Gurue

Mreya, me, and Derek at the top of the Gurue waterfall

Path through the tea fields

Off the waterfall

Drinking tea in the market

Derek and Mireya

Gurue mountains

More Gurue mountains

Tea fields

This is where I'll retire.

Zambezia landscape

I thought I felt someone watching us...

My favorite picture of Gurue.

Mireya, me, and Derek fter a successful hike

2nd Trimester break (a little late...)

            It’s hard to believe that I’ve already taught 2 trimesters of the 6 I will teach in my two years here.  Time sure does fly.  With the end of every trimester comes a short break that education volunteers tend to take full advantage of.  Lee, a health volunteer in Gurue, has named these breaks PCV tourist season because as soon as school lets out, we are all on the move.

            For this two week break, Mireya and I planned a packed trip.  First destination: Gurue, Zambezia.  Of course, getting anywhere is always an adventure.  Mireya and I had an unusually difficult time of getting to Nampula this time around but after two buses (one of which broke down…), a truck, two personal pick-up trucks, and 11 hours later (mind you it normally takes less than 6 hours to get to Nampula from Montepuez) we finally arrive in Nampula.  The inconvenient thing about Nampula is that it is expensive, a little dangerous, and there are no PCVs to crash with.  Even after 11 hours of travelling, we still had to continue on to Morrupula to stay in a PCV’s house.  So we met up with Derek (who had much better luck than we did getting to Nampula) and caught the last chapa out of Nampula to Morrupula.  Finally, 3 more hours of riding backwards on the tiny ledge behind the driver seat and locking knees with an old man, we arrived at our first pit stop.

            The volunteer in Morrupula was actually in Maputo the night we came to stay so she had left her keys with her new Brazilian neighbor.  Some of the most interesting people I meet here aren’t actually Mozambican but like me, somehow ended up in this country almost completely randomly.  We took her out to dinner and, although tired, resigned ourselves to speaking Portuguese for a few more hours.  Well into the conversation, she reveals that she speaks English!  I’m thinking, well geez, why have I been struggling to spit out broken Portuguese when she speaks English?  Of course, she speaks English only a little better than we speak Portuguese so the conversation continued flowing smoothly betweeen English and Portuguese as we saw fit to express whatever it was we were trying to say.  For me, those bilingual conversations can be the most fun.  She had to raise the bar, though, when she admitted to going to graduate school in Germany and therefore also spoke German fluently.  The United States needs to get it’s act together because from what I gather, we’re the only ones who really only master one language…  My students speak Portuguese plus whatever dialect they speak at home plus they are learning (though not that successfully perhaps to no fault of their own…) English and French in school.

            Anyways, back to our trip.  We woke up early the next morning and caught a ride to Alto Moloque.  Crossing the river into Zambezia, everything was immediately greener.  Then, as we climbed into the mountains in an open back from Alto Moloque, it became obvious we were a long way from sandy, rocky Cabo Delgado.  When we finally made it to Gurue… just, wow.  If I combined the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to, it wouldn’t compare.  Zambezia is the most fertile province in Mozambique and Gurue certainly exemplifies that.  Even though I think I can spit more than the rain we’ve gotten in Montepuez since May, Gurue was damp and muddy.  Maybe you have to live somewhere as dry as Montepuez for a while to appreciate sloshing around in the market.  Maybe the insane variety of cheap produce in the market made me think I liked the mud, who knows.  What I do know is that we went crazy over carrots (a kilo in Gurue was probably about 20 mets when in Montepuez it’s 100!!!)  The most striking things, however, are tucked away in the mountains just outside of Gurue.  Tea plantations, eucalyptus groves, waterfalls… a runner’s/hiker’s dream.  I’ve dedicated another post just to pictures from Gurue.  Seriously, paradise.

Mireya, me, and Derek snug as bugs in a rug.  Yes, Gurue was cold enough for a big fuzzy blanket.  It was delightful.

Me, Patrick, Patrick's sister, Derek, and Mireya, hanging out in Gurue.  You can't see it but Patrick's sister is sporting one of our REDES bags!!!

            After a few days, Derek, Mireya and I begrudgingly said goodbye to Gurue and made our way to Cuamba, Niassa.  Cuamba is really just a huge intersection.  Pretty much the only way into or out of Niassa is through Cuamba, not to mention it’s on a popular route to Malawi.  Cuamba really doesn’t have much scenery to speak of and is notorious for being DUHUHS-TY.  You can see the dustcloud over the city from miles away.  However, what Cuamba lacked in hospitality, our PCV host Zackaria made up for.  We spent an entire day relaxing, eating chocolate and homemade hummus, and watching new media.  Well, Mireya, Derek, and Zackaria did anyways.  I unfortunately had to spend my relaxing day hugging a toilet and battling a fever.  But that’s just how it is.  In anycase, I chose an awesome house to be sick in as Zackaria has running water, a tiled bathroom, and even a working shower!

            Luckily I was feeling better by the time Mireya and I continued on to our next destination: Lichinga, Niassa.  I’ve seen some bad roads in Mozambique but almost nothing comapares to the road connecting Cuamba to Linchinga.  Apparently, that ride is not complete without at least one person getting motion sickness and throwing up (great when you’re recovering from a stomach bug).  Our ride was no exception and we scored seats in the splash zone.  Actually it wasn’t that bad.  It was just about 10 seconds of chaos as the woman started to get sick while Mireya and I shuffled everything in the cramped backseat of the chapa to simultaneously take her baby (now covered in vomit but somehow still adorable and cuddly) and dig out a plastic bag and some water.

           

            Lichinga is a strange place.  It’s cold almost impossible to access yet it seems to be the only place in Mozambique that can support cows.  This was exciting.  I ate a hamburger for lunch and the next morning, we went out for fresh yogurt!  In Lichinga, we met up with Grisha, Victor, Ella, Jade, Matt, and Stephen all from my training group, probably the biggest Moz 19 reunion I’ve been two since the Reconnect conference three months ago.  We ate s’mores over a campfire in Jade and Ella’s backyard and more importantly, Mireya and I went capulana crazy.  I bought three capulanas in Lichinga!  They’re just so pretty I couldn’t help myself. 

            To get home, we needed to return to Cuamba, take the train to Nampula, and then find our way back to Cabo Delgado from there.  Our second pass on the Cuamba-Lichinga road merits its own blog post and after writing it, I never, ever want to speak or even think of it again. 

            So fast forward to Cuamba where again we got to enjoy good food and showers.  This time we even decided to try our luck at a poker game.  I’ve never played but I’ve always wanted to give it a shot.  My first thought after playing is how on earth people can have weekly poker games that obviously start in the evening???  Our game went SOOOO LOONGG!  Good grief.  By the end we were doing all in just because we were tired of playing.  But guess who won the whopping pot of 200 meticais (less than $10…)?  I did.  Guard your wallets, folks.

            The train leaves Cuamba at 6:30am which means Mireya and I had to start our 7km walk to town well before sunrise.  The thatched neighborhoods we had to pass through don’t have any organization to speak of so trying to find our way through them in the dark almost ended in disaster until we realized that the majority of the people up and moving at that time were also going to the train station and we needed only to follow them.  When we finally did make it to the train station, we couldn’t figure out where we were supposed to go and a group of jeering men were absolutely no help as we paced up and down the cars looking for 2^nd class.  When we finally found our cabin and plopped our bags down to claim our bunk beds, we were greeted by a Mozambican girl about our age. 

            The conversation started in Portuguese until she suddenly just started speaking English with and American accent!  Turns out she had received a scholarship through a church organization to go to college in Texas.  Not only that, but she’s actually from Montepuez.  She landed a job as a secretary/translator for Rubing Mining Company which runs out of Montepuez.  You will probably be hearing more about Susanne in the future.

            Anyways, Mireya and I weren’t the only lost souls Susanne collected on the train.  She had found a Swedish college student, Alex, the day before in the line and had helped him purchase his ticket.  Mireya and I were fully prepared to spend the 10 hours on the train alone in our cabin staring out the window at the Nampula countryside, but instead we had an extremely pleasant time in the food car chatting away, drinking cokes, and playing cards… in English!

Alex, Susanne, Mireya, and me on the Cuamba-Nampula train

            Joining Peace Corps has probably been the most adventurous spontaneous (so spontaneous it took only a year to get in…yeah…) I’ve ever done.  I struggled to decide what to pack in the two suitcases I was allowed and fretted about how I was going to keep in touch with everyone back home.  Then Alex comes along completely alone with a tiny backpack, no Portuguese and no phone half-way through a 2 month trek through southern Africa.  Even after my Peace Corps experience, I don’t think I could travel by myself half a world away with no language skills and just sending an email once in a while to my mom to tell her I’m still alive…

            Well, now I’m back in Montepuez while school supposedly started this week, it should come as no surprise now that it, well, didn’t start.  I won’t be fooled, though.  This is only a slow start to what is bound to be my busiest trimester yet.

Cinderellie, Cinderellie

Our typical weekday begins around 5am.  We wake up with the sun and usually, our neighbors are already up taking baths, washing dishes, cooking breakfast, etc.  Around 6:15, Marisa, Veronica, and Tobias all dressed in their white shirt and black pants, join the herd of other students on their way to the secondary school.  My younger neighbors, dressed in white shirts and maroon skirts and pants, head off to the primary school.

            Rita stays behind.

            Rita’s father, supposedly living somewhere in Nampula province, is of some relation to our neighbor, Selemane.  Rita’s father was married but her mother was not the woman he was married to, but some other woman that he had on the side (unfortunately a practice ridiculously common in this country).  Rita grew up with her father and his wife, but his wife, in simple terms, refused to take care of her or treat her as one of her own.  As a result, Rita was never enrolled in school and too often not even fed.   Looking at her now, singing the latest popular song while finishing up her chores, you wouldn’t know.  She seems healthy and she seems happy now that she’s living with her uncle (maybe?), Selemane.

Our neighbor, Rita

            Unfortunately, food is about the only support she gets from my neighbor’s family.  It is common for Mozambican families to hire “empregadas” or maids, but the key word is hire.  Rita is essentially their maid, working for her keep.  In addition, as a result of being passed around the family before settling with my neighbors, Rita has never had the opportunity to go to school.  Given that she is living with a math teacher with the equivalent of a Masters degree and his wife who just graduated from the primary school teacher trainer institute, I find it strange that at her age, Rita cannot read or write.  Our neighbors claimed to have bought her a school uniform at some point but just never got around to enroll her.  Rita is now too embarassed to start school so late and I’m not sure she would go to school if she were given the opportunity because it would mean starting at the very beginning and her classmates would probably be only 7 or 8 years old.  Mireya started teaching her to read last year but eventually it just became too difficult to dedicate enough time.  She did make progress.  Rita can now, with difficulty, recognize and copy letters and write her name.

            We’ve since started a REDES (Raparigas em Desenvolvimento, Educação, e Saúde or Girls in Development, Education, and Health) group with most of our female neighbors, including Rita.  We focus on income generation and independence by teaching the girls to sew bags.  If this really were a fairytale, Rita would be some seamstress prodigy with an eye for fashion that would land her in Milan, but it isn’t and we struggle to get her to align the fabric and sew in a straight line… We have some work to do, but she is learning all the same.  This group has also given us more time to observe how Rita interacts with the other women in her family, in particular, her new “stepmother,” Paula.

            Paula does not hide her dislike of Rita well and while she doesn’t deny her food like her previous stepmother, she can be psychologically cruel.  This became painfully obvious when Mireya and I started planning for the annual REDES workshop.

            Like the JUNTOS workshop, REDES workshops teach the girls about leadership, health, and HIV/AIDS.  Also like JUNTOS, it is an opportunity for a bunch of girls from different cities to hang out and have fun.  Mireya and I knew that we had to invite Rita because she’d never get this kind of education or opportunity otherwise.  We approached Paula for her persmission.  Paula hesitated and said she’d have to talk to Selemane as the workshop was in Monapo, Nampula and Rita would be gone for an entire weekend.  We expected this since Rita really does do most of the housework.  A few days later we asked Paula if she had made a decision and she said she had spoken to Selemane and they were still thinking about it.  A week later, they still had not made up their mind.  We knew at that point that she probably hadn’t spoken to Selemane but had made up her own mind that Rita wouldn’t be allowed to travel; she just hadn’t found an excuse that didn’t make her seem like a, well, yeah.

            Fine, if she wanted to play dirty, so could we.  One afternoon, Mireya and I went over to talk to Selemane for ourselves, since that was the excuse that Paula was clinging to for not yet giving us an answer.  We couldn’t have timed it more perfectly.  Selemane and Paula were sitting alone in the house and Rita was washing dishes outside.  We told him that the workshop was completely paid for, that I’d be going with her along with our other adult neighbor, Esperança, and that this would be a good opportunity for her to learn about herself and meet other girls her age.  He agreed almost immediately as if we were idiots for even needing to ask permission.  All the while, Paula pretended to be asleep on the mattress on the floor until Selemane asked her opinion.  Since he’d already agreed and Paula had no REAL reasons for disagreeing, she just rolled over and said something like “sure, yeah, whatever.”

            It turns out Cinderella was going to the ball afterall and we didn’t even need a fairy godmother to kidnap her in a pumpkin.  Don’t get me wrong, we love Paula and 90% of the time she’s a likeable human being.  It just so happens she’s not a likeable person the rest of the time and she spends that rest of the time with Rita.

Our counterpart Esperanca, Veronica, and Rita at the workshop.

2013 Cabo Delgado/Nampula REDES workshop

            Rita had a blast at the workshop and is still talking about it and singing the songs she learned, but it was no royal ball.  With its workbooks, posters, and “read alouds,” it was full of reminders that she was the only one in the room who could not read.  During the self-esteem session, after an entire morning of reading about business plans and doing math for calculating revinue, her frusteration came to a head.  The facilitator of the session said she was going to throw a marker around the room, and if she threw it to you, you had to stand up and say something good about yourself.  She started.  She was smart and loved to read and study.  The first girl she threw it to was Rita.  Rita stood up and said “I don’t go to school, I can’t read, I don’t do anything.”  Not really sure what to do with that, the facilitator threw the marker to the next person. I was a little too shocked to say anything but luckily the counterpart for another group stood up and said, “She forgot something.  She’s pretty.”  I did some more damage control after the session that day but it’s never been so obvious just how far we still have to go with Rita.

            Now Mireya and I are always looking for ways to make Rita feel important.  A few weeks ago, we started talking about birthdays in our REDES meeting while we were sewing.  We’d known for a while that Rita didn’t know how old she was let alone what day she was born so when we got to her, we set out to give her a birthday.  First we asked if she like rainy season or cold season.  She liked cold season so we told her to pick her favorite month between May and September.  Then she picked a number between 1 and 30.  We celebrated her birthday this past Sunday, June 30^th.

            Most of our REDES girls came to the party, as well as some neighborhood children, and even Brito, our JUNTOS counterpart, showed up.  We decorated our alpendra with paper chains, put out drinks and snacks, and put on the music.  We brought out a brownie cake and sang happy birthday first in Portuguese, then in English.  In accordance with Mozambican tradition, Rita cut HER birthday cake and fed the first bite to her most valued guest at the party.  She chose Rodasa and Suel, the toddlers she spends most of her day caring for.  After cake, in accordance with American tradition, we made Rita open her present, a brand new capulana Mireya and I had picked out for her.  Then we played musical chairs, danced until it got dark, and had a generally great time.

            Happy Birthday, Rita! 

Farzana, Rita, Neuza (with nephew Helio) and Eunilde playing musical chairs.  Helio did not like this game.  He refused to let Neuza put him down but cried every time she went to grab a chair.

Rita feeding cake to her guest of honor, Suel

Presents!

Neuza, me, Farzana, Rita, Brito, Suel, Mireya, Paula, and Eunilde at Rita's 15th (?) birthday party.

JUNTOS

I apologize for the gap in posts, but I write to you now from the last leg of a secondary project marathon.  June is a CRAZY month.

            Two weekends ago, Mireya and I started the marathon by hosting a workshop for JUNTOS (Jovens Unidos no Trobalho Oportunidades e Successos or Youth United in Work, Opportunities, and Suncesses).  Of course as a pre-race warm-up, we had to navigate an obstacle course of headaches common to planning any such event in Mozambique.

            The workshop was to include three groups of kids: Home team Montepuez and visitors from Mocimboa da Praia and Mariri.  The first challenge was finding a safe and affordable place to house the visiting groups.  Ideally, visiting groups stay at the host groups’ school dormatories because we can usually negotiate for them to stay for free.  Unfortunately, there was no space at ours so we began to look elsewhere.  Thanks to the ruby mining just outside of town, Inns in Montepuez are a tricky business for two reasons: 1) People who stay in inns in Montepuez usually have a lot of money, therefore, the inns often charge an arm and a leg 2) Where there’s money, there’s crime (Don’t worry, life in Montepuez is not a scene out of Blood Diamond), and so inns that don’t charge an arm and a leg are often sketchy at best… no place to put our underage charges.  Luckily Mireya found the perfect place:  A bright pink inn with reasonably priced rooms, a restaurant area that they were willing to rent out to us a conference room, and PUPPIES!!!

            Second obstacle:  food.  Due to budget cutbacks, we couldn’t hire just anyone to “cater” our workshop and pay for each meal by the plate.  Our budget demanded that we buy all of the food in bulk ahead of time and negotiate for someone to prepare it.  The obvious person to prepare it would have been the cook for the inn’s restaurant.  But being Mozambique, just because an inn has a “restaurant” it doesn’t mean it’s functional.  There was no cook.  Someone staying at the inn just happened to know of a woman who used to hire herself out to cook for large groups and was currently looking for work.  The owner of the inn gave her a call and just like that, the inn had a functional restaurant and we had a cook.

            Then we actually had to get the food.  Have you ever tried to extrapolate recipes for more than 20 people?  I don’t know about you but I generally don’t think in quantities of kilos and litres when I’m cooking (I don’t just mean the thinking in metric part).  More importantly, have you ever tried to buy food for that many people without a grocery store or a car to transport it?  After 16 chickens and a 50lb bag of rice we had over 200lbs of stuff to get across town.  As we were debating how to get our rice home (I can carry feed bags, sure, but the last time I checked it wasn’t a mile between the barn and the car), we ran into Alan, one of Montepuez’s lovely missionaries, running errands in his truck and he graciously agreed to give us and our stuff a lift.

            The first group to arrive Saturday morning was Mariri.  About this time, I had learned that the inn had completely sold out of sodas so we would have to bring them in from elsewhere.  This is not a simple task because sodas here are sold in glass bottles that have to be returned to the vendor so unless you have empty bottles to trade, they are hardpressed to let their bottles go.  This meant I would have to go to the wholesaler (of course on the other side of town) to try to negotiate a deposit on some crates of bottles.  Since Alan wasn’t around to save the day, I put the Mariri group to work.  I took them into town, bought them breakfast, then we carried the two cases of soda from the wholesaler back across town to the inn.  Being typical respectful Mozambican students, at first they refused to help carry one of the cases for a stretch.  Finally they tired and I took my turn and we spent the rest of the walk talking about Arnold Schwartzenager (as Mozambicans are always surprised when we Americans show ANY willingness to do physical labor).

            Mocimboa da Praia arrived a few hours later (9 hours of travel that started at 3am!!!) and the workshop was finally underway.  JUNTOS is funded by PEPFAR so all of our sessions are about leadership, sexual health, and HIV/AIDS.  These kids have this information beat into their heads time and time again so finding new and fun ways to present these topics takes some creativity.  One of the topics Mireya and I were responsible for presenting was puberty.  All of our kids have already hit puberty so we decided that we could probably get away with a game to review what happens.  Thanks to a donation of extra hair weave from my neighbors among other local materials, we were able to design relay races with activities that related to feminine and masculine puberty.  Some of the activities might seem crude, but part of the purpose of these PEPFAR youth clubs is to make the kids comfortable with the changes they are going through and you can’t achieve that by beating around the bush, so, with that disclaimer:

Feminine Relay Race:

1) Body hair begins to grow – put clumps of weave in armpits

2) Breasts come in – stuff shirt with two balls made of plastic bags

3) Hips widen – run back with a ball/pot between legs

4) Menstruation begins – Open a sanitary napkin and smash a tomato on it

5) Face become oily – wash face

Masculine Relay Race

1) Facial and body hair begins to grow – put on a beard made of weave

2) Muscles grow – Stuff sleeves with plastic bag balls

3) Voice deepens – Read a sentence starting with a high pitched voice and end with low pitched

4) Wet dreams begin – “Fall asleep” in a chair covered in a capulana, wake up surprised, “wash” the capulana and replace it on the chair

5) Face becomes oily – wash face

            Those 5 minutes were easily the most entertaining I’ve had in months.

            As far as the kids knew, the workshop continued to run smoothly.  Things in the kitchen, however, were getting heated.  For the first lunch, we had planned matapa served over rice.  We had intended for the 50lb sack of rice to last for all four meals we were serving that weekend but when we went back to check on the matapa, the cook had prepared 25lbs of dry rice JUST FOR THAT LUNCH!!!!  I mean, they love their carbs here, but even our hungriest teenage boy wasn’t going to eat an entire pound of rice.  (A pound of potatoes for every person, right, Mom?) The woman was indignant when we confronted her about this and maintained this attitude for the rest of the weekend when we started keeping a closer eye on the portion control.  We told her she could use only 5 chickens that night for the curry because the rest were for serving grilled half-chickens the next night and had bought just enough.  Of course she used 6 when we weren’t looking which left us with the awkward decision of who wasn’t going to get to eat dinner the next night.

            On top of that, she had called for her kids to come armed with large tupperwares to take home food…probably the real reason for making too much food.  We quickly put a stop to this practice but compromised by letting the cook and the rest of the workers eating the extra food after all of our kids were served.  Then they tried tell us that they weren’t going to see any of the money we had agreed to pay the owner of the inn for the preparation of food so we needed to pay them extra.  We cleared up that misunderstanding with the owner right away.  Mozambicans can be the nicest people in the world but boy do they try to milk you for every last dime sometimes.

            Speaking of milk, the cook made an odd request before she agreed to cook for our group.  She asked us to buy her fresh milk to drink while she cooked to protect her throat from the charcoal smoke.  We agreed that this was an easy thing to do and if it would she would cook better and faster with milk, then get the lady milk.  Then we saw her on her smoke break with a fat cigarette… I really wonder what goes through people’s heads sometimes.

            Then there was the matter of plates, cups, and utensils.  Everytime I visited the kitchen while planning the workshop I never saw enough stuff to serve 20+ people and everytime I brought it up with the owner and the cook, I was assured that there would be.  Either way, you’d assume that would have been an obvious detail when it comes to running a restaurant.  When we were getting ready to serve lunch the first day, I asked where the plates were. 

Me: Where are the plates? Cook: You didn’t bring your own plates?  Me: No, you said you had them.  Cook: Oh, I guess we can find some…

*Time elapses*

Me: We need utensils.  Cook: What?  You didn’t bring utensils?  Me: NO!  Give us some freakin spoons!

*Time elapses*

Me:  We need 20 cups.  Find them.

And we still ended up bringing utensils and cups from home.

            Despite all of the firey hoops Mireya and I had to jump through to keep these kids housed and fed, they seemed to have a great time and many went home with the names and numbers of new friends.

Julito, Belarmino, and Pedro performing a skit about violence against children.

2013 Cabo Delgado JUNTOS workshop participants

Montepuez JUNTOS 3rd year veterans Gamito and Joao

JUNTOS Montepuez (left to right) Joao, Jorge, Mireya, Fastudo, Belarmino, Julito, our counterpart Brito, me, and Gamito