a feeling of accomplishment!

on another saturday in august i went to participate in the first "feira de saude," or health fair, in quelimane. the purpose of the day was to promote healthy practices, all the local ngos had booths set up with information and were doing various screenings (HIV tests, breast cancer, blood pressure, etc). there were singing groups and skits with themes of non-discrimination, etc. some outstanding community health workers got prizes. all really nice, right? well it would have been, but my day started by meeting the icap car and my peer educators at a point on the other side of town from the fair to hand out t-shirts. thatºs nice, right? peer educators and icap staff were all supposed to get t-shirts that said icap and "feira de saude" and walk together in one happy group to the fair location. except that t-shirts are like gold here. every event, every commemorative day, every organization, etc. makes a t-shirt and they are coveted prizes which people will wear for years, and when i got to the meeting point there was already a full-scale war going on, all 90+ peer educators were in a mob around the icap car scrambling and screaming that they didnºt get a t-shirt, or they wanted a different colored t-shirt, or the person next to them had taken 2, or that another person wasnºt even a peer educator. it was RIDICULOUS, but i should have known, thereºs always a guerra (war) when ANYTHING is being given away, money, t-shirts, food, whatever. i blame the ngo culture for making people believe that they need t-shirts to be taken seriously, or that they have the right to expect something free when an ngo car shows up. but it is still such a spectacle over something that SO isnºt worth it, it always puts me in a bad mood. it is an unfortunate part of my reality here.

to round out my month, towards the end of august my joma group put on a training. the kids who had gone to the nampula conference had really wanted to do a full-on training for the rest of the group, for them to experience well the material that they had learned. so we wrote a grant, got the money, and finally did it this month. theyºre really motivated, smart, organized kids, so i was lucky that i had to do relatively little prep work. i gave them the money to buy supplies, and a little guidance, and they ran with it. they did a 7-day training (their choice). 5 afternoons after school and all day saturday and sunday. i went every afternoon during the week. the first day started pretty late, and i was starting to get annoyed, but i decided that it was their project, and that as long as they accomplished something and they were happy with it, iºd let it be, and it all turned out ok. every day they started more on time and more people showed up and the training went better. they divided up the training into 2 days on leadership, 2 on gender, and 3 on theater, with different people in charge of leading each day. the associationºs president (one of my best peer educators) ended up running a lot of the sessions, and sometimes their leadership styles or management skills werenºt necessarily how i would have preferred, or what i thought was the "best" way to do things, but i let them go with it, and again, every time i thought something wasnºt going well, it ended up ok, and i was really happy with my decision to stay out of most of it (even though they complained) because i think it was much better for them to learn how to do this on their own. as reading my blog will probably indicate, trainings are a major part of the ngo/activist life here, and as these are all smart, dedicated kids many of them are likely to end up working or volunteering in some capacity where knowing how to put on a training will be a very useful skill. anyway, the training had low points (more kids than weºd budgeted for showed up on some days and there were fights over food; some of the kids got into an argument about each othersº behavior and the group was pretty tense as a result) and high points (the peer educator who did a session on gender explained sexual orientation in a way that i thought completely correct and respectful but also sensative to the fact that the ideas are uncomfortable for a lot of people here, making me really proud; the groupºs final theater piece in a local market was really interesting and well-received) but overall i was happy with the way it turned out.

with all that, i still manage to feel unproductive a lot of the time. things like fights over t-shirts and whatnot, lack of attendance and participation in peer educator activities, and inability to get answers to what i see as simple questions because of ngo beurocracy, can get really annoying and disheartening, and certainly contribute to my feeling of uselessness or lack of accomplishment. but as this blog proves, i have been doing something. and iºm taking a 2-week vacation starting next week which iºm SUPER excited about, and which i think will really help me relax and reenergize. and this week i have meetings every day with people to talk about a variety of different potential projects, so iºll have something to work on with all my new energy when i get back.

JULY (a few successes)

oh goodness, i don't know if i'm ready for this. ok, here's what happened in july:

i went to the city of Chimoio for a weekend for the JOMA transfer meeting. JOMA is the youth organization, run by peace corps volunteers, whose conference i went to in april with some of the youths i work with. this meeting was for outgoing PCVs who ran the conferences last year to impart their wisdom to this my group of PCVs. the prospect of being handed this huge project was more than a little overwhelming, but it all went ok. there were about 10 of us "newbies" there who had participated in the 3 siumltaneous conferences (northern, central and southern regions). we chose new positions/jobs (i'm going to be working on improving the content of the curriculum, especially the gender aspects), and talked about some changes to the conference and program structure. JOMA is still a relatively young program and every year the new group of volunteers has made some significant changes. for instance, it started out as a boys only program (the point being that there are lots of groups working to empower women, but unless you get the guys on board it's going to be difficult if not impossible to achieve real widespread change), about 2 years ago they decided to let girls be invovled in the school clubs, and this year was the first year they allowed girls to come to the conferences. it has also varied year to year the number of conferences, locations, and timing. but the main changes we talked about, in addition to vastly improving the curriculum, were downscaling the conferences a bit. they're a lot of fun for the kids, but they're a lot of work, and older volunteers have attested that the vast majority of their time, energy and budget went into a 5 day conference, meaning that activities for the rest of the school year weren't well supported or organized. we decided to have smaller, more local, more frequent conferences, and have separate ones for gender/sexuality and communications areas (theater, journalism, etc). the smaller conferences mean more kids will be able to participate (i could only bring 4 from a group of almost 20) and they'll be easier for volunteers to plan because they'll be more local (a lot of on the ground planning for the past conferences has fallen on whoever happens to live in or nearest the city it's held in, whether or not they were the person best suited or most interested). there were a lot of LONG discussions because of course everyone has had different experiences at the conferences and in their groups, but by the end i felt ok about the decisions we made. still a little freaked out about the huge responsibilities of the new undertaking, but i figure if the last groups managed it, we can!

about a week after i got back from the JOMA meeting, alison and i ran a couple of trainings for our peer educators, both supported by icap. the first was a 2-day permaculture training. i did most of the planning, using the information from the training i'd participated in, and planned a similar training, with the mornings doing theoretical work talking about the ideas and the advantages of permaculture, and in the afternoons putting the ideas into practice. i was a little stressed out going into it, but it went really well. instead of me giving the training, it was mostly run by the peer educator who i'd brought to nampula and another mozambican who had participated in the peace corps training. this was a huge advantage, not only for my stress level, but because they are much more fluent in portuguese farm-language than i am, they both speak the local language fluently, and i think that pretty much any information is received better when it's being given by a peer and not an outsider. so these two guys ran the training, i tried to keep them on track with the program and jumped in when i had a point i thought was important to emphasize or whatever, and alison helped with the logistics, things like making sure the food showed up on time and we had copies of the documents we needed, etc. the land we dug up was a short walk from the classroom site, in the backyard of one of the icap doctors. unfortunately the doctor left recently so no one will be there to see if our garden is growing, which is a shame because it came out beautifully! it was sometimes a bit chaotic having 20 people digging, weeding, seeding, whatever at the same time, but they all seemed really excited about the new techniques. i was actually pretty surprised, because they all have machambas (gardens or small farms) so i figured they would know a lot about gardening, but it seemed like a lot of people just do what they see other people doing and had never really talked about techniques, or the reasons why their gardens did or didn't produce well. so not only did it go well logistically, but i actually felt like people got even more out of it than i had originally thought they might. only time will tell how many of them will actually use and benefit from the techniques (unfortunately it was alreay in the middle of a growing season so most things people couldn't start right away even if they wanted to), but the materials i prepared (power points, handouts, schedule, etc) can be used by other volunteers, one group of peer educators has asked to start a garden at their hospital, and another icap volunteer in a neighboring district has asked alison and me to do a training for his peer educators, so this was definitely an overall positive experience.

the other training alison and i ran was on project design and management (PDM), or how to come up with a strong project idea and write a grant proposal to be able to realize it. this one alison did most of the planning and i just helped with logistics and stuff, but it also went well. we invited peer educators who are also part of other legalized organizations, because in order to apply for most grants you have to be part of a legalized organization. the process can be really hard conceptually, because you have to evaluate ideas on multiple levels, not just what's the most exciting or interesting, and because there are a lot of detailed steps to the process, which are really important in terms of securing funds, but can seem kind of silly otherwise. but they got through that training as well, going through all the steps in a big group to design a fictitious project, and some of the peer educators who participated recently asked me if we could work together to prepare a proposal for a similar project for real, so i mark that another success.

my last big event for the month was another training in nampula put on by peace corps. the topic this time was behavior change communication, or BCC. the theory is that many programs seek to solve problems by giving people information, but when the solution to the problem requires some major changes in people's behavior, this isn't always enough. there are myriad cases here of people who can talk the talk, they can answer questions all day long about how to prevent HIV transmission, how to use a condom, why to use a condom, how to take their medication, etc. but then go home and do all the "wrong" things. obviously having correct information is hugely important, but information education communication (IEC) alone doesn't solve problems. so the hope is that BCC will. the conference, while put on by peace corps, was led by people from an organization called global health communication (GHC). over the week they taught us 2 techniques. the first was a game called pathways to change, which looks a lot like chutes and ladders. you would play the game with a group, and you start out with a specific case or question. it can be imaginary (jose is 15 years old and having unprotected sex and....) or real (our group wants to achieve x). and as you move along the paths you land on either facilitators or barriers to the goal, which can be personal, societal, or environmental. the goal is to look at the big picture, to help people understand all the factors that influence their situation, both positively and negatively, so that the ultimate outcome is more logical than just reactionary to certain factors. it was an interesting exercise, and took shockingly long for a board game. my favorite element of it was that you present people with a problem (be it real or imaginary, at least applicable to their life) but then instead of telling them how to solve it, you open up a discussion around it. the goal can still be to solve the problem, but i think most people probably react negatively to just being told what to do and not being told why, especially if it's coming from an outsider or someone they feel doesn't understand their situation, and the purpose of this game was to create a situation in which people could come up with their own solutions which are within their own frame of reference. i haven't yet tried the game with any of my groups, although i have explained the concept to some peer educators. my idea was that they could sometimes use a variation of it, instead of their morning palestras (talks) at the hospitals they could just present a situation and start a discussion. the second technique that we learned was a process for sitting down with a group, talking about a problem or a goal, brainstorming factors that influence that problem, dually prioritizing those factors in terms of importance and feasability of change, then coming up with a final proiority and designing a project that reflects that. i think it's a very valid process, but one that closely resembles several things we've learned in peace corps (among them the PDM curriculum alison and i used in our recent training), so i found this aspect of the conference a little less useful and captivating. but overall, i definitely agree with the idea that people need to be allowed to evaluate their own circumstances and come up with their own ideas for how to do things. and there were many representatives from icap at the conference, 4 volunteers, 3 peer educators, a psychiatrist and a pscychologist, so we had a really interesting array of opinions and ideas on how to use the new techniques. we haven't yet had the chance to sit down and discuss ways we might want to implement them formally, but i think many of us are already using the ideas informally.

ok, that's that month. i realize that another month is just about over that i haven't even touched on, but these posts are so long, they tire me out, they probably tire you out as well. i'm going to put up some links with JOMA info. and i've put up some more pictures at a new site, that i'll add the link to. my computer died recently, and i'm daily realizing things that were on there that i've lost - most importantly some work documents and MANY of my pictures (tho not all) so even tho it's going to take 1000 years, i'm going to start trying to upload all of my pictures instead of a select few so they'll be more secure. i hope everyone reading this (are there any of you out there anymore, or did you get tired of waiting?) is doing well. i'm doing fine, although getting a little burnt out, but i'm taking some vacation next month which should help cure that! i'll try to update about my august before i leave. beijos:)

JUNE (subtitle: 4 ways to be married)

ok, i'm probably going to have to do this in installments cuz it's been FOREVER since i've posted. i know. i'm sorry. i suck. ok...

in JUNE i helped run a training of about 45 new peer educators for quelimane. it was run by 3 of the newly trained trainers from way back in my last post, one of whom is one of my favorite peer educators, and i was really impressed with how well it went. there were some snags of course, because the 3 trainers had never run any sort of training before, let alone with the specific material, so at times it was frustrating to think "this could be going better," but they got through all the material, no catastrophes, and i think in the long run that was much more important than it going "perfectly," because the whole point was to make the program more sustainable and not need icap or other ngos or ex-pats to run a training, and all that icap really did was the logistical stuff (materials, food, etc), none of the training. so it was pretty cool. i had to do a lot less work so even tho i was busy every day, it was a lot less stressful than some previous trainings i've mentioned!

towards the end of june i took my first real vacation here (i know i travel quite a bit, but if you look back every other travel experience has been work related, either icap or peace corps)! my pcv friend luke is dating a mozambican woman named dinha. they work together, and several of us zambezia pcvs have become friends with her (she's awesome) and she invited us to go to her brother's wedding in inhambane (city, capital of the province of the same name, south). so her family rented a chapa (just as uncomfortable on your butt as any chapa, but at least way less crowded, and full of friendly faces) and we drove down. it took about 18 hours. yeah, exhausting. but i got see even more of mozambique (i crossed the Zambezi river!), and got to have some hilarious times with my friends and dinha's aunts drinking whisky and singing and joking basically the whole car ride down. when we FINALLY got to inhambane, we all stayed at the house of the the groom's "padrinhos" or god-parents. it's the same word as god-parent in a baptism, but in the case of a wedding they are people who almost stand in for your parents, have to make vows (legal and religious) to help the couple, and help out financially with the actual wedding. so i spent 5 days surrounded by a CRAZY conglomeration of various family members and almost 24-7 food production, and had basically a 5-day slumber party with several of my best friends. as for the actual wedding stuff, it was pretty complicated. i've only been to one wedding in the states and it was VERY low-key (just my style) so the only US weddings i have to compare this to are the ones in movies. there is a lot of variety in weddings in the us, to be sure, but to me the most common usually involves a legal contract along with some sort of ceremony. well, as i discovered, in mozambique there are 4 different ways to be married.

so...the day before the wedding was the lobolo, a traditional ceremony usually translated as "bride price." everyone from the groom's side of the family (except the parents) goes to the bride's house with a car laden full of stuff to give to the bride's family. we got there about 1 minute late, and in punishment the bride's family made the groom's family dance and sing outside the gate to the courtyard and they had to pay a fee (everyone emptied small change from their pockets) in order to be let in. when we finally got in, the padrinhos of the groom went and had a long pow-wow with the bride's family in another room, while most of us sat around in the living room and waited. at one point we got shushed, cuz the bride's family said they'd charge another "fine" if we made too much noise! after awhile the groom showed up, and he was greeted at the gate by all the old women in the bride's family, and the tiniest (and one of the oldest) grandmas picked him up and carried him into the house on her back! i never got the significance of that explained to me, but it was hilarious. a little while later we all got invited out to the courtyard where the bride's family was. the two families sat on opposite sides of the space, and they were very specific that men had to sit in chairs and women had to sit on the esteiras (straw mats). there were 2 exceptions: the bride and groom were both in chairs, and in the middle of the circle the oldest male representative from each family sat on the esteira facing each other. (one of my favorite observations of the day was that the grandfather on the groom's side looked very sharp in a suit, but if you looked closely you realized his shoes were brown, his pants were grey, and his jacket was navy blue. but they both took their shoes off (custom when sitting on the esteira) and the other grandfather, also dressed nicely, had on holey socks with giraffes on them.)

what followed was a LONG ceremony, mostly conducted in dialect so i couldn't follow everything (and it wasn't an appropriate space to ask someone to translate for me) but it was clear that there were very set rules for every action. there was a pre-made list of items that the bride's family had asked for, and representatives from each family had a copy. they went through one by one, with the grandfather from the bride's family asking for a thing, and the grandfather from the groom's family presenting it carefully, then the bride's grandfather verified that it was the right thing, or good quality, or whatever, and then everyone clapped and they went on. there was a large sum of money handed over, painstakingly counted out bill by bill. there were capulanas and kerchiefs for many of the older aunts in the bride's family. there were a lot of food items, enough for a feast for the entire wedding party: rice, oil, vegetables, some other stuff, and a live chicken and live goat (who had ridden all the way down with us from zambezia, poor thing)! towards the end of the ceremony the groom's padrinhos presented a full new outfit to each of the bride's parents. and my friend dinha, as the sister of the groom, took the bride out of the room and dressed her up in a new outfit and brought her back, and then had to place a ring, earrings, and necklace on her, each symbolizing her being handed over from her own family to the new family, and to encourage her to be a good wife. when the ceremony was over, everyone got up and sang and danced (even the goat!).

seeing the lobolo was really interesting. it's a "traditional" ceremony, so it's easy to think of it as something that perhaps more modern/educated families (as both of these are) wouldn't do. traditionally, the lobolo is the most important part of a wedding. if the groom's family doesn't pay up, or the bride's doesn't accept what they offer, that can cancel the whole thing right there. i asked around, and everyone sort of said "no, it's not that serious, it's just tradition....but it's VERY important." i'm not sure anyone was ever really concerned that the wedding wouldn't happen, but everyone was VERY concerned that every little detail happen right. after the lobolo we ate (for some reason the families were separated again for this part), and then there was a sermon, which i wasn't a fan of because the preacher kept on repeating and repeating that a woman's job was to obey her husband in EVERYTHING, and that she shouldn't have opinions of her own but should have her husband's opinions. apparently the bride's family is significantly more religious than the groom's, because dinha had just as hard a time listening to the sermon as i did! so after that night, the couple was already married traditionally (way to be married #1), and i guess in a lot of cases that would be the end of it. but not for these families.

the next day was "the big day" of the "official" wedding, which had two more parts. first thing in the morning everyone went to some government office (mayor's office, town hall, what have you) to sign the legal contracts. hearing about it i figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal, just signing contracts, right? but the whole wedding party and all the guests went, everyone was decked out in their finest, bride and groom already in white gown and tux, there was singing and festivising. the official gave a short speech about legal obligations, and then the couple and their padrinhos had to swear to abide by these obligations, and all had to sign a register book. then the wedding party filed outside and all the guests greeted them/congratulated them in a receiving line. and now they were legally married (way to be married #2).

after that we piled into a parade of cars and wound around town to the church (methodist), which to my surprise was a small church in an outer neighborhood of the city, where apparently the bride's family used to live. it was a small, simple church, with wide open doors, plain wooden benches, and the only decorations were paper chains. there didn't seem to be any ceremony about where people sat, so we all just piled in. the padrinhos sat up front, and the bride and groom both walked in, down 2 separate isles. there was a relatively brief sermon (thankfully without a reprise of the "women are inferior" theme), the bride and groom said vows pretty similar to the vows we've all heard 1000 times in movies, and the padrinhos had to promise again to help out the couple. then they all had to sign the church book to prove they were married, and there was a special song for the signing, as one by one they danced across the room waving a bic pen in the air. and now they were religiously married (way to be married #3).

after the church wedding the entire party returned to their vehicles for a parade around town, which stopped in places of the bride and groom's choosing (a park, along the waterfront, etc.) for them to take pretty pictures. when that was all over everyone went to a big banquet hall for the reception, which was about what you'd expect. lots of food, festive atmosphere, a ceremonial giving of gifts (but not from the immediate family, we had a separate gift-giving party the next day), dancing. at the end of the evening the bride threw the bouquet and the groom threw one of his socks (yeah, ew?). the next day, as i said, the groom's family gathered at the house we were at and we gave our presents. we ate some yummy zambezian food (i'd been missing it for several days!), and late that night we headed back north. the groom came with us, they didn't even have time for a honeymoon.

and way to be married #4? that would be just living together and having children. obviously this is a living option for couples in the us, but i don't know of people who cohabitate but refer to each other as husband and wife. and especially having children "out of wedlock" is still at least something to comment on. but here it's totally common. as you can imagine, those other 3 weddings cost quite a bit of money, and not everyone can afford that, and who wants to wait to have children? so, for instance, my friend and neighbor gina, who lives with her husband and 4 children and is building a second house, has informed me that she and her husband are hoping to be able to get married next year.

ok, i don't think i have the energy to write more right now....until later!

formações

that's portuguese for trainings, and it's the reason i haven't posted in so long, trainings galore! i warned of some of them in my last post, oh so long ago, but more have appeared to occupy my time since then.

in mid-April i went back to nampula for a week for the JOMA (youth for change and action) conference. i brought 4 members of AJOCS, the youth theater group i've been working with that includes several peer educators, 3 as students and one as a counterpart. the JOMA conference was a lot of fun - it felt a little like summer camp. we were at a "hotel" a little outside the city, with extensive grounds, and lots of separate buildings like cabins (really, like summer camp). there were 16 groups from 16 high schools (well, minus my group which isn't school-based) from Zambezia, Nampula, and Cabo Delgado provinces, doing activities in theater, journalism, photography, and community art (murals). every day in the morning there were gender sessions for the boys (which i unfortunately can't comment on because i wasn't allowed to attend, boo!) while the professors and the pcvs went to sessions on leadership. in the afternoon were tech sessions in the four areas i mentioned above. in the evenings there were group activities - they split the boys into two groups, the pirates and ninjas, and every evening there was a different competition. they got really into it, and it was crazy and fun. did i mention it was like summer camp? i really had no idea what to expect from the JOMA conference, but i was very pleasantly surprised. it was very well organized (all pcv planned and run, so all the more impressive), and my kids (as i refer to them, tho i really shouldn't, 3 are 19 and one's 23!) were awesome. i was the envy of all the other pcvs, because my guys were all really well behaved, super enthusiastic, good participants, just awesome. and all 4 of them were involved in the final production. all the different tech groups worked towards a final project, and the theater group chose a theme (oppression of women), planned out a story, made all the props, and practiced all week, and they did a fabulous job. it was definitely a feel-good, feel-productive week.

i didn't come home after nampula, but went straight to milange (after 6 hours broken down by the side of the road and an overnight stop with some other pcvs). in milange i and 3 other fellow icap pcvs helped our bosses to train a new group of peer educators to work in the local health center and community. this training was more tiring to me. although i did less running around and had less responsibility, it was more mentally taxing to have to work to explain difficult concepts (HIV, volunteerism) to a group of people with a wide range of experiences, education levels, and languages (there were 3 being spoken!). but it was also really great to finally see how a peer educator training was run. there is a set curriculum that icap uses, but of course things change, people have questions on things the trainers think are simple, and we were always getting off schedule, so every night, after spending the whole day on our feet explaining things we'd go back to the hotel to re-hash the current day and plan the next, eat dinner, and then pass out. most days the pcvs just helped make sure people were understanding directions in group work, helped pass out materials, serve food, etc. but one day we ran the session on prevention, ie: we taught a group of 50 people to properly put condoms on bananas. it was pretty hilarious, and it went well.

after the long week in milange we got a little bit of a reward, we pcvs stayed an extra day and crossed the border into malawi! we just did a little day-trip to blantyre (about a 2 hour ride). it was a really interesting experience to compare malawi, however briefly and superficially, with mozambique. while some things seemed identical (same stuff being sold by the side of the road, same-looking women in brightly-patterned capulanas carrying things on their heads, same tiny houses, same gorgeous mountains), in many ways malawi is like a whole different world. not only do people speak english (in addition to the local language), but the second you cross the border the roads are wide, well-paved, and pothole-free, buildings look less dilapidated and there's less trash, and the chapas were comfortable and NOT overcrowded! it was surreal. we just went to blantyre, had "city food" (chai tea, ice cream, burritos, yogurt), and wandered around. we discovered, to our disappointment, that capulanas are more expensive there, so we didn't get any. and we discovered a nice craft market where for the first time in my life i haggled for earrings in english...so weird. and then we came home. it was a good day. which was followed by an awful day, after waking up at 3am to catch a chapa back, the road from milange is AWFULLY bumpy and dusty, our chapa was in terrible condition and very crowded, and when we finally got to our next stop and got out we discovered we were COVERED in fine red road dust. we looked like hell.

so after that i made it home, finally, and took a few weeks to re-settle into work and whatnot. then the second week of may i went back to nampula for another training, this one in permaculture (permanent agriculture). peace corps put it on for interested volunteers, and we all got to bring counterparts, so i brought one of my peer educators. it was only two days, but it was a really good training. the first day the trainer (an ex-pcv who now works for peace corps in tanzania) talked a little bit about the main concepts of permaculture and why it makes sense in so many ways for people here. in essence, the idea is that if you "double dig" (dig twice as deep as people usually do) then roots can go down instead of out to the sides and you can plan a lot more food in the same amount of space, and if you build good ditches and burms (dirt walls) to control the water flow, in times of little rain the ditches hold water in, and in times of too much they funnel it off so the garden doesn't get washed away. those things combined with good fertilization and management can lead to an up to 400% increase in production, which means you need to farm a lot less land to feed your family, or if you farm the same amount of land you can have a lot more production and have extra to sell, and you'll be more inclined to vary your crop (instead of planing all corn and rice cuz those are the staple foods and you can't afford to not have them) and have a healthier diet. anyway, after talking about that stuff for a little bit, we went on a little "nature walk" around the grounds of the hotel (same summer-camp place where JOMA was) to see things that were well or poorly planted, and things that grow wild that are really healthy. then, over the next day and a half, we built a garden. we cleared an area (i'm horrible at estimating areas/distances, but roughly around 15x30 feet), built a compost pile (way more complex than i'd originally thought), designed the layout for ditches, berms, and beds, and started digging. that was the first day. the second day we "double dug" to almost a meter deep (hard work!), fertilized with charcoal, ash, and manure, and planted corn, beans, pumpkins, lemon grass, and papaya trees, and learned a cool way to water tomato plants underground. and i'm going to stop writing about this cuz it's probably boring, anyone who is into gardens can ask me more about it. i'm not sure i ever knew i was into gardens, but i had a lot of fun, and i felt like it was a really worthwhile training, and my peer educator loved it and now we're talking about how to transmit the information to the other peer educators here in quelimane. and i'm trying to figure out how dig up any land in my teeny tiny courtyard to try it out for myself. and i discovered that there's lemongrass growing in my courtyard already so i can have yummy tea all the time!

SO, that was permaculture. if you think i'm done talking about trainings, you're wrong! a while back i mentioned that alison and i had been working on revising a slide presentation on HIV to use during the peer educator trainings? well we used it during the milange training, and it went well, which was pretty exciting. but the other slide presentations from the trainings, the existing curriculum, were pretty dry, sometimes hard to understand, and not very aesthetically pleasing. so we took it upon ourselves to make them better, which turned into a LONG process. so i've spent the past few weeks working on that, in addition to trying to get back into the swing of my peer educator activities, again. then at the end of last week we found out that, before icap ran the training for new peer educators in quelimane, they were going to run a training of trainers (TOT in the lingo) to train mozambican health workers and peer educators to train other peer educators in the future. an awesome idea, but not a lot of warning. some icap big-wigs are up from maputo to help run the training, and they want to give the newly formed trainers a complete manual and cd with the slides on it at the end, so alison and i have been working overtime this week to get them done, including a lot of sessions of people critiquing our work. it's not done meanly, and it's hard to argue with health professionals and mozambicans if they tell you it's better to do something a different way, but it can still be frustrating after putting so much effort in. but it's also really awesome to think that these things that we've been working on will go on to be used by others. so this training is probably going to go through saturday, then next week we're having the training of my new peer educators which i'm definitely excited about. i think some of the newly trained trainers might help run it, and all of my groups have seemed a little run down and tired lately, so hopefully the reinforcements will do us all a lot of good.

whew! and that's basically my life. the rain has pretty much stopped, the mud and puddles are gone, the nights are so cool i can sleep in pajama pants and sometimes a hoodie. i'm pretty happy there. and despite being happy about the training, i'll be glad when it's over and i can get back to other work - observing peer educator activities, trying to convince them to show up for meetings, doing gender and theater activities with my JOMA, working on writing a grant to help them do some activities, and planning a mini-permaculture training for my peer educators. that will take up my month of june at least, and i know i have some other activities planned for the months after that. it's crazy how time's flying! i constantly go back and forth between feeling super productive and like i'm doing nothing, between feeling like i have tons of time and no time left. and between being busy and then soaking up what little down time i have, i've become completely negligent with regards to email and snail mail, and for this i apologize. it doesn't mean i don't love you, i swear. hope everyone on the other end of this blog is doing well! oh! and your prize for having read this ridiculously long entry is some new picture on the picasa site! enjoy! :)

the last two months

Hi folks, sorry it’s been, I dunno, 1000 years since I’ve posted. What can I say, I’ve been busy (and yes, lazy). Ok, so in the past (gulp) 2 months here’s what I’ve been up to:

In February they celebrated Carnaval here. Quelimane is often called a “little Brasil” and part of that is their huge carnaval celebration, it’s by far the biggest one in the country. Carnaval here took place on two weekends, Friday-Sunday. There’s one part of the city where there’s a small roundabout, really a plaza, and they set up a stage there with a live band playing samba music. Groups of youth from all over the city (some organized by neighborhood, some by corporate sponsor) had been practicing samba routines for months, and they danced around and around the roundabout all night long, 3 nights in a row, I got tired just looking at them, but it was fun to see the different costumes, routines, etc. around the edges of the plaza and down the side streets were tons and tons of barracas (small booths/stands/bars), all basically the same, selling beer and spicy chicken on a stick. You could tell they’re striving to be like brasilian carnaval, which is a complaint of many people, that they don’t make it more their own, but I enjoyed the home-grown feel, it wasn’t fancy and flashy, but it was fun. Some of my American friends complained that the public doesn’t really dance, just the people in the groups. The public (ie: me) just stands and watches the dancing or sits at barracas and hangs out. Again, I thought it was fun! I went with different people every night, sometimes American friends, sometimes Mozambican. Every night I ran into people I knew (for being a city, quelimane is a small place), and most nights I made new friends. I just really enjoyed the atmosphere, the whole city enjoying itself together.

Shortly after that I had to go to a peace corps conference in Nampula, the capital of the next province (also called Nampula) to the north. The trip was about 10 hours on a medium-comfort bus. i got to see a lot of zambezia that I hadn’t seen yet (every inch of it is gorgeous), and at every stop the bus was overwhelmed with people selling fresh fruit and nuts and wooden toys and carvings and god knows what else, all for really cheap (I bought a bag full of guavas for 5 meticais, like 20 cents). Nampula is the 3rd biggest city in moz, so a pretty big deal. My first reaction when I got there was “this place is big,” (not overwhelmingly big, just significantly bigger than quelimane), the second was “they even have stoplights!” that pretty much summed up my impression of the city, because I really didn’t get to see much of it. Peace corps put us up in a nice hotel with great Indian-ish food at every meal and kept us busy for most of the day. The first few days were IST (in-service training), for just the moz13 group. We talked about how our first 3 months at site went, difficulties, frustrations, successes, etc. then we had two days of training on project development (essentially choosing and designing a project with community members, and applying for grants), and positive prevention (keeping hiv-positive people healthy is a prevention strategy because not only are they able to work and lead good lives, but if they’re healthy then their viral loads are lower and they are less likely to infect others). The next few days of the conference were Regionals, for all the PCVs in the region. There we basically caught up on policies, goings on in the pc-moz world, gave feedback about our projects (health/education) and training, and the like. The break from “reality” was nice, and it was good to see some people I hadn’t seen since training, and to meet more moz12ers. One night one of my friends had a birthday and we took her out dancing and had a great time. And I was lucky enough to be offered a ride back in an icap car (my boss took pity on all her icap babies), so I got to ride back in comfort, and see some other new parts of the province on the way back.

Since then I’ve been back at the work thing. Right before the conference, and then again a few weeks ago, I had meetings with my “big boss” as I refer to her (because she’s the head of the office as opposed to my direct supervisor), about the types of projects I could be working on, her expectations of me, etc, which were really helpful. As a result of those meetings, one new thing I’ve been working on is working with the digitadores (data entry guys) at the hospitals to check on their procedure for creating lists of abandoned patients to be searched for by the peer educators. The system was never fully implemented because of some technical and political hang-ups, so I’ve been learning how the system is working in reality, and explaining how it’s supposed to work, and where there are problems helping to answer questions or come up with solutions. It’s been really interesting to be involved in a different side of the work that the peer educators do (without these lists being done properly and on time, the peer educators can’t do their job), and to see more of the behind the scenes at the office level (coming up with ideas for training the digitadores in the system, etc). I’ve also been working with Alison to improve a presentation explaining HIV in basic terms to future peer educators during their training. It’s a really good exercise in changing my thinking patters, because the way that I might explain HIV to an educated American is not the way I can or should explain it to a Mozambican with sometimes only a few years of schooling. Anyway, those two projects have been occupying most of my time the past few weeks. I’ve also still been going to the health centers to watch the palestras (speeches), going to meetings with the peer educators (including one attempt last week to bring all the groups together to give my observations on things they can improve on), I’ve gotten to go on a another busca and another outing to visit patients, and a trip with some peer educators to give a lecture at a small hospital in an outlying neighborhood of the city, a very different experience from their normal work because this hospital doesn’t offer ARV treatment, they don’t even have HIV testing, so the knowledge level of the patients was very different. So I’ve been much busier at work, which is awesome.

Another thing I’ve been doing is going to meetings of a youth group called AJOCS (association of youths in the fight against AIDS), several of whom are peer educators. This group does theater pieces about HIV-themes, and they sing as well. I’ve been meeting with them because I am going to be taking a few of them to a conference in Nampula next week. The conference is for JOMA (youths for change and action), a group started by pcvs in moz in schools all over the country for adolescent boys to learn about some communications medium (art, music, theater, journalism or photography), get technical training in it, and tie it in to discussions of gender inequality and HIV, with the goal of reducing HIV transmission among their peers. There is a similar group for girls (REDES), and JOMA groups can also include girls now, so I’m bringing 3 boys and a girl to the conference, then we’ll come back and share what we learned with the entire AJOCS group. I’ve seen several of their theater pieces, and they’re really good, but almost none of them have ever had formal training, so this will be a good opportunity for them. So I’ll be back in Nampula for a week, and right after that I’m going to Milange, over on the Malawi border, for a training for some new peer educators from that area. We’ve been waiting for quite a while for these trainings to happen, so I’m excited one is finally nailed down! The training for new peer educators for quelimane should happen sometime in may.

The other major activity in my life these days is avoiding mud and puddles. It’s been raining a lot more (at least a little almost every day, some days utter downpours), and many parts of the city, including my neighborhood, are majorly flooded. The entrance to my road has been under water for weeks, so to get out I have to cut through a neighbor’s yard to the next road, which is super muddy and some days has puddles. Then my whole walk into town is on dirt roads which are mud roads if it’s rained in the past day. The main road to town has always had puddles, but there used to be a small path along the edge I could walk along. Those puddles have become lakes so I’ve been using a detour around that intersection. Now the detour is under water. I cannot get out of my house without walking through mud or water. Many days I can be seen doing ridiculous things like hanging onto a fence and inching along a tiny ledge trying to avoid the water. I feel like I’m on some adventure reality tv show. Not I’m not afraid of water, or mud, although it’s nice to get to work not completely covered. But the water here, well, it’s cholera season….so I try to avoid the water, but some days I just have to say screw it and wade through and scrub the hell out of my feet when I get home. So yeah, a significant portion of my life these days is spent mapping out routes into and out of my neighborhood and walking gingerly through muddy areas trying not to get completely mud-covered.

So that’s me! How is everyone back there? Sorry I’ve been lamer lately at the email and letters, but please keep them coming cuz I love hearing about how people are doing, or just how life is going over there. I hope everyone is well, and I promise to those threatening me that I will try to update in a more timely manner next time!

work?

here's what i've been doing: i've been going every morning to one of the three hospitals icap works in. the peer educators give palestras (lectures) about various health topics to waiting patients, and i'm trying to observe them to get an idea of how their work goes, what kind of information they're spreading, etc. they start between 6:30 and 7 (am!) so i have to get up FAR earlier than i'd otherwise opt for, and it's unfortunately often already hot at that hour. and, also unfortunately, they often either don't show up on the days i go, or have already given their talks by the time i get there. the few times i have gotten to see the talks they have mostly been given in echuabo, the local language, which i only know one word in so far (manguana, means tomorrow). after the palestra i tend to just hang out with the peer educators and other hospital staff to try and get a better idea of the work they do and the process the patients go through. each of the three hospitals has a different setup, different levels of staffing, and different roles for the peer educators, so i'm still learning the system in each place. because of the nature of the agreement between peace corps and the moz government i'm not allowed to work with patients directly because i am not a trained health worker, but i have been able to observe many steps in the patient process, from registering new patients, to accompanying them to various appointments, to counseling sessions, to picking up their medications. as i said, the peer educators' role varies from site to site, but they are basically supporting the patients by explaining the process to them, walking them to their different appointments within the hospital, and answering questions and providing moral support. this also is a huge help to the hospital staff as the hospitals tend to be overcrowded and understaffed. the staff and the peer educators work very hard under very hectic, stressful conditions, and i get tired just watching them do their work!

one of the other activities the peer educators do is called busca (search) for patients who have abandoned treatment. they find out why the patient has abandoned (often has to do with the distance and/or cost of transportation, because they don't have enough food and they don't feel strong enough to continue treatment, because of fear of or actual discrimination within their family or community, or because of a misunderstanding of how often they are supposed to take their medication or visit the hospital), and provide moral support and try to convince them to return to the hospital. i have only gotten to go along on one busca so far, and the patient was actually at the hospital that day, and hadn't abandoned, there was just a mix-up with the data collection! but it's a really integral part of the peer educators' work and one i'm looking forward to participating in more. another activity that the peer educators do is called cha positivo (positive tea), which are meetings open to everyone (positive and non-positive patients, hospital staff, family and friends, etc.) to discuss issues surrounding hiv and aids, transmission, prevention, treatment, adherence, discrimination, etc. they happen once a month at each of the three hospitals, and so far i've attended two. they involve theater skits, speeches, and open discussions about all these issues, and provide a safe space for people to ask questions or talk about their experiences. afterwords there's a little snack (hence calling it a tea). it's a really interesting activity. between the two i've attended there was a large disparity in the amount of participation of non-peer educators and in the level of interest in the discussion, but helping the peer educators improve the format of future chas to be more participatory is one of my projects/goals, so we'll see how those go in the future.

so as i said i'm almost always at a hospital in the mornings, i often go home for lunch in the middle of the day, and then i have often come into the office in the afternoon to catch up on internet, catch up with Alison and my bosses, and do things to help the peer educators like make photocopies, turn in requisitions, remind staff of things they said they'd do for them, etc. Alison and i have also started offering informal english and computer lessons to interested office staff a few afternoons a week. there's been a lot of interest (although not always a corresponding attendance!), and it's a nice way to get to know some office staff better and to be able to support them in a small way.

so i've definitely been doing work, at least in the sense that i've been going places and talking to people every day, but so many days i feel i'm never going to figure out exactly what i'm supposed to be doing here! i think it's taking longer because i have 3 groups to work with, so it's taking 3 times as long to get to know people, develop relationships with them, and figure out what things i can help with. but it is going......slooooowwly. later this month icap is going to be training some new peer educators in quelimane to help reinforce two of the groups that have fewer people, and i'll get to participate in that training, which i'm looking forward to because it will give me a better idea of what type of work the peer educators are trained to do, and what areas i can work with them on.

let's see, in non-work news, i got my furniture and it has changed my life and made my house SO much homier. i have made several good friends in my neighborhood and am meeting new neighbors all the time. i've been cooking and baking (in a dutch oven, aka a small pot inside a larger pot) up a storm which is really fun, but it's a good thing i walk a lot! i discovered i like pineapple, then discovered that if you don't eat it fast enough it ferments, and therefor discovered how to make a pineapple upside-down cake! i bought a bike, which made getting around to the different hospitals much easier, but it got stolen from one of the hospitals last week (boo!). but i'll replace it soon, and buy a lock! between city traffic and GIANT and FREQUENT potholes, biking can be a bit terrifying, but it also gave me a sense of independence, and as much as i like walking sometimes it's good to be able to get places more quickly, and i certainly didn't mind the extra exercise! it's been raining more so it's cooled off a bit so i'm MUCH happier temperature-wise. and one of my favorite new things that makes me smile is the fact that bike taxi drivers, when they want to get around someone and they don't have a bell, yell "bee-beep" at whoever's in their way!

as always, i apologize for the delays in posting, and i hope everyone reading this is doing well. other than being hot (although less so) and tired from getting up early and running around all over the place, i am doing fine. beijos (kisses)!

pictures

This is my house!

I've put some other pictures up on the Picasa website, I have tons more but uploading is slow. Hope everyone's doing well! I promise more written updates soon!

settling in - and new address!

oh my goodness, where to begin. i know it's been a thousand years since i've updated, but i swear i've tried! every time i've gone to the internet in the past few weeks it's been closed, not working, or with a wicked long line and people cutting.

my province trip was good. for people who like looking at maps, i got to see the cities of mocuba, milange, and gurue. most of the trip was on "highways" of hardpacked dirt, so it was quite an adventure. zambezia is beautfiul, i got to see green fields, huge craggy mountains, boulderish hills, and tea plantations, and i can't wait to travel around it more and do some hiking!

my holidays went well. i hope all yours did as well! i spent christmas eve at alison(the other icap volunteer in quelimane)'s house with some other volunteers. we ate yummy food and drank gin and watched movies and decorated a small christmas tree with pipecleaner ornaments. on christmas day we watched a ridiculous bollywood movie in a hot sweaty theater full of screaming children. interesting thing about christmas was that businesses were closed and the streets of quelimane were empty - except for hordes of children running around unsupervised! i felt like i was in a sci-fi movie where all the adults have disappeared. for new years i traveled to mocuba and spent time with 6 other moz13 friends. we had a grand old time hanging out, sweating together (mocuba's hot!), cooking, eating, drinking, reflecting, etc.

so i'm now back in my city and my house and the holidays are over and i'm finally starting to settle in. i'm an easy 30-ish minute walk from town, so most days i walk into town to run errands or just poke around and find out where i can get stuff. when i need to get somewhere fast or i'm too hot or tired to walk (or trying to beat the rain!), i take a bike taxi, an exhilarating/bumpy ride on the back of a bike. on the home front, i've comissioned a table and bookshelves to be made so i can stop storing all my stuff on the floor. i've bought a two-burner gas stove but can't use it til i get the wooden table to put it on (i have the feeling it would melt right through my plastic table!) so i've been cooking on my one-burner coal stove outside every night, pretty successfully.....with one burner and only one pot at the moment i've been eating a lot of pasta, but i love pasta, so it's all good! my landlord, oscar, has been really helpful in showing me around my neighborhood and helping me get stuff, like the furniture, and he's nice and worries about me if i come home late. i made friends with a woman who works at a market in town and hung out with her yesterday. and i've made preliminary friendships with some other neighbors. so all in all things are good. and i start work tomorrow, in some capacity or another, so i'll have more to update on the work front soon.

but i wanted to get some updates up, and also get out my new address!

Sarah Farnsworth, VCP
ICAP Columbia C.P. 395
Quelimane, MOZAMBIQUE

so anyone who sent me mail to the old address it will get to me eventually when someone from pc comes up here from maputo, but this address should be good from now on!

i also wanted to let the world know that due to flash drive issues i have managed to lose maybe 8 emails from various people, sent in the beginning-middle of december, so if i don't reply to any emails from that time frame it's not because i don't love you anymore, it's just that i'm techonolgically impaired. and if i don't reply to emails from other time periods, it's just cuz i'm lazy.

that's all for now. as always, if people have specific questions feel free to post them. when everything's new and there's so much going on around me it's hard to know what to focus on on here! and i do respond to emails (eventually), and i've actually been shockingly good at responding to snail mail (except to my immediate family, sorry!), so feel free to send questions/messages/hugs in any format you like. até a próxima (until next time)!