A Triumphant Return

Good news everyone!  Two weeks ago I won the PCV Lottery.  I got a call from Sergio, the Southern APCD who told me that I’d won an all-expenses paid vacation (well, not really) to Maputo.  I’d been selected to participate as one of the visiting PCVs during the training of the new group of Education volunteers.  And not only that, but I was chosen to come for the PCT Arrival in Maputo and the following Week One in Naamacha.  Now to you folks back home, this probably doesn’t mean much, so let me school you a bit in how awesome this actually is. Week One is when the PCT’s first set foot in country.  It was my responsibility to not only welcome them at the Maputo Airport (which, as it turned out, I wasn’t able to do because my flight got in an hour later than theirs), but also to help them settle in at the luxurious Hotel Cardoso and to over-indulge in their extravagant buffet.

Because I got in a little late, our Country Director Carl and Pedro, one of the Office Administrators, met me at the airport and gave me a lift to the hotel.  I arrived about an hour after everyone else and was greeted by 50 whacked American faces.  Like zombie babies, they were exhausted to the point of collapse, moving mechanically; yet wide-eyed and curious, still anxiously trying to soak-in their surroundings and that they could.

I spent the next day and a half answering questions about Mozambique, shoveling grilled steak and calamari ceviche into my stomach, and standing under a hot shower. Yesterday morning, we had one last crack at the breakfast buffet and one last orientation session, before we boarding a couple of chapas and a minibus bound for Namaacha.   It’d be my first visit since departing last December.

So now I find myself back where it all started, Namaacha.  My housing situation is a bit different (Laurie, the other visiting volunteer and I get to stay in a small guest house behind the local PC Office) and my stay is a bit shorter, but the town itself still has the same feel to it. It’s freezing out, hasn’t stopped raining, and there’s a whole lot of mud.  Namaacha is familiar, and it feels like home.


ADD-ON!
I got to visit my host family, and it was great!  It was only my Mae and Pai, but that was ok.  Octavio has since moved north to Nacala and Mandinho is living in Maputo trying to get into College.  Anyway, I dropped by after training was done one day to say hey, and to try and organize a time to come for dinner sometime that week.  My Mae wouldn't have it.  "Haha, it's funny how you think that you're gonna walk out of here with an empty stomach," she exclaimed in her characteristic booming, yet well-intentioned voice.  "Sit down. I'll be right back."  Well, it wasn't exactly "right back," but that wasn't an issue for me because it gave me a nice chunk of time to do some well-needed catching up with my host-father.

No joke, the first thing I did was apologize to him.  My Portuguese is far from excellent, but I can now comfortably communicate and understand most of what's being said to me.  So I apologized for my pitiful inability to speak when I had been here last time, and thanked him for his patience with me.  I was finally able to say all the things I had wanted to before; finally able to tell him how much I really appreciated him opening his home to me and welcoming me into his family.  It felt good to finally be able to say it.

We sat there talking for a while.  It was one of those conversations that feels like five minutes, but must have been more like an hour and a half.  Finally, my Mae came back with a huge bowl of coconut rice and some pumpkin leaf matapa.  Even though it had been nearly a year since I left to start anew in Cabo Delgado, she still remembered my favorite dish and how much I loved her green stuff.  And then, just like she used to, flipped my plate over and piled on a hefty portion that could feed a small army.  That's motherly love right there.

The visit was short lived, but still very enjoyable.  I was so happy to see them, and I think they were equally happy to see me.  They loved hearing about what I had been up to over the past year, and even seemed proud of me.

What a feeling.  I'm so glad I got to do that.

Surveying Trip to Rio Montepuez

So remember that expensive piece of equipment the government let me borrow?  Well, here's the part where we take it out to the bridge site and put it to use.

Armindo and me in the back of Alan's Truck.

As it turns out, there were a bunch of women from Bandari who were in Montepuez for a funeral. Alan knew about it, so he offered to give them a ride back.  They all piled into the back of his truck.  there had to be like 15 women back there.  Here's a pic of them getting out.

A truck bed full of women!

Takin' some measurements with the fancy equipment

John, the city technician, scouting out the site.

More surveying...

John wanted a picture of us with he machine, but then he decided that he also wanted a picture of Alan taking a picture of us. It turned out to be a picture of him taking a picture of Alan taking a picture of him.

Alan and Armindo tough at work.

Something made a sudden movement in the grass and John flipped out.  I never seen a Mozambican jump to far all of a sudden.  Armindo man'ed up, grabbed a machete and started chopping away at the grass to make John feel better.

Crossing the river and heading back to the truck.

Really…You’re just gonna let me walk out of here with this $5,000 piece of equipment?

I guess Mozambique is just like that.  They’ll fight you over the price of a single banana, but when it comes to borrowing a $5,000 precision measuring device, you can walk right out the door with it sem problemas. Ok, so maybe it’s a little more complicated than that.

So, I’m at the point where I need to put together a solid estimate of the budget for my bridge project.  Not easy to do.  To accomplish this task, I not only need to get estimates on labor, but I need to figure out materials and how much we’ll need as well.  This involves making a mockup of the bridge, and to make a mock up, I need measurements.  Good ones.

I’ve already identified an adequate site and specific location for the bridge, so that’s half the battle.  A couple of visual and playful soil tests (picture me rolling around in the mud pretending to be a warthog) helped me confirm that the site was suitable for foundations.   I’d gone out there a few weeks before with a 50-Meter measuring tape, some stakes and my counterpart Armindo to try and get some good measurements, but it turned out that the ones we got weren’t good enough.  What I needed to know was the difference in elevation between each side of the river and distances between the potential foundation sites.  The measurements we had taken couldn’t provide me with that.  I needed to go back. But before I could do that, I needed to find some equipment.

I was looking for a tool called an Abney Level.  It’s a little device that allows the user to measure angles. Using a little bit of trig, all you need is a horizontal distance and an angle to build a theoretical triangle and then calculate the difference in elevation between two points.  Exactly what I needed to do.  Easy to use, not too technical and widely available, I was crossing my fingers that someone, somewhere in the city had one.  Then for the first time, Mozambique decided to throw me a bone.

First, I went to the market, then to some of the local hardware stores; then I went to the Government Infrastructure Office before being sent over to the Municipal Services Building. That’s where I got my answer, and I’ve never been so happy to hear no.

“No, we don’t have whatever tool you just described in your shitty Portuguese, but what we do have is this crazy little device called a Total Station.  You can use it to do all the things you just said.  Maybe that’ll work for you?”

Marry me.  No, but really, yes, I want it.  Give it to me. 

I then learned that borrowing it wouldn’t be a problem, so long as I got approval from the city President.  “Well, how do I do that?” I asked. The answer was surprisingly simple. The man in charge told me that I’d have to write a letter describing what I wanted to do (borrow this expensive toy), why I wanted to do it (because I need to measure stuff), and when I needed it (Tuesday), then I’d drop it off at the other Municipal Building where various officials would pass it around until it ended up in the possession of the President who would give final approval.  Apparently, this would only take a day or so to do.

I ran home to start writing, and that’s when Mozambique threw me another bone.  I had been staring at a blank computer screen for about a half hour when my good friend Pedro Undukkus stopped by.  I don’t know if I’ve written about Pedro before, but he’s one of the good guys.  Extremely intelligent, well rounded, and a completely selfless individual, he’s passionate about the development of his country and wants nothing more than to improve the lives of his countrymen.  He’s full of good ideas, has an incredible network, and always wants to help.  And he never asks for anything in return.  Our conversations, which often switch between English and Portuguese (he speaks both, beautifully and fluently), are some of the more intellectually stimulating conversations that I have in this country.  But I digress…Anyways, Pedro arrives and in typical fashion, saves the day.  We talk for a bit before he offers to sit down and help me write my letter.  An hour and a half later, I staring a no longer blank computer screen.

I dropped the letter off on a Wednesday and was told to come back Friday morning.  Unsurprisingly, o senhor still hadn’t had a chance to take a look at it when I got back, but was told that if I came back after lunch, it would be ready for me.  To my surprise, when I returned, I was led into the President's Office where I had the opportunity talk to him directly.  He had read my letter and not only was he going to approve my request, but he wanted to personally tell me how excited he was about the project and how he knew of another site nearby that could use a bridge if everything worked out with this one.

I left the building feeling on top of the world.  Rafael, a neighboring volunteer from Balama who was in town visiting, was waiting outside the office for me.  He offered a nice, strong handshake and a pat on the back.  “Congrats man,” he said it his ever-friendly voice.  “Now let’s go drink some cabanga to celebrate.”

Here are some pictures from the Site Survey:

Me and Armindo with the goods in the back of Alan's Truck.

Classic Mozambique.  If you've got some space, you give it away to someone in need of a lift.  Since the back of Alan's truck was open, we gave about 12 women a ride to Bandari.  They were in Montepuez for a funeral and needed to get back.

Another picture of the Mae's crammed in the back.

Angelo taking some readings.  Good thing he's wearing a hard hat, you know, just in case.

Angelo taking a picture of Alan taking a picture of us. Me confused.

Armindo, happy to be helping out.

This is the current river crossing when the water level is low.  Right now is about as low as it's gonna get and while you could technically walk across the river, there is still a threat of crocodiles.

Agua.

With a set-up like the one I’ve got, who am I to complain? It’s selfish, I can’t deny that. I live across the street from people who have nothing more than mud and grass for a house, yet here I am sitting inside my little castle of concrete feeling stressed out about life.  Why?  Water.  That’s why.  Allow me to explain.

The dry season has been in full swing for about 6 or 7 months now, and I can’t even remember the last time it rained (Well, I can, but I was far, far away in Chamoio nearly 1000km away).  The ground is dry, it feels like a rock.  The wind blows, kicking up sand and leaving it everywhere, inside and out. My once white-walled home now has a brown tint to it, partially due to the dust and partially due to the dirty Bairro kids touching everything when they come over to hang out and play.  Luckily, the dry season happens during winter time here, so at least the temperature has been manageable; nice even.  But it’s September now, and that’s starting to change.  Summer is coming, and you can sense it as soon as you wake up cause you’re already starting to sweat.

So why am I stressed?  Well, this part of the dry season has some very undesirable consequences.  Because it hasn’t rained in close to half a year, the ground water level has diminished dramatically.  The river is drying up.  City wells are drying up.  Even people’s individual wells are drying up.  Water is disappearing.

During the rainy season, my house has running water most, if not all of the day.  But as I’ve mentioned like 84 times already, this is not the rainy season.  And, I’m quickly finding out how difficult life can be when you don’t have running water.

The water that gets piped to my house comes from a big water tower we have on the school campus.  A decently working pump pumps waters up to the tower from the aquifer deep below the school and city.  When it rains, the rain water soaks through the ground and reenters the aquifer, thus replenishing the supply.  When there lots of water, the pump doesn’t have to do much work and keeps the water flowing day and night (there are a few outages, but nothing serious).  I rarely had to ever dip into the reservoir that I have (I have a big trash can in my kitchen that I use to store water, maybe 30 or 40 gallons of it).  But after February it stops raining, and when it stops raining, the aquifer stops being replenished.  The water level starts to drop, and it continues to fall until the rains return some nine months later. 

With an ever falling water level, the pump is relied upon to do more work to lift water than it had to do the previous day.  Queue the outages.  Outages became common place as soon as it stopped raining.  At first, they weren’t so bad.  Rather than running day and night, the water was only on in the morning and sometimes at night.  A month later, it was only morning.  Around April, the water would usually only come on during the morning for a few hours on weekdays only.  This lasted for another month, and when the end of May arrived, I started losing water for days on end.  The outages were never longer than three days, and rarely even that in length, but then came August.  Three, four, and even five day would pass without water.

There are a lot of things in life that cause stress.  Relationships, school, work, family, friends, that baseball team you love that keeps letting you down in the hardest way, anything really.  In my opinion though, most, if not all of that pales in comparison to the stress you feel when you have no idea when you’ll have access to water again.  At least for me, this is the cause of a significant amount of stress.

So how do I deal with it?  Well, in a few ways.  First and foremost, I had to go find a new source.  One new source turned into two, and two into three.  The sources are wells of various quality that people have dug near their houses.  Today, I carted water from the third because the other two had dried up.  This first alternative source of water that I found was a hole in the ground next to my friend Chale’s house.  Literally, it’s nothing more than a really, really deep hole that doesn’t really have any protective walls, nor much of a cover, just a few bamboos sticks laid across the top (Quick side story:  A chicken fell in the other day and died because there was no way to get it out).  The water that I get from it is a cloudy, muddy mess filled with sediment and some dead bugs for extra flavor.  To get it, I throw a 5 liter plastic container that’s attached to 10 meters of very sketchy rope into the hole and wiggle it around until water fills it up.  Then, I pull it up, pour it out into my 5 gallon bucket and repeat the process  until the buckets full.  I’ve got two of these 5 gallon buckets, and once both are filled, I help one of my Barrio crianças put it on his head (I’ll throw him 5mts later for the help), put the other on mine, and together we walk the half kilometer back to my house.  Don’t let this quick little description fool you.  The carting processes it absolutely miserable. There are few things I hate more than having to put something on my head (not including hats), so to me, this is like having someone peel one of my fingernails off with some pliers.  It’s heavy, dirty, and leaking, not to mention the point on the bottom of the bucket that stabs deeper and deeper into your scalp with each bouncy step you take on the long hike home.  I hate it, but I have to do it.  It’s life here.

Realizing that I can minimize the number of times I cart water if I learn to conserve it better, I’ve taken some steps to changes my habits in regards to usage.  I’ve learned that you can recycle it, often using it two or three times to do what you need.  For example, I was my dishes in two buckets.  One bucket it to wash and clean the gunk off the dishes, and the second is to rinse the soap off.  I then take the wash basin with the gunky water and either flush my toilet with it or water some of my plants.  I then use the water in the rinse bucket as the new gunk-wash water, or I use it to wash some clothes.  It’s not really dirty, just has soap in it, so it really serves a secondary purpose well.  After a little laundry, I dispose of it in the same way. 
Water is not an issue back home (not like it is here at least).  It’s everywhere.  The city brings it to us, and we use it freely to do our biddings.  Jeez, we’ve even got little spouts on the corners of most city street where if we turn a knob, it’ll expel water in massive quantities.  I never thought about how much of a commodity water was, and I definitely never treated it as such.  Back home I kept the water running while brushing my teeth; I took 20 minutes showers just because I liked the way hot water feels; and I let a leaky faucet drip just cause I was too lazy to repair it. 

I never did any of that intense, multi-use conservation stuff back in the states, and if I return, I doubt that I will.  But while I might not manually flush a toilet with my dirty dish water, I will try to find other ways to change my water consumption habits.  Because it’s important, and after living here for a while, it’s something that I feel I need to do.

Side note:  Shout out to Travis Ramos, a friend of mine from Grad School at Colorado.  He recently started an incredible organization called Second Mile Water (2MW) and he and his team are working alongside disadvantaged communities to help them gain access to clean, safe drinking water with the goal that these people will never again have to live with the stress that amounts from not having it.  Check out the 2MW website here:  http://secondmilewater.org/