January 9, 2010
Dear Amigos,¡Feliz año nuevo! Happy 2010! I hope everything is spectacular and fabulous in your lives. It's still hot as hell in africa, but here are some much needed updates on my life:
-my site placement! I'm living in southern mozambique, in a province called inhambane, in a town called maxixe (pronounced ma-sheesh). I'mon the indian ocean so come visit me! It's so beautiful here-i reallygot lucky with this site. My direct addy: CP 31, Maxixe, Inhambane,Mozambique
-i got robbed 5 days after moving into my house. Yeah, sucked.They stole all my expensive stuff and then stole clothes and food. Iwas gone for less than 2 days and sure was a welcome to theneighborhood. I got all my data backed up which is cool, but no music!Womp.
-i shaved my head. It's way too hot here to deal with all that mess. I have 1 pic up on fb, soon to be more if the internet decides it wants to be cool.
-i have a puppy! I'll put pictures up. His name is mulungu.
-my work: i'll be with 2 orgs. 1, PROLIR works with young women'sempowerment in the community as well as hiv/aids education. 2, ICAPwhich is a dept of columbia univ in the states, working on gettingARVs to people living with hiv/aids and making sure they adhere totreatment. I start officially this week so i'm excited.
January 21, 2010
I apologize for the lack of email communication—there is no internet café at my site so to use a computer I have to take a boat across a bay to the provincial capital, which is usually some type of hassle.
But there are many much needed updates! As you can see from my last email, we all have officially passed our 10 week training and exams and are now sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers! We are the 14th group of Peace Corps (PC) volunteers in Mozambique, 67 people in total. 40 volunteers are teachers, ranging in subjects from English to Physics to Chemistry and Biology, all at high school level. 27 of us are part of the health project and we all have very varied projects, working with nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, faith-based organizations, in areas such as HIV/AIDS, maternal and child healthcare, youth and community activities, etc. And naturally (or not so naturally) we all speak Portuguese now!
Alright, now details on my situation. I have quite literally been blessed with my site and job placement. I received my number one choice and am now working with two organizations. The first is PROLIR (Promoção de Liderança das Raparigas), a Mozambican organization that focuses on empowering young women in the community. We have “activistas” which are the community educators, ranging from 17-23 years old. Our next project, starting around the end of the month, is an environmentally focused education for fishermen and beach populations in the district. We’ll be building latrines and teaching them about soil erosion so they stop cutting down trees and also inform them on the dangers of overfishing. The second organization is actually a department of Columbia University in the U.S. called ICAP (International Care and Treatment Programs). Their work deals primarily with delivering HIV/AIDS medication, known as ARVs (antiretrovirals) to the people here. Mozambique has only had access to these drugs for the past 5 years, though they’ve been available in the U.S. since the 1990s, so our work is important, especially in terms of patient adherence. If people are not educated on HIV, the risks of re-infecting others (and thus creating recombinant strains) and the drugs themselves, people can facilitate the growth of drug-resistant strains of HIV. I work in the health center in my community with HIV/AIDS support groups that test, educate, and care for those with HIV/AIDS. There are less than 1,000 doctors in a country with a population of 20 million.
I have been placed in the southern region of Mozambique, in the province of Inhambane, in the city of Maxixe (pronounced “ma-sheesh”). This area was discovered by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in the 16th century, which he deemed the “terra da boa gente” or, “the land of the good people”. I have been placed on the Indian Ocean and it is breathtakingly beautiful here Grandma! My town has a population of ~175,000 and is on a bay, which you cross by ferry or dhow boat to get to the provincial capital, Inhambane City. It is the Mozambican summer currently and it is excruciatingly hot—I am up at 5:00am because the sun rises around 4:30am and if I stay in bed I will probably start sweating. I don’t stop sweating until 7:00pm at night or so. I live alone in a 2 bedroom cement house, although I got a puppy for Christmas! I can get it vaccinated here, plus I found flea and tick shampoo in the South African grocery store here so I can take care of him. He’ll help with security for my house because, unfortunately, during my first week here my house was broken into and most of my valuable things were stolen. My laptop, headlamp, iPod and speakers, my backpacks (one was for hiking), four pairs of pants, my running shoes, jacket, and even food from my kitchen. Luckily, I still have my camera. There were a total of 6 break-ins into Peace Corps volunteers’ homes during the holiday season, but none of the break-ins occurred when the volunteer was at home. I was in the capital for work during the break-in, which took place at night. The window grates on my house were reinforced, I changed and added locks on all my doors and lock my front gate at all times now. I’ve been fine since the incident and refuse to let it ruin my time here—I am much more aware and vigilant, however.
I am feeling at peace here though. My Spanish has definitely helped my Portuguese and I’m currently searching for a tutor in one of the local languages. Being in Mozambique for 4 months now has definitely made me appreciate life in the United States more. All my other trips to Africa were shorter and spent traveling so I didn’t have a home and neighbors and friends like I do now, here. I definitely appreciate American culture for its customer service and respect for time. If you set a meeting for 8:00am in the States, people show up at 8:00am. Here, an 8:00am meeting won’t start until 10:00am and sometimes people are still walking in at 11:30am!! I don’t think I will ever adjust to this aspect of Mozambican culture. However, people’s neighbors here are their support network—neighbors actually greet and know each other here! I’ve never had that in America. It’s also interesting to see the globalizing of the world here—younger people here are wearing American fashions in the cities while older people continue with the traditional “capulana” and music from America definitely has a strong presence here. Also, I’ve realized that I have no idea what seasons are, in terms of knowing when fruits and vegetables are in season. We are so privileged in America—if we want something, we import it. Here, you wait. Wait for the rains, wait for the bus, wait for people to show up, wait for the heat to subside. You always need to carry a book so that you something to occupy your waiting time.
But all in all the people here are wonderfully warm and hospitable, and the level of calm and prosperity is remarkable given that they were in a civil war from 1975-1995. There were presidential elections in October, where the same independence era party, FRELIMO, won, under what has been reported as pretty heavy fraud. The Charge d’Affaires from the U.S. Embassy spoke to us during training about it. But no riots, it’s been calm.
In personal news, I cut my hair. Well, I buzzed my hair, like a boy. Haha. It is too hot here, uses up too much water, costs too much to maintain and mostly is too much hassle. I have pictures online that I will email when I next get to a computer. It was a very liberating experience. 8 of us women shaved our heads the night after being sworn in as volunteers. So much of a woman’s identity is wrapped up in our hair—I thought that without it, I wouldn’t be a woman. But here I am, still me, and now I feel like I can do anything.
My phone number: +258 82 294 8198
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