12 April 2010
22 March 2010
kicking off my second year
in mid-january we had our mid-service conference, my entire training group together again. it was really cool to see some people i hadn't seen since training, tho also weird and overwhelming at times, i found myself often retreating to my little zambezia group of friends. at the conference we talked about a lot of stuff, including m&e (monitoring and evaluation, a necessary evil), savings clubs (more on that later), and the increased peace corps budget and enrollment goals and the possibility of extending for a third year of service (yes, i'm thinking about it, but don't worry, i'd be home in december no matter what). also got a cavity filled and had a doctor's appointment, no parasites or anything!
once that week was over, a smaller group of us stayed an extra few days to plan the joma and redes conferences. my loyal readers will remember way back in july i went to a meeting to plan the transfer of joma responsibilities from the old group to the new. this planning meeting was the shit from that transfer meeting hitting the fan. 7 or 8 of us sat around a table and ate greasy pizza and tried to plan out all the details of how JOMA's going to run this year. the meeting went well, but it was when it first started to hit home how much work this is going to be, planning conferences, managing money, writing new curriculum, designing and implementing stronger m&e tools...it's a lot of responsibility. the national coordinator and financial person are bearing the brunt of the headaches, but it's still a lot even for us regional underlings!
so JOMA is one of the things i've been focusing on most since i've been back at site. my main roles are in curriculum and trainer contacts. i've had to contact all the new pcvs to try to convince them to do joma, and find old and line up new technical and gender trainers. but the thing i've spent the most time on is the gender curriculum. joma has always had the purpose of working with youth (specifically boys) to promote gender equality through communications projects. but something we've decided to focus on more this year is the actual gender-related messages. in the past the conferences have been mostly about the communications areas, and only briefly touched on gender issues, and this year they're all about gender. also, the manuals the groups use only deal with their communications area. so what i did was go through a bunch of manuals that peace corps gives us, full of various activities that deal with topics such as gender, hiv, health, self-esteem, etc. from these manuals, i created lists of activities that lend themselves easily to one of the communications areas of joma (theater, music, journalism, photography, art), so that groups can use them as suggestions of activities that more directly address gender issues while still working within their chosen area. eventually i'd like to have all the activities typed out so that we can have an actual manual tailored to gender activities for JOMA, but right now it's just an organized list. on top of that, based on a conversation the joma coordinator had with a representative from usaid (who funds the joma project), i had to write up (this time actually typing out) a gender curriculum for the conferences, to be able to hand to trained gender trainers, and then cut that down into a mini version to present to the technical trainers so they're on the same page. this may not sound like a lot, but it involved going through a lot of books, in english and portuguese, and it took quite a while. i felt like i was in school again doing a research project.
on the icap side of things, i haven't actually been doing a whole lot that's noteworthy. towards the end of last year the provincial health director trained another batch of peer educators for quelimane, so there are now over 100 of them, far too many for me to keep track of or even think about doing anything that involves all of them. i still go to the cha positivos and some of their meetings. several times lately groups have asked to meet with me to discuss doing a "project," a very vaguely defined term that usually has the expectations of receiving funds. in each of these meetings, i've talked with the group about what they want to do, always income generating projects. it's a great idea in theory, but designing and implementing an effective income generating project is a lot more difficult than most of them seem to realize, frankly it's more than i'm sure i can handle, and i have yet to have a group present me with a really strong plan or show the initiative to tackle the difficult questions. i think they have a strong desire to work to earn money, but their lack of desire to deal with questions of storage, division of profits, etc. means that i don't feel comfortable moving forward on any of the ideas i've seen so far. an idea that i've presented as an alternative is that of a savings group (or VSL, village savings and loan, the more official name). we talked about it at mid-service, and i have a few fellow pcvs working on it in various ways, and i really like the idea.
basically, a group of people choose to work together. they get together every week, and they have a minimum and a maximum amount they can save. it doesn't have to be much, whatever they think they can spare, basically those small amounts that would get spent on random whatever if they held on to them, but that they wouldn't miss if they go into the savings pot. so the group saves every week, stores it in a safe place, and once their collective savings is big enough, members who want to can ask for loans from the group. because the group is self-selecting there's a higher level of trust. they pay interest on the loans, but unlike with a bank the interest stays with the group, so that at the end of the year when they divvy up the fund, they'll get more than the amount they put in. it's very basic, but because of this groups can monitor themselves. it gives them access (in a limited way) to the services a bank would offer, which poorer people often wouldn't have access to in a more traditional setting. it gives them experience managing money in a setting where they're held accountable by their peers. and it gives them the opportunity to take out loans, which they can use for income generating activities on an individual basis, thereby getting rid of the concerns of a group not managing a project well. practically everyone does some kind of informal income generation here, whether it's sewing or farming or selling bottles of juice, and on their own, within their own experience and comfort level, they might have success they might not have if they grouped together and tried to take on a much larger-scale project.
anyway, that's the basic idea, and i'm pretty sold on it, and i know of many settings in which variations of it have worked well. and as i said, i've pitched the idea to the groups who have approached me recently wanting to do income generating activities. only one group has taken me up on it so far, i think the others either weren't convinced, or couldn't come to a consensus as a group, or said they didn't have enough money even for small weekly savings. but this one group, of 6 of the newly-trained peer educators, seem to be really into it! they started saving on their own after my first pitch, and since then we've worked together to write up the group's rules, worked out simple ways to record their savings, and talked about how to run a meeting so that things go smoothly and there's transparency with the money handling. it's still relatively new, but i feel really good about it. the only really necessary input into this type of project is a lock box that uses multiple different keys, to help ensure no one member has access to it alone. i've asked for support for this from icap, it hasn't happened yet, but i'm hopeful!
what else? i moved to a new house, about a month ago, just to the next neighborhood. my old house heated up like an oven, and i wasn't crazy about my neighbors, they were loud and not very friendly, and the neighborhood was up-and-coming ritzy so i didn't really feel like i was living "with the people." the house search was way harder than i thought it would be, and i ended up in a place that isn't very "peace corps" in many ways (although i think i still get too caught up in what peace corps "should be" and not what my life actually is), but is much better for me. it's another small dependencia behind a main house, the neighbors are friends of laras's and much friendlier. the house is tiny, but homey. has unnecessary comforts like air conditioning (the landlord insisted on putting it in!) and running water. has a nice big kitchen. and it's in a neighborhood that's more "average," some houses are really nice, but there's a wide variety of economic levels. there's a school down the street so i have small children staring at me and informing me that i'm white all the time. and there are two markets very nearby where i can go to buy food. and don't worry, there are new and different (and smellier) mud holes blocking my exits in this new house, so that all-important element of my life isn't gone. i still need to buy appropriate footwear. anyway, all in all, i'm much happier in my new home.
and i'm too tired to write any more, but we're pretty much caught up on the highlights of my life. as always, i apologize profusely for not communicating more with my nearest and dearest. i've had far far less down time than i did in the old days (when i didn't write either). there are still a lot of ideas churning and future plans and possibilities, so i promise that, at least here, i'll have something to say in a month when i remember i have a blog again, or when people start harassing me, whichever comes first. i miss you all! beijos.
once that week was over, a smaller group of us stayed an extra few days to plan the joma and redes conferences. my loyal readers will remember way back in july i went to a meeting to plan the transfer of joma responsibilities from the old group to the new. this planning meeting was the shit from that transfer meeting hitting the fan. 7 or 8 of us sat around a table and ate greasy pizza and tried to plan out all the details of how JOMA's going to run this year. the meeting went well, but it was when it first started to hit home how much work this is going to be, planning conferences, managing money, writing new curriculum, designing and implementing stronger m&e tools...it's a lot of responsibility. the national coordinator and financial person are bearing the brunt of the headaches, but it's still a lot even for us regional underlings!
so JOMA is one of the things i've been focusing on most since i've been back at site. my main roles are in curriculum and trainer contacts. i've had to contact all the new pcvs to try to convince them to do joma, and find old and line up new technical and gender trainers. but the thing i've spent the most time on is the gender curriculum. joma has always had the purpose of working with youth (specifically boys) to promote gender equality through communications projects. but something we've decided to focus on more this year is the actual gender-related messages. in the past the conferences have been mostly about the communications areas, and only briefly touched on gender issues, and this year they're all about gender. also, the manuals the groups use only deal with their communications area. so what i did was go through a bunch of manuals that peace corps gives us, full of various activities that deal with topics such as gender, hiv, health, self-esteem, etc. from these manuals, i created lists of activities that lend themselves easily to one of the communications areas of joma (theater, music, journalism, photography, art), so that groups can use them as suggestions of activities that more directly address gender issues while still working within their chosen area. eventually i'd like to have all the activities typed out so that we can have an actual manual tailored to gender activities for JOMA, but right now it's just an organized list. on top of that, based on a conversation the joma coordinator had with a representative from usaid (who funds the joma project), i had to write up (this time actually typing out) a gender curriculum for the conferences, to be able to hand to trained gender trainers, and then cut that down into a mini version to present to the technical trainers so they're on the same page. this may not sound like a lot, but it involved going through a lot of books, in english and portuguese, and it took quite a while. i felt like i was in school again doing a research project.
on the icap side of things, i haven't actually been doing a whole lot that's noteworthy. towards the end of last year the provincial health director trained another batch of peer educators for quelimane, so there are now over 100 of them, far too many for me to keep track of or even think about doing anything that involves all of them. i still go to the cha positivos and some of their meetings. several times lately groups have asked to meet with me to discuss doing a "project," a very vaguely defined term that usually has the expectations of receiving funds. in each of these meetings, i've talked with the group about what they want to do, always income generating projects. it's a great idea in theory, but designing and implementing an effective income generating project is a lot more difficult than most of them seem to realize, frankly it's more than i'm sure i can handle, and i have yet to have a group present me with a really strong plan or show the initiative to tackle the difficult questions. i think they have a strong desire to work to earn money, but their lack of desire to deal with questions of storage, division of profits, etc. means that i don't feel comfortable moving forward on any of the ideas i've seen so far. an idea that i've presented as an alternative is that of a savings group (or VSL, village savings and loan, the more official name). we talked about it at mid-service, and i have a few fellow pcvs working on it in various ways, and i really like the idea.
basically, a group of people choose to work together. they get together every week, and they have a minimum and a maximum amount they can save. it doesn't have to be much, whatever they think they can spare, basically those small amounts that would get spent on random whatever if they held on to them, but that they wouldn't miss if they go into the savings pot. so the group saves every week, stores it in a safe place, and once their collective savings is big enough, members who want to can ask for loans from the group. because the group is self-selecting there's a higher level of trust. they pay interest on the loans, but unlike with a bank the interest stays with the group, so that at the end of the year when they divvy up the fund, they'll get more than the amount they put in. it's very basic, but because of this groups can monitor themselves. it gives them access (in a limited way) to the services a bank would offer, which poorer people often wouldn't have access to in a more traditional setting. it gives them experience managing money in a setting where they're held accountable by their peers. and it gives them the opportunity to take out loans, which they can use for income generating activities on an individual basis, thereby getting rid of the concerns of a group not managing a project well. practically everyone does some kind of informal income generation here, whether it's sewing or farming or selling bottles of juice, and on their own, within their own experience and comfort level, they might have success they might not have if they grouped together and tried to take on a much larger-scale project.
anyway, that's the basic idea, and i'm pretty sold on it, and i know of many settings in which variations of it have worked well. and as i said, i've pitched the idea to the groups who have approached me recently wanting to do income generating activities. only one group has taken me up on it so far, i think the others either weren't convinced, or couldn't come to a consensus as a group, or said they didn't have enough money even for small weekly savings. but this one group, of 6 of the newly-trained peer educators, seem to be really into it! they started saving on their own after my first pitch, and since then we've worked together to write up the group's rules, worked out simple ways to record their savings, and talked about how to run a meeting so that things go smoothly and there's transparency with the money handling. it's still relatively new, but i feel really good about it. the only really necessary input into this type of project is a lock box that uses multiple different keys, to help ensure no one member has access to it alone. i've asked for support for this from icap, it hasn't happened yet, but i'm hopeful!
what else? i moved to a new house, about a month ago, just to the next neighborhood. my old house heated up like an oven, and i wasn't crazy about my neighbors, they were loud and not very friendly, and the neighborhood was up-and-coming ritzy so i didn't really feel like i was living "with the people." the house search was way harder than i thought it would be, and i ended up in a place that isn't very "peace corps" in many ways (although i think i still get too caught up in what peace corps "should be" and not what my life actually is), but is much better for me. it's another small dependencia behind a main house, the neighbors are friends of laras's and much friendlier. the house is tiny, but homey. has unnecessary comforts like air conditioning (the landlord insisted on putting it in!) and running water. has a nice big kitchen. and it's in a neighborhood that's more "average," some houses are really nice, but there's a wide variety of economic levels. there's a school down the street so i have small children staring at me and informing me that i'm white all the time. and there are two markets very nearby where i can go to buy food. and don't worry, there are new and different (and smellier) mud holes blocking my exits in this new house, so that all-important element of my life isn't gone. i still need to buy appropriate footwear. anyway, all in all, i'm much happier in my new home.
and i'm too tired to write any more, but we're pretty much caught up on the highlights of my life. as always, i apologize profusely for not communicating more with my nearest and dearest. i've had far far less down time than i did in the old days (when i didn't write either). there are still a lot of ideas churning and future plans and possibilities, so i promise that, at least here, i'll have something to say in a month when i remember i have a blog again, or when people start harassing me, whichever comes first. i miss you all! beijos.
04 February 2010
tanzania
hi all, is it even worth mentioning that i'm super behind on this as usual? i didn't think so.
SO, my big vacation. i went to tanzania to meet my dear brother john for two weeks after christmas. my trip started with the long bus ride to nampula (ya can't get there from here in quelimane by plane), running around there doing last minute errands (buying dollars to pay my tanzania entry visa, getting my doctor to fax me my proof of yellow fever vaccine which, interestingly, i needed to show to EXIT mozambique but not to ENTER tanzania), then flying to dar es salaam, henceforth known as dar. got to dar and my sweet brother, who had gotten there the night before, had made his way back to the airport to meet me. the taxi ride to our hotel reminded me a lot of my first ride from the airport to hotel in maputo, through the outskirts of the city, past car dealerships and industrial areas, but prettier public transport, brightly-colored "dalla dallas" (chapas) everywhere. dar is BIG - definitely bigger than maputo, so pretty overwhelming for me at first. that first day we got ourselves situated, figured out that, sadly, many restaurants don't serve beer because of the significant muslim population, and decided to head to zanzibar the next day.
getting to zanzibar is kind of crazy, the port is predictably bustling, and there are seemingly dozens of companies selling fares, and of course everyone you meet is trying to convince you to get on their boat or their friend's boat. so again, a little overwhelming, but we got a nice small, fast boat, maybe an hour and a half of a smooth ride over beautiful blue waters past spits of pristine white sand and a nice mix of commercial motor boats and traditional sail boats. our first day on zanzibar we just wandered around the main city of stone town, here being disappointed by the lack of cold drinks - apparently THE cable bringing electricity to the island had somehow been cut, so everywhere (that could it afford it) was running on generators, which were often reserved for silly things like light, and not refrigeration of beverages. and that first night happened to be new year's eve, so we were wanting cold drinks even more to get in the spirit of things, so we had a pretty lame new year's if you're judging by how late we stayed up/out. but it was still fun, that night (and every night in the city thereafter) we had dinner in this beautiful waterfront park, where tons of vendors set up stands and you can buy all varieties of meat and seafood grilled on sticks, soups, salads, falafel, pizza, and really yummy sugar cane juice with lime and ginger.
the next day we went on a spice tour, a must-do on zanzibar. a delightful little man led a group of us around the jungle pointing out plants and trees bearing pretty much every spice you've ever heard of, as well as several fruits and flowers you probably haven't. everything smelled delicious. on the tour we also saw the ruins of an old bath house built by a former sultan, had a delicious lunch of rice pilau and coconut curry, and went to a gorgeous beach.
the next day we decided to head to the "real" beach. zanzibar has several popular beach towns, and we picked one that was supposed to be a little less touristy and busy, called jambiani. we didn't have a hotel reservation, just recommendations, and the bus drivers brought us to the places they recommended, which i thought seemed like a pretty sketchy system, and probably can be, but worked out wonderfully for us because they brought us to a place that was too new to be in any guide book, only had 4 bungalows and a tiny restaurant, and was super peaceful. we spent 3 nights there, and it was the most relaxed i've been in over a year. we spent long hours sitting on the deck of our cute little bungalow reading and half sleeping and listening to the waves. we took long walks up and down the beach. we ate lunch in a different beachside restaurant every day, and delicious dinners at our hotel every night. on our last full day we went snorkeling on the reef just offshore, with a chill guy named "captain james" and his crew, and just us. they sailed us across the bay which was a dozen amazing shades of blue-green, out to the reef where we walked around, captain james kept picking up star fish and sea cucumbers and other random crazy things, and at one point he shoved a stick into a hole and killed an octopus! eventually we went back to the boat and snorkeled around little underwater coral islands, i felt like i was on the discovery channel, it's so quiet and peaceful under the water. at one point i spent several minutes waving my hands and making faces at a group of clown fish who were swimming around me curiously.
eventually we had to leave the beach, we returned to stone town for one more day, had fun wandering around windy allies, bought souvenirs from a nice masaai vendor we had met, had one last dinner in the park. the next day we headed back to hot, busy dar for one night, and the next day we got picked up to head out on a safari! this was our big splurge of the trip, john didn't want to come to africa without seeing wild animals. tanzania is home to some of the most famous game parks, like serengetti and ngorogoro crater, and they're supposed to be spectacular, but because they're spectacular and famous they're also supposed to be pretty much always crawling with tourists and tours and i couldn't wrap my mind around seeing wonders of "nature" surrounded by cars. so we arranged to go to some of the southern, more off-the-beaten-track parks. the first day we drove to the udzungwa mountains. on the way we drove through mikumi national park - the highway goes right through it - and there we saw our first big animals, elephants, some zebra, a lion guarding an elephant that had been hit by a car. i'm used to spotting deer, skunks, and turkeys from the car, but it's pretty wild to think about elephants along the highway not being noteworthy! the place we stayed the first night was a lovely little camp, called "hondo-hondo" (the swahili name for the hornbill, which were flying all around), on the side of a hill right at the edge of the national park. we were the only guests there, we stayed in a little "banda" (hut/bungalow), ate outside, and at night sat by a campfire and tried to communicate with the camp staff, who didn't speak any english, about the elephants ("tembo") we could hear trumpeting and rustling in the trees down the road! it was super peaceful, and wonderfully cool.
the next day we took a long drive to ruaha national park. we felt like we were in the park long before we actually reached the gate, because it was so isolated. and once in the park it was still another 15 minutes drive to the camp. the park was beautiful, rolling green hills, and awesome, quirky baobab trees everywhere. it was dusk as we were getting there, and as we drove in we saw some elephants right by the car, and some giraffes on the top of a nearby hill lovely-ly silhouetted against the darkening sky. it's hard to explain the sense of wonder at seeing large animals in the wild that are almost mythical to me, in the sense that i always thought of them as far away and not part of my world. john said he felt like he was in jurassic park in the scene where they first see the dinosaurs, and i think that really captures the feeling. consequently, i had the theme song from jurassic park rolling around in my head for the remainder of the trip! at this camp we slept in a round tin banda, the camp was quiet, right along a river, and guarded by an armed guard which made me a bit nervous to go outside to pee at night!
the next morning we left early for a game drive around the park. the game drive is the focal point of a safari, up until now we'd really just been driving to destinations. we drove around for about 5 hours in this beautiful park. it was kind of hazy and misty, which made it hard to take good pictures, but gave it a sort of mystical, surreal feeling. we could go for long stretches without seeing animals, but we saw tons: elephants, giraffe, zebra, lions (including one with a freshly dead zebra), impala, gazelle, hippos, baboons, storks, ibis (and i'm sure other birds whose names i'm forgetting), water buck, giant lizard, warthog, dik-dik (tiny deer) and some fast little rodent that looks sort of like a ground hog but apparently is a close cousin of the elephant. this was all pretty incredible, but the best thing for me was that we only passed 1 other car the whole morning, no other humans in site until we got back near the camp for lunch. in the afternoon we went on a "walking safari," just me, john and an armed guard. we walked for about an hour and half along the river, it was unbelievably peaceful. we saw alligators, hippos, baboons, and giraffes.
the next day we drove back to mikumi. once we had settled in there, at a campsite at the base of a huge baobab tree, we set out for an evening game drive. we saw some lions pretty near our camp (unsettling!), and were headed to another part of the park when our car got stuck in the mud at the bottom of a dip! not a big deal, we missed the game drive, but kind of enjoyed just sitting there letting the world go on around us. it started to pour, making it more impossible for the car to get out, and sometime after nightfall a park car came to get us, and we had to take a long route back to our camp in the back of a pickup truck, in the pouring rain. john said it was his favorite part of the trip! we got dry and warmed up and had dinner and went to bed early. the next morning we had one last game drive. we avoided the mud this time. mikumi is pretty, tho not as pretty as ruaha for me, it was a flat open plain, and in the morning covered in mist. it was pretty cool to see long graceful giraffe necks appear out of the mist, and we saw tons of them that morning. saw elephants, hippo, crocs, impala again. and water buffalo, and some new birds, and on the way out of the park, one lonely wildebeest. then we had our long drive back to dar.
we spent one last day in dar before leaving. we finally knew our way around the area of our hotel, so we just wandered around, looking for craft shops and places to buy gifts, tried some new restaurants, and went back to some old ones. it was a good last day, tho i, at least, was tired and ready to go home by that point. of course my going home was dragged out by having to spend another night in nampula then a long bus-ride home and i was thoroughly exhausted by the time i got here. it was a really great trip tho. i definitely recommend tanzania, it has great food, beautiful sights, and very friendly people. if you want ok pictures of all these wonders, mine are already up on webshots. if you want professional quality, contact my brother.
SO, my big vacation. i went to tanzania to meet my dear brother john for two weeks after christmas. my trip started with the long bus ride to nampula (ya can't get there from here in quelimane by plane), running around there doing last minute errands (buying dollars to pay my tanzania entry visa, getting my doctor to fax me my proof of yellow fever vaccine which, interestingly, i needed to show to EXIT mozambique but not to ENTER tanzania), then flying to dar es salaam, henceforth known as dar. got to dar and my sweet brother, who had gotten there the night before, had made his way back to the airport to meet me. the taxi ride to our hotel reminded me a lot of my first ride from the airport to hotel in maputo, through the outskirts of the city, past car dealerships and industrial areas, but prettier public transport, brightly-colored "dalla dallas" (chapas) everywhere. dar is BIG - definitely bigger than maputo, so pretty overwhelming for me at first. that first day we got ourselves situated, figured out that, sadly, many restaurants don't serve beer because of the significant muslim population, and decided to head to zanzibar the next day.
getting to zanzibar is kind of crazy, the port is predictably bustling, and there are seemingly dozens of companies selling fares, and of course everyone you meet is trying to convince you to get on their boat or their friend's boat. so again, a little overwhelming, but we got a nice small, fast boat, maybe an hour and a half of a smooth ride over beautiful blue waters past spits of pristine white sand and a nice mix of commercial motor boats and traditional sail boats. our first day on zanzibar we just wandered around the main city of stone town, here being disappointed by the lack of cold drinks - apparently THE cable bringing electricity to the island had somehow been cut, so everywhere (that could it afford it) was running on generators, which were often reserved for silly things like light, and not refrigeration of beverages. and that first night happened to be new year's eve, so we were wanting cold drinks even more to get in the spirit of things, so we had a pretty lame new year's if you're judging by how late we stayed up/out. but it was still fun, that night (and every night in the city thereafter) we had dinner in this beautiful waterfront park, where tons of vendors set up stands and you can buy all varieties of meat and seafood grilled on sticks, soups, salads, falafel, pizza, and really yummy sugar cane juice with lime and ginger.
the next day we went on a spice tour, a must-do on zanzibar. a delightful little man led a group of us around the jungle pointing out plants and trees bearing pretty much every spice you've ever heard of, as well as several fruits and flowers you probably haven't. everything smelled delicious. on the tour we also saw the ruins of an old bath house built by a former sultan, had a delicious lunch of rice pilau and coconut curry, and went to a gorgeous beach.
the next day we decided to head to the "real" beach. zanzibar has several popular beach towns, and we picked one that was supposed to be a little less touristy and busy, called jambiani. we didn't have a hotel reservation, just recommendations, and the bus drivers brought us to the places they recommended, which i thought seemed like a pretty sketchy system, and probably can be, but worked out wonderfully for us because they brought us to a place that was too new to be in any guide book, only had 4 bungalows and a tiny restaurant, and was super peaceful. we spent 3 nights there, and it was the most relaxed i've been in over a year. we spent long hours sitting on the deck of our cute little bungalow reading and half sleeping and listening to the waves. we took long walks up and down the beach. we ate lunch in a different beachside restaurant every day, and delicious dinners at our hotel every night. on our last full day we went snorkeling on the reef just offshore, with a chill guy named "captain james" and his crew, and just us. they sailed us across the bay which was a dozen amazing shades of blue-green, out to the reef where we walked around, captain james kept picking up star fish and sea cucumbers and other random crazy things, and at one point he shoved a stick into a hole and killed an octopus! eventually we went back to the boat and snorkeled around little underwater coral islands, i felt like i was on the discovery channel, it's so quiet and peaceful under the water. at one point i spent several minutes waving my hands and making faces at a group of clown fish who were swimming around me curiously.
eventually we had to leave the beach, we returned to stone town for one more day, had fun wandering around windy allies, bought souvenirs from a nice masaai vendor we had met, had one last dinner in the park. the next day we headed back to hot, busy dar for one night, and the next day we got picked up to head out on a safari! this was our big splurge of the trip, john didn't want to come to africa without seeing wild animals. tanzania is home to some of the most famous game parks, like serengetti and ngorogoro crater, and they're supposed to be spectacular, but because they're spectacular and famous they're also supposed to be pretty much always crawling with tourists and tours and i couldn't wrap my mind around seeing wonders of "nature" surrounded by cars. so we arranged to go to some of the southern, more off-the-beaten-track parks. the first day we drove to the udzungwa mountains. on the way we drove through mikumi national park - the highway goes right through it - and there we saw our first big animals, elephants, some zebra, a lion guarding an elephant that had been hit by a car. i'm used to spotting deer, skunks, and turkeys from the car, but it's pretty wild to think about elephants along the highway not being noteworthy! the place we stayed the first night was a lovely little camp, called "hondo-hondo" (the swahili name for the hornbill, which were flying all around), on the side of a hill right at the edge of the national park. we were the only guests there, we stayed in a little "banda" (hut/bungalow), ate outside, and at night sat by a campfire and tried to communicate with the camp staff, who didn't speak any english, about the elephants ("tembo") we could hear trumpeting and rustling in the trees down the road! it was super peaceful, and wonderfully cool.
the next day we took a long drive to ruaha national park. we felt like we were in the park long before we actually reached the gate, because it was so isolated. and once in the park it was still another 15 minutes drive to the camp. the park was beautiful, rolling green hills, and awesome, quirky baobab trees everywhere. it was dusk as we were getting there, and as we drove in we saw some elephants right by the car, and some giraffes on the top of a nearby hill lovely-ly silhouetted against the darkening sky. it's hard to explain the sense of wonder at seeing large animals in the wild that are almost mythical to me, in the sense that i always thought of them as far away and not part of my world. john said he felt like he was in jurassic park in the scene where they first see the dinosaurs, and i think that really captures the feeling. consequently, i had the theme song from jurassic park rolling around in my head for the remainder of the trip! at this camp we slept in a round tin banda, the camp was quiet, right along a river, and guarded by an armed guard which made me a bit nervous to go outside to pee at night!
the next morning we left early for a game drive around the park. the game drive is the focal point of a safari, up until now we'd really just been driving to destinations. we drove around for about 5 hours in this beautiful park. it was kind of hazy and misty, which made it hard to take good pictures, but gave it a sort of mystical, surreal feeling. we could go for long stretches without seeing animals, but we saw tons: elephants, giraffe, zebra, lions (including one with a freshly dead zebra), impala, gazelle, hippos, baboons, storks, ibis (and i'm sure other birds whose names i'm forgetting), water buck, giant lizard, warthog, dik-dik (tiny deer) and some fast little rodent that looks sort of like a ground hog but apparently is a close cousin of the elephant. this was all pretty incredible, but the best thing for me was that we only passed 1 other car the whole morning, no other humans in site until we got back near the camp for lunch. in the afternoon we went on a "walking safari," just me, john and an armed guard. we walked for about an hour and half along the river, it was unbelievably peaceful. we saw alligators, hippos, baboons, and giraffes.
the next day we drove back to mikumi. once we had settled in there, at a campsite at the base of a huge baobab tree, we set out for an evening game drive. we saw some lions pretty near our camp (unsettling!), and were headed to another part of the park when our car got stuck in the mud at the bottom of a dip! not a big deal, we missed the game drive, but kind of enjoyed just sitting there letting the world go on around us. it started to pour, making it more impossible for the car to get out, and sometime after nightfall a park car came to get us, and we had to take a long route back to our camp in the back of a pickup truck, in the pouring rain. john said it was his favorite part of the trip! we got dry and warmed up and had dinner and went to bed early. the next morning we had one last game drive. we avoided the mud this time. mikumi is pretty, tho not as pretty as ruaha for me, it was a flat open plain, and in the morning covered in mist. it was pretty cool to see long graceful giraffe necks appear out of the mist, and we saw tons of them that morning. saw elephants, hippo, crocs, impala again. and water buffalo, and some new birds, and on the way out of the park, one lonely wildebeest. then we had our long drive back to dar.
we spent one last day in dar before leaving. we finally knew our way around the area of our hotel, so we just wandered around, looking for craft shops and places to buy gifts, tried some new restaurants, and went back to some old ones. it was a good last day, tho i, at least, was tired and ready to go home by that point. of course my going home was dragged out by having to spend another night in nampula then a long bus-ride home and i was thoroughly exhausted by the time i got here. it was a really great trip tho. i definitely recommend tanzania, it has great food, beautiful sights, and very friendly people. if you want ok pictures of all these wonders, mine are already up on webshots. if you want professional quality, contact my brother.
21 December 2009
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.
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.
01 November 2009
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.)
(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.)
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