Mozambique

Mozambique is a Portuguese-speaking country on the southeast coast of Africa, across from Madagascar. It has twice the coastline of California, and runs about as far north-to-south as the continental United States. The terrain varies from beach to forest to low-ranging mountains. As you might expect, it gets pretty hot in the summer, also known as the rainy season (~November to February- southern hemisphere seasons yo!), but winters, aka the dry season (~June to August) can reach freezing temperatures on occasion.

Mozambique was a Portuguese colony for around 500 years, and didn’t become independent until 1976, after 10 years of revolutionary battles.  When the colonists left, they left behind a country with less than 1000 high school graduates and only a handful of trained professionals. Independence was followed by a 17-year civil war, which decimated the country’s infrastructure, terrorized the civilian population, and further prevented the advent of widespread education opportunities.

Since the end of the civil war in 1992, Mozambique has made huge strides in its economic development, but it still has a long way to go. The Peace Corps were invited to Moz in 1998, to bring in volunteers trained as community health workers, and high school science and English teachers. Now, Peace Corps brings in a new group of health and science/English education volunteers each year. Each volunteer serves their community for a two to three years. Outside of their primary jobs, volunteers in Moz also assist projects such as boys and girls clubs, female empowerment activities, organizing local libraries, HIV/AIDS education, English Theater competitions, and science fairs.