Moz for a Month.

In light of the tremendous efforts some of my fellow trainees have put into their blogs, I'm going to try to at least write more on my computer and upload them as I have time.  No more writing about a subject, I'm going with the day to day model now (well at least I'm going to try it out).

But to get through that let me tell you about stuff in the past few weeks.

A group of PCTs hiked up the mountains at the fronteira. When I told my family I was doing this, they were confused why we voluntarily hike up a mountain and by foot no less. Anyways, it was challenging (steep), but absolutely gorgeous. Namaacha is next to the boarder with TWO other countries. So I stood simultaneously in Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa. I have a video for you guys that I might be able to upload?

Anyways, this past week was probably the latest I've stayed out for the most number of days, and by late I mean past 7p. I don't know if I mentioned this already, but it's already (somewhat) challenging to walk during the day and walking without any light and unable to see the ground is miserable. 

Each language group has a chefe da turma, which is somewhat like a prefect for all you Harry Potter readers. So all the chefes meet with Claudia  our Training Manager once a week at her house to get information and provide feedback on what's going on with people in our language group. I am the chefe for my lingua group. This week's meeting went very long due to some new schedule changes. Well afterwards, people needed to be walked home and dropped off because it's not smart for people (especially the females) to walk alone at night. Note: This also happens during the day where volunteers just walk one by one to each others houses pick each other up. It is like kindergarten sometimes.  So I have a new neighbor now, who is  quite conveniently  also a chefe! Derek recently changed families and now wins as my closest neighbor. So we walked back with Helen to drop her off and the path to Helen's house is treacherous in the dark. It was like a goat path. Then we ran into Mona and walked her home, except we spent a good amount of time just venting about the past week. Week 4 didn't start off too hot.

We also had our first interview with our APCDs about site placement. While the interview was pretty bland and non-descript, I'm optimistic that I'll be happy wherever I'm placed. Talking with current PCVs about their sites and their friends'  sites, it seems like the APCDs really try to take your personality and requests into consideration (somewhat).

The rest of the week was absolutely wonderful. Wednesday was our hub day. Hub days are nice because education people finally get to see the health people. I got my last rabies vaccine and learned about some new STIs that pretty much only exist in developing countries. They are absolutely scary. I can't remember the name, but one is a bacterial infection but you get sores that pus and smell. The worst part is that wherever that infected skin touches also gets infected so groin area… multiple open gushing sores. Yeah, fun stuff eh?

We also had our second Ngoma time, which is when the PCTs present something American (skit, song, dance etc) and the language facilitators present something Mozambican. The first Ngoma time was absolutely wonderful because other people's presentations were hilarious! I think my favorite was the Namaacha song. A language group wrote a song in Portugese about Namaacha. I think it's uploaded on youtube somewhere, I'll try to find the link. (Also, this is a good time to say that you really should check out the blogs of my friends because they have uploaded pictures and videos that have me in it!)But last Ngoma time was kind of miserable because my group presented Circle of Life from Lion King, which was very poorly executed and a bit obnoxious. Don't get me wrong. I thought it was hilarious , but obnoxious. We just ran around in a circle pretending to be different types of animals with Simba-Anthony emerging at the end shirtless. So this Ngoma time, our skit KICKED ASS. Chris B. choreographed a sweet Bohemian Rhapsody and we sang completely in a capella. I really want to upload the video for you guys.  They also thought it would be fun to play the game where you hold a ball/fruit (in our case) under your chin and pass it to other people down a line without using hands. It was a race between ED and Health except they choose the shortest and tallest 6 people in each. Of course. It was HIGHlarious and a bit awkward, but just slighly.

Thursday, WE TOOK A TRIP TO SWAZILAND! It was pouring down rain outside and all 71 of us (in separate smaller groups) made it across the boarder to look at nothing in particular just to walk back over. Why would we do that? Well we're all still here on 30 day tourist visas, and we had to re-enter before our time was up. Why don't we have residency visas? Well apparently the Mozambican government has increased the price ten fold. There are currently 200 some PCV/PCTs in Mozambique right now and to pay that much more is difficult especially when you didn't plan it in the budget. But, we got the rest of the day off which was very nice and I uploaded my previous post and a few pictures at the hotel. However, as of yesterday we are now kicked out of the hotel.

On Friday, I helped present for chem's mini-lesson during class in Portuguese. Teaching and getting up in front of people is difficult enough, but to do in Portuguese was very challenging. It went well though, and now everyone in ED understands the difference between physical and chemical reactions hopefully. I think the main thing is that I'm still insecure about my Portuguese, but all the volunteers say the first trimester is a shit show. I'm just not going to stress too much about it. I hung out with people at the bar across from the secondary school chatting. We hang out at bars because there's no where else for us to go. We can't exactly invite people over to our rooms.  But I think it's funny that  we don't even know the names of most of the bars, there's the one near Caitlin's house (CDC - Casa de Caitlin), CDD (Casa de dois), and the one across from the secondary school. But, man does Namaacha's tourism income increase when training starts. We buy so much soda. No joke. Lunch, after lingua classes, on the weekends.

Saturday, I picked up my new capulana dress. Capulanas are gorgeous (well some are and some aren’t) patterned cloth that women traditionally will wrap around as a skirt. But it can be a dress, bedspread, table cloth, baby holder, potential black board, and the list goes on and on. It is very versatile and convenient. I bought two at Shoprite last week. I use one for when I go back and forth from the outside shower and the other I asked Ian's mom (who is a seamstress) to make it into a dress. It turned out very well! I wore it for my Halloween costume as Miss KFC. In Mozambique, KFC is HUGE and is actually considered a nice, snazy restaurant. Anyways, KFC hosts beauty pageants and the winner is named Miss KFC.  It's a big deal. The Halloween party was really fun! It was nice for us to hang out, kick back, and enjoy an evening together of ridiculous costumes and of course drinks. They sell gin and whisky in 300 mL flasks for 30 mets. That's 1 dollar. A big problem here is that alcohol is cheaper than water/juice/soda. There's no culture of social drinking, ie have one beer with dinner. People only drink to get drunk, which males do very often. Anyways, I actually stayed out til 11p, which was exhausting for me. It was late when I got back and the door to my house was locked, so I climbed in through the window. It was a good idea at the time and I didn't want to wake up my host family although my mãe didn't get back from her party until 2a.

Before the Halloween party we got to cook American food for our host moms because a few weeks earlier we had a cooking cultural exchange where we cooked couve and matapa (Moz dishes). Our group decided to make spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic bread, and a salad. It was absolutely  delicious and well worth it even though it took 3 hours to prep and cook the food. Yeah, it takes a long time to do stuff here sometimes, especially when you're just limited on resources. I used corn husks as pot holders. Then there was a session on diversity. Moz 15 is supposedly the most diverse group to come through Moz. We have people of different ages (some are 50+), ethnicities, orientations, experiences, etc. So hence the need to discuss, but I don't know if anyone left that meeting feeling any better. If anything a lot of people felt more divided and defensive.

But Sunday was nice. It actually was a day of rest. I washed some clothes and then it started raining. So clothes were wet Sunday and Monday. It's all good. I just keep telling myself I can't predict weather. But we watched Zombieland for Halloween, which was awesome of course.