This past winter (technically more like May-July) was kind of a whirlwind. Since May, each week has been marked with a pretty significant event which either included travel outside of my province (that means at least a 5 hour trip in any direction) or a visit from someone – Peace Corps related or not – allowing me to play host in my town, and welcome someone into my daily life here in Inhambane, Moçambique.
It’s a bit overwhelming to think of all that I could write about to catch you up, and sometimes that’s what becomes my barrier to sharing, so I’m going to offer a summary of the highlights of each month, and then give my word that I will write more regularly from now on.
May 2018
May started off with a visit to Nampula in the northern part of Moçambique. I was fortunate to be chosen as a workgroup member for the fairly newly formed, HIV Task Force for Peace Corps in Moçambique, and as such was invited to attend the handover meeting whic took place the first weekend in May. The trip was extremely short, and the meeting brief yet productive. Unfortunately, however, because of where I am located in country, any travel to the national capital is all overland and typically takes about 10 hours by bus. Since travel to Nampula province from my town in Inhambane would be at least 2 days by bus, Peace Corps arranged for me to fly – which meant a bus trip south to Maputo, and then a flight north to Nampula for a one and a half day meeting, with the same plan for the return. If it sounds at all tiring, that’s because it is.
By no means do I have the most challenging travel amongst volunteers though, so I keep that perspective in mind whenever I have to make the journey for official PC travel to the capital. The road I travel is all paved, pothole-less for the most part, and there is an actual “rest-stop” break halfway through the journey where travelers can purchase a prepared meal (usually arroz e frango….chicken and rice), and use a dump-flush toilet (beats baring my bum while peeing in the reeds on the side of the road). All relative indicators of privilege and resources. It is a long journey nonetheless, so after pleading my case, I was granted permission to break up my travel into two days, which I hope will continue to benefit future volunteers placed at my site for service.
I wish I could say more about Nampula, but my perspective was limited to a small section of the city of Nampula. Very much like Nicaragua, and the disconnect between the western/central part of the country and the Caribbean coast, the northern provinces of Moçambique experience life very differently to the south, and there are obviously significant differences between those provinces that are considered “northern region” as well. The resources of many countries tend to be greater in abundance the closer one lives to the financial capital, and many Moçambicans will attest to how the stark disparity between north and south shows up in their lives thousands of miles from Maputo city. I often hear, from those who are or who have lived in the northern provinces, that Moçambique is actually two different countries which exist within one border.
I still have plans, in the first quarter of 2019, to make it back to Nampula and perhaps one or two other provinces in the north. Time, travel options, and of course money are all factors in how and when that could happen, but leaving Moçambique without spending some meaningful time in the north would be like closing a book without having read half of its chapters.
June 2018
June started with yet another trip south to Maputo to support the training of the incoming cohort of health trainees to Peace Corps Moçambique. Moz 30, as they are now known, had been in country just about one week before my co-trainer and I had the opportunity to meet and spend a week with them sharing insights, experiences, and information that would be (hopefully) useful and relevant to their two years of service.
My co-trainer is a health volunteer from my cohort, living and working in the north on health promotion (he was initially placed in Cabo Delgado province, but with the recent violence that has unfolded there, has been moved to a neighboring northern province for the remainder of his service). He and I paired well through the week in terms of how we represented differences in experience related to gender, race and ethnicity, province and region, site size and a our general approach to providing information and support.
This trip was my first time going back to the training community where we had spent 3 months at the start of our Peace Corps journey last year, and would be the first time back to visit my first host family here in Moçambique. In another post I’ll share more about my with my time with my host family in Namaacha (training site), but for now I’ll just say that it was a complex dynamic filled with lots of wonderful and equally challenging moments and experiences.
It turns out that that the brief visits I was able to make to see my host family were so much warmer and joy-filled than I had expected. It was great to see how the family has settled into the role of being “host-family” to their second trainee. I wasn’t expecting to see and hear such pride in how they regarded me as their first volunteer – but it was a comforting feeling that reminded me of the sacrifice they made (and continue to make) to take a stranger into their lives for 3 months, and make them part of the family. In true fashion, my host mother gave me her sassy little attitude when it was time for me to leave, because the visit was way too short. But now as a volunteer, independent in many ways in my life here and now in Moçambique, it was so much easier for me to be me, and accept her as she is, now that we have space between us to recognize, appreciate, and accept who we are as the women that we are.
July 2018
July was the most anticipated of the past few months, because I had the honor of hosting my sister-friend, Teresa, who had come to visit from the States. We had been planning this visit for months, and I realized how excited I was to have someone from back home – who knew me well – witness this part of my life here in Moçambique. Sharing my life here through phone calls, messages, and blog entries is the very least I can do to help everyone in my life envision, much less begin to understand how my life has continued here, but it can never fully capture the full picture of what everyday life here can be.
All that I share is also through my lens – and my lens only – with all of the misinterpretations, prejudgments, assumptions, and privileged conclusions that come along with the filter of my life experience. Having Teresa here to visit me, walk the paths I walk, breathe the air I am breathing, meet the people I’ve come to know, ask an entirely new set of questions, offer summaries of who she is to new friends she inevitably made, and experience Moçambique for herself, was such a blessing.
Teresa came with all of four words in Portuguese, and she left with the ability to greet Moçambicans in both Portuguese and the local language in my town (Chitswa). She remained open for adventure as we took on chapas (standard overcrowded minibuses) and machimbombos (overcrowded big-ass buses); survived some chilly nights that required knee-high socks and two blankets (Moçambique in the winter is no joke!); tried food that neither of us could pronounce properly – but was so good it made us want to dance; we “passeared” plenty to find street food (passear is the Portuguese verb used here for “taking a stroll” with no real destination…but our objective was always snack food!), and watched the brilliance of a colorful sky as the sun set over the Indian Ocean.
And we talked. We caught up on our lives from before we had even met 10 years ago, and continued filling in our stories which included hopes of what life might bring us in the future. Talking, laughing, and being able to feel in my native language – and with a dear friend who has the context of “me” prior to my Peace Corps service, was such a gift.
One of the wonderful benefits of her visit was the effort she made to bring along messages from past-colleagues and friends from back in the States. I received cards, hand-written letters, video messages on the phone that I received to save me from my dying phone here, and little (yet very significant!) care-package items from my Goodman Community Center family that will keep me going into this next and last year of service. I can’t express how much each and every thought means to me – and I’m so thankful to have people in my life (regardless of how physically far away), who continue to look out…and reach out…regardless of where we are in the world.
August 2018
Moz 28, as my cohort is known, came together during the second week in August for our Mid-service conference, which marks the halfway point for our service as volunteers here in Moçambique. It’s typically a conference that lasts for a few days, and is meant to be a time for medical check ups and check ins, reflections on service thus far, visioning for future service and life thereafter, and generally (and arguably most importantly) time for all of us to just be together again.
Coming back together was important – and almost necessary – as we learned the week before midservice that a member of our cohort had recently passed away, not long after ending her service here in Moçambique. I didn’t realize how important it would be for me to be back with the group again – particularly at this time. Learning of the death of our friend and colleague stirred up the greatest fear that I’ve been sitting with since leaving the States, which is how I will be able to manage the loss of those I know (and perhaps love) while I’m so far away. Being around others who are in similar positions, far away from family and friends, and who have have been socialized to mourn such a loss in similar ways, provided opportunities to share memories and reflections, and even provided some much-needed comfort.
The week continued with a very quick trip to South Africa for us to take care of paperwork related to our Visas. It’s been a long process, too complicated to even begin explaining it now (and I don’t even really understand it all anyway), but it continues – and this trip was just a part of the latest in the process. We literally spent two days traveling to and from Nelspruit, South Africa from Maputo, Moçambique, which was approximately a 5 hour trip in either direction. In Nelspruit, we stayed in a really nice hotel, located right next to a large indoor-outdoor mall that had many of us walking around with our mouths open as if this was the first time we were experiencing the wonders of such a construction.
It was a strange feeling, to have left our Moçambicans towns with little (and oftentimes, none) of the glamour and shine of the bigger city – only to end up in Nelspruit which felt like we had just landed in an overly-resourced city in the middle of a chique part of Wyoming. Disorienting (and at times unsettling) to say the least. I’ll be honest, it was really nice to eat nachos with real cheese and guacamole, and browse the MAC store again, but I was really glad when the week and a half of training and visa travel was over, and I was on my way back home to Inhambane. Home.
The best part of August was spending time with the closest of friends I’ve made while here this past year and a half. In addition to the “downtime” we spent together during conference, I was so fortunate to be able to spend a great day with a few other volunteers as we made our way north again from the city. And, after 10 months of sharing my daily life through messages and phone calls from a distance, I was finally able to share my town, my host-family and friends , and my every day, with my “partner in crime” here in Moz.
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As I write this, I’m struggling with how incomplete it feels. There is so much more that I could share about the past few months that I can’t capture completely (or respectfully?) now that so much time has passed. When I started writing this blog back in January, I reminded myself that it wasn’t a Peace Corps “project” I decided to start during service and then end the moment I COS (end service). This was a choice i made, after many years of thinking through it, and being encouraged by so many, to share my thoughts and experiences as only I live them.
So I did…start the blog…but it’s not worth anything unless I make the time, choose the words, and share the stories you have asked me to share with you. And so I will…