The Mysterious Lotion

I didn’t have electricity much this weekend and was bored and hungry so I decided to do a spring cleaning of my house, though it’s really a “winter cleaning” as it’s that time of the year here. It also helped get my blood flowing as I was actually chilly, and betraying my tough Michigan constitution! I did the initial run-through of my clothes and what I would keep or give away in 4 months when I leave Mozambique. I picked out a few clothes that I wanted to give to Veronica and her daughters right away, clothes that were still in good shape and I knew they would appreciate more than me and clothes I never wanted to see again after 2 years of constant wear. I also sorted through all of the junk in my bedroom- toiletries, old papers, receipts, etc. I placed some of the garbage in a bag for Veronica to throw away when she came to clean today.

Then, as I am sitting in my office working, I look out the window facing my house and see Veronica and Virginia, the office cleaning lady, examining a bottle of old sunscreen I had thrown out. They stared at the bottle, probably trying to read the English or deduce what it could be used for, and probably wondering why I’m throwing away an apparently perfectly good bottle of lotion? I noticed that they had squirted some onto the dirt first, probably before they tested it on their skin. I was just going to let them discuss it themselves but then decided to mosey on out there and explain what it was and why I had thrown it out. So I did, I told them that it was lotion to protect against the sun, and that I get burnt really easy because my skin is so pale. I said that the date on the bottle is still good but that the lotion itself is bad because of the consistency and that things age faster in Mozambique. Sunscreen and skin included! I told Virginia she could have it if she really wanted it but don’t rely on it too much because it wasn’t as effective as it used to be. She grinned and shouted out her trademark “woo!” and sort of kicked her legs up. She and Veronica chuckled and then Sitoe, the office maintenance guy, came out to inspect the commotion and what new treasure Virginia had gotten. I could turn this story into a lesson on how people here appreciate things so much more because they have so little, which is true, but I won’t go into that. Instead, I’m just going to tell it as a vignette that might make you smile. It made me smile, especially as I look out my window and see the puddle of sunscreen still chilling out on the dirt.

Scorpions in the Night

I used to be alarmed to find an ant or a small spider in my bedroom at home. Oh how far I have come…

The PCV who was at my post before me returned to Mozambique to visit and spent a few days at my house. She was sleeping in the living room, her old bedroom. I had just turned off my bedroom light and crawled under my net into my bed when I hear Robin’s slightly panicky voice from the other room, “Lindsey?? Um, there’s a scorpion on my mosquito net!” I raced out of bed, especially because I gathered that she did not fight back too well against any bugs, judging from her reaction to the one cockroach in the bathroom. I sped to the other room where Robin was standing nervously a foot from the bed. She pointed to the top of the net, which forms a sort of flat surface on top, and is a very inconvenient place to kill a scorpion or easily get it off the net to kill. It wasn’t like my past scorpion assassinations when they were on the wall or floor and were easy to smash with a flip-flop. We both stood and stared at it, trying to figure out if it was dead because it wasn’t moving at all. I tried moving it with a thick piece of paper but didn’t force it too hard as I was afraid it would A) spring to life and run away too fast to catch B) kill us. Haha, not really, but it was a difficult maneuver. Finally, only in the direst of situations I resort to this (like when the living room door lock broke with five visitors’ things inside the room and even Chase or Patrick couldn’t bust through)… I went to find the 80 year old guard.

Though not so spry anymore, he has a very pointy stick (slightly useless in the scorpion situation) and has lived in Mozambique for 80 years, thus having 78 years more experience with scorpion murder than we do. I told Robin to stay there and watch the scorpion while I went to the office (30 feet away) to get Señor José. I grabbed my trusty head-lamp and went to where he sleeps, or “guards”, and said “Señor José, hello? Hello? Are you awake?” He stirred a bit, his lips murmured something incomprehensible, while his 1980s era winter jacket rustled. I just started talking, hoping he was awake/comprehending my Portuguese when he really only speaks Shangana. I said there’s a scorpion on Robin’s bed and I don’t know how to kill it and can you please come now and help us? He drowsily muttered something again. I repeated myself and still got nothing. Then I backed away, unsure if he was even conscious at all, and went back to the house. I don’t think he understood/is awake/is coming, I relayed to Robin. Man, what were we going to do? As we were brainstorming new plans I heard the trademark shuffle of Señor José. Yes! He appeared out of the darkness; I thanked him profusely and motioned for him to enter. He shuffled in, slipped off his flip-flops, and entered the living room. Robin said hello and we both laughed the kind of laugh you do when you know the other person thinks you’re a fool.

I told him I don’t know if it’s even alive but it’s in a difficult position to get at. So, Señor José in all of his 80 years of hardened wisdom, picks up the scorpion, apparently by its tail, with his fingers! Both Robin and I let out slightly horrified “Oh’s!” while Señor José said something along the lines of “dead.” Then as he’s dangling the dangerous possibly undead sucker in my living room, I gesture towards outdoors where we can dispose of it. We get as far as my “veranda” which is essentially the cement hallway that is still inside and he flicks the scorpion into the darkness and right in the direction of the clothesline where Robin’s clothes are hanging! There’s a stifled ah/gasp in my throat while Robin looks horrified and Señor José says “Estamos Juntos”- the “We Are Together” phrase uttered for sure by every Mozambican every day of their life. I hold back searching the veranda for the scorpion until he shuffles out and back to his chair, as I didn’t want to be rude and have him think I was a total paranoid freak of a foreigner.

“Oh my god!” Robin exclaims, “What if it landed on my clothes?!” I switch my head-lamp on the brightest setting, point it down to the cement floor and crouch. It was nowhere to be seen so I try the clothes. Nada. It’s like we’re combing the beach for a lost ring. Then, finally, I find it! And it is wriggling around! Not dead! Esta viver! I stand up and gathering all my bug smashing experience, I step on the intruder with all my might. Then, for good measure, I retrieved the lethal, toxic bug spray and spray the scorpion 3 times. Dead.

Whew. Now knowing that Robin can sleep safely again and the scorpion has met its match, we returned to our beds and thank our good fortune to have bed nets to protect us from whatever other horrifying things are crawling around the room at night. And Señor José, not so speedy, but a hardy soul.

Eu Sou Eu

Read on if you’ve been wondering what I have been up to non-stop for the past several months!

For most of my adult life I have been concerned about the status of women in the developing world, in college I researched, wrote about it, advocated, interned for a women’s political participation team in DC, and now, in Mozambique, am witnessing it first hand. Women here are still very much second-class citizens. They are the foundation of society, yet benefit so little. They have to fight from the minute they are born, through their childhood, adult years, and all the way to the end. That is, if they make it that far. Here young women are 3 times more likely to become infected with HIV than young men the same age. They have to fight against this, and so many other diseases and violence that could kill them. They have to fight to keep their dreams and are often so unequipped to do so.

Peace Corps Volunteers in Mozambique and our Mozambican colleagues are working to change this, however, through an organization we created called REDES. REDES stands for “Raparigas em Desenvolvimento, Educação, e Saúde” which is Young Women in Development, Education, and Health. It was founded by a group of female Peace Corps Volunteers in Mozambique and this year was our fifth conference. REDES is a national network of young women’s clubs in Mozambique, financially supported by the U.S. Embassy’s Public Affairs Office and PEPFAR (The President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief) and managed by Peace Corps Mozambique volunteers. We work to promote girls’ empowerment and reduce their vulnerability to HIV through gender awareness, sexual and reproductive health education, HIV prevention messages, future planning, and skills building. We work in the four core areas of income and agricultural production, volunteerism and community action, culture/art/sports, and technology and career preparation. Every April we have a conference with participant representatives from the clubs, mostly from secondary schools, teacher counterparts, Mozambican facilitators, and PCVs. This year was the first year that we had 3 regional conferences instead of 1 national conference, which enabled a lot more girls to come. The goal of these conferences is to provide a safe, comfortable forum where girls can come together to develop leadership abilities, promote positive behavior change, share best practices, participate in skills building sessions, and have fun. The participants will then bring what they learned back to the other girls in their groups and to their communities.

My role in all of this is the National Communications Director. I’m the signatory on the rather enormous grant from the US Embassy, and the REDES representative at meetings in Maputo and also act as the point person for communication between our different partners (government ministries, Peace Corps, and other NGOs in Mozambique, Brazil, and the US). Since we had 3 regional conferences this year I was responsible for keeping in touch with all of the regional conference coordinators and making sure everyone was on the same message, needed any help, troubleshooting, and making sure everyone was getting the necessary support. It was a big job, made more difficult by a huge country with a very weak communications infrastructure. The PCVs’ cell phones didn’t always work, and the majority of us didn’t have regular internet access. It was basically organizing 3 huge conferences in a country of 19 million people, spotty cell phone reception, little to no frequent internet access, and one or two face-to-face meetings with PCVs from other regions in the year leading up to the conference. But, drum roll, we did it! All 3 conferences went wonderfully, with no big problems!

I live in the southern Mozambique so I also helped in the conference coordination for our REDES South conference. So in addition to my job as the National Communications Director, I helped my fellow PCVs with conference coordination and acted as the southern regional Communications Director, my national job on the micro/regional level. Hopefully this isn’t too boring to you, I need to explain all of this before I write some of my tales of the conference, in part for you to understand why I have been absent from my blog and several email responses for awhile!

My PCV sitemate Emily is the Financial Director for REDES and also was the REDES South Conference Logistics Coordinator. She is amazing. Emily is a teacher and from my experience as the daughter of a teacher, I could definitely see it in her and see it in how she carried out her job and the details, all while being creative and positive and thinking of how the girls would react to it. So, Em, if you’re reading this, “palmas” to you! We all had quite the job ahead of us, ever since October 2008 when the Moz 11 group handed over the REDES leadership to us.

I often think of how weird our life can be here. My involvement in REDES had been no exception! I’ve done things in relation to this conference that I never would have imagined I would experience in my life in the US. Some particular experiences that stick out in my exhausted post-conference mind are shopping for conference supplies for the girls in Maputo, a week before the conference. I was in a large supermarket sort of store in their personal hygiene aisles, and while I was scooping 71 sticks of deodorant off of the shelf, wiping out their women’s deodorant supply, I explained to the teenage salesperson why I needed so much deodorant, toothpaste, and toothbrush. Then I couldn’t remember the word for pads, and couldn’t find them either, so I just asked her and talked about the object that women use when they are menstruating and made a really awkward pointing motion downwards. After she was done staring at me she laughed and led me over to them. I looked on my list, and 300 condoms was next, so I figured I’d just ask her that too, but they didn’t have any, nor did any stinking store in the city sell them in bulk (concerning in and of itself). We needed them for our condom demonstrations with cucumbers, so after some inter-PCV phone calls, a PCV named Liz got 500 from the organization she works with and we arranged a time to pass them off on the national highway as I was returning from Maputo. I told the chapa driver that I needed to pick something up from my friend who was waiting on the side of the road, and after coordinating timing, we pulled up to her village just as she was approaching the road, and smoothly handed me the boxes containing 500 condoms through the chapa window. Emily and I then transported those condoms, Alabama made, to the conference a few days later and commented on how these have got to be some of the most well-traveled condoms in the world.

Then there was the whole saga of trying to get a hold of a very popular Mozambican female musician/lawyer, Dama do Bling, to come to our southern conference. I got a lead from another PCV who had met her and her manager at a show in the north but after I had a meeting with the manager and several weeks of shadiness from him I gave up on that lead. Then I was hanging out one weekend at site with Megan and her friends from Maputo and we were talking about how one of the guys had gone to law school in Maputo and I realized that Dama do Bling had also gone to the same law school so I asked him if he knew her and how I was trying to get her for our young women’s empowerment conference. He said she had actually been a year before him and could forward my information on to her sister and she could get a hold of me that way. YES! So that Monday I sent him our proposal and that night I got a phone call saying, “Lindsey? This is Dama do Bling.” I almost started laughing because it was such a funny situation. If I were in the US, this would have been the fame-equivalent of Beyoncé calling me. She said that she was really interested in REDES so I offered to meet her for lunch the next day when I was in Maputo. So the next day, Dama do Bling and I had lunch. She was really interested in the project and it didn’t take any convincing to get her to agree to giving a talk and performing at the conference. Oh and apparently the “manager” I had been talking to hadn’t been her manager for a very long time, it was very much VH1 special worthy. So, on the day of her arrival, and Emma, Stephanie, and I went to the Inhambane City airport on the lodge’s shuttle to pick her and her husband up. It’s an airport straight out of a tropical destination ad stereotype, there was even a tourist writing in her journal on the white-washed roof, waiting for the small plane to touch down. While we were waiting a small crowd of children were wandering around asking the tourists for money, including one 8 year old boy who called me “sweetie” while begging for money and man did he regret that after my lecture, and after it turned out that we knew Dama do Bling, haha. When she and her husband arrived excited Mozambican children ran up in all directions, and just sort of stood in clumps and stared, in awe of her, and partly wondering probably why in the world we knew her. And for the first time in a very long time in Mozambique, we were not getting stared at more than someone else.

I timed it so that the REDES participants wouldn’t know she was coming until the very moment that she walked into the conference room for her talk, and it worked! It felt like a slow motion reaction as I walked in front of her, and kept my eyes on their faces. They looked stunned and then instantly right after that started cheering and clapping. Then they started singing their traditional Welcome song “Hoyo-Hoyo” and dancing in place and when she started dancing along, they rushed up and started dancing in a huge clump. The PCVs were a tad afraid we were going to have a mob situation on our hands for a second but then relaxed, haha. She gave her talk and it was so amazing for the girls, quite inspiring and good for them to hear things from her like school is so important, read as much as you can, follow your heart, you are a strong woman. She also performed later that night and the girls had so much fun.

The theme of the conference “Eu Sou Eu”, roughly translated into “I am me/I am who I am,” became even truer as the week progressed. When the girls first arrived we could tell that they were tentative with each other and not very comfortable, including being in a setting so much nicer than they were used to. For many of them it was their first time being away from home, and for the majority it was pretty far away. Some of them arrived without more than one other girl that she knew. 53 girls were together from three very large provinces and it was a huge adjustment for them. They did amazingly well though, we could tell as the days went on that they were becoming friends and so much more comfortable with themselves. We even had some of the guests at the lodge tell us that they noticed a change in the girls. They ended up thriving after the first few days, and so many came out of their shells in an environment without boys, and one in which they were encouraged to learn, to question, and to be themselves.

We had sessions on HIV/AIDS, sexual health, pregnancy, including talks from women in the nearby community who were living with HIV/AIDS and a debate about the pros and cons of getting tested. We also brought in a nurse to offer confidential HIV testing during the conference. As I was carrying the box of testing supplies from our house to the nurse, I kept thinking of how this box could change someone’s life and I was just carrying it down the sidewalk on a sunny afternoon. It just seemed slightly surreal, but I’m so very glad that we were able to offer HIV tests to the girls and so many of them ended up getting tested!

We also had sessions on Women’s Rights and relations between teachers and students. There is a huge problem with this in Mozambique as many teachers prey on their students and get them to have sex with them in order to raise their grades, or even to give them the grade they deserved in the first place. Many girls also date their teachers because they some of the only ones who have money in their communities and are authority figures, though it all comes down to the teachers acting as predators and the girls needing the confidence and capability to say NO. We also talked about other forms of sexual abuse, in the home, with family and friends. One of the Mozambican woman facilitators came up with a chant so that the girls could practice saying no. It went “Não, não… não, não…” with every girl saying this loudly with a shake of their finger and then all together “Não não não Abusa Sexual.”

One of our other methods of empowering the girls was to provide them with sessions on skills-building. Every morning for two hours the girls went to different sessions on song and dance, sewing, cooking, and public speaking. I co-facilitated the public speaking session with Julietta, one of the Mozambican professors. We started off the session by giving them public speaking tips, like the importance of eye contact, to be confident and even if you don’t feel like it, act like you are, don’t put things in front of your mouth, be professional but also don’t be afraid to show your personality, and so many more! Girls in Mozambique, particularly in the classroom setting are so much more timid than the boys and during the infrequent times they actually speak, they keep their hand or a pen in front of their mouth. In addition to these public speaking tips, which they copied into their notebooks and we discussed, we did an activity called “The 60 Second Hall of Fame”, or as I translated into Portuguese, “O 60 Segundo Corredor de Fama”. Each girl tries to speak about any topic for 60 seconds without stopping talking or saying “um.” If she is successful, she can enter The 60 Second Hall of Fame. The girls LOVED their activity! They were a little freaked out at first, but they all tried and for the ones who didn’t succeed on their first time, they kept trying, and most got it on their third try. I was so proud and so impressed. Every time a girl made it 60 seconds, I would announce “Sesenta segundos!” and we would all cheer and I would say “Bem-vindo ao Sesenta Segundo Corredor de Fama!!!” (Welcome to the 60 Second Hall of Fame!). Their perseverance was amazing and though they all aren’t the most collected public speakers, they tried and now they are better than when they first came.

We talked about how it’s all going to be harder when they are back home. It will be a struggle but they have to remember what they accomplished this week and how it felt to yell out “EU SOU EU!” and to mean it with all of their heart. One of the participants that I’ll always remember is Nilza. She is training to be a teacher right now but her ultimate dream is to become a lawyer. She was chosen by all of her peers to be our closing ceremony speaker and delivered a beautiful speech.

I truly hope that Nilza and all of the girls at the conference are able to accomplish their dreams. They have so much working against them. The cycle of poverty and gender standings make life so incredibly difficult. I do believe we have made a difference in the lives of many of the girls who came to the conference and that they will remember what it felt like to be here. I hope that when life gets really hard, they will realize that they are worth it and that they are strong women and that they are Mozambique’s chance for a brighter future and that they can succeed. I really hope that they do.

Running in the Rain

Do you know those moments in life that seem as if you’re in a movie or like you’re living out one of those events that you’ll remember forever? I had one of those two weeks ago. My friend Ali and I had just arrived in a town north of mine, we had traveled up for a weekend at the beach with some of the other volunteers. After arriving on an amazing ride thanks to an hour waiting trying to hitchhike, some wonderful grilled cheese sandwiches (whoever would’ve thought that a grilled cheese sandwich would be a food that we raved about for the rest of the weekend? Only after a year and a half in the Peace Corps!), we set off to find our friend Anne’s house where we were spending the first night. I’d been to this town many times, and knew I could find her house so I just told her not to come and get us.

Well, I turned out to be wrong. After what seemed like forever walking on the national highway that ran through the town, we decided we must not be that close after all, so we stuck out our arms and waited for a car to pull over. One did, a South African man, who clearly thought we were nuts, and he drove until I realized that we were actually much too far up the road, so we got out. At that point, every Mozambican within 500 feet was staring at us, and we stood there for a second, trying to decide what to do. I called Anne, tried to describe where we were, she started laughing and said we were WAY too far up the road, and to walk back towards town, and we would come to her office, the turnoff to find her house. Ok, I thought, it’s fine, we can do this, piece of cake. Not too far to go!

Oh, how I was mistaken. The very instant I told Ali what we had to do, it started raining, the kind of rainstorm that you’ve never experienced unless you’ve been to Africa. We weren’t too concerned about getting wet, it was our stuff that we were worried about. An entire weekend and bus ride back home stretched ahead of us, with the terrible thought of damp, smelly clothes. So we ran down the highway, looking like turtles because of our backpacks and the hodge podge of plastic bags full of flip flops, books, and who knows what else in our arms, to find cover. The nearest shelter was a mango tree, which provided a bit of cover until I realized it was not just a pleasant mango tree, but an ant colony.

As we shrieked at the ants, water cascading down from our faces to our feet, we noticed a house behind a reed fence and decided to go stand under their tin overhang. We shimmied through a mysterious tin door, that we thought led to their yard, hanging by its hinges with rusty wire, but realized it was a different house. Oh well, they had a cement porch! I heard voices inside and decided it would be rude and kind of creepy not to knock and ask if we could hang out on their porch until the rain stopped. So I knocked, and a man opened up his door to a sight I am sure, in a million years, he was not expecting. Two soaking wet, blond, young white women with raincoats draped over not themselves, but over their backpacks, standing on his porch.

However, he reacted better than you would think! He smiled and said “Boa tarde” (Good afternoon). I explained that we were trying to get to our friend’s house but then it started raining really hard and would he mind if we waited on his porch for it to stop. Of course not, he said, so we set our stuff down and tried to catch our breath for a few seconds. A moment later, he came back to the door, and invited us in.

We were absolutely soaked, so we hovered in the doorway, not wanting to drip over their entire house. The man motioned for us to come inside further, and to sit down, and his wife welcomed us with two kisses on our cheeks. As we sat down on their sofas draped with lace doilies, water soaked the cement walls of their house, making its way in through an opening in the tin roof. Another thing about rain in Africa is that many of the houses have roofs made of tin, making the rain sound like a freight train is using your roof as its tracks. It was so incredibly loud that we could barely hear anyone talk, so after shouting our names at each other, we sat, smiling politely, on the edge of the couch, while the wife continued to iron, and the husband perched, half standing, on the edge of his kitchen table. I occasionally tried yelling out questions, which made it through the slight roadblock of second language Portuguese and a rainstorm. In the intervals of soft rain, we established that we were Corpo da Paz volunteers from America, that I worked with a HIV/AIDS association and Ali worked at a children’s center, and that the family had lived in this town their whole life. Ali and I tried to explain what Peace Corps was, and asked if the family remembered seeing any of the volunteers around their neighborhood, because unless we were completely lost, Anne’s house, and the old volunteer’s house, were relatively close by. It’s funny describing other volunteers to people who don’t actually know them, because it’s always by exaggerated physical features. Really pale, big head, always wore skirts, glasses, red hair, etc. And the man got it, in this particular case! He said “ohhh, yes!”

News must have spread that there were two mulungus, or va lungu, in the neighborhood, because all of the family’s kids suddenly appeared with a gaggle of mostly unclothed neighborhood children. Their mom was horrified and she yelled at them to go into the bedroom and put some clothes on! They giggled, while staring at us the whole time, and told her that they took them off to play in the rain. The kids who lived in the house put a t-shirt on or some pants, but most of them didn’t bother, and instead just ran in and out of the house, our novelty wearing off quickly, and dove in and out of the rain puddles in the yard.

We were probably in the family’s house for 45 minutes, waiting out the rain. It turned out to be much more than trying not to become completely saturated with water though, but was also an exchange of kindness, and an example of the truth that no one is really a stranger. This man didn’t have to invite us into his house, much less allow us to wait on the porch, but he did. And because he did, we all experienced our common humanity. For all of the annoying aspects of living in this country, it is often experiences like this that make me glad I’m here. I’ll always remember the kindness and warmth of this Mozambican family on that very rainy day in February.

Viva Obama!!!!!

I flew home for Christmas for about a month in December and January. It was wonderful. The homesickness has revived itself now that I’m back in Mozambique though, but with only 9 months to go until November and so much left to do I’ll be fine. It’s as hot in Moz as it is cold in Michigan. I never know the exact temperature because we don’t have a thermometer but it’s enough to make every living creature want to be constantly submerged in water, as was the case today with my new chicken and basin of clean water for the dishes.

I had an amazing time at home, it’s so interesting to see how some things and some people change, but at the same time most things aren’t all that different. I will never again take for granted the physical and emotional comfort of my life at home, and the literal comfort of my house. Wow was it nice for four weeks to walk around my house and not expect a giant hairy spider to run across the floor, or to go into my bathroom with the beautiful shower and not have cockroaches the size of a bar of soap pop out at me. It was especially pleasant not to have my coworkers urinating on the side of my house or staring into the windows throughout the day.

Spending time with my family and good friends was really rejuvenating. Though the separation is fresher now, it was worth it. I loved seeing what everyone is up to now and imagining what our lives will all be a few years down the road. I’m so excited to see where we all go in our lives.

Especially now that we have a new president and a new chance! When I returned to my town, my neighbors all greeted me with about the same three statements:

1. “Where have you been??!”
2. “You are so WHITE now!”
3. “OBAMA!!!!”

I have memories all throughout the campaign of my experiences in Mozambique in relation to Obama, America, and whether he would really get elected. And oh he certainly did! On Election Night I gathered with the other area PCVs and some Mozambican friends at our friend’s house that had CNN access, thank goodness. And then on November 5, at about 6am Mozambique time, Barack Obama was named President-Elect. I’ll never forget the chapa ride back to my house on the hilly beach road, whipping past palm trees through the morning fog. The woman next to me started speaking English, and I found out that she was Zimbabwean. I asked her if she had heard the big news about my new president. Her face spread into a wide, shining smile, and she said “Of course! Today is a new day for our world, things will be better now.” When it was time to get off the chapa, I stepped out and the first thing I heard was “Viva Obama!” from the elderly man who sells candy at the stop. Through out the day it was like that and up until the very moment I left to fly home for the break. I felt so lucky to be representing the United States in Mozambique at that very moment.

When Inauguration Day came, some of the other PCVs and I decided to stay in Maputo for a couple days after our Mid-Service conference so that we could watch the Inauguration at the US Embassy’s party. After all, we all decided, if we couldn’t be in Washington for it, this was the next coolest place, other than Kenya perhaps. The Embassy’s Public Affairs Office hosted a lovely get together for the occasion. I had a great view of the screen in the front row and once the sound came back on it was fabulous. Afterwards the Mozambican television station wanted to interview an American about the speech in Portuguese, which we all thought we had successfully avoided, until an embassy employee asked me if I spoke Portuguese and I, with a sinking feeling, said “Yeah…” and he led me over to a Portuguese man who said he was from a news organization in Portugal, their version of the AP more or less, and could he ask me some questions. Ah. It went pretty well, who knows if I actually answered the questions he was asking as it was really loud and my Portuguese certainly wasn’t up to its usual standards after a month at home, but when asked how I thought President Obama would improve affairs in Africa, I did remember to call Sudan “Sudão” when referencing Darfur. All in all, I was relieved when it was over but it certainly made for an even more memorable night.

I don’t think it will ever get old when someone comes up to me and shakes my hand to thank my country for electing Obama. People here aren’t expecting huge changes in the beginning, but like much of the world, they have hope just like us for what now can be. So, obrigada America. Viva Obama!

A day in the life of Lindz/a

My life here is different every day, but I thought I’d write an entry to give you a view into what I usually am up to. My alarm is usually set for about 7:30am, but that doesn’t mean much because I usually wake up several times in the late night, early morning, from a combination of barking dogs, roosters, men shouting, the office guard sweeping the dirt in the yard, and the office empregada (cleaning lady) opening the office for the day. And if it’s raining that night, I can usually forget about sleeping through the night because there are several tiny little holes in the tin roof right above my bed that leak on me if it’s raining hard, not to mention sounding like a hurricane has taken up residence on my roof. I usually go into work between 8:30 and 9; it’s the office being 10 feet away does not make for a long commute and the only traffic I have to deal with are the chickens and lizards.

It depends on the day but I’m usually in or around the office for most of it. The office is a house made into office space, set in a neighborhood removed from the town. Most of the people who work for the organization live in the area, though we work all over the region in several towns and villages. My official title for this Peace Corps assignment is Community Development Promoter, and my actual name usually sounds something like “Lindz,” and sometimes “Lindza”, coming from my coworkers. In the office I work mostly with organizational development. I help them write grant proposals, with computer problems, and professionalizing staff interactions. I’m in the process of trying to set up regular staff meetings, creating job descriptions, and making a calendar of monthly events so that everyone’s on the same page. They’re a pretty solid organization compared to many community based organizations (CBOs) in the country, but still could use a lot of improvement.

I sometimes go out with the activistas (activists) and visit the homes of people in our association who are living with HIV or AIDS. These activistas have a hard job and I’m always impressed with their endurance. They hike up and down sandy hills with incredibly steep inclines in the 100 degree heat to visit more than 6 very far apart homes each morning. When we do home visits we approach the house, ask to see the person, the family brings out chairs for us to sit on while they sit on straw mats on the ground if there aren’t enough chairs for everyone. I’ve given up offering to sit on the ground because that is just not acceptable here for me to be on the ground if there is a chair, despite my best efforts. I have managed it when I get up from chairs at birthday parties and sit on the straw mats and chat with some of the ladies, or offer them my chair, but it’s not a frequent occurrence at all. The activistas ask to see the person’s hospital card with visit status, medicine, etc. The entire visit only lasts about 5 minutes, which is very frustrating to me, and probably to the patient, because what are we doing rather than checking his/her name off on the list for that week. Still alive- check. Taking medicine- check. The last time I went on home visits several of the patients asked me questions, some of which I couldn’t answer because they required actual specific medical knowledge. I helped as best as I could, and never will I forget the look of gratitude on a middle-aged man’s face when I told him he could try to put ice from neighbor’s fridge on his knees to ease the pain. That’s all. Not so helpful, but more than he had been getting. Then another man, in addition to having developed AIDS, also had TB and didn’t know how to protect his family from becoming sick. His wife was also refusing to take a HIV test. My organization supposedly has a nurse available for consultation but I’ve only seen him once so that’s another thing I’m working on, trying to set up a system for the activistas to write down the patient’s questions, take down a phone number, talk to a nurse, and get back to the patient.

I’m also working on a mosquito net project, which would collect funding from groups and individuals and groups in the United States to purchase Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLINs) for members of my community. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, and more than one million people die of malaria every year, most of them in Africa. Malaria is preventable and curable and sleeping under a mosquito net every night is an invaluable tool of protection against malaria. One net purchased in Mozambique costs about $6, if you would like to help please leave a comment on this entry or contact me by email.

Future projects that are in the works are an income generation project for women in a village north of us, and a condom distribution and education project. I’ve spoken to my sitemates’ classes about my organization, NGOs in Mozambique, and on how to protect yourself from contracting HIV. I probably talk about the importance of condom use once a day at least. When my uncle visited he said he never heard someone talk about condoms so much in their life, haha. The opportunity is always here though, and so important to seize! I’ve had condom discussions in markets, schools, buses, chapas, and even the luggage store in the Johannesburg airport. You can’t be shy in this kind of work or you would never accomplish anything, or survive for that matter.

Once a week at least my sitemate and I meet with our young women’s empowerment group (REDES). We have weekly meetings which usually include a debate and an activity. We’re also learning how to use computers and the internet, which will be so beneficial to them. I’m also busy throughout the day with REDES as a whole, as the 2009 contact person there’s a lot to keep up with, especially with planning for the REDES 2009 year and our conferences in April.

Then, as I have written much about, I still have my English class that meets twice a week. Despite how tired and hot I am at the end of each day, my English students always make going to that class worth it, with their smiles, enthusiasm, and intelligence.

And then some of the other interactions throughout the day that make me very glad I am here are my daily chats with Simão, my 7 year old neighbor. We sit at his vegetable stand and chat about how school was that day, what he learned, and how his next toy construction is coming along. Kids here are amazing, they can make a toy/game out of nothing. Simão’s speciality is twisting old wire and crushed pop cans into toy trucks and cars. And then there are the women in the small market by my house who are lovely and shout out “boa tarde, amiga!” to me when I approach. And then there are the philosophical discussions I have with a couple of my coworkers, about religion, corruption, foreign affairs, psychology, that amaze me every day. Here, as I have found in much of life, it truly is the human interactions that make experiences so special, and I am very thankful for it.

Some days are harder than others. Some days I sigh with relief when I take a young woman to get tested for HIV and her results are negative. Some days I cry. Some days I am furious. Some days I am bored. Some days I laugh really hard. Some days it is all of those emotions. Unless you experience this for yourself though, you’ll probably never truly understand what it’s like here. I hope this entry did give you a better idea of what I could be doing during the day. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions about anything just let me know.

When a voice doesn't matter

Recently when visiting my friend at his site we found out that one of his students had been raped by three of her classmates when they were working in a field during class. And the school community’s reaction went like this. The girl came forward because she was injured, then the boys were identified and taken to jail for a week. And the theme of the majority of the comments surrounding the situation was, “oh the boys were so close to graduating, how sad. Hopefully they’ll be ok soon.” And then they were released. And now the school administration is slowly trying to decide whether or not to suspend them for school for a few days. What happened to the police? What happened to the law? They’re silently skulking away.

This incident raises so many issues. This poor girl was raped in SCHOOL by her peers. One of whom was a respected student leader. My friend asked his colleague if he had thought this student was capable of doing this. His colleague paused for a moment, looked down in thought, and then raised his head and said “Yes. Good people can be animals.” But does the community even view these boys as animals, as vicious animals that would take down a more defenseless animal in their habitat? No, they don’t. Much of the community looks at it as rape and other sexual violence has been viewed for much of history, “boys will be boys.” Slap them on the wrist, and then put them back on their path, while in the dark back room the girl is struggling to live, much less think about her future. The girl in this case probably wouldn’t even have come forward if she hadn’t been hurt. She was torn and infected and in immense physical pain. The emotional pain would probably have been worth staying quiet, but the physical pain was too much that she was willing to suffer the scorn and doubt inflicted upon her by her classmates and neighbors. And this whole incident will probably end with the boys being suspended for a couple days and being allowed to return to school to finish up and graduate. And people will forget. And this girl will slip further into the darkness unless she is given support by her family and friends, for her community has surely already turned their backs against her.

You may come away with many thoughts from reading this entry. You may forget about it in a few hours, a few days. But in the end, please remember this girl. Think of her and the millions of others who have been raped and shut up because they were female. It happens all over the world, no matter where you live, whether it is in the middle of the Mozambican bush or in New York City. Think of it the next time you hear of an attack like this and examine your reaction. And then figure out how to respond. Because we can all do something, whether it is providing a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board to scream at, a soul that says “I believe you,” to encouraging mutual respect and empowerment among the young men and women in our lives. We can make their voices heard.