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!