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.