0 to 60... Real quick!

Well, I well begin by letting you know that a now-official Peace Corps volunteer is writing this post. The group of Mozambique 28 swore in to service this past Thursday on the lawn of the U.S. ambassador's house (let's be honest, mansion) and will now be beginning their 2-year stints as health volunteers.

The last 3 weeks of training went well, but the energy had definitely changed from the first weeks after arrival in May. The last segment of PST was largely characterized by general restlessness and everyone scrambling to spend a little more time with various other volunteers who they would likely not see again for either 3 months or one year, depending on which area of the country they will be serving in. Peace Corps policy has it that volunteers so not leave their province for the first 3 months, as their presence better facilitates integration into their communities. However, at month 3 there is a conference called Reconnect in which volunteers from the northern, central, and southern regions of the country get together to break down there first months at site. Then at the year mark is a full-group conference in the capital city, Maputo, at which the entirety of our possé will reunite for a mind-service debriefing. 

The end of training snuck up on me, as all important dates tend to do, and I find myself in some ways unable to comprehend that it is over. After so much moving around you enter a state of almost permanent adaptability and it's hard to believe that I'm at the location that I'll be living in for the next 2 years. I'm ready for it, though. It's going to be a huge challenge and I'm very excited to work my way through it. Peace Corps is "the hardest job you'll ever love" according to the organization and I have already been able to get a glimpse of both sides of that coin. That will be the subject of my next entry... But for now, here are some photos of the last few weeks.

The legendary Wimbe Beach of Pemba, where we were able to wait for our flight back to Maputo after our phase 2

The hotel-top view of a Maputo sunrise. We stayed one night in the capital before continuing back to Namaacha

When I got home I learned that the family had a new member

Learning some of the benefits of local ingredients during a nutrition session during our last 3 weeks is training

We did a session on permagardening. Here Isabela and Essence are working on cutting up the brown material for the compost

My tia, Aissa, and I having a last ShopRite chicken lunch. Many of the volunteers would go there every Wednesday to partake in this beautiful gastronomic experience

Michelle battling my pai in Damas, a board game similar to checkers but with a much more anarchistic gameplay

We went and gave practice health talks at a local neighborhood/school. No one spoke Portuguese, but it all worked out really well in the end. It was a great experience and showed quite well what our job was going to look like

We had a host family party and got all of our families together to thank them for taking us under their wings for 3 months. Part of the celebration
included a relay race of peeling coconuts, washing clothes, starting a charcoal stove and other activities we learned during our time there. Grandma, you'd be proud to know my team tied for first place!

Mãe holding our new baby goat

Pai and I posing for a photo during the homestay celebration

These gorgeous little morsels were found in Maputo our last night. They were Mana in the desert.

It's hard to describe how this burger made me feel. I wanted to weep, laugh, and fist pump at the same time. 

Billy and I sharing center stage at the ambassador's house after swearing in

Michelle, the fearless Wisconsinite with whom the majority of my Pre-Service Training adventures were shared, represented our group at the swearing in ceremony and gave a brilliant speech in Portuguese about Moz 28's experience in the Peace Corps up to that point

Marco, a good friend from my bairro and lingua group, and I hanging out at the Peace Corps office just after swearing in

From Cá to Lá

Needless to say, a lot has happened since my last post! I have entered Phase 2 of training and find myself sitting here in my foster family's kitchen in the province of Ancuabe, Cabo Delgado preparing for breakfast. Meals are always something to look forward to as far as I'm concerned, but the meals here have been especially notable for their feast-like qualities so they become the joyful glue that holds my days together. We were warned that a lot of volunteers during Phase 2 experience a dearth of food or dearth of flavor... I'll have to keep my face somber and secrets deep as a they sing their dirges upon reunion. It's Saturday so things are a little more tranquilo, even more tranquilo than normal!

However, this is a very easily misunderstood statement in my new site. The name of the town I will be based in is Metoro, and it ends up being a town that Dad sprung up as a result of it's location at the intersection of the two main roads/highways in the province, the national highway that runs north-south and the interprovincial highway that runs east-west. The reason I mention this is that it means the community, though smaller than some others around it in terms of the amount of shops and infrastructure, ends up being a huge center of operations and struggles with many unique problems. Like the majority of our 7 Cabo Delgado volunteers, the NGO I'm partnered with is the Ariel Glaser foundation. One of the many things they do is partner with local health centers in communities to make sure everything is running smoothly and that data is being collected and submitted in a correct manner. As it's the end of the month, the team is super busy and I've been running all over with them. Yesterday we went to Ancuabe (the district capital) for the day and today the group is off to both Meza and Minhewene to finalize reports. Days begin early and have been going late.

I've gotten amazingly lucky again in terms of my host family here. I have a mãe who also happens to be my supervisor and she is awesome! Such a character and with great ideas and motivation as well. I'm very much looking forward to getting to know her better and working with her and the team more. Vamos à ver. Mas, por agora... Estamos juntos!

The crew working in Cabo Delgado with the Ariel Glaser Foundation. From left: Ben, Dannia, Liz, Isabella, myself and Camila. We went to site in the company car.

The local secondary school, run by Catholic religious. Not sure which order yet.

A view from above of Ancuabe, the district capital of our district

I don't have a site mate, but Dannia is only a 30-minute drive away if we can wrangle in a company car. Otherwise it takes closer to 2 hours with public transportation

We had a little pre-departure snack before our departure from the motel in Nampula (where we had our supervisor conference). Unfortunately, though maybe not surprisingly from this photo, the milk was sub par

The famous cathedral in Nampula

My name tag with the fateful name

Me and my supervisor at the conference. She also happens to be my mãe here in Metoro during Phase 2.

A snapshot from the lap of luxury. We stayed in a nice hotel for the conference before being shipped out.

One Down, Twenty-Six to Go

Well here we are just past the one month mark in Namaacha, Mozambique. It's only been roughly 3 weeks since my last post, which is fairly fantastic when examined through the lens of Mozambican time! ... Which is worth a quick look. I think we all have various stereotypes in place when it comes to 'Africa' (including an unfortunate tendency to collect all the tidbits of information we receive about any of the 54 countries on the continent, create​ a generalized 'Africa', and then project this new summarized identity onto each of the 54 countries individually) and some end up being true and some end up being false. If your idea of Mozambican time includes a relaxed relationship with deadlines, a slow walking pace and a reality in which the time-words we speak and the events that come to pass are more or less arbitrarily related, then you're spot on. However, if you haven't received th information that the underlying cause of this is the Mozambican value in socializing and deep, authentic relationships, then you're also missing something. One thing that becomes quickly clear when living here is that our behaviors and our reasons for committing them are vitally intertwined, but we often only see the former without understanding the latter. This has become apparent in both American assumptions of Mozambique and Mozambican assumptions of the U.S.

On a less philosophical note, this first month has been fantastic and I couldn't ask for a better family to be living with or a better group of trainees to be journeying with. We recently took our first LPI (Language Proficiency Interview) and I tested into intermediate-high level, which means I should be good to go as far as the language requirement for service is concerned (intermediate-mid), as long as I don't hit my head and lose half of it along the way somewhere. Also big news, today we turned in our site placement forms today and had our interviews regarding potential locations for service... We should know where we'll be placed within the next two weeks! That will likely be the subject of the next post, unless I somehow exceed all expectations and am able to dish out another post next week, we'll see!

Finally, though, here are some photos of my family and this first month!

My awesome family from left to right: me, Nora (Tia), Aissa (Tia), Francisco (Pai), Ehrson (Irmão), Macita (Mãe), and Kelvin (Irmão)

Ehrson and Kelvin doing some backyard acrobatics

One of the front yards of a house where our language lessons to place

The kids making a bolo (cake) for Ehrson's birthday

Volunteers learning how to de-shell peanuts to mash and make peanut butter

The 'German bakery' of Namaacha, which ends up actually being run by a Slovenian​ who is very friendly and makes a mean pão doce (sweet bread) 

The volunteers enjoying a nice Friday brew at the local bar after a long week of training

Sitting around waiting to get permission from the border guards to continue our hike to Tres Fronteires (Three Borders). We ended up not getting it because they said that there is now a new rule in place that requires us to have a special permission slip from the government

A park in Namaacha

The volunteers organized a hike to the local waterfall, Cascadas

As Cascadas

An outdoor language lesson on a beautiful Namaacha day

We had a cooking exchange day in which our language group and our busy mothers exchanged lunch dishes

Doing some lunch prep work

The gorgeous 'backyard' of the Hub

Bem-vindo a Moçambique!

Well, it's definitely been a long couple weeks. Not at all in a bad way, more in a wow-everything-is-new-and-I-have-literally-nothing-to-compare-it-to way. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was hanging out on a rooftop in Haiti with Patrick drinking a beer. Philadelphia and Peace Corps staging also feels like a world away. It all started with a long trip, here's a quick summary of how it went:

Durango to Dallas for a layover.
Dallas to Philadelphia for Peace Corps staging.
Two days in Philadelphia of general Peace Corps information and preparation.
2 1/2 hour 2.00 a.m. bus ride from Philadelphia to JFK airport.
11.00 a.m., 15-hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg South Africa for a 4-hour layover.
Hour-long flight to Maputo, Mozambique (the capital, situated in the south).
Two days in Maputo for more country-specific information and training. Very introductory stuff.
Finally, a two-hour bus ride to Namaacha, where we are more or less situated for our 3 months of training.

Our time here in Pre-Service Training consists of language, health, technical, history, Peace Corps structure, culture and security lessons, occuring at various times and in various ratios each day and week. The general breakdown is class from 7.30-12.00, lunch until 13.30, sessions again until around 17.00, then time with our host families in the evenings. A cool tidbit of information is that in early June we will be finding out our personal site placements, where we will be serving the entirety of our 2-year stint. We will also have a 3-week period during this training period where we will stay in our future site and get a feel for the area.

I realize everyone is interested in details and probably have a ton of questions. However, this is where I'm going to end this post (never forgetting the photos of course!) and I'll go over more specific topics such as language, host family, culture in future, more focused posts.

Sunrise while flying over the coast
of Western Africa

Lounging in the Johannesburg airport

Everyone's stoked to finally get to Namaacha after such a long trip...This selfie was taken before the second group's bus broke down though.

A section of the grounds of the Hub, which is the Peace Corps training center

Mozambique's climate is tropical

Thanks to my amazing sister, my wall is covered in photos of my beautiful family

Snapshot of my room. Mosquito nets are ultra important in a country with malaria and many other tropical diseases

The view from my family's front porch

On the road to the Hub

Namaacha sunset

Another section of the Hub. The building in the photo is the covered shelter where we have our training sessions