the parent trip

i went to maputo to meet them, and they were about the last people off the plane. we didn't get to our hotel til after 11, we were all exhausted but hungry, so we went downstairs to a local bar to find something to eat. they told us they didn't have anything to eat cuz it was late, so we ordered drinks and bought bad potato chips from a street vendor. then we saw the waitress bringing grilled cheese sandwiches to a table next to us, and were like, wtf?, so we asked and she said, "oh, we just have sandwiches, not real food".....yeah. welcome to mozambique guys! the next day we got up and caught a chapa to namaacha to visit my host family. it was totally surreal to be sitting on a chapa with my parents. worlds colliding! and then it was totally amazing to be back in namaacha. my family was awesome as usual, because of the cell-phone problem i'd only been able to re-remind them we were coming the day before, and they were like "sure, show up with your family, no problem!" we basically just relaxed with them, had good meals, my host-mom plied my dad with beer, my real mom plied my host-sisters with questions; my family harangued a cousin or something into driving us around town so they could see the swazi border and my host-mom somehow convinced the border guards to actually let us walk past the mozambican immigration (we'd left our passports at home), all the way up to the sign that said "Welcome to Swaziland." crazy. the next day after lunch we headed back to maputo, did a little walking around the central market and got some souvenirs, and rested a bit. then went out for thai food for dinner with my old boss juliana, her mom, and her empregada/my friend luizinha. it was a strange combination of people at the table, only juliana and i spoke both english and portuguese so there was a lot of halted conversation and translation, but it was really wonderful.

the day after we headed to quelimane where we had a whirlwind tour. my parents of course wanted to see everything, and everyone i know wanted to meet them. we had exactly one meal in my house because people kept inviting us over, i've never had such a busy social calendar! we rented a car, which seemed like a bit of a luxury but also completely necessary in order to see everything. and luckily laras had vacation at the same time and was a saint and drove us around the entire time. the first full day, while laras picked up the car, we walked to town, and even tho for me it was finally cooling off it was sweltering for them coming from spring in new england and they almost melted. but we cooled off, they saw the icap office and met some of my co-workers, and after lunch we drove around so they could see the city and the variety of neighborhoods, even went to some places i'd never been! that night was our one and only meal at home, laras and i made coconut rice and fish, and my parents got to experience grating coconut and cooking on my charcoal stove, it was pretty fun. i'm having trouble remembering the exact order of our other adventures, but here's what else we did:

we ate out: one breakfast at laras's aunt's house (mandioca with coconut); one breakfast at paulo the peer educator's house (mandioca and mucapata and coconut water); dinner at a restaurant with my bestest pc friends (half-chickens all around!); lunch at laras's mom's house (matapa, mucapata, chicken); dinner with my land-lord's family (matapa, beans, 2 kinds of chicken, fish); drinks at the top of hotel chuabo, watching the sun set over the river; and dinner at my friend gina's house (matapa and zambezian chicken). we were stuffed silly the entire time.

we drove to gurue, a beautiful town in central zambezia. it was about a 6 hour drive, and we went there and back in a day. it was pretty ridiculous, i know, but i think it was worth it. mom and dad got to see a lot of scenery, and lots of different towns and places i've talked about a lot. laras really wanted to take my parents there because he'd lived there for several years, and we had a great time. we walked around the market there and bought capulanas, then drove up a long, windy, narrow, cliff-side path to the top of a hill, to a place called casa dos noivos (the newly-weds' house). the house itself was pretty run down, but you could tell it had been lovely once. and the view from the top was incredible, you could see forever. the only thing i could compare it to was a national park i visited in brazil, but this vista had the added bonus of being full of gorgeous green hills, so it felt more like home. after a picnic lunch at the top of the hill we drove all the way home again. again, ridiculous, but worth it.

another day we visited a house where they're running the sewing training i mentioned in my last post. mom and dad got measured for capulana clothes. we then went to visit paulo, one of the peer educator leaders and my counterpart for permaculture, he'd invited us over, and was so proud to show us his machamba (farm), serve us food from his land, and introduce us to his infant twins who'd i'd been given the honor of naming, and did so after my dad's parents, frank and ruth. it was really touching both to see dad with the babies and to hear paulo thank my parents for sending me to africa and for all the help i've given him. from there we drove through nicoadala, where laras lives during the week, through licuare, where he works during the week, to luala, where we picked up gina, my best mozambican friend, who teaches there. we surprised her at her house and it was so amazing to see her, we'd been out of touch for weeks between my work and hers and the cell phone problems. she gave me and my parents huge hugs, it was like she'd known them forever. we piled her and her son into the car and kidnapped them to continue on our field trip. the destination of the day was the Zambeze River, famed in song and story, and southern border of zambezia province. it's always farther than i think it is, but i think it was worth it, kind of a mile-stone, and more beautiful views. we drove back to nicoadala and a late lunch at laras's house, then went north to the Lagoa Azul ("Blue Lagoon"), a famous local beach spot i've never been to. we had to bribe a guard to get into the grounds, but we got there just in time for sunset, it was beautiful.

on a sunday my mom and i went to church, something she'd really wanted to do. i hunted down the anglican (episcopal) church in queli, not easy to find, it's off the street and still under construction. it appeared "normal," pews, ornaments on the altar, etc. the format of the service was pretty traditional, it was luckily in portuguese not chuabo so i could translate the basics for my mom, until it came time for the sermon, when a handsomely dressed lay-woman stood up and began to basically re-hash all the readings, in english and portuguese (turned out she was nigerian, but never figured out if the english was solely for our benefit or not), with a lot of fire-and-brimstone style moralizing. the sermon lasted over an hour, by which point my mom was getting antsy to leave, which i thought was kind of funny. but the service wasn't complete until we newcomers had stood up front and introduced ourselves. i hate that. but we survived. we went straight from church to the beach with some of my pcv friends. we'd forgone the prettier beach for the long trip to gurue, but my parents couldn't leave without putting their feet in the indian ocean. that's probably about all they did cuz it started raining not long after we got there, but it was pretty and we relaxed and had a nice lunch afterwards.

and that's it. i can't tell if it sounds like a lot, but it sure felt like a lot! i think just 5 full days in quelimane. i think we were all exhausted by the time it was over. at times it was a little odd to be mixing my worlds like that, but mostly i was really pleased with how easily my parents fit in with my friends and my world here. i'm having camera issues and can't get pictures off my camera right now, but my mom has posted lots of pics on facebook, so friend her and see them for yourself! or go hunt down my dad, who's the professional photographer in the family.

mom and dad, if you disagree with anything i wrote, or if you think i left anything out, feel free to write up your own account and send it to me, i'll even post it as a real post. :)

general update

omg, i don't know if i can handle this, i've been gone so long and so much has happened. but i know the longer i put it off the more daunting this task will be. so......

let's start with april, which is when i pretty much dropped off the face of the earth. towards the end of april is when the joma conference happened, so pretty much the whole month of april was spent being really really tense and stressed. it's hard to explain, cuz in some ways i would say the conference wasn't that much work, i mean, it was all pretty straight forward, the national level project and financial coordinators did all the hard work and sent us regional underlings precise lists of what we needed to do. and it wasn't anything particularly hard, most of the prep stuff was actually kind of mundane: open a bank account, pay deposits on venue and food, make a million photocopies, buy supplies, etc. and my good buddy luke was actually the conference coordinator, i was his second-in-command and the money person, but as i have learned at other trainings i've helped run i have trouble letting go and letting things happen in their own way so i was antsy and micro-managing a lot. i think the real stress was just the weight of the idea, it was "The JOMA Conference" in big bold letters, something i'd heard about and thought about for so long that it was like we had to be stressed just to make it seem like we were doing it right. sigh. and we did it. the actual conference only lasted 3 full days. most things ran pretty smoothly, and the things that didn't were pretty predictable: the trainer, who was from maputo (a city many of whose inhabitants don't realize they live in one of the poorest countries in the world) wasn't satisfied with the accommodations; the food was late more often than not; almost all of the sessions ran over schedule (i take a large part of the blame for this, we tried to pack probably 5 days worth of really heavy material into 3 days); often the other PCVs (all newbies except for me and luke) seemed a little uninterested in what was going on.....i could go on. i unfortunately can't comment much on the actual content of the sessions, i probably missed about half of them cuz i was running around organizing stuff and during most of the rest i was so stressed out i didn't absorb anything. like i said, the content was dense, and i'm sure got a little much for some people, but i think over all they were interested. they played games at night at had a blast. we got a lot of good constructive criticism but no super-negative feedback, so all-in-all i think it went about as well as could be expected. it was a good experience that i have no desire ever to repeat!

right after joma, i just crashed. literally, the day after i was running around town paying the remaining balance on the venue, food, and trainer's expensive hotels, and i almost fell asleep on my feet. i booked it home and collapsed. a day or two after, my technological world collapsed too. meaning, something happened to a major fiber-optic cable and the northern 2/3 of mozambique was without mcel (the main cell phone company), land lines, or internet, for about 2 weeks. i know, boo-hoo, i'm in the peace corps in africa without technology. actually, i'm not complaining at all. sure, it was a slight pain in the ass. but i managed to get my most vital communication done with a cell phone number from the other company (which was so flooded with new customers that it basically didn't work either, but did a few times for me when it counted most which is all that matters), and other than that i decided that this was the universe's way of telling me it was ok to chill out and relax and not work. all the work stuff i needed to do (and there was definitely stuff i needed to do after 2 weeks of thinking about nothing but joma) involved either catching up on email (no internet), finding and meeting up with people in quelimane (no cell phones, and i'm WAY to lazy to walk ALL over the city looking for people i'm probably not going to find), and communicating with joma folks in other parts of the country to work on finalizing data for that (no cell phone again).

the biggest upcoming thing that i couldn't work on was my parents' visit, but i'd managed to text a friend in maputo (where they knew nothing of our northern technological woes) to email them so they kenw why i'd dropped off the face of the digital world, and they made it here just fine without any virtual hand-holding. i'll give their trip a blog-post all their own. stay tuned.

since their trip, i've been re-figuring out, yet again, what i'm doing. one big activity i have going right now is a project that i helped a local association of people living with HIV write months ago that took forever to get approved. the association, called VAHIYA, includes several peer educators, which is how i met them. several of the members are skilled seamstresses and tailors and they wanted to run a 3-month training for OVCs (jargon for "orphans and vulnerable children," basically any child who is hiv-positive, has a parent who is hiv-positive, or has lost at least one parent) on basic sewing skills. with the grant money we were able to buy machines and sewing materials, and pay the trainers a little something for their considerable time and effort. the group has been great, i've hardly needed to oversee the activities at all. i see the association's president about once a week to see how things are going, give him money, get receipts, etc. i also try to stop in at least once a week to just sit. it's one of those funny things, sometimes it doesn't seem like a lot, people sitting quietly in a mud house and learning to sew, but to me it's so amazing that the initiative came from them, and they're doing all the work all on their own. some days recently, after lots of rain, the house where they're holding the training is almost impossible to get to, i had to have a bike drive me all the way up to the doorstep once cuz the house was completely surrounded by water, but they're always there working. i can tell some of the kids are going to come away from it with very good skills, and while others may just be able to fix their clothes at home, i think having this kind of attention paid to them is an opportunity many wouldn't have otherwise, and i'm really happy with how the project is going so far.

the small group of peer educators doing the savings and loan project is still going. i had a hard time meeting with them for several weeks because of joma, no cell phones, then my parents' visit, but they keep going, saving bit by bit, and actually gave out their first loans to 2 group members a few weeks ago! they don't always use the exact processes that i laid out, but what they're doing works for them and they all still seem happy with it, and last week they were extra happy because i was finally able to get them some materials, most notably a lockable cash box. they had gotten to the point where they'd saved enough money that they were nervous about leaving it around the house, so this was a great addition. still no other groups have latched onto the idea, but another group has proposed a much more modest and reasonable income generating project that i'm going to see if i can get funded, and regardless, i'm going to look into getting training in business skills for some of the more motivated peer educators.

so that's where i'm at in work. the only other big news in my life is that my extension has been approved and officialized so, pending disaster, i will definitely be staying for a third year of service. some days i think i'm crazy, but i am excited about it. i'll still be with icap, but i'll be doing different work. there's a grand plan within the ngo world and the ministry of health for ngo partners to slowly phase out of the country and leave their services to the government and local orgs. it's such a complicated process i can't even begin to envision how it's going to happen. i agree it needs to happen, but it will be difficult. and i will play a small part in it. icap will be one of the first ngos to start phasing out, as they were one of the first to start working here, so next year i will be helping some local organizations prepare for that switch, to receive responsibility for services icap currently provides as well as to handle the money that comes along with it. there's still a lot up in the air for me, for instance, the particular orgs haven't been identified yet, and depending on what area they work in and where in the province they work, my work could have some very different outcomes, but i'm excited about all the possibilities, excited to be moving to a different sector of icap.....we'll see what happens! but as promised, i will be home at the end of the year. i have to "c.o.s." (close of service) along with my group, so i will go through all the processes as if i were going home for good, and will leave the country november 19th, and be home through christmas. so mark your calendars and come and see me!

k, as promised, i will post a separate entry about the big family vacation asap, and, if you're lucky, i might even right about my most recent adventures. but i need to go get something to eat first. stay tuned! hugs all around! :)

a snapshot

here's where your old clothes end up...

interesting article

http://allafrica.com/stories/201004080798.html

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.