Thanksgiving

I could sit here and describe thanks giving to you word by word, but instead I'll just show you what I ate.

First Plate

Second Plate

After the second plate, the turkey got to me and I was too lazy to take any more pictures.  Instead, I attacked the desert table.

Desert Table

Thanksgiving was awesome.  We all came together for a big feast, where individual teams cooked up a variety of different things.  A lot of the regular stuff (Sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, salad, green beans, and turkey...there were ten turkeys), and then an entire table devotes to deserts (pumpkin pie, peacan pie, apple crisp, apple crumble, brownies, and more).  As I've been craving brownies since we left Philly nine weeks ago, I managed to land myself on the brownie making team.  We cooked up four or five trays before coming to the realization that the most popular item for sure, would be brownie batter.  So instead of cooking the last tray, we poured the chocolatey mixture into some tuberware (we made this last batch without eggs) and brought that along with us.

One side of the buffet.

Some of the turkeys.

Site Placement Day!

Well, today arrived in dramatic fashion, and it started with some rain. It hadn’t rained in about 4 days and had been so hot that I was practically beginning for the crappy weather to role in.  Today, it finally did, and I was quickly reminded of why walking anywhere sucks when it rains in Namaacha.  About two minute into my soggy trek to school this morning, enough matope had latched itself onto the bottoms of my shoes to make it feel like each of my feet weighed about 20 pounds.

The morning itself crawled by at a turtles pace.  Some representatives from USAID spent the first few hours talking about a new initiative they were starting in Moz, and then Carl, our Country Director, did a session on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.  When 1pm finally rolled around, every single trainee was sitting on the edge of their seat.  We were given the go-ahead to pack up our stuff and head to the Gymnasium where the site placement ceremony would take place.

As we entered the gym, we formed a big circle around a giant map of Mozambique that had been drawn out with chalk on the floor. Our language professors then handed each of us a personalized envelope that contained a piece of paper with the name of our sites, a short job description, as well as a map. 

Now, I’ve opened plenty of envelopes in my day, some more interesting than others.  While the majority of the envelopes I’ve opened have contained complete crap (e.x. credit card offers, magazine subscription renewals, valentines that didn’t include a piece of candy…), some have not (e.x. Report Cards, SAT scores, college application decisions, birthday money…).  This envelope definitely fell into the latter group. 

Upon grabbing the envelope, I felt my heart begin to beat a little faster as a tidal wave of excitement surged through my body.  Endorphins released; my fingers went numb.  I stared deeply into the envelope’s empty white surface, lost in thought; my mind erupting with visualizations and fantasies of how the next two-years would all pan out.  I was excited.  

I’d been waiting nearly eighteen months for this exact moment; for my life to finally have some sort of certainty.  Ever since finishing grad school, my life has been a messy clump of ambiguity.  Between moving away from Colorado, watching a family staple disintegrate, bouncing around from job to job, and looking for a new path in life, I can’t remember the last time I was able to confidently answer the question “Where will I be in two months, and what will I be doing?”  And it’s taken a stressful toll. But the contents of the envelope would change all that.

After counting down from three, all 68 of us opened our envelopes and then ran to find our places on the giant map so that we could meet our site-mates and new neighbors.  And just like that, life became a little more clear.

PCV Name:  William Zweig

Subject: Physics Teacher

Site: Montepuez, Cabo Delgado

School: Escola Secundaria 15 de Outubro

Initial reactions:  I’m psyched. Know why?  Because I wanted the north, and I got the north.  I wanted rural but close to a city, and I got rural but close to a city.  I wanted to replace someone at an already-established site and live alone, and sure enough, I got both of those things.  My house is fairly new, apparently has consistent electricity and even water that comes out of a tap (albeit sporadically).  There are nearby mountains, and lots of hiking trails to explore. I have two site-mates, which is also awesome.  One is a Moz 17’er who’s been living in town for a year already.  The other is a delightful young woman from my group named Anna.  Even more awesome is the fact that she is the only other person in my group that happens to be from Maryland. There doesn’t seem to be much to complain about (well, it’s supposedly pretty hot, but it’s a dry heat like Colorado and not miserable and humid like DC!).  Maybe that’ll change once I settle in and get to know it better, but for now, I’m going to sleep a pretty happy guy. 

Site Placement Interview

After waiting all day for my turn to come, I finally had my site placement interview just as we finished the afternoon language class. You know, I think it went pretty well. I interviewed with Gellany, who is the APCD for the Northern Provinces.  Not sure what his job is exactly, but it includes figuring out where to place volunteers depending on the need of various schools. We spent about 20 minutes or so talking about a variety of things.  He asked what I was looking for in a site, what I wanted to teach, what I wanted to do, what I wanted my living situation to be like (roommates?), and more. I had spent about six weeks thinking about all this prior to our interview, so I had a lot to say.  I told him that I was pretty open to placement anywhere, but was really hoping for electricity.  I also explained that I was very interested in infrastructure engineering projects, wanted to explore what was going on in Mozambique (there is a lot!), and possibly make some international engineering contacts if at all possible.  He seemed pretty receptive to this, but who knows, maybe he was just humoring me.  Either way, I’m excited!

We find out what our sites are on Wednesday, two days from now.  It feels so weird, time has never moved slower. 

A few Gross Note from the Beginning of Week 7:

• It’s funny to look back at the past few weeks and reflect on what I’ve been through, how I’ve changed, and what’s to come.  One thing I remember well that stands out is my tendency to stress out over the language. Meh, it’s kind of unavoidable when you are expected to be fluent just 
• Mango season just arrived.  In the past, I’ve never really eaten them or been much of a fan.  But here in Mozambique, it’s a different story.  In the past two days I think I’ve eaten about 17.  This fruit is un-freakin-believable.  I’ve never done crack before, but my guess that mango’s taste like crack feels.  That’s gotta be why both are so addicting. Also, I think I remember hearing that doing too much crack gives you diarrhea.  The same thing happens when you do too much mango too.
• To continue with the bathroom talk, I’ve recently discovered that there is an impending problem with my host-family’s latrine: it’s nearly full.  The level of body fluid that currently resides below the ground is at an uncomfortably high level, barely a foot and a half from the top of the chimney.  It’s bad.  You know how sometimes when you pee in a toilet or stall, a little toilet water will splash out?  Well, that problem isn’t limited to toilet bowls.  If the level of body fluid in a pit latrine reaches a certain level, it can happen there too.  It’s just that what splashes out isn’t really water. Like I said, this is a problem.  We have three more weeks of training left in Namaacha and we don’t have another latrine.  It’s gonna be a long three weeks…

Climbing the Mountain

It’s Sunday, and you know what that means: LAZY DAY! But today was anything but lazy; instead it was active and awesome.  I woke up after five awesome hours of sleep at the awesome hour of 7am with an awesomely upset stomach. I ate an awesome breakfast of awesomely stale bread and an awesomely unripe banana.  The water in my tea was awesomely lukewarm (because I was feeling awesomely lazy and did not want to fully heat up the water) and the artificial creamer that I put in it did its best to resist disintegrating, instead deciding to form an awesomely disgusting clump of fake milk play dough that floated around my tea.  Around 815ish, I was feeling even more awesome, so I decided to go back to bed.

I woke back up around 1030am – still feeling awesome – and began getting ready to carpe diem the crap outta the day.  Ryan, Rafael, Anneke and Anna showed up at my house around 11am, and after a bit of dilly-dallying with mangos and sunscreen we set off on our journey to climb the mountain the overlooks all of Namaacha. On a side note, Ryan and I have been talking about hiking up this mountain for about four weeks now. Since Sunday is the only day that we don’t have class, it’s pretty much the only time we would be able to go on such a long hike.  Unfortunately, since all it ever does here is rain, we’ve had to postpone our plans more than a few times.  But today…today was the day that we were determined to make it happen.

Here are some pictures from the hike:

Stereotypical Brazilian Pose.

The Chapa Information Post

Not sure if I’ve described what exactly a Chapa is yet, but if I haven’t, then here’s a short lesson on what they are, how they work, and how much they suck. 

Chapas are the official Mozambican method of travel when someone is looking to get from Point A to Point B.  There are other options to choose from (buses, trains, airplanes, taxi’s, etc.), but Chapas seem to be the preferred way of getting around if you don’t have a personal car.  They work a bit like a normal municipal bus system in the states would with pre-determined routes and a set price, but they are far more dangerous.  There’s a reason for that too. 

Manned by a Motorista (Driver) and Cobrador (I don’t know the English translation, but he is the one who takes the money as people get into and out of the van), Chapas are big (but not that big) ghetto-looking, flat-face vans a bit smaller in length and width than a typical sixteen-passenger van you see in the states.  In these vans though, the engine is located in a compartment below the space that is between the driver and shotgun seat (keep in mind that they drive on the other side of the road here, and thus the driver seat is on the other side).  Often, there is a seat on top of this compartment to make the space more comfortable for the unlucky person that has to sit there.  Behind the front row where the driver sits are four more under-padded benches – each with a fold-down seat on the end that folds-up so people can get in and out of the back “easily” – that provide just barely enough space for three people to sit uncomfortably in each row.  Because this is Mozambique though, they cram four people into each bench. 

But it doesn’t stop there.  There is still a little bit of space behind the driver and passenger seats, and as a result, there are typically a couple people sitting backwards and occupying those spaces as well.  But, if the Chapa is going less than 100km, it doesn’t stop there.  Even though the Cobrador is already having trouble closing the sliding door, he’ll typically try and squeeze one more people who will join him in spending the entire ride crammed in and standing as if they we’re imitating the shape of an upside-down capital letter “L.”  Keep in mind that this van also doesn’t really have much storage space, so if you have any sort of carry-on, it usually rides on your lap.  Now, if you’ve been doing the math, than that makes approximately 22-23 people – with luggage – packed into a van that is designed to hold 16 people.  The Chapa experience redefines any preconceived notion of what it means to be packed like Sardines. There is no such thing as a personal bubble when riding a Chapa.

Thus far, my record is 26 people in one Chapa (Ok, ok…two were kids sitting on the laps of adults, but I think that should still count!).  It was miserable, and when I get back, I promise never to complain about not having enough leg room on a bus, plane, or car in America ever again.

Site Visit to Guija in Gaza Province

We were somewhere around Macia on the edge of the Mozambican savannah when the Malaria drugs began to take hold.  I remember turning to the ex-patriot on my right and saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…”  He looked at me with a face that was half asleep and tangled in a web of confusion. Then suddenly, the engine of the downshifting Chapa let out a terrible roar and the sky was full of what looked like huge, once latent bat-like flies, all swooping and screeching and diving around the cabin of our enclosed archaic mini-bus, which was going about a hundred-sixty kilometers an hour and jam-packed full of people headed to Chokwe.  Inside my head, a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What the hell is going on!  Where am I and what are these goddamn animals?!” Then it was quiet again, and I was blindsided by the reality of my current situation: “Oh…that’s right. Africa.”

Larium is a hell of a drug.  There are two benefits: 1.) the protection it offers the user from that vile, murderous villain that is Malaria, and 2.) Lucid psychedelic night terrors and Thompson-esque day-time hallucinations that sometimes develop in people who’ve been ingesting it for far too long.  I’d only been on the pills for five weeks, but it had felt like a lifetime.  If this was already happening now, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the side-effects would be like after popping one of these little white, pressed-powder pills every seven days for the next 108 weeks.  Guess that’s just one more thing to look forward to.

The dramatic reality check I just described came a few days ago as a group of three other trainees and myself were making our way up north to the city of Guija for our site visit. Week 6 of Pre-Service Training is a special one; it’s when Peace Corps Mozambique arms its trainees with a very generous per-diem and sends all of us out to visit the sites of current volunteers so that we can see what life in the Peace Corps is really like and what we’ve gotten ourselves into (Spoiler Alert: I’ve since learned that what we’ve gotten ourselves into is beyond anything I could have ever imagined; and whether I end up telling it or not, it’s gonna one hell of a story). Needless to say, site visits are amazing.  Everyone’s been looking forward to this point in training for a number of reasons.  For one, it means that we are finally given a chance to escape from Namaacha for a few days, but more importantly, it means that we get to try to find some real food.  One’s stomach can only endure a diet of only carbohydrates for so long. 

We traveled in groups of two to four people, and every group went somewhere different.  Some groups visited the Northern and Central Provinces, and some groups stayed in the South.  Those in the North got to fly (not as luxurious as it sounds…they then had to take Chapas to site just like the rest of us), while those in the South traveled only by Chapa.

My journey began last Saturday (the 3^rd) at 4am.  I caught a bus out of Namaacha at 5, which then took me to Juntos, the central chapa meeting point right outside Maputo.  From there, I hoped abroad another chapa that was headed in the direction of the site I was going to visit.  As I previously mentioned, my group was headed to the small town of Guija in Gaza Province, which took about three and a half hours to get to from Maputo.  If the road had been paved though, it probably only would have taken us an hour and a half.

The trip was brutal to say the least (I explain the intricacies, and misery of the chapa experience in a future post…).  Not only was it early, but it was also the first time I found myself riding in a chapa that wasn’t packed full of American’s traveling between the capital and our training village.  I had no idea how long the trip would actually take and was feeling pretty nervous about the prospects of not being able to use a bathroom the entire time.  Side Note…Some survival advice to anyone who wants to visit Mozambique: If the opportunity to go to the bathroom presents itself, take it.  Even if you don’t have to go, try to empty whatever miniscule amount of processed liquid is being stored in your bladder, because you never know when you’ll have that opportunity again.

I had been in contact with the Elisabetta and Ali, the volunteers we were going to be visiting, prior to leaving, so I had a very vague set of instructions on how to get there.  They were: Take a Chapa from Maputo to Chokwe, then another one from Chokwe to Guija; get off at the last stop (the secondary school) and call them; someone would then come and fetch us.

Although the ride was cramped and uncomfortable, we made it in one piece.  For enduring such a long trip, our hosts rewarded us with a luxurious and rare treat: Feta Cheese.  I was never really been much of a fan of feta back in the states, but for some reason, I devoured this gift without thinking twice.  It looked way to appetizing to decline.  Thus began my food vacation.

We spent the next few days cooking up extravagant and savory feasts while pestering the volunteers with questions about anything and everything that we could think of: How do you like your job? Who are your friends? What do you do to fight off boredom? Have you dated in the community? Where did you buy that Capulana? How do you clean your pit latrine? Etc.  We discussed the various types of corruption Ali’s seen in the schools while slurping up Thai-Coconut Soup.  We talked about the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Guija over an Asian-infused stirfry.  We baked apple-pie in a dutch-oven and listened to Michael, Ali’s RPCV boyfriend who was visiting from South Africa, explain how racial issues in Mozambique compare to those in the country he just recently finished serving in. In between our meals, we explored the small town while meeting a few of the people Ali and Elisabetta interact with on a daily basis.

On Monday the 5^th, Elisabetta (who is a health volunteer) took us to the hospital that she works at.  It was about 8am when we arrived and were surprised to find that there were already a couple hundred people camped out on the steps and ramps, lined up outside.  When we asked Elisabetta about what was going on, she explained that the people were there to receive their Anti-Vitrovial medication. The group was mostly women with some men mixed in as well.  But there were also teenagers and children, infants and babies that weren’t even old enough to have sex.  And each and every one of the people sitting there waiting was either HIV Positive or already living with AIDS.  Just like that, my mind melted.  AIDS is real, very real.  And in Mozambique, it’s a big problem.

Six days a week, a different group of people numbering close to or greater than this one lined up at the hospital and waited to receive their weekly supply of a free medication that would help them control this life-threatening disease. According to the statistics thrown at us by Peace Corps, 25% of the population in Gaza is living with HIV or AIDS.  In Guija though, a few years ago that number was reported to be closer to 50%.  As a contemporary estimate, Elisabetta believes that 65% is more accurate.  Holy shit, 65%.

As expected, the rest of the trip was pretty amazing and flew by.  I should mention that we did take a day trip to the beach though and got to take a short dip in the Indian Ocean (sort of…it was more of a lagoon, but still pretty awesome).  More importantly, I finally got my first taste of Mozambican sea food.  My friends got crab matapa while I enjoyed some prawns.  I think I’m gonna like this country.  Enjoy the pictures.

Ella and Taylor enjoying a rare find

Making some burrito pie.

Making our way down to Rio Limpopo.

I like bridges.

The road to Gaza.

Bilene!

Crab Matapa

Camarao

Spoiling ourselves with Thai food in Maputo