racism as i experienced it today

These 2 pictures are taken with my phone of the 'Face of the Old Man'
mountain in a town called Chimoio, where I visited after xmas. The
first one is at the bottom and the second is of the view after we'd
hiked up his nose.

Anyway, topic of conversation today is racism. As I walked around town
today, to the parts where I've never been, along with the usual
staring by everyone I pass, I got called several things that reminded
me of an experience I had in Namaacha that I forgot to write about.
When I say stare, I really mean stare. Everyone I walk pass would dog
me out, and they don't even care if I stare back. And it's not a
smiling stare either. It's straight up mean mugging. It's very weird.
Well, besides that today, there was also a lot of name calling. Like
they'd call me chinesa, chinese, japonesa, japanese, or korean. I
think I must be the first Vietnamese person here cause nobody knows
where it is. On top of that, the damn little kids went up to me and
was like 'ching chang chong chang chong' in a mocking voice to me. Oh
I was so pissed. are you freaking kidding me!? I have not been made
fun of like that since Elementary school, and to be mocked by
children! Well, i guess i shouldn't have been so mad but it was just
so shocking to be made fun of. Most of the time ppl don't even believe
i'm american. You know how when ppl in the states would ask what are
you, i would always respond with vietnamese. Well here, i have to
respond with i'm american, which i totally forgot about the first few
weeks, and ppl here would be like, no really what are you. It's so
hard to fathom that i'm american and i would have to speak english to
prove myself. Well, that's my identity crisis of the day. Just wanted
you to be aware that stereotyping exists here too. There's no escaping
it.

Site!

So today was my first day at site. Btw, i'm located right in the middle of mozambique, in the Buzi district of the Sofala province. The river Buzi actually divides our town in half, but i live on the larger and more central part. Many of my students will come from the other side and have to take a raft across. I haven't yet explored too much of the town because it's been raining, but i've had quite a few visitors, and everytime they like to chat right outside my door for like 15 to 30 minutes. Mozambicans are very welcoming. I've had former students, other teachers, and neighbors come by, and they all seem very nice. The town itself is located in the middle of nowhere but is a good size town with a decent market. When peace corps dropped me off with my luggage, we had to get off the main road and drive on this dirt path for like 40 minutes. Nothing but farmland and grass. So much like the texas country, but still beautiful. It was so rediculously hot last night that it was quite difficult for me to sleep, even with the fan blowing on me all night. Thank goodness it started raining and cooled off a bunch today. It felt great to go to the market and buy and cook my own food. Since we're by the river, there are lots of fish, but from what i've seen, the're all small and bony. I'm not adventurous enough to cook it yet, but i also know they sell frozen chicken here. Kind of a bummer since i wanted to kill my own chicken but i'm sure that will come with time. Today i made sauteed vegetables and omelette. Also am glad they sell bananas, apple, and mangos here but i wish there were other fruits. Ok. More later when i've explored more, but so far so good. I'm excited to get started.

Site Placement Announcement

November 28, 2009~


So, we got our site placement last week right before Thanksgiving dinner. It was all very exciting because Peace Corps actually let us have a Thanksgiving “dinner”, with turkey and everything! I say “dinner” but since it was Peace Corps, it was actually the day before Thanksgiving and “dinner” was really at 2 PM. We didn’t care though. We were just so happy that it happened at all. I was very impressed by all the different dishes people were able to cook here, even though there are so little to work with. We had all kinds of mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, gravy, all kinds of cookies and cakes, fried pies, and even a key lime pie. For my part, I made chocolate cake from scratch, and it was edible. Yay me! We had classes in the morning, and since we all knew that they would announce our site placement sometime that day, I don’t think anybody’s mind was on the lesson. It was a good thing they announced it right before we ate.
They gave us all envelopes and told us we had to open it all at the same time, and it was like Christmas day when all the kids opened their presents at once. Some kids were ecstatic about what they got, others were disappointed. It was the same for us. Some people were crazy about where they got placed and others not so much. I was pretty happy with my placement, which is in the central region of Mozambique, in the Sofala province, in the district of Buzi. I had really wanted a northern region since I knew that’s where the mountains were, so I was disappointed at first that Buzi is just a flat plain, just like Texas, and just as hot, too, I heard. However, there is a river that runs through the town, and it’s fairly small, which is great because then I can integrate into the community better. It’s fairly interesting to see how our group divides after we’ve learned out site placement. Northern people hung out with each other more, central with central, and south with south. Another good thing about being located central is that all the central people are pretty cool people. Haha… look at me, already taking sides.

Well, so I wrote the first 2 paragraphs a couple of weeks ago, and it is now December 9, 2009. We just had our swearing in ceremony yesterday in the capital of Mozambique, Maputo, and I´m still here waiting on a flight to a supervisor´s conference, where I meet the heads of the school where I´m going to work at, tomorrow, and then off to site we go. I don´t think it´s really hit me, yet, that I´m actually a volunteer now, no longer a trainee. I don´t feel any different. The swearing in ceremony was actually pretty nice since it was held at one of the ambassador’s house, and all types of important people came to give us speeches. Half were in Portuguese, which I didn´t quite appreciate as much since I was so sleepy and kept on zoning out due to lack of mastery of the language, but it was nice nonetheless. The entire ceremony only took about an hour and a half. People made speeches, 2 of our own made thank-you speeches, they called our names, and then we swore to serve the Peace Corps. It was difficult to think that we´d worked so hard for the past 2 months just to have the opportunity to say those words, yet those words only took a couple of seconds to say. I can´t quite put my finger on it, but I felt kind of robbed. Damn. My English is starting to falter now that the Portuguese is kicking in that I can´t even think of the right words to express how I felt. It´s probably not that important, anyway. It was pretty sad to have to say good-bye to everyone afterwards, though, because it felt like this was going to be the last time I see a lot of them for awhile. Like I said, the first 3 months at site, I´m restricted to my hometown except for Christmas or New Years, I have to pick one in order to go visit others. When I said good-bye to my host family, it wasn’t as sad, because I was very excited to be on my own. I did have a long talk with my host mom before leaving though, so I did feel good about that.
It´s strange how they grew on me so much, especially my host mom. Not everything is as meets the eyes as you may think with these Mozambicans. Since my Portuguese improved a lot more since I´ve been here, I´ve been able to have more meaningful conversations with her, and I´ve learned a lot about her family. I truly felt that they cared for me a lot, and it made me happy when I was able to do nice things for them. For instance, I made them cake, which they loved. It´s nice to think that this time next year, if I’m not headed for America, I might go back and visit them.
So, something cool happened to us. One of the U.S. ambassadors came to see us the other day before we swore in. Oh my gosh, I felt so privileged! I mean, this dude had a say in how much money the US put into Mozambique every year and has control of billions of dollars. He meets with the President of Mozambique on a regular basis, and he is basically the State´s main means of communications with this country. During our session, he got a call from the General Manager of some big company that invested billions of dollars into Mozambique, and he declined it for us! I couldn´t help but feel special. He talked about how the US pours billions of dollars into this country every year. Yes, this was exactly what I had been wondering for a long time now, too! I mean, with our huge national deficit, all of our economic problems, and the insufficiencies in states´ budgets, ahem California, I couldn´t understand why we invest about 5 billion (don´t quote me on this but I think that´s what he said) every year in another country. That includes economic investments, not just purely selfless giving away of money, but we do devote millions of dollars into PEPFAR, which is the emergency aids funds that backs tons of anti-AIDS campaigns here. Couldn´t we use this money to help stimulate our own economy and fix our own budget problems? Well, the way the ambassador put it, we are actually being proactive. Poor countries tended to become war-torn countries, which is a breeding ground for terrorism, and it would cost way more to send countermeasures in later than it costs to help the country build its infrastructure now. In addition, he also said that there are quite a few untapped resources in Mozambique and if we could help them develop economically, it would strengthen our economy, as well. Besides, Mozambique is the first African nation to have survived a civil war and is a prime example for other African nations that democracy does work, so it´s in our best interest to promote this nation, to encourage the principles of freedom and liberty to other African nations. Anyway, that´s probably pretty boring to read, so I won´t go on any more about that, but I only wanted to express my feelings at that time. As I was sitting there listening to him speak, I felt validated somehow, like I´m part of this movement to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world. What I´m doing is important, and I´m important enough for this man that works for the White House to come and speak to me about my work. He has tons of things to do all day long and important people to meet, yet he took out time from his work to speak to us, to me! Score! That was such a winning moment! Not to mention that guy was an awesome speaker and was so delightfully entertaining.


Now for pictures! I uploaded wrong and the more recent one is at the top and the one from long ago is at the bottom. sorry!

After hiking over 10 miles to the top of the Limpopo Mountain only to be turned back by 2 armed guards with AK´s 20 feet from the top. Grrh!



All the people teaching biology from our group at the Halloween party.


The only asians in this year´s group of 67.




My mae, host mom, and pai, host dad.


All of us fitting into the chapa!


People in my language group and our favorite professor, Candido Macaringue!



Me and my host mom. She´s so cute!

site visit

So.. This past weekend our group finally got to leave nam, the town we're training in, to go on site visits, which is when you get to visit a current volunteer at his or her site and see what your future after training is like. This year, peace corps got a lot of funding from Pepfar, an aids foundation, so a lot of the health volunteers got to fly to northern provinces. (I may not have mentioned this before but of the 70 or so volunteers training with me here, half are health workers and half are education, but you don't have to be an education or health major to do either. Many people have humanities background or some bullshit like that so anyone can join as long as you're serious about it.) anyway, the northern area is where you want to go cause it's supposed to be really mountainous and fun..basically anywhere really far from nam in the south is really fun.. But ofcourse with my luck, where did i get placed? Friggin one hour away from nam in the south! Ok.. So i was pretty envious of all the others but i decided to make light of the situation and hoped for the best.. After all, the site was very close to the capital so atleast we got to stop there. I was partnered with another girl and since we were so close, we didn't have to wake our asses up at 4 in the morning to catch a flight. We got to leave at 730 instead. Score!
Anyway, so let me share the good news first.. For those who don't know, people get around their own town mostly by walking. I haven't seen that many bicycles or mopeds but they do exist. Now, how do people get around outside of their town, like from one part of the country to another? Why, in a magical contraption they call a chapa. Remember this word cause i'm going to be describing it once here but mentioning it a lot more throughout my stay in moz since i don't have a car and will be riding chapas for the next 2 years. A chapa is a big van, like one of those white vans that shuttles you to and from the airport, except here they don't include AC and go up to maybe 60 mph? I'm guessing, but don't quote me no that. I just know it's slow. They cram as many ppl as can fit into a seat, and they usually pick passengers up along the way or wait until the car fills up. We didn't have to wait long for ours to fill so i was shoulders to shoulders with the ppl next to me and thank god the dude was wearing some kind of musk or aftershave. Otherwise, can you just imagine the BO if i sat next to someone who didn't wear deodorant? Anyway, the ride wasn't too bad because it wasn't hot and the scenery was awesome. I swear, everytime i get out me our little training town, i get that awed feeling again. Like shit, i'm in friggin mozambique! I'm in africa! It's so gorgeous here and i'm so lucky. Being stuck in training makes me forget that sometime cause i'm just so wrapped up in classes and lessons and stupid stuff like that.. Anyway, we arrived at the capital and net up with our volunteer and i find out that a girl from our group has decided not to finish training and is going home. How sad for her. She must be so miserable to have reached that decision cause when i'd talked to her before training she was so excited about this. How sucky to have to say goodbye to everyone and then return to say you couldn't do it. She's very brave to do that. Anyway, we get to eat burgers for the first time in a month, ofcourse nothin like the states burger but definitely close, and i was enjoying every bit of ground patty as possible. Then we got ice cream and no joke, that ice cream must have been inhaled based on how quickly i finished it. I even got greedy and bought a custard cake for the ride. There was my mistake, as you will find out later, but i should not have been so greedy.
So then we took another chapa to site. This ride was quite interesting. So, apparently, it's very common for ppl to drink on chapas, as long as they're not the driver. This guy in the front seat was drinking a beer, pretty sure not his first by the way he was talking loudly, and my friend and i were sitting in the seat behind him. Next thing we know, some guy jumps off the back of a pick up in front of us as we slowed in traffic and walks towards our chapa with a cattle whip in his hand yelling at the guy in the front seat of my car. This guy yells something back, but i didn't understand, so i thought they knew each other. i was thinking to myself.. how random, ppl here can just jump off a truck in the middle of traffic to say hi to each other.. Well, then another guy from the back of the pick up jumps off, this time with a shovel in his hand, and yet another dude jumped off, this guy with a broken bottle in his hand, all charging at the drunk guy in my chapa. There was a lot of yelling going on and threatening with the farm tools of destruction, but i couldn't decide if this was a joke or if there was seriously going to be a throw down in the middle of the road. Thankfully, traffic picked up and we started moving again and the driver shooed those guys away. I learned later that the drunk guy in my chapa had called those other guys cattle since they were riding in the back of the truck and that's highly insulting. Note to self.. Don't call ppl in the back of pick ups cattle and don't be drunk on the chapa! So back to the good news, we got to eat whatever food we wanted at the site and i got to see the bio exams they gave at her school. We got to watch dvds since she had a tv at her site and we didn't have to ride 9 hours on the chapa like some me the others.
And now.. The bad news. Remember how i was greedy and bought that custard thing? Well, i didn't get a chance to eat it until night time and it must have gone bad or something go my purse cause i got oh so sick that night. I'd made it through a month without diarrhea, but i had to get it during site visit, when i didn't have my medicine with me, when i was staying at someone else's house, when this person was the most uptight person about keeping her house clean, especially her bathroom, and when the bathroom of the site was an indoor bathroom with lousy ventilation and plumbing. Oh my god it was so embarrassing to have to go to her to tell her i had clogged her toilet and was even more embarrassing for her to see my mess. (Plz don't be grossed out. I'm just tryin to keep it real.) Anyway, so the girl showed me the plunger and where to get water to flush the toilet. Yes, my friends, toilets here are just the toilet seat. Most of them don't flush so you have to get the bucket of water to throw into it, but then you also lose the suctioning of the water. Hence, the plunger. That's why i much prefer the latrine since it doesn't require you to flush and it's usually located outdoors where the fresh air ventilates a lot. Back to the volunteer's bathroom at hand.The pipes were so bad there that you have to plunge everytime you poop, and i mean everytime. Guess how many times i had to wake up in the middle of the night to plunge and carry water to flush?! My poor friend.. So, she and i got mattresses and slept in the living room. Too bad she chose the spot right next to the bathroom door.. I bet she got woken up everytime my stomach turned. On top of that, it was rediculously hot there and the guy who was supposed to bring our mosquito nets forgot to, so we used our sheets to cover ourselves up as nets. But then, it got so hot under the damn sheets that we had to open them up to breathe and then the mosquitoes would race to eat us. Man was i miserable.. What with trying to hold it it in but then failing to and the running to the bathroom every couple of hours, the stomach aches, the mosquitoes attacking and me covering myself and then uncoverin myself with the sheet, and the heat.. I think it was my first time thinking to myself.. What have i gotten myself into? Yea. I was so miserable that night. Fortunately, we got nets the next night and i got on the peace corps diarrhea diet the next day so the next night did not require several trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night with the bucket and plunger. It was still hot and i have like 30 mosquito bites all over, but we made it back in tact and i am happy again. That momentary lapse into misery has since subsided, and i don't think the visit was so awful. Ofcourse i'm jealous out of my mind that other ppl's volunteers took them to a resort, the beach, drinking, etc, but ours wasn't too bad. Even though she was just a bit uptight, she was very nice and tried to be as accommodating s possible. After i told her i was sick she was very concerned. She also let me cook some stir fry in her kitchen and i was super happy to be able to cook my own food again, using soy sauce too! Can't wait to get to site and start cooking. Anyway, so that was my weekend.
So.. Funny thing. In the capital, they have very weird names for the streets. All the streets are named after dictators, and not just the mozambican dictators! I walked down rua Mao Ze Dong today and they also have karl marx and john lenin street. Weird huh? Why would africans honor mao ze dong with a street. How do they even know who he is? Food for thought. Until next time!

Ok, so how have I been? What have I been doing with my time? What’s it’s like in Mozambique? Well, we’re entering into the rainy season now, so last week, it rained everyday. I had to walk 20 minutes everyday in the freezing, yes it’s cold, rain to class. When I say freezing, I mean like 60’s (cold for Moz), and when I say rain, I mean that annoying light constant drizzle and not the rain that pours like rope from the roofs, though they say that that kind of rain will come later. I don’t mind the cold. Better cold and rainy than hot and rainy. Less mosquitoes that way. I just don’t like picking up all this mud. Yuck! There are not really paved roads here, so it’s muddy all the time, and my shoes get muddy and yucky so often it’s annoying. I also have to do laundry more often because mud gets on my clothes, but there’s no sun cause it’s always raining, so it’s such a bitch.
My daily life is pretty busy. I get home from school only in time to do homework and eat dinner and then I have to go to bed. The sessions are pretty interesting. This week, we learned about Permaculture in class, which is a technique of farming food in your own backyard. It’s all about maximizing water use on your land and composting to increase efficiency of the soil. I know, it’s so dorky, but a Mozambiquan family can learn this technique and feed themselves without having to go to the store at all. I’m really excited to test this out on my own backyard when I get to site, and I’m even more excited to take it on as a side project to teach it to Mozambiquans. I was talking to my host-mom, who teaches elementary school here, and she says that it’s very difficult to teach her students sometime because they come to class hungry often. Their parents work in the fields, so often times, they leave before the kids get up, which means the kids go to school without breakfast. People are very poor, too, so they just don’t have food. Then they go to school for 5 hours without food! Can you imagine that? The kids at home get breakfast, and then snacks, and then lunch in elementary school while the kids here go without food for hours! It’s no wonder they can’t learn! If a school could just learn this technique, then potentially, they could maybe feed some of the children, and if the families learn this technique, maybe the parents don’t have to go to the fields to work but can farm near their own house! I really hope I don’t lose my zest or memory of how this works, so I really can complete this project later.
Hmmm…. What else? O yea, so Mozambique only has an election every 5 years here, and how lucky is it that I get to be here when they have it? There are 2 parties, Frelimo, and Renamo, but there’s an overwhelming favor for Frelimo, so they’re definitely gonna win. It’s so funny how they vote over here. People still use written ballots, and there are no machines to count, so all the counting is done by people! Yes, that’s right people. And so the results aren’t even known until 15 days later! Oh, and there’s not record of people on the computers. I’m guessing they don’t have ID’s here, so in order for them to know that you’ve voted, they put this permanent ink on your finger that doesn’t wash off for like 2 days. So all these Mozambiquans are walking around with black fingers so that they can’t vote twice. It’s so funny. Over there, we get stickers. Everyone was so excited about the elections, my host family, especially. These people have only had their independence for maybe 20 years, and everyone really wants to take advantage of the fact that they can vote, and a lot of partying goes on afterwards. No one takes it for granted.

It´s so funny. The word that means ´robber here is ninja. So when people yell ninjas here, theyºre talking about robbers. Somebody´s mom was like don´t sit out there because the ninjas can see you, and she meant robber, but it was so funny. Haha… maybe you just had to be there.

Things I miss from home:

My bed.

Soft clothes… when they dry by sunlight, they´re definitely not soft.

Well, I have some homework to do later, so I’m really pressed for time. Maybe a longer update later.

STaging

So... first day in my Peace Corps adventures... please excuse the way I write for I have a pretty good buzz going on right now. Some of my fellow PC members and I went down for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, and I drank some Heinekens. I have a feeling that our 3 month training is going to be filled with many more drunken nights together. Last night, I got a total of 3 hours of sleep because I had to keep re-packing my bags and weighing them so that I meet the 50 lbs limit, and tonight, I will also get about the same amount of sleep because it's already 10 PM and we're supposed to be out of our hotel by 2:30 AM. I usually wouldn't mind sleeping on the plane, but I hate not having enough sleep because I'd be too tired to talk or communicate the next day, and tomorrow is going to be pretty exciting! We're leaving for Africa!

Staging in Philadelphia is such a tease because all we did was talk to other volunteers and get all excited for our adventure, but then we'd have to sit there and endure 5 hours of orientation that doesn't go into enough detail to really teach us anything. I mean, I was so happy and excited to meet and talk to other volunteers, but I didn't like sitting there listening to some guy just introduce us to what's going to happen. The real adventure awaits in Mozambique when we go through our 3 month training. Anyway, our group this year has 66 volunteers, which is a massive amount of people. Hopefully, we'll be able to communicate with each other after training, so that we can still get together even when our service begins. I mean, you think you know the type of pple you're going to meet in the Peace Corps, but when you're actually here and do meet people, it's so different. I love our group and I'm just so excited to begin this new adventure! This is probably going to be my last post for awhile, so wish me luck!

Pre-Departure

Will update once my journey begins. Stay tuned!