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.