Update 7

I’m sitting at my computer, post-dinner, thinking about getting into bed soon even though it’s just past 8:00. I have music on low but the door is open and I can hear the swishing sound Suzana is making as she sits on her verandah and uses a flat straw basket to separate corn kernels from their skins, which she spent all day pounding in order to break apart. Now, as she lightly tosses the coarsely ground corn in the air, the kernels fall back into the bottom of the basket while the skins float to the top, which she deftly removes with a shake of the basket and sweep of the hand. My other close neighbor Carolina is also over there, her son Willy tightly bound and sleeping on her back, and they are chatting and laughing. Suzana has one of the most amazing laughs I have ever heard, with possibly the exception of her eight-year-old daughter Amelia.

I find myself somewhat panicked at how little time I have left in Mozambique, even though I think I’ll be ready for the next thing, whatever that may be. I recently got back to site after our three day Close of Service (COS) conference. At one point 27 months seemed like forever and it’s hard to believe that only three remain. It’s strange to realize all that I’ve learned and experienced in the past two years and at the same time think about how everyday I continue to be challenged and discover new things about life here.

One of my biggest fears in returning is not being able to hold onto this experience and the things I can't help but think about everyday just by living in a community so vastly different from where I grew up. I fear that all I’ve learned and thought about will fade and won’t be present in my everyday life back home. That I’ll forget to appreciate the things that will become normal once again.

At our COS conference I spoke with Peace Corps friends about how to continue to make this experience a part of our daily lives back home. We spoke about remaining in touch with our communities here and the people we’ve become close with, finding ways to continue to speak Portuguese, continuing to volunteer at home, sharing our experiences with people from home through storytelling or presentations. In this respect I am especially lucky because I’ve had lots of visitors from home during my time here. At times I have feared that being so connected with home takes away some inherent value to what the Peace Corps experience is typically thought to be—an experience that assumes a certain amount of isolation from the world as accustomed to, in particular family and friends. I guess I’ve come to the realization that perhaps there would be a different element to the personal growth I’d feel if I lived in an isolated community separated from family and friends for two years straight, but I don’t believe that compares to the value in being able to share this experience with so many important people in my life, both because I will continue to be able to share this with them years down the road and because visitors always make me see my life here from a different perspective. They show me new things in my community and ask questions about what I’m doing here that allow me to constantly see my life here from fresh angles. Sometimes it scares me how normal the things I see have become—and then someone from home asks me about it and I remember that this isn’t how the world is everywhere, that this isn’t how the world has to be.

Following are some of my favorite moments from the past few months. Some of them involve visitors and some of them are just little glimpses into the community here and the people who have become like family to me.

*****

Though I always go running early in the morning before too many people wake up, when Cassie and Amie were here we went for afternoon runs because we found it hard to get up early. (And by “we” I don’t mean me... Cassie.) Running here has always been a strange thing—it took me many months to feel comfortable and many more months of running the same paths through the community to not get surprised looks. And I still get surprised looks. The three of us attempting to run in the middle of the afternoon, at the height of village activity, was quite an experience. As we set out, running by the primary school and winding our way past houses and yards, kids began yelling and pointing. Soon they were running to the edge of the path to wave, and then they began trailing along after us. Now, I’ve always tried to keep my running here low key to preserve as much of its mental benefits as possible—but clearly this was impossible in the middle of the day with two visitors. It kinda stressed me out, worrying that my running here would never be the same, and I remember telling Amie and Cassie that I always resist looking back when kids follow me because I don’t like to encourage it. Apparently neither of them could resist and, as they looked back and laughed, the large mass of screaming children grew. Within about 5 minutes Amie reported that we had at least 30 kids running behind us. We were a long shrieking caravan winding our way through the community. Amie pointed ahead of us and exclaimed, “Look! They’re coming from all directions!” Four small kids on an intersecting path up ahead were sprinting determinedly towards ours, ready to join in as we passed.

I write about this not because the incident was novel- I've run during the daytime before by myself or with visitors and this phenomenon of attracting kids always seems to occur. I write about it because near the end of their stay here Amie told me how this was one of her favorite parts of the visit. It allowed me to see things a little differently—to let go of my instinct to protect running as my own and instead to appreciate and find humor in the fact that these kids are joining in. Although I still try to avoid afternoon runs, preferring the calmer, quieter mornings, children always call out my name and wave or come running to the edge of the trail as I go by. Perhaps soon I’ll miss running down paths and hear my name echo across nearby yards.

*****

On July 14, while I was home for Teddy and Amie’s wedding, my friend Ana Maria gave birth to a baby girl who she had carried for over 10 months. I got to meet the baby when I returned from my trip home. Ana Maria had had a difficult pregnancy that left her house bound for months and it was so good to see a healthy little baby and a very happy mom. The new baby had still not been named when I stopped by with Suzana in late July to meet her, and they asked me to name her, for which I felt honored. I’ve been told that being asked to name a baby here is similar to the concept of being a God-parent back home—it signifies a special relationship between the namer and namee, which often involves small gifts every now and then. Which is why it makes sense that I’ve been asked to name some babies while I’ve been here, as I’m someone with a few more resources than the average Mozambican. Already in the community is my little neighbor Willy (born when Skip was here and thus named William after him) and little Liza, born shortly before Liza came and named while she was here. Given that I had no visitors when I was asked to name Ana Maria’s daughter, I asked Suzana what she thought I should name her. She suggested naming her after my mom. I explained that my mom and I have the same name and it felt strange to give the baby the same name as myself, which she seemed to understand. Sticking to the family theme I suggested Margarida, the Portuguese version of Margaret, after Meg, but then we realized that Ana Maria’s first daughter is called Gida, already short for Margarida. So then I suggested naming the baby Katarina, the Portuguese version of Katherine, after Cassie. Both Suzana and Carolina agreed that that would be a good name for the baby. A few days later I gathered some baby clothes I had been saving and bought a bar of soap, and Suzana, Carolina and I made the 20 minute walk to Ana Maria’s house. We sat on a straw mat in the yard and passed the little baby around. Her father, who I hadn’t met before, was also there and pulled up a small bench. Suzana nodded for me to tell them the name I had chosen and I explained that I thought Katarina, after my sister, would be a good name. There was a pause and I watched Ana Maria look at her husband and a small amount of confusion passed between them. “Katarina,” Suzana repeated. “Katarina is a beautiful name,” she said, Carolina nodding in agreement. There was more hesitancy. Cleary this was not going as planned. Finally Ana Maria’s husband launched into a story about the time he was asked to name his sister’s son. He explained that he chose the name Agosto… “And my name is Agosto,” he concluded. He continued with other examples of friends who have been asked to name children and named those children after themselves. When he finished they all looked at me as if to say, “So?”

So. I named Ana Maria’s baby Jenny. After myself. And even though I feel like I kind of got tricked into naming a baby after myself, I admit that I sort of like the fact that there’s a little Jenny who will grow up here.

*****

My friend Ben, my most recent visitor, arrived here a few weeks ago and one of the first things we did was go to church the following Sunday morning. Church is something I love here—mostly for the music and the community and the chance to see how people here come together and discuss important issues. I think I’ve taken most of my visitors to church and every experience has been a little different. Ben, Suzana, and I walked together and settled ourselves on one of the tiny little wooden benches, knees bent together almost touching the backs of those in front of us. Most of the service takes place in Cuitee, one of the two main local languages in my community, or a combination of Cuitee and Portuguese, meaning that much of it I don’t understand. It involves a lot of standing up to sing and sitting down to listen and let my mind wander. My friend Serra is very involved in the church—he reads from the bible and interprets what it means for the congregation. After doing this in Cuitee, he repeated his explanation in English for Ben’s and my benefit. Serra is one of the only people I’ve met in my town who speaks English well—he seemed proud and honored to be able to do this for our distinguished guest. (On a side note, before church Suzana had inquired as to whether, while Serra was speaking in Cuitee and making gestures, Ben would be able to understand since he knows sign language. We clarified what sign language is and during the following week she loved learning signs from Ben.)

After some announcements and discussion Serra called Ben and me up to the front so that we could introduce him to the congregation. Things like this always make me a little nervous. Cassie and Amie had also been called up to be introduced, so I had an idea of what to expect. Serra spoke in English to us and Cuitee to the community and introduced Ben, who in return thanked everyone for the welcome. There was an exchange from some men in the first row and Serra turned to us and said that the community wanted to meet Ben. Which was a little confusing because I thought that’s what had just happened. But before we knew it, the entire congregation had risen, singing and clapping, and was forming a line down the aisle. Ben and I made up a small receiving line and every single person in the church slowly made their way down the aisle to meet him properly—to firmly shake his hand, with big smiles, sometimes clasping his hand in both of theirs—and then to greet me as well before filing back to their seats. I caught Suzana’s eye near the end, after she had already returned to her seat, and I must have been smiling, because she broke into a huge smile too and shook her head as if to recognize my thoughts—continued wonder at the people in this community, at how they never cease to surprise me with the thoughtful things they choose to do.

*****

Two weeks ago I made the first round of payments to women who knitted baby hats and booties that Meg and John brought back to the states to be sold. I went around to each woman and counted out their earnings and had each sign a piece of paper showing the money was received. They were full of smiles and excitement as they received it and counted it and there was lots of happy chatter. I guess I hadn’t thought too much about what this would mean to them (beyond the fact that it would allow them to make some purchases) as I’m so accustomed to getting paid for work I do. But for these women—who have spent their whole lives working harder than many people can imagine just to feed themselves and their families—to receive money in exchange for a service is not an everyday occurrence. One woman, Eva, does not speak much Portuguese. She speaks local dialects and knows a few English words from living in Zimbabwe for a short period. She loves greeting and saying good bye to me in English. She is always full of smiles and Alexa (my Peace Corps friend who does the health classes with me) and I have noted how she never fails to make a joke and completely crack herself up. After receiving her payment and signing her name carefully, she smiled at me and said “Thank you, Jenny.” I began to say that it wasn’t me who did the work, it was her. To which, trying not to laugh, she replied in English, “Yes, but you give me power,” (pronounced “pow-a”) and then she slapped my hand and burst out laughing.

The comment surprised me—and I don’t really know what she meant. But the thought of her feeling that way—that the money gave her some element of control, even if she was just joking around—made me think about what it means to earn income, and how the difference between working to eat and working for money can be huge in terms of the amount of security one has in life. I can try to understand this difference when I think about it, but I wonder what it must be like to live it.

*****

Well, I guess that’s about it for now. As I write I can think of a million other stories I’d like to share but I’ll save them for next time. Here are some more photos from the past few months…

Willy, Liza and Jenny

 

 

 

Playing with Meg

 

John learning about mandioca

 

Making chima with Suzana

 

Amelia getting her hair braided

 

 

Sorting beans

 

Cassie practicing for later in life

 

Amie helping with homework

 

Checking on building progress with Suzana

 

To the river to wash

 

Silva sweeping

 

Sunset from verandah

 

Suzana and Carolina

 

Amelia carting water

 

Suzana, Simao and Amelia

 

Drumming in church

 

Vovo eating grilled corn

 

Making soap!

 

Suzana and Carolina

 

Mami sharing breakfast

 

Neighborhood friends (look at Bizinho's resourceful shoes!)

 

Update 6

I’ve sat down a number of times this summer to update my blog and for some reason haven’t gotten very far. Lots has happened since my last entry and I find myself shocked to think at how few months I have left of this experience. The thought of leaving here is completely overwhelming. Anyway, this one got kinda long, but here’s the project update.

Although perhaps I knew it all along, I am now beginning to really understand why it is that this is a two year commitment. In terms of my project it is only since May that things have begun to show tangible progress and I fear that by the time I leave here in a few months it will really just be taking off. In late May I began to integrate the health component into the project. Working with another volunteer from the city whose organization wants to reach out to rural women’s groups, we’ve starting teaching health classes. I always anticipate our Friday classes with lots of excitement and I have been blown away with how much fun it’s been to teach these women, and at how responsive they’ve been to the classes. Our first class was on nutrition and food groups—and cheap local options available for each food group. The following week we held a cooking session in which we taught the women how to easily and cheaply improve the nutrition of a number of dishes they make regularly. Since then we’ve had classes on pregnancy and contraception (this when Amie and Cassie were here, allowing us to make good use of Amie’s health knowledge—the women asked her all sorts of questions and it was nice to have a source of credible information), anemia, first aid, diarrhea prevention and treatment, germs and disease prevention. The idea is to teach the women some health concepts one week and the following week to do an activity based on what they learned: such as making menstrual bracelets to keep track of their cycles after learning about contraception, or making soap after learning about diarrhea and germs. A week of theory and a week of practicum, as Dona Celeste, one of the participants, recently commented. Still to come are classes on HIV and AIDS, women’s reproductive health and STDs, malaria, and more. Some photos from a recent class.

 

 

When Amie and Cassie were here we had the opportunity to take the women to a two day self-defense class in Chimoio offered by an organization where a Peace Corps colleague works. We met at my house and walked to the chapa stop—all the women brought their knitting and my heart swelled with happiness as I watched them standing waiting for transport, some with babies slung on their backs, knitting and chatting, their balls of yarn tucked in a bag or under their arms. The self-defense class consisted of talking about body language and prevention and then included several self-defense moves against an attacker in various situations. Though shy at first, I loved watching them get active and get involved. Cas, Ame and I got to be on baby duty, which of course was so fun. Some more photos....

 

 

 

 

In addition to the health classes, the knitting group has been turning out products weekly. We’ve gone through almost all the yarn donated in May and are about to start in on yarn that was donated in July that I was able to bring back after going home for Teddy and Amie’s wedding. We are in the process of setting up a connection with a mission down the road that has a shop where we hope to sell the products. Many mission teams from overseas pass through and it would allow us to sell the products at a higher price than in the city or the community. Last week I made the first payment to the women for baby bonnets and booties they made in April and May—they were visibly excited to receive money for their work and it felt good to give them tangible results. Lots of women in the community have been coming by and showing interest in participating in the project. Although the original idea was to wait until the center was completed to open up the project to more women, we’ve decided to open it up now and next week will start with a second group of knitters.

 

 

 

 

The final component of the project—construction of the women’s center (where all this will hopefully continue after I’m gone) and the chicken coop—is also moving along, slowly but surely. The biggest difference came when I arrived back here in July after being away from the community for almost three weeks—at home for Teddy and Amie’s wedding followed by a few days in Maputo for a REDES (Raparigas Em Desenvolvimento, Educação e Saúde) planning meeting.

Going away lets you see things from a different perspective, a chance to step back and see anew. Returning, I felt overwhelmed at how good it was to be back. I felt astonished at what I saw here, at where I live and the world I’ve become a part of. It had been strange to see people from so many parts of my life in the previous two weeks—my family, extended family, family friends, friends from high school, from summers growing up, from college, Peace Corps friends in Maputo, and then my neighbors here who feel like family. Two friends who live on the nearby mission picked me up in Chimoio and drove me home, arriving at my house after dark to a quiet neighborhood. As I set my things on the verandah and began to thank them for the ride we heard screams coming across Suzana’s yard and looked to see 4 neighborhood kids running towards us shrieking. They each gave me great big hugs, followed by Suzana who appeared shortly after, laughing (laughter being her natural state I think). After catching up for a few minutes I went inside to get resettled before collapsing into bed. While away, my house continued to serve as the base for the women’s project. I left all knitting materials and money for construction materials inside and my keys with Suzana. Along with switching my verandah light on in the evenings and off in the morning, she came into the house for anything she needed to continue the project. In addition, when I arrived home I found my house swept clean, my water containers and buckets completely full. I felt taken care of, grateful in a way that was hard to express.

I had left her with 10,000 mtn (400 USD) for project expenses that might occur while I was gone, an amount of money that was most likely hard for her to comprehend, as she currently has no income. She recorded all expenditures and accounted for each with receipts. The next day, as we sat huddled on the floor in my house going over what happened while I was away, paper work spread before us filled with her careful handwriting, I was completely astonished at her diligence and honesty in reporting it all. I watched her bent over her legs, chin cupped in one hand, finger moving down the page, explaining all expenses: small hinges, large hinges, money for the carpenter, mango trees for firewood to bake bricks, transporting wood, food for brickmakers, bus fare to Gondola to buy supplies, money to pay my energy bill. She got to one line that she had to read twice to recall what it was: “Eu gastei—200 mt para o meu sustento familiar.” She paused and then turned to me to explain and I couldn’t help but smile— she had written that she spent 200 mtn on needs for her family. As she started to explain and saw my smile we both burst into laughter—I felt so much affection for her at that moment. She borrowed the money, she explained, because a number of family members had shown up unexpectedly and she didn’t have enough food to feed them or money to loan them return bus fare. I love that she borrowed the money. I love that she knew it would be okay—somehow it signified for me a certain level of understanding in our friendship. A friendship that continually shocks me at how easy and normal it is across all the cultural and economic differences between us. And also, I felt so proud at what an incredible job she had done in managing the project and getting so much done on her own. In my absence she oversaw the completion of the roof on the classroom, the completion of the chicken coop, arranged for wood and a carpenter to make the frames and windows for the classroom, oversaw the making of over two thousand bricks (which included coordinating numerous people doing different jobs), bought materials needed for continued construction and held knitting classes. Here are more photos: Suzana and I meeting with the builders and some recent ones of the women's center and chicken coop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So that’s the project update. I am finishing this entry, which I started about two days ago, a few hours outside of Maputo at our COS (Close of Service) conference and will post it when I return to the city on Saturday. In the meantime, as all these crazy thoughts are going through my head of what it means for this experience to be coming to an end, I hope to write another update as well. More soon.

 

Update 5

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning. I’ve just set dough to rise in the sun on the porch and am listening to kids play on the new swing I have hanging in the yard. It was put up last week by my neighbor, Simão, and John after John came up with the brilliant idea. Meg and John spent 10 days here with me. On Tuesday, May 6, we had a very tearful goodbye in the Beira airport. (The Beira airport is one of my favorite and least favorite places in Mozambique: it is spacious with lots of dark wood and a cafeteria where you can eat grilled cheese sandwiches or sit on the balcony overlooking the runway. You can watch people walk to and from their flights and watch the planes take off and land. It is a place to welcome friends and family when they visit. The only problem is that at the end of their visit you have to return to the airport with them-after you watch the plane disppear you have to walk away and it is a lonely walk, the memories of which make me panic stricken every time I think of or come near the airport.)

It was so wonderful having them here. We spent most of our time in my community, doing the things I normally do here. We spent lots of time playing with the kids in the yard, visited the work site where the classroom and chicken coop are slowly going up, visited the carpenter to check on progress, visited friends in the community, held Tuesday and Friday knitting classes, went to Gondola and Chimoio for supplies, made chima and matapa with Suzana, went to church, and went for lots of walks and runs. It was a little surreal to look out and see Meg in the the yard in the middle of a huge game of Ring around the Rosie, first slow and then fast, then quietly and then loudly. Or to be huddled sick on my bed with Meg on Primeiro de Maio (Labor Day) while John was boldly out wandering and celebrating in the village with community-member Chingolima (and imagining what they’d been talking about and doing for over two hours). We also got to spend a few days at the coast, on a tiny peninsula where a river meets the sea, full of white sand, palm trees, sea beans, and reed huts.

Along with lots of clothes and art and school supplies, Meg and John brought with them a suitcase full of yarn collected and given by friends from home. At our Tuesday knitting meeting we presented the yarn to the women—they were so excited to see all the different colors and textures. Amongst themselves they agreed to finish our supply of local yarn before delving into the new stuff—each woman has to turn in three sets of baby booties and hats in three different models before she can select some of the new yarn. Then, she can decide if she wants to continue to make baby booties and hats, or maybe try a sweater or adult hat. Since then, the women have been excitedly selecting the donated yarn to start new, and more ambitious projects. Every week they come to my house and show me what they’ve accomplished and I’m shocked at the progress they’ve made.

For a number of reasons I had been away from site a lot in the 4-5 weeks before Meg and John’s arrival. In April was the REDES conference (Raparigas em Desenvolvimento, Educação e Saúde or, in English, Girls in Development, Education and Health), a national Mozambican girls’ conference, which I helped to coordinate. It consisted of 54 girls from all over Mozambique, 17 Mozambican professors, and 14 Peace Corps volunteers who came together for a week and talked about issues concerning women’s empowerment, sexual and reproductive health, healthy relationships, communication and negotiation, and small community projects. The weeks leading up to the conference and during the conference I spent most of my time in Chimoio, where it was held, getting ready and preparing the conference center. Though stressful at times (I didn’t sleep much during the conference), I think it was overall very successful and I feel proud of what I was able to accomplish, in Portuguese, in Mozambique. And now that I have some logistical planning under my belt, I’m thinking my future career might include planning weddings. (In English. In the states.)

Planning the conference slowed project things down a bit in my community. I wasn’t sure it was possible for them to go any slower than they were already going, but, as it turns out, my time away from the community enabled things to move along at an even more leisurely pace. Hence, we are still in the process of constructing the classroom and renovating the chicken coop. But in the meantime we are knitting and next week we start the health component. Each week we will hold health classes during the knitting class—to teach some basics on nutrition, female sexual and reproductive health, and HIV. This will hopefully promote interesting and productive discussion amongst the women while they are working. I hope that discussion will lead to questions that can be asked without embarrassment and where women can receive good and accurate information about their health.

I’ve been talking with two Peace Corps volunteers who live nearby on possibly collaborating with them on the health component of the project. They came and visited our knitting group on Friday and as we sat amongst the women, knitting and chatting, ideas were flying about how to integrate health concepts into our sessions, strengthen the small business component, and perhaps most exciting, focus on the cross-cultural potential of the project. I love the idea of what happens when women get together and knit—I love that this happens all over the world and how powerful it can be as a social network. It serves as an important part of society and gives women space to exchange ideas and information and support each other. I think there’s a lot of potential in continuing to connect this world with that world (whatever “this” and “that” means to you, we’re all part of one world, right?) through a common activity.

That’s a little update on the project and what’s been going on in general here over the past few months. To end, I’d like to share a moment.

On one of the last nights I spent with Meg and John in my community we cooked a Mozambican dish with Suzana and Simão, matapa and chima, and all had dinner on my veranda. While preparing it, I mostly stayed in the kitchen, watching over the kale that was being cooked with ground up peanuts, coconut milk (all completely fresh ingredients), tomatoes and onions, and chatted with Mami, Suzana’s one and a half year old niece who’s been staying with her. Suzana would come in periodically to check on the food and tell me what next step to take in its preparation. Simão sat on the porch chatting with a Peace Corps volunteer friend who was visiting, Amelia and some other neighborhood locals played on the new swing, and Meg and John sat in the yard on little wooden benches around a cooking fire with Suzana. There were three large rocks placed there, on which sat the big metal cooking pot to make chima, heavy cornmeal that is the staple food here, eaten twice a day in most households. A scene similar to this has occurred with all my visitors and it is always a little bit magical. Suzana sits outside with them, without me, and, across language and cultural barriers, teaches them to make Mozambican food, something she is intimately familiar with in her everyday life. She is a natural teacher and in these moments I always hear laughter ringing out. From inside the kitchen I could tell when Meg or John were trying their hand at scooping the chima into “balls” and taking them from the cooking pot to the serving dish: first the quiet concentration and then the burst of laughter from all three as Meg and John realized how difficult and precise the process is. Suzana does it swiftly and confidently, making perfect rounded mounds of chima that miraculously stay together and don’t stick, while Meg and John did it slowly and clumsily, the technique being new and foreign, the result being oddly shaped heaps, not totally staying together and kind of sticking to each other. (But still VERY tasty. And definitely not any better than I could do.) It’s hard not to love the joy that Suzana gets from watching them try.

The meal was served on a straw mat in the dim warm light of my verandah. We all sat at the edges of the mat, legs tucked underneath us. John made a toast, thanking Suzana and Simão for the opportunity to get to know them. We ate with our hands and drank cokes and fantas as a special treat. By that time Mami was sound asleep on my bed just inside. As always, Suzana, who quietly had made the entire meal through close oversite of the food in the kitchen and the chima-making process outside, complimented all the cooks, giving the credit to us and calling special attention to Meg and John’s expert ability to make chima.

Update 4

Sometimes in my daily life here I’ll have these moments, almost like an out of body experience, when I remove myself from my present state and imagine I am in a satellite looking down at me. I find great pleasure in doing this because most of the time I am doing something completely absurd. Not that the doing is absurd, necessarily, but that it is me that is doing it.

This happened twice in the past two weeks. Last Sunday it was during a crazy attempt to attend a funeral and today it was at a wedding.

Last Saturday night I found out that the father of one of my closest neighbors died unexpectedly. The family has six kids aged two to fifteen. I have never been close with the parents—they do not speak much Portuguese—but I have always been close with the children, particularly the four youngest. They are good kids—I love them dearly—and was sad and shocked to hear about the death of their father. The following day many people had gathered at their house for the funeral. It was decided that he would be buried in the nearest big town, because that is where his family is, as opposed to our small community. Because he worked for the railroad company they sent a truck from town to pick up the funeral participants and bring them there and help with the burial. Around 10am Suzana came and got me and, along with about 30 friends and family, we gathered in the back of the truck for the 20 minute ride to town. As we set off it began to sprinkle. I had on a t-shirt and skirt and had wrapped a capulana (the large colorful clothe that women wear as skirts but are used for just about everything from head wraps to baby slings to carrying corn from the field) around my waist as well. As the rain came down harder Suzana took off her capulana and covered us both with it. We huddled there until the rain paused and emerged only when the other passengers shouted to us that the rain had stopped. As we came out from the capulana, grinning because we were soaked, everyone burst into laughter—I think they were worried about me getting wet and surprised to see me with a smile on my face. After a short time the rain began again harder, and even though we attempted to cover ourselves again, it only took about 3 minutes for the thin cotton to soak through and we were defenseless against the wet. We had been sitting in the very back of the truck and the others motioned for us to come to the front to avoid as much of the rain as possible. We did so which left us sitting on the ground only to be flooded by standing water that would rush forward whenever the truck slowed. By the time we arrived at the hospital to pick up the body to take to the cemetery all of us were drenched to the bone and shivering and laughing. (The funerals I’ve been to here are solemn events, but it was not unnatural for us to be laughing. It sounds strange to say, but at that point I was having a good time—we all were. Perhaps it’s because death seems much more a part of daily life here. I have been to more funerals of friends or acquaintances here in the last year than in all my 25 years at home.)

After we descended from the truck, we stood under the eave of a back wall of the hospital as the rain continued to pour down. Eventually I lost feeling in my fingers and wondered at just how unaccustomed to the cold my body has become. We waited for two hours because there was a dispute amongst the family about when and where he would be buried, during which I stood as still as possible trying not to let the sides of my wet skirt touch my goosebumped legs. Eventually it was decided that the funeral would actually take place the next day and we would all go back home. So we piled back into the truck, people shaking their heads at the effort we'd made. Any drying that had taken place huddled under the hospital eave for two hours quickly vanished as the rain poured down again. We were laughing again by the time we got home.

Yesterday I asked Suzana if she was going to go to church today and she informed me that there was a wedding that we should attend. Even though we weren’t invited she said it was fine for us to go and watch the ceremony, especially because it was at her church. Every once in a while I go to church with her, mostly because the music is incredible and it’s a good way to see people and feel a part of the community. There are lots of churches in my community—they are small one room structures made out of mud and thatch with tiny wooden benches and a table at the front serving as the altar. In the fifteen minute walk to her catholic church we pass at least three others of different denominations, singing and drums ringing out. In her church when we aren’t singing we can usually hear the music from a nearby church.

The last time I went to church with her we didn’t sing at all and there were no drums—afterwards I had felt kind of cheated by the church going experience and Suzana explained that there was no singing during lent. Today when I entered the church for the wedding ceremony/Easter service, it was an explosion of music and drums and dancing and color. After so many weeks of no dancing and singing, people were especially energetic. It was an elderly couple getting married, both in their seventies. It is quite common here for people who are legally married to wait years and years to have the actual ceremony. Most people don’t have the money to buy wedding clothes or enough food to feed friends and family.

The couple pulled up to the church in the cabin of a large open back truck, which was filled, overflowing, with people dancing and shouting and clapping hands and stomping feet. They slowly descended and gradually made their way to the church surrounded by the vivacious crowd, its music beautiful and deafening. The couple inched forward towards the church walking on straw mats—as they came to the end of one and stepped onto the next the first was immediately removed, passed over head, and rolled out in front of them. It was done automatically and a little frantically, adding to the spirit and movement of the people as it rocked overhead before being placed down. We entered the church and I was certain it would crumble with the noise. During the ceremony, similar in some respects to traditional wedding ceremonies at home, there was intermittent singing and drumming and dancing.

Afterwards Suzana and I went to greet the priest who is a catholic missionary from Mexico who Suzana’s husband Simão works for a few days a week. Normally he preaches at a large mission church about 5 km away but came to our rural one in honor of the wedding and Easter. He insisted that we join him and another missionary woman from Mexico at the reception. A bit hesitant because we hadn’t been invited to the wedding, Suzana and I piled into the back of his car and found ourselves next to the bride and groom. Leading the large truck full of wedding goers, we headed down what was only a small footpath. The house where the bride and groom lived turned out to be a 15 minute drive into the bush—straight downhill on what appeared to be a dried up riverbed. We bounced along, joking about when the road would finally get better as the groom claimed it would (“It gets much better right up here,” he kept proclaiming to the dubious priest, even though we were clearly only venturing farther away from anything resembling a road). I sat in between Suzana and the groom, who was next to his bride. Sometime along the way her veil (handily made from a mosquito bed net) began to come off and though he clumsily tried to help her fix it, she was sitting on most of it and they only managed to fumble around and mess it up more. Suzana found this hilarious and she kept poking me to point out their nonprogress on fixing it and I kept turning to her to tell her to quit it, only to find her in absolute hysterics, about to lose it. Which made me about to lose it too—not so much because of the fact that the groom couldn’t fix the veil but because Suzana was having a laughing attack and what were we doing anyway in the bridal car bouncing down to who-knows-where when we hadn’t even been invited to the wedding in the first place? (Here is where I have one of those out of body moments: how has life gotten me here, to this place and time? What have I done right to deserve this? Because, truly, this is amazing. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else, not at this exact moment.)

Finally we emerge from thick brush to a small clearing which is the bride and groom’s house, and people run to meet us and they throw rice as we all descend from the car. It wonder as I get out, rice falling from the sky, if it’s bad luck to have rice thrown at you as you emerge from a wedding car when it’s not your own wedding day. There are probably over a hundred people singing and cheering. We (the bride and groom and priest and Suzana and I) are lead into a structure of wood and thatch specially built for the wedding feast where there are two tables. At one sit the bride and groom and family members and a few friends and at the other are Suzana and I and the priest. We are served rice and goat, a luxury I can’t believe, and warm cokes, and I secretly keep giving Suzana the pieces of meat from my plate that look like intestines or some unrecognizable part. I also secretly remove stiff black goat hairs from my food.

There’s been a lot of sadness and a lot of funerals in the past few months. Funerals that are solemn and beautiful in their own right. But today, it was an amazing day, full of energy and life that seems sucked so dry in the difficult times. If you ever have the opportunity to go to a wedding in Mozambique, go.

To be a part of a community in the sadness and the goodness, I feel so blessed for that.

Following are some photos of hanging out with my neighbors and the wedding. More to come soon.                                            

Update 3

Well, I feel like I’m finally settled back at site after a lot of traveling. It started at the beginning of November when I went home for Alyssa’s wedding. It was a crazy five days at home, a whirlwind of friends and family and wedding festivities. It was so worth it, I can't imagine not having been there. I came back here for a month, of which Liza was here for most of, and her parents Lorni and Jock also came for five days after a trip to Uganda. It was so incredible, as always, to show people from home what life is like here. It was wonderful to have my little house feel so full, and it was a bit of adjustment coming back in January and trying to make it feel like home again. Lize and I left December 5th to travel overland to Maputo before flying home for the holidays. I was at home this second time for about two and a half weeks, again a whirlwind, then back here for a week before going to Maputo for our week-long mid-service conference.

My main project right now is the formation of a women’s center in the community. I spent a lot of the summer designing the project and writing the proposal, and received the grant in October. Things are moving slowly. I’ll start at the beginning and tell you a little bit about what the project is supposed to be. Most of the following is taken from the grant proposal.

The aim of this project is to open a women's center in Amatongas Socel where women will have the opportunity to:

•learn about HIV and AIDS, nutrition, women's reproductive health, and sexually transmitted diseases through a series of health classes

•access the means to improve their nutrition through a chicken coop run by the women that will sell eggs in the community at a below market price and provide chickens to the women who successfully complete the health classes

•partake in small business training and initiatives, which will include access to a sewing machine, brick oven and other small business ideas they may have.

Last spring, as I began to become more comfortable in my community, I became friends with a number of women. Some began to confide in me about health issues and many had questions regarding HIV, women's reproductive health, and sexually transmitted diseases. They have no place in the community to get good health information. Simply by speaking with them and sharing my health knowledge, I have been providing an important service to these women. Additionally, upon arriving here I noticed that people, especially children, suffer from lack of nutrition, specifically from lack of protein. This was obvious to me from both looking around at the people and from living here and getting to know their way of life—and realizing that people do not or cannot include sufficient protein in their daily diets. This was confirmed in speaking with a nutritionist at a nearby mission that serves babies in the community, who told me that the biggest nutritional problem she sees in the area is lack of protein.

The project I’m working on now has been designed—with the help of women in the community and based on another project done by a Peace Corps Volunteer—to address the issues I have just mentioned: lack of health knowledge in the community, lack of nutrition (specifically protein) in the local diet, and to reduce transactional sex (due to lack of income generation options for women). (Transactional sex is not limited to what we commonly think of as prostitution—it can be very informal, whereby a woman acts more as a girlfriend or sex partner in exchange for material goods, such as food or clothes, etc…. Although sex work is probably not too common in my community, informal exchanges between men and women involving sexual acts are most likely very common.) The objective of this project is HIV prevention through empowering women and building confidence. The goal is not only to give the women knowledge, but to provide them with the means to use this knowledge to benefit their lives. The women's center will provide a safe space where women in the community can access knowledge about health (HIV prevention, nutrition, and reproductive health) and where they have access to the means to be able to change their nutritional and financial situations (through the chicken coop and small business initiatives). The aim of the chicken coop is twofold: to produce eggs in the community that will be sold at a below market value so that the families who live here will be able to purchase them; and to raise chickens that will be given to the women upon completion of the health class as an incentive to participate. Lastly, by providing options for income generation through a small business training and skill building, they will be less likely to turn to transactional sex. The intended long term impact is the formation of a strong women’s association in the community with HIV and AIDS and other health knowledge that will be transmitted to the larger community. While the immediate beneficiaries will be the women participants, the community at large will indirectly benefit in a number of ways such as through the women’s positive preventative behavior change and increased nutrition in families.

During the first year I will work closely with the women in organizing and managing the project. The initial stage will last eight months with the expectation that the project will be completely transferred to the women in the community within a year. At that point the project will be self-sustainable, earning enough income from the chicken coop and small business initiatives to cover the expenses generated by the health classes and small business training.

So, where are we now?

If you look at the Project Action Plan that I included with the proposal, by now (month 3 of the project), we should be finished with the construction of the center and the renovation of the chicken coop and into the first session of the health classes. Ahh. I would say we are almost a third of the way through the construction of the center. Which is a great source of stress in my life, but I tell myself over and over that these things are out of my control, I have to continually let go of my own ideas of work and things getting done. Things just come up. Things that are beyond anyone’s control, that are a product of this world and the way it is. It is frustrating and I get discouraged by a lot—from wood not being available at the price we budgeted, or at all, and the head construction worker not being able to give accurate estimates on quantities we’ll need; to having a conversation with women in the community who talk about how common it is for women to give their young daughters or sisters to men to sleep with in exchange for money because they need the money and don’t want to do it themselves; to myths in the community that condoms transmit HIV. Sometimes it seems like this is too big a battle to fight.

One day last week I was all set to get a lot done. I had an 8:00 meeting with Suzana and the builders to go over some problems that we’ve been having. A lot of the bricks that were made (locally) for the project have been breaking because they weren’t thoroughly baked (possibly because it rained when they were being made and possibly because they just weren’t baked properly). We’ve arranged a trade with a member of the community who happens to have a bunch of already-made bricks—we’ll use his bricks now and when the rainy season ends we’ll have bricks made to replace them. Also on the agenda: the procurement of bamboo to start renovating the chicken coop and procurement of wood to proceed with the classroom. Suzana and I made it to the work site by 8:00, shortly after which it started to downpour. We waited in the chicken coop for almost an hour, huddled together on a log in the middle to simultaneously avoid getting wet and getting bitten by red ants, when we decided that no one was going to show up with the rain. No one did.

Secondly, I had a meeting scheduled that same day for 9:00am in which the coordinator of the organization I was placed with was going to come and talk with the activistas in our program about why things fell apart last year and what her plans are for 2008. It took me a couple hours to walk through the community the day before to inform each of the activistas about the meeting. However, because of the rain she did not show up, which shouldn’t have surprised me because it would have only been her third time making the trek from the city (an hour away) during the whole year I’ve lived here.

So I didn’t get anything done. And instead spent most of the day feeling thoroughly discouraged about development, what I’m doing here, the creeping realization that it’s not all that likely I will leave here feeling like anything has been accomplished. I made rice pudding and pumpkin soup and flossed my teeth and read. The thought passed through my mind as I was reading Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, that I am accomplishing something because I’m educating myself and therefore being a good world citizen. It was a stretch.

In addition to the frustrations of a slow moving project and the difficulties of getting adjusted to life here after spending a lot of time with friends and family, some difficult things have happened this past week. Over the weekend one of my neighbors died of cholera and late last week another woman in the community, one of the beneficiaries of our house construction project last summer, also died of cholera. In addition, my cat Cotamba died last weekend. It’s strange to see how death is dealt with in another culture, and even stranger right beside my own way of dealing with it.

Late yesterday I had a long conversation with Suzana in which I confessed to her all that I’ve been feeling in terms of not getting anything done here. She pointed out some of the smaller things I’ve done, such as teaching her how to make popcorn, and the conversation ended with us in hysterics over the thought of me returning home and people saying, “Wow, so you’ve been in Africa for two years? What did you do there?” And me responding, “Well, I taught one of my neighbors to make popcorn.” Later in the evening I had a mini dance party on my verandah with all my favorite neighborhood kids. I realized that they were imitating my every move, a strange thought given they are gifted with rhythm that I just don’t have. A combination of feeling like I was butchering my own dance moves and watching better versions of myself dance. But, amongst a lot of hard hard things, it left me in wonder at the redeeming qualities of this experience, and how happy I am to be here.

Update 2

hello again! mom keeps asking me to write about what i do here (and i assume she means more than play with little kids in my yard) so i’m going to attempt to explain a bit more about my work.

as i described in my previous post, the organization i was placed with is based about an hour away from my community in the nearest smallish city. it was started 5-6 years ago by the woman who is the coordinator and who has all the decision making responsibility. there is also a president, a secretary, an accountant, a program official and a field official. from what i've gathered, the president and secretary are largely symbolic roles, leaving the work to the coordinator, the accountant (who is actually the coordinator’s brother, hmmmm), and the program and field officials. my counterpart is the field official (meaning that he is the one who i supposedly work closely with in terms of him showing me what i’m supposed to be doing and how to do it, and in terms of me building capacity within the organization). there is another volunteer who was also placed with this organization who lives in the city and works more in the area of organizational development. the organization does work in my community and in a neighborhood right outside the city. the work consists of giving support to orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs), though "support" is a loosely defined term here— what's on paper is very different than what actually happens.

in the community where i live there are five local activistas (volunteers) who make weekly visits to the families where the 33 orphans who we support live. the visits are supposed to serve as a way of giving the orphans and families "psycho-social" support, checking in on whether or not they are going to school, getting enough food, living in sanitary conditions, as well as assessing their needs. the program also includes giving out second hand clothes to our beneficiaries twice a year, school supplies quarterly, getting the kids to the hospital when they are sick, getting them official identification, a vocational training program and recently a house construction project for our beneficiaries most in need. for a lot of reasons, which i’ll go into later, these things haven’t been happening and very little is actually being done in the way of supporting the orphans or their caregivers. two years ago the organization built a chicken coop in the community but only provided enough resources for it to last a few months and it now stands empty. and last year they built a brick oven to make and sell bread in the community but it never functioned because no one has money to buy ingredients.

what i do for the organization on a daily basis mainly consists of overseeing the activistas who make the weekly visits to the orphans. on mondays and wednesdays the activistas do their visits and on thursdays i meet with them to discuss the visits and get feedback. the weekly meetings are always at 14:00 on thursday afternoons. at about that time i spread out a large straw mat under the mango tree in my yard and put out some stools. then i go about my business until the first activista arrives. it’s a good day if the first one arrives by 14:30 and if they are all there by 15:00 we are right on schedule. we have four female activistas and one male: two named isabel, ana maria, luisa and antonio. one of the isabels has an 18-month-old daughter, mariana, who always comes along and i spend a lot of time trying to make friends with her (and then i realize i was just asked a question and am sheepishly lost). although all the women are in their thirties and have lots of kids, antonio is younger, about 18, and still in school (walking three miles every morning to attend class at the nearest secondary school).

every week the activistas hand in their reports detailing their weekly visits and the well-being of the orphans in their care. and every week the reports declare that the orphans are lacking school supplies and clothes and sometimes adequate nutrition. this is where things begin to fall apart. the reports should arguably play an important role in the program because they contain the information, directly from the community, about the situations and needs of our beneficiaries. one would think that these would be instrumental in determining what the program can and should be doing to support our beneficiaries. instead these reports are left forgotten—the office does not even ask for the weekly reports that the activistas fill out and give to me. it doesn’t matter what is written in the reports—the actual purpose of the reports is not for the well-being of the orphans as a means to respond to their needs. at first i was baffled at the insistence from the office that the reports be filled out when nothing seems to happen with them. then i figured out that from the perspective of the office, the reports are a tool that proves to the funder that the visits are happening if the funder should ever audit. they are proof that in the yearly report the program completed X number of home visits. in fact, everything that the office does seems to be aimed at what the funders want, not what our beneficiaries need. (for example, the funders gave us money to buy bikes for the activistas. so the organization did and now gets angry at the activistas when they find out that they are not being used. they aren’t being used in part because they continually fall apart and it’s costly to repair them—it means buying parts in the city and finding someone who knows about bikes to fix them. the other reason they aren’t being used is because the activistas didn’t ask for bikes. the women don’t know how to ride them.)

another problem is that the office rarely makes it out to the community. although there are supposed to be monthly supervisor visits in which the coordinator, program official and field official come out to check in on the activistas and orphans and monitor the quality of the visits, the coordinator has been out to my community only once since i moved here in february. the field official (my counterpart) is supposed to come here twice a week but comes about once every two or three weeks. (at first this was a major source of stress. as my counterpart he’s the person who was supposed to show me the ropes. instead, for my first few weeks here i would wake up in my community every morning, an hour away from the office with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to tell me what i should be doing. looking back, i think this was instrumental in the relationship i now have with my community.) it is unclear whether this is how things have been running all along or if this really began after they placed me in the community, thinking that once i was here they would not need to continue checking in. what makes it a little more complicated is that, as the field official, my counterpart is the main liaison between the community and the office— he should be in the field as much as possible. and as a peace corps volunteer i'm not supposed to be taking the job of a local and instead am supposed to be capacity building. thus, my being the only one at the administrative level in the community is problematic as it has only served to facilitate the lack of direct involvement from the office. it’s hard to imagine how the organization can claim to be working in a community that they are barely in touch with.

from the very beginning my counterpart has always claimed the reason for so rarely showing up in the community is lack of funds— and at first i thought that money simply hadn’t been budgeted in for him or other people from the office to get here (which in itself would be a huge problem—how could the organization forget to budget in that money?). soon after, it became apparent that at least some money was budgeted in for transport to and from the community, it just wasn’t being used for that. additionally, the school supplies and second hand clothes and trainings and sometimes even the small monthly incentives that the activistas are supposed to receive often mysteriously disappear. i made all these discoveries slowly but the big blow came when my counterpart explained to me that he is asked to lie on the quarterly reports he writes that go to the big ngo that funds the project. the reports contain outright lies, which supposedly are backed up by receipts that the coordinator buys—she bought seven bikes to give to the activistas and paid s little extra to get a receipt written out for 10 bikes. apparently she took home the money budgeted for the other three bikes.

i know that the coordinator is stealing money, but what i cannot figure out is if she has good intentions, little knowledge and experience in money management and just takes a little off the top for herself (which would be expected culturally, i’m told). or, if her intentions aren’t in the right place and she does not care as much as she professes about helping our beneficiaries. i recognize that i do not know her story or the reasons why the money disappears, but the situation has been incredibly frustrating. i see our beneficiaries go without school supplies (if they don’t have pens, which they don’t, they are often turned away from class) and i am the one who has to explain to the activistas at our weekly meetings that, still, the organization has not followed through with their promises. i've struggled a lot with how to make the program more substantial. it’s been hard to remain motivated in helping this program or the organization when it’s clear that the coordinator is stealing our funding. it is certainly a disincentive to try to get more funding. it puts me in a difficult position—given the financial struggles that go on in the office i have doubts whether the organization is going to last. i feel that sooner or later the funders will find out that significant amounts of money aren't reaching the beneficiaries and the funding will get cut. (they have been auditing lately and i’ve been hearing rumors from my counterpart that our coordinator is in legal trouble.) by living so far away from the organization and having little contact with it, what i have been able to do is separate myself from it a bit. maybe next time i’ll go into that more and what i’ve been doing outside work. for now i want to tell a success story (so far) about some work i have been able to do in collaboration with my organization.

in addition to the weekly home visits, one of the organization’s activities for last year (2005-2006) was to construct 6 new houses for our 6 families most in need. it never happened and was on the agenda again for this year. though the year-long project started in september (2006), by well into the spring the house construction program had not started. the deal was that the organization would provide all housing materials (cement, roofing, a door, window, and beams) and pay construction workers if the community came together to make the bricks. the only problem was that when the activistas tried to mobilize the community to make the bricks, the community rejected. i live in a community where a significant portion of the households support orphans. there are hundreds here—kids who have lost one or both parents—and there seem to be more and more on a daily basis. my organization supports 33 of them. when the activistas asked the community to come together and work to make bricks to support these families, the community asked "why them? we support orphans too." it is an understandable response, but frustrating all the same. part of me kept thinking why can't they just help? if they help someone else today someone will help them tomorrow. everyone has to contribute. but part of me could also understand: why should they take time out of their day (when they should be going to the field or carting water or making corn flour) to help someone else, when they need that help just as badly? regardless, the community at large was not convinced to come together and make bricks to build houses for our beneficiaries. the project stalled out and unless the families made the bricks themselves (at least 3,000 per household most of which consists of a grandmother and one-three grandchildren), it seemed like a lost opportunity.

meanwhile, since the first week i arrived at site a man in the community, chingolima, has been asking me to help him get uniforms for the soccer team here. there are two men's soccer teams in the area, one in my community and one in the next town over. on weekends they play each other and then have a championship in june. the other town always wins the regular season games and then the championship. the other team also has uniforms and a lot of them have shoes to play in. chingolima, who is somehow affiliated with the soccer team, had been asking me to help out. so when teddy came to visit in june he brought two duffel bags full of old sports jerseys that he had organized from wayneflete and cassie had gotten from nobles. i didn't want to just give the jerseys away and after talking with a pcv friend, we came up with the idea of having the soccer players make bricks in exchange for the jerseys. i proposed the idea to chingolima, we had a couple meetings to arrange the details, and six weeks later the men's soccer team had made about 8,000 bricks to go towards 6 new houses for the orphans. my fear throughout the brickmaking was that after they had all been made the organization would fail to provide the construction materials. partly because our funder has been making recent appearances and checking in on the program, the organization got its act together and brought materials to build the houses. the project has continued and three of the six houses have been completed. following are some pictures of the process.

that’s it for now. hope that gives some insight into my work environment. thanks for reading and more to come soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a few photos...

my hometsay sister doing dishes (october, 2006)

 

chimoio (january, 2007)

 

fishing in vilankulus (february, 2007)

 

vilankulus (february, 2007)

 

vilankulus (february, 2007)

 

my new kitty, cotamba (february, 2007)

 

trip to pemba (april, 2007)

 

my neighbor, suzana, taking in laundry (april, 2007)

 

the long cold winter (may, 2007)

 

visiting women's project in angonia (may, 2007)

 

angonia (may, 2007)

 

with my counterpart, in angonia (may, 2007)

 

playing in my yard (june, 2007)

 

my neighbor, amelia (june, 2007)

 

amelia (june, 2007)

 

suzana, one step in the long process of making corn flour (june, 2007)

 

teddy and i head south! (june, 2007)

 

making chima with teddy and suzana (july, 2007)

 

laundry at home (july, 2007)

 

slacklining with kate, laura and lots of neighborhood friends (july, 2007)

 

amelia (august, 2007)

 

suzana, william, anastancia (september, 2007)