Adventures in Africa

THE CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE MINE PERSONALLY AND DO NOT REFLECT ANY POSITION OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT OR THE PEACE CORPS

Name:
Location: Mozambique

I will be in Mozambique with the Peace Corps for the next 27 months. While in Africa, I will periodically post thoughts about my experiences so anyone interested can keep tabs on my happenings.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Week 3 of training done!

Hi all! Week three of training is done, and at this point I think we are all really looking forward to the end of it. My self and a few of my American friends have escaped into Maputo again for the day. It is not that I am not having a good time here. I am really glad that I am doing this. The thing is training is really tough. I am trying to get used to all the cultural differences (very difficult), and I am living with a family, which would be difficult even in the US, and finally the language is really a tough barrier at this point. Every minute of every day I have to be up and alert and trying to understand what is being said around me or why people are acting in certain ways, or trying to make lesson plans for my english teacher training. It is a lot. Next Saturday we get to leave for site visits and we are all really looking forward to it. I am not sure where I am going, but they send all of us out to stay with current volunteers for 5 days. We get to see what there site is like, hang out with them, go into their classrooms to see what it is like to teach. It should be really great!
My birthday this past week was great. Thank you for all the emails and even phone calls! I am sorry if I have not written back yet. I usually only get in to use the internet for an hour so I can´t always write as much as I want. On top of writing emails I like to try and figure out what is going on in the world. I am very cut off from any sort of news. The news I see is in Portuguese and usually about Africa. Anyways, for my birthday some of the other trainees made me a birthday cake and they all made cards for me. It was really nice. Everyone tried really hard to make sure I had a great day. Then my family threw me a birthday party. They made a ton of food and had me invite over a few of my friends. They gave me this funny little plastic bear with a rose that is in a plastic case... I am not allowed to take it out. It was really thoughtul of them and they put a lot of time and effort into it. I was blown away.
I didn´t bring my camera to post pictures into the city. I am nervous about bringing valuables into Maputo so the pictures are going to have to wait. I will see if I can post them from Namaacha. I have discovered internet there, although I have had difficulty posting any blog entries from there. The computers are much slower and do not always work.
So, I am going to go check the news, but thanks for all the comments and letters and emails. I really have appreciated it. It feels really good to hear from people and it makes me feel less far away from home. Being away and in this situation has kind of been an emotional roller coaster for all of us. We have really good days and kind of bad days. Any uplifting emails always help!
I miss everyone and I will try to post pictures soon. Take care and send any news my way!

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Maputo for the weekend

Hi all! This has been my first chance to get to a computer since departing for Namaacha 2 weeks ago. A lot has gone on, and I feel like I have been here much longer then two and a half weeks. Don't mind the typos if there are some.. the key boards are a bit different here.
So there is too much to say, and not enough time, but I have moved in with my homestay family. The family is really big because lots of people live in the house, not just the immediate family. They are really nice, but it is not always easy because they speak portuguese, and I do not. The portuguese is definitely the hardest part about being here but I am not stressing because I did not expect to learn it immediately. I take portuguese lessons every day and I have learned a lot in just these two weeks. I should be doing a lot better by the time I go to site.
The house that I live in is down a hill in the town, and it is "rustic" to say the least. I have my own small stone house that is just my bedroom. I have a bed, a small closet and a desk to lay my things. The family lives in the big house about 15 yards to the left of my front door. There house has two bedrooms (that somehow they all fit into at night), and then there is also a dining area with a tv and dvd player! There is a separte house for the bathroom, which is basically a hole in the ground, and then another house for where they cook. When I say house it is not at all like our houses. They are often made of scrap materials and they all have tin roofs. The bathroom does not have a roof at all in some places. Its not bad though... just takes some getting used to. I get to take a bucket bath every morning which I kind of like. There is no wasted water and that is important here. I spent an hour and a half getting water last weekend so I know how important it is to conserve. I don't want to be lugging back 200 gallons of water more then once a week.
My family structure is interesting. I have three brothers, 9, 18 and 20, and then a sister, who is 15. We also have my Dad's brother living in the hosue with his wife and twin babies, and there are two other children living there who are family but I'm not really sure how they are related. The women here are really strong and tough. They do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and child care. It is a lot of work here in Mozambique where there is no running water and dirt everywhere. The men get to hang out a lot more, and get to reap the benefits of all the good food, but they go to work during the day as well so they do a lot too. The way the family interacts is completely different from any thing I have seen in the US. They live much more communally and there is very little privacy. I have to escape sometimes and lock myself in my room just because I am not used to it. Americans need a lot of alone time I have realized.
The town that I am living in is really pretty. It is in the mountains, so it is pretty cool. I never thought I'd be cold in Africa but I have been! I didn´t bring enough warm clothes with me to my homestay. I am not sure when I will be able to share pictures but I will do it as soon as I can. Internet is not easy to come by here.
I know I'm leaving a lot out but I have a lot to do here before 12 when everything shuts down. I have a wedding to go to later in the day also... Its a three day wedding... they know how to have fun here in Mozambique.
I miss everyone! Let me know how you are all doing through email.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

End of orientation

Today I am off to my home-stay. I will be living in a town called Nammacha with a family. It is about two hours outside the city, and part of my group will be living in the same town with me. I will have my own room, and they will make my meals for me and show me how to cook and do my laundry, and they will help me learn portugese. I started my language lessons the other day. Portugese is both easy and hard because of spanish... Easy because I understand a lot of the vocab, but difficult because I get a lot of the vocab confused. I am looking forward to spending time with my new family because I will have to use the language to communicate so I should learn it a lot faster.
I have not seen much in terms of Maputo so far. I have only seen a little bit of what I would call "real" Africa, and that was on the trip from the airport to our hotel here in Maputo. On the way I saw poverty like I have never seen before. People were running around with no shoes on through trash and muck, and the houses all seemed to be made out of scraps and were very small and close together. I saw one little boy taking up water from a really dirty gutter running through the middle of the houses... it definitely was startling to see even though I kind of knew that was going to happen. Luckily, I am not going to be living in extreme situations such as this. I will say, though, that all the kids seemed to be running around very happy, and they had made there own soccer balls and were playing every where, which I found to be really cool.
The Americans and the staff here are great. I think there are some amazing people in the group. We went on a retreat yesterday to the American School and we had a lot of fun activities. I got to play soccer with all the guys, which I loved. We also had a scavenger hunt, and some relay races. It was a nice way to end our time together.
This coming week I will start the real training. Lots of language and some cultural training. I will be out of touch for a bit, but I will let you all know how it is going with my family when I have a chance.