Welcome to site!

When the Peace Corps car dropped me and my stuff off at site and drove away, leaving me on my own in Mozambique for the first time, despite that I’d been looking forward to this moment for a long time, I’d prepared myself to feel utter panic. I’d expected to be overwhelmed by the enormity of this decision I’d made, agreeing to live for two years in a small, remote village in central Mozambique without electricity or running water, and with only a basic knowledge of Portuguese. I’d expected to feel the terror of this sudden isolation and independence.

Instead, I felt- well, kind of hungry. Hey, it was 2:30pm and we hadn’t stopped to eat all day.

Luckily though, I had been able to buy some ‘take-away’ chicken and rice in Molócue. So as soon as the director and my host-parents left to let me settle in, I sat on the stiff couch in the living room and dug in.

I took stock of the house. It’s not actually my house, since mine is still being built, but it’s where my sitemate Gabriela lives. She was gone on vacation and would be away until January, so in the meantime I could stay in her house. In a lot of ways I’m actually really grateful I got to spend my first weeks there, because it meant I got to live right next to my host family, who have been a huge help. Already before I’d arrived they had made sure all the water buckets in the house were all filled, so that I wouldn’t need to worry about carrying water from the pump across the street myself for at least a few days. When they found out I’d brought a solar panel with me, they also helped me set it up and showed me the best place to put it alongside the house to get the most sun.

Water buckets in the kitchen

The water pump across the street, where I get all my water

Water pump from a distance

View of the house (red and white) from the water pump

The house I'm currently living in- just got a new paint job!

The main road, which is lined with mango trees for literally miles in both directions

My solar panel charging up

In any case, the house was already well set-up- plenty of food in the kitchen and charcoal for cooking- plus I’d brought some groceries of my own. The bathroom has a real toilet (though only flushes by manually pouring a bucket of water down it) and sink, the living room has couches and a bookcase full of books and magazines left from several generations of previous volunteers.

After about an hour, the director returned and took me on a short tour of town. We visited the school, only a minute’s walk down the road. Then we walked off the main road a bit, though the neighborhoods to meet some of the other teachers who were hanging out outside their houses. We saw my future house, still under construction, which had me a little worried since it didn’t look any different from pictures I’d seen which had been taken two months ago. Still, the director promised I’d be able to move in by Christmas in a couple weeks. (Note: as of this day, January 18, as I sit writing this, I still have not moved in. In Mozambique, delay is inevitable.)

We returned to the main road and walked the rest of the way through town, past the police station, the administrative office, the hospital, and finally, at the far end of town, to the mercadinho,  the little market where it’s possible to buy the occasional produce and other small essentials. The mercadinho also had my favorite view so far of the mountains surrounding Nauela. All throughout the walk back home I couldn’t stop flipping out about how beautiful this whole place was.

Near some administrative buildings on the main road

Oh also NAUELA HAS A FRICKING CASTLE IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN no big deal...

The view from the mercadinho. Not the best weather or camera for it- I'll try to get a better picture later

Finally, I returned home. My host-sisters, Dulce and Albertina, were sitting out in front of the house, collecting mangoes from the tree in the front yard. I figured I should start making dinner before it got too dark. I took the charcoal and stove outside, and then realized that I didn’t have any matches. I looked all over the house, but couldn’t find any. Luckily, my host family lives literally in the backyard, so I estou a pedir-ed (asked) them for a lit piece of charcoal to get my stove going. Pai Janeiro happily got my stove lit for me and I found a pan in the kitchen to get some rice started. While the rice cooked I chopped up some tomatoes and garlic to add to it.

Looking out the back side of the house, with a view of my host family's house and what I have lovingly dubbed Monster Mountain, due to the little eyes/horns/ear tufts it has on top.

The back porch, where I cook- unless it's raining super hard and the whole porch basically floods

I thought about trying to cook something else to go with the rice, but I was getting really tired and my head was pounding. I had made way too much rice, so I offered some to my host family, which they readily accepted. All I really wanted was to eat quickly and go to bed to relax, but this seemed like a good time actually talk with my host family a bit. I sat with mãe Velosa outside their house in the dark as we ate, and asked her some questions. It turns out she’s a retired primary school teacher, and she told me a bit about the rest of the family as well, like the fact that her daughter Dulce just graduated 12^th grade, which is a pretty great accomplishment out here, especially since Dulce has an eight-month-old baby.  

Eventually, I went back inside and dug out my rechargeable flashlight get ready for bed. I had never been so relieved to finally crawl under my mosquito net for the night. The director had mentioned several times that Nauela is a safe town- both violent crimes and theft are rare. One of the previous volunteers even used to leave the back door open at night so her cat could go in and out. Especially with my host family living ten feet away, despite the dark and being alone in the house, I felt completely safe. All in all, though I was too tired to completely appreciate it in the moment, I was unbelievably happy to have been placed in this beautiful and friendly site.

The Road North

The end of training seemed very sudden. In one day, our group of now 53 volunteers had officially sworn in and were now spending our last night all together. Early the next morning, the 27 of us headed to sites in the northern region of Mozambique left our hotels in Maputo early in the morning to catch our flight to Nampula city.

Somebody miscalculated how much trailer space our luggage would take up so they just tossed the last ones on top- but even through all the twists and turns on the way to the airport they didn't fall off!

I didn't catch the name of these islands off the coast of central Mozambique, but dang, I wanna visit!!!

When we arrived in Nampula city, I was blown away by the crazy-awesome mountains that surround the area. One of the other volunteers, Scott, our resident geology expert having a masters degree in said subject, said the mountains here probably have their weird shapes due to having been formed by blobs of molten lava that bubbled up through the ground, and then over time these lava-blobs have been exposed and become mountains due to erosion wearing away the softer surrounding soil. (Lonely Planet has since confirmed this theory). It creates a kind of Dr. Seuss-landscape effect, with these wavy, blobby mountains popping up across the terrain, and it's totally freaking awesome.

View of some far-away mountains from the hotel balcony in Nampula

Look it's Pride Rock!

Nampula city was where we stayed for the next two days, for a 'supervisors' conference' at which we met our school directors (or a representative), and sat through sessions with them on info about Peace Corps and what our roles as volunteers are in our school and community. My director has turned out to be pretty good so far- he's been very friendly and takes his job seriously.

My director and me at the end of one of the conference info sessions

Finally though, it was time... early in the morning on December 6th, we all packed into Peace Corps cars and chapas to be dropped off at our sites.

Having a slightly stressed-out breakfast at 6am as we hang out with our fellow northern volunteers for the last time before heading to sites.

To get to Nauela, I rode in a Peace Corps jeep along with fellow volunteers Cathy and Katy, who would become my two nearest volunteers from group Moz 23; we and each of our directors would all be riding together for this trip. I squeezed awkwardly into the backseat along with the three directors; in Mozambique the actual intended allocation of people-per-car is rarely followed. Likewise, Katy and Cathy shared the front seat.

There were more great blob-mountain views as we left Nampula city, heading south to get to Zambezia province

 The views were amazing throughout the trip. Just over two hours south of Nampula we hit our first stop- Cathy's site in the town of Alto Molocue. It was surreal (and more so for her, obviously) to be dropping the first of us off at the place that would be her home for the next two years. And since Molocue is the nearest larger town to my site, it's a place I'll hopefully get to know well over the next couple years too. So at least saying goodbye to Cathy when we finally left to continue our road trip wasn't as sad as the goodbyes to other volunteers that morning in Nampula had been, since we'll actually see each other on a semi-regular basis.

Next came the moment of truth... my site, Nauela, was our next stop. Our driver, Peace Corps staff member Marcelino, left Molocue to follow a mango tree-lined dirt road headed into the mountains. On the way, Marcelino got a call from another staff member who had found out that another volunteer was having trouble getting to her site. Peace Corps, not having enough of their own vehicles, had rented a mini-bus to get her to her site in Cabo Delgado province. But the bus driver was "fazer-ing chapa", meaning, he kept stopping and trying to pick up more passengers along the way.

Marcelino had us call the volunteer, and asked to speak to the driver directly. We then got some entertainment out of listening to his side of the conversation. He started out with some typical polite introductions, "How are you? Oh, fine, thank you. How's the weather? Oh, good. I'm Marcelino, from the Peace Corps staff..." and so on. Then he got down to it.

"When I paid you to take a young lady to her site, I paid you the money to take one lady and her things to the site. You are forbidden to take any other people, or frighten this young lady and endanger her things, or to take any more money for the trip." He listened to the driver talk for a bit, who was apparently protesting this. Marcelino buckled down. "If you don't listen to me, I will tell my colleague to take your money back, and you will pay for the trip. If you don't-"

This went on for a few minutes, but eventually Marcelino seemed to win. He hung up the phone, shaking his head. "Mozambicans! This is how we are- that driver sees those people looking for a ride and he says to himself  'But I can't just leave that money lying on the road!', even though I told him, when I paid him, exactly what I was paying him to do-"

After a little less than an hour's drive, we arrived in Mugema, a small town but with a nice market and some shops where we stopped so I could buy some groceries. Another twenty minutes down the road, and suddenly as we drove up a slight incline there was a cluster of yellow and red buildings on the right side of the road with Escola Secundaria de Nauela painted in black along one wall. Literally seconds later we were already stopping in front of a house I realized I'd seen in pictures. It was my sitemate Gabriela's house, where I'd be staying at first while my own house was being finished up.

Arrived in Nauela! This is actually my sitemate's house- mine was still under construction. My host-mae Velosa is on the porch.

Just from a first glance I was already in love with the views surrounding the neighborhood- it was hard not to be. The street is on top of a hill, so both sides of the road have views to rolling green hills and mountains. I just couldn't believe yet that this is where I will get to live for the next two years. While we unloaded the car Katy and I had a few last moments to chat and absorb the surreal-ness before the jeep packed back up and continued on to Katy's site in Lioma, another few hours down the road.

Unfortunately all my good pics of the views are on my camera which I can't transfer pics from at this moment, so I'll have to leave y'all hanging on that until my next real post about Nauela, which deserves it's own post anyway. I'll try not to delay too much on it- depends on my electricity situation. Til next time!

Bye Namaacha, time to head north!

On a Tuesday morning, December 2nd, all of us in Moz group 23 left our host families and training site in Namaacha to head out and start our actual Peace Corps service. There are a lot of little details about Namaacha that never made it into any previous blog posts, so here's a variety of some last short glimpses:

That random guy's pet monkey

One of the AWESOME GIANT PURPLE TREES of Namaacha, which I have finally learned is called a jacaranda tree

These trees, just popping up in the middle of all the other normal green trees, always made me feel like they come from some kind of psychedelic magical candy land or something.

SERIOUSLY AWESOME

That time someone threw the football in the abandoned, potentially-parasite-infected pool next to the science teachers' hub, and creative attempts were made to retrieve it...

Going outside to the casa de banho to take a bath on a rainy day

A fruit found in Namaacha called an ata, or sugar apple

The inside of an ata has seeds covered in sweet white soft flesh

Namaacha also has litchis... many, many litchis

Lichis!!! :D

Portuguese language class under the litchi trees 

Fish-filled chamusas at one of the local barracas, always popular at the end of a full day of training 

At Xavier's, the most frequented barraca to meet at the end of the day

My daily view on the walk back home after training sessions

But training in Namaacha didn't last forever, and at the end of nine weeks we left for the capital of Maputo to finish training and swear-in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. On my last morning, my mãe made a special going-away breakfast.

Mãe with the big breakfast she made

Heck yeah french fries and eggs

Then I dressed up in my custom-made capulana dress, left the house for the last time, and left for Maputo on a chapa (mini-bus/van). The swear-in ceremony took place at the U.S. ambassador's house, an absolutely beautiful place right near the ocean. First there were a lot of speeches, until finally we all held up our right hands and swore to support and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and faithfully discharge our duties in the Peace Corps. This is actually the same oath taken by the President. Rock on.

Before the ceremony, at the ambassador's house 

Taking pictures on stage after the ceremony

Finally a real PCV... time to head north to site!

Taking it to Tete

Peace Corps pre-service training in Mozambique is ten weeks long. It can get pretty monotonous, with lectures and lessons day in, day out, starting to get fed up with the constraints of host family life, and easy to forget why we're actually here. So, for week 6, as sort of a mid-term break, we got to go on site visits! Each of us trainees, typically in pairs, got to visit a current Peace Corps volunteer's site in Mozambique for about three days, to see a bit of what daily life is actually like.

By happy coincidence (or possibly by someone on the Peace Corps staff who likes name-puns a little too much... ;) ), I got to visit the village of Mavudzi-Ponte in the province of Tete, where volunteers Helen and Laura live. I'd been following Helen's blog for the past half-year, so upon finding out that Mavudzi was actually, seriously, the site I was going to get to visit, I'll admit I freaked out a little. Just a little.

Oh and also, because Moz is such a huge country, me and the five other trainees visiting Tete province got to take a plane there. And let me just say that LAM, Mozambique's airline, has infinitely better airplane food and service than any average American flight.

Namaacha to Tete (though we flew out of Maputo)

To Tete we go!

LAM-WICH FOR THE WIN and also an orange-muffin. All for just a two-hour flight.

First views of the mountains in Tete

After arriving at the airport (to like 100 degree weather- Tete is infamous for being Mozambique's hottest province), we went to an air-conditioned café in the capital Tete City for lunch, where we met a group of about ten other volunteers from the area, from both health and education sectors. Annie (my travel buddy who I would be site-visiting with) and I then left with Helen and Laura to get a ride on an open-backed truck to Mavudzi, only 45 minutes from Tete City.

When we arrived in the quiet town of Mavudzi-Ponte and came to Helen and Laura's abode on the secondary school teachers' complex, there was immediately a stream of toddlers and kids streaming through the house, and other teachers stopping by to say hi. They were all very friendly and welcoming. Well, except for the one little boy who literally screamed in terror at the sight of Annie and me and ran for his mother, who laughed and patted him reassuringly. "But he doesn't do that around me anymore!" Laura exclaimed, "I thought he'd gotten used to white people!" But the sudden appearance of two MORE new white faces must have just been too much ;)

Arrived in Mavudzi-Ponte!

The teacher's complex, with long buildings divided into housing sections

Most importantly though, we made mac n' cheese for dinner. With REAL CHEESE. After five weeks of xima, rice, bread, bony fish, and a distinct LACK of real cheese, this meal was amazing beyond words :)

REAL CHEESE

Annie, Helen, and Laura with our mac n' cheese dinner

It also quickly became apparent that Laura and Helen had essentially received their mini-me's as site visitors. Both Laura and Annie went to school in Colorado, had lived in Denmark, along with other similar interests. And Helen and I had the obvious name thing (and we both go by Helena in Portuguese here), have vaguely similar features (in Mozambique, two people with blond hair and glasses are pretty much considered to look the same) and both of us are double-citizens of a German-speaking country. So needless to say, we all had plenty to talk about!

The next morning, Annie and I got the full tour of town. Helen and Laura showed us the secondary school where they both teach English, and introduced us to the director. Then, on one end of the school building we got to see the sweet map mural they painted with a group of students. It was part of a health awareness project- the map shows the percentage of HIV prevalence in each country.

Laura and Helen with their badass map

After seeing the school, we continued towards the health clinic. And on the way their were THESE AWESOME ORANGE TREES.

ORANGE TREE

At the clinic, which Laura knew pretty well since she used to volunteer there, we got to see all the different parts of the clinic, from the maternity ward to the lab where they carry out the HIV tests. On this particular day there were a lot of people there to get prophylaxis medicine for something called elephantiasis, which is when a person's limbs literally swell to insanely gigantic proportions. 

On the way to the clinic

After the clinic, we went walked back along the road to check out Mavudzi's little market, and stop at the barraca for a cold drink because, as we later learned, it was in fact 110 degrees Fahrenheit that day. I have never appreciated a cold refresco so much in my life. 

At the barraca, taking a break from our walk

Back at the house, Annie and I spent the afternoon laying on the floor underneath two fans because it was too hot to think about doing anything else, and Helen and Laura alternated between doing the same, and going to school to proctor final exams. The next morning, the wonderful food parade continued as we had pancakes for breakfast!

Just look at them stacked pancakes

Then, since this second day was a little cooler out, we went on a hike by the river.

Walking through a neighborhood of houses to get to the river

It was the end of the dry season, so the river (on the left) was pretty low at the moment.

View of the mountains from the river

It also turned out that Mavudzi is home to an EPICALLY giant baobab tree (think Rafiki's tree from the Lion King), which we also saw on our hike. SEE THE AWESOME:

Walking towards the baobab

CRAZY HUGE TREE with me for scale

Seriously though

That night, we were also treated to a spectacular sunset, as viewed from Helen and Laura's front door.

Sun sinking into the mountains

On our third and final morning in Mavudzi, we left to spend the day in Tete City, to tour a bit and do some shopping before leaving for our flight back to Maputo early the next morning. Since space at the hotel was tight, we actually stayed with a couple of Laura and Helen's expat friends, a couple from Zimbabwe. They graciously invited us for dinner, and we had a good time chatting and hearing their stories of how they came to Tete after having to leave their farm back home. They were great hosts!

At dinner with Helen and Laura's friends

Finally, the next morning it was time to head out. Good times were had by all, but us trainees still had the second half of training in Namaacha to get through. Tete was a great place, I hope I get to visit again to see more of it someday!

One last view of Tete

Heading to the airport on a tuk-tuk; a tiny three-wheeled taxi common to some cities in Moz