The End

Read at your own risk...

When people here ask me what I’m doing in Mozambique, I say that I teach high school math and physics. Before I left the States to come here, and also when I was home on medical evacuation in January and February 2012, I told people that I would be (or was) a math/physics teacher in Mozambique. Inevitably, people ask follow-up questions. To Mozambicans or foreigners in Mozambique, I respond, “Yeah, I work here as part of an exchange program between the American and Mozambican governments.” To Americans, I explain that my teaching placement is through the Peace Corps.

Whether speaking with Mozambicans, Americans, or foreign ex-pats and travelers, I tend not to immediately present myself under the banners of “volunteer” or “Peace Corps.” It’s not that I’m trying to hide these tags, rather, I feel like both “volunteer” and “Peace Corps,” as common titles thrown around in both Africa and the States, carry sweeping generalizations.

On one of my last nights in the Bay Area before moving back east and, it was correctly assumed, on to Peace Corps service, I went to dinner with west coast family. I remember my cousin and his wife dropping me off at the BART station and sending me off saying (paraphrasing) “You know, we think what you are doing is really selfless and admirable.” I sort of didn’t know how to react to that and, if I remember correctly (this was April 2011), said something along the lines of “Selfless? Really?” When I was home on med-evac in February 2012, I was introduced as a Peace Corps volunteer to a girl at a party. When she left the party, she sarcastically remarked to me “good luck saving the world.”

The “why are you here?” conversation is one that comes up from time to time among Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV’s). Not surprisingly, you get a wide range of mentalities.

So what am I doing here? What have I done here? Has my perspective on what I’m doing here changed over the course of 25 months? All obvious reflections given the impending end of my time here.

I’ve been writing in my grad school application essays that I set three goals for myself when I graduated from college: stay excited, learn, keep doors open. That broad set of goals that is currently informing my post-Peace Corps plans similarly informed my decision to join the Peace Corps. I was pretty psyched when I graduated from college; really ready to just go see and do and explore. Not unusual for a 22-year old, I guess. I spent a great summer wandering around South America and driving out to the west coast to start a job in San Francisco. Hitch-hiking through the Atacama Desert and solo-cruising with the windows down on western back-roads don’t exactly prime a kid to start a corporate job. Sitting down for new-hire training felt like a strangle-hold on the gas-line of the flame of youth, if you will allow me the heavy-handed metaphor. I figure that once that flame goes out, it can be pretty hard to re-ignite it. And I can’t help but feel like the world would be a pretty bleak place for me without the youthful excitement that comes with the sense of all the great possibility that the world holds. I applied to the Peace Corps because I could feel that flame being slowly smothered and was terrified of letting it go out. I left the job in April 2011, spent a month cruising east, and then flew to Asia to see friends, work, and rock climb while I waited for a response from Peace Corps. Invite to Mozambique? Sounds good.

But I wouldn’t say that I joined the Peace Corps to run away from something. I don’t see my situation in San Francisco as the inevitable “real world” that eventually awaits me. Rather, I ran toward a dynamic situation that has allowed me to learn, to not close out future opportunities, and, most of all, to stay psyched to keep doing stuff. Running away from complacency or toward possibility; it’s not about getting anywhere (forgive the cliché) so much as the mentality you maintain in the process. I figure that as long as I’m keeping myself psyched to do stuff (in the end, it’s a string of actions…), as long as I keep learning (kind of reciprocates the staying psyched part and helps with the ‘doors open’ part), and as long as I do all that without pigeon-holing myself (possibility has to exist to stay psyched), I put myself in the best position to approach the world honestly and fluidly.

So how does Peace Corps specifically fit those goals? The learning and keeping doors open parts are pretty simple. It goes without saying that going to a new country, living in new ways, speaking new languages, teaching, and traveling all contribute to some new perspective. Whether it’s warranted or not, Peace Corps has enough name recognition to keep grad schools or employers from saying “What the hell were you doing for 2+ years?” The “stay excited” part, in a generalized way, isn’t too hard to see either. But I wrote specifically about it in my Peace Corps application essays (which I actually wrote in May 2010 even though my application wasn’t submitted until January 2011). An excerpt:

A large majority of people, both in the United States and around the world, form opinions based on generalized ideas presented by biased or inexperienced sources. As such, they often forget that behind every issue are individual human beings that laugh, cry, love, and share meals together. In dismissing these humanizing elements, it becomes easier to hate and make detached decisions. Serving in the Peace Corps would highlight the human element behind cultures to me…

 Once again, please forgive the frilly Peace Corps application language (though I may be duplicating it in this post…). I didn’t join the Peace Corps with some grandiose idea of “saving” a bunch of people I didn’t know the first thing about. Rather, I joined the Peace Corps to humanize, for myself, a region of the world that I only had a very generalized picture of and to do the same in the opposite direction. I joined the Peace Corps to maintain perspective on the complexity and depth of pretty much everything. Anyone who tells you that they don’t form generalizations about unknowns is, frankly, full of shit. The difference, I think, between “open-minded” and “close-minded” people is in how they act on the limited observations informing their generalizations. “Open-minded” doesn’t mean not having a pre-conceived notion; if you packed to come to the Peace Corps, you projected some idea of what you would encounter. “Open-minded” means maintaining an awareness of the limits of your observations and integrating that understood degree of uncertainty (although probably under-esitmated) into your actions: I observed A and B and therefore conclude X, but I know that the possibility of adding C (therefore concluding Y), etc. is ever present. The Problem of Induction:

Hume was right in his negative result that there can be no logically valid positive argument leading in the inductive direction. But there is a further negative result; there are logically valid negative arguments leading in the inductive direction: a counterinstance may disprove a law.

Hume's negative result establishes for good that all our universal laws or theories remain for ever guesses, conjectures, hypotheses. But the second negative result concerning the force of counterinstances by no means rules out the possibility of a positive theory of how, by purely rational arguments, we can prefer some competing conjectures to others.

In fact, we can erect a fairly elaborate logical theory of preference - preference from the point of view of the search for truth.

The difference between a scientist and a lunatic is not that the first bases his theories securely upon observations while the second does not, or anything like that. Nevertheless we may now see that there may be a difference: it may be that the lunatic's theory is easily refutable by observation, while the scientist's theory has withstood severe tests.

In other words, there is no 'absolute reliance'; but since we have to choose, it will be 'rational' to choose the best tested theory. This will be 'rational' in the most obvious sense of the word known to me: the best tested theory is the one which, in the light of our critical discussion, appears to be the best so far; and I do not know of anything more 'rational' than a well-conducted critical discussion.

 Being “closed-minded” just means acting on your limited observations and expecting “absolute reliance.” You probably piss yourself off when your “certainty” is contradicted. And you probably piss a lot of other people off when you try to put them in boxes that they don’t fit in. Hence part of my reason for avoiding the tags “volunteer” and “Peace Corps;” why help people generalize? Everybody loses, both the boxer and the boxed. Joining the Peace Corps, traveling, wandering down the road, doing anything to expose myself to people in light of being just people is where I get specific with that “stay excited” goal. It’s self-reciprocating. The more experiences you have where your generalizations are shattered, the more aware you become of the limits of your own perspective, the more able you are to approach situations in a way that allows your generalizations to be shaken up. Why is this exciting? Because it’s everything; it’s saying, “Holy fuck, I’m not really sure, but that’s totally ok, because, as I’m becoming more and more aware of as I get to know a broader and broader range of people (and hence become more and more humbled by the limits of my perspective), no one else is either. Everyone is trying their best. It’s ok.” “Be kind for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” Right? Drop me out of a plane with a parachute anywhere there are people surviving. I will be taken care of. I live to maintain that mentality. There is nothing more exciting to me than how broadly the world opens up when your experiences have ripped apart your ability to dismiss the possibility of positive interaction with essentially anyone.

 In case there wasn’t enough philosophy in there, tackle the same idea metaphysically: If we all experience the world through our unique lenses of past experience (bias), what experience do we truly share? We share experience when we see the world with our uniquely tinted lenses pulled away. Given that the lenses are the experiential reference structure we use to make sense of the world, “seeing without the lens” would mean staring into the nearly infinite degree of uncertainty in pretty much everything we understand (no referential experience = minimal ‘sense’). It’s everything and nothing; ultimate ownership and choice while drowning in a lack of absoluteness in anything. It would be crippling if not for the fact that in coming to this thinking you weren’t finding that it’s shared by everyone (to some degree). Humanize yourself (show that you’re not sure) and those around you will humanize themselves. Allow yourself and others to share the only thing that, in a metaphysical but also tangible sense, we can universally share: the fact we aren’t really sure.

 If “coming to God” means confronting the vast uncertainty of the world and surrendering to it, and if church, etc. is merely a way of sharing this confrontation and surrender (the only thing, I argue, that we can truly share), then religion is a beautiful thing. But if religion is used as a dismissal of the questioning process that brings you to know the only sharable thing, then it’s a sad tool used to keep people from sharing humanity with each other; it allows people to oversimplify, generalize, dehumanize, and, as a result, do things like drop bombs.

 Anyway…

I find it hard not to digress when talking about this stuff. It’s difficult for me to get into a discussion about pretty much anything without zooming out into the “big picture.” But I’ve found that that kind of all jives with what I’ve been getting at in this post. I quickly zoom out when I get into conversations with people. Repeatedly, people jump at the opportunity to engage in those discussions. Everywhere in the world. Kind of the “humanize yourself and those around you will humanize themselves” thing that I just mentioned. It may create rambling monologues but, ultimately, if it helps me to humanize my perspective of the world (and hopefully others’), then that’s good. Why hide from each other when at heart everyone wants so badly to be honest and to be treated honestly? (The “wife” character in Capote’s “In Cold Blood” being ‘tired’ comes to mind.) I’m not sure either. It’s ok. We don’t need to pretend.

So… yeah. I joined the Peace Corps because shaking up my universe has served me well – it keeps me honest and, by extension, helps me to humanize the world. I’m excited, I’m learning, and I have a lot of choice on the table.

But let’s zoom back in a bit. Everyone reading this has some idea of “Africa.” As if the United States was just one big generalization, we use the word “Africa” to talk about a place that’s like three or four times bigger and has more languages than have been counted. I had an idea of “Africa” and, of course, still have one. But I have also gotten to know a ton of individuals in Mozambique. Some people are great. Some people suck. Kind of like everywhere. But both the people who are great and the people who suck go home at night, lie in bed, stare up at the ceiling in the dark and wonder about something. The more time you spend around others, the more aware of that you become. I live in a neighborhood where few people know that the United States is a country. I could stay in Ncuerete for twenty years, learn fluent Makua, marry, and subsistence farm for a living but I would still be far from understanding my neighborhood’s culture. But in just two years, I’ve hung out with enough people to know that they wonder (in the most general sense). Hopefully I’ve shown some of them the same in myself; goal achieved.

I tend to dismiss the word “volunteer” because it implies that I went somewhere to help others because I know that they need help. To tell a Mozambican who subsistence farms to support their family that you “volunteered” to get a round-trip plane ticket, intensive training, a free house, free western-standard medical care, and a professionally comparable salary is sort of laughable. To tell my colleagues that I volunteered to teach with them implies that I don’t think that they are doing a good job and that I know how to do things better. Hence my usual explanation “I’m here on an exchange between the American and Mozambican governments;” this is a two-way learning process. Which isn’t a lie. In putting it that way, I find that Mozambicans I meet treat me more as just a person working as a teacher in their country and less as some guy telling them what’s good for them (see: humanizing stuff). I’m not trying to rip on volunteerism here, people helping people is what makes the world function, more just commenting on an approach to humanizing myself.

I definitely entered the Peace Corps with that mentality. I still have it in some ways. But I’m happy to say, as much as I avoid the whole “volunteer” thing and as much as I tend to view things from a “big picture” angle, that I do reflect positively on specific work that I have done here.

 I showed up for class consistently and on time. As a turma director, I looked out for my students when they had issues with their other teachers. I encouraged kids to ask questions and to wonder – physics explains things! I threw pieces of chalk around the room and made kids push each other over. Generally I tried to show my students that I felt a sense of responsibility toward them and my job (sadly far from a given here). Hopefully they learned some physics or at least saw that it’s way more exciting and applicable than orally-dictated theory lessons might indicate. If not, hopefully a new classroom environment, or, if nothing else, the presence of some weird foreign guy, planted some sort of seed of curiosity – I hope I encouraged at least a few kids to wonder. I got science fair going in our district. It seems like the district government is on track to keep it going. And I left a group of students at our school excited to come up with new projects for next year’s fair. Hopefully with the help of some new Peace Corps teachers, science fair will continue to improve. I kept the provincial government on track with the national science program – and had a window into an entire different world in the process; a rural classroom and a city government are different working environment.

 In the end, the best summary of the last 26 months is probably to say “it was an experience.”

 A few contrasts to highlight things that I will miss and things that I am happy to be leaving behind:

 Flexibility vs. Organization:

Probably the single biggest frustration I had adapting to Mozambique was the general lack of organization and planning. I already ranted a bit about the education system on this blog several months back; no need to repeat myself. Generally, nothing is planned in advance. Problems are never foreseen. They always arise. Nothing ever runs smoothly. When it means waiting over two hours for your grilled chicken, no big deal: drink a couple more beers and enjoy your company. When it means that you can’t even get a classroom open to meet with your science group because there is absolutely no organized system for storing and managing keys – pain in the ass. On the flip-side, what Mozambique lacks in organized systems it makes up for in its flexibility. In the States, you could rent a van and driver a month in advance, have a set price, and generally be able to rely on the company to have the car ready to go at the right time on the right day. In Mozambique, trying to plan that far in advance is a waste of your time. The driver will inevitably call you day-of to say that he got distracted and won’t be making it. But… you don’t have to worry about going through some company’s policy and procedures, or store hours, etc. to get something done immediately. Need a car and driver? Someone is cruising around with an open-back truck and wants to make a dime. Deal. Done. Let’s go. Want to raise pigs? Call up some neighbor kids to help you build a corral and another kid to find you some cheap pigs in the neighboring town. Feed them with the corn by-products the neighbor ladies already have. No livestock permits. No overpriced special animal corral builder people. Need fire wood for your oven? Pay a dude $0.60 to walk into the bush and chop some stuff. You may not be able to look up the nearest building supply depot and their prices, but you can put a word out in the hood that you need some bamboo and it will show up at your door. School is a disorganized hell-storm but I have no issues with parental or administrative interference. I run the classroom as I see fit. No way that a teacher could enjoy that freedom in the States.

 I will not miss the clusterfuck that is organization here. I will miss being able to make things happen on the spot – no red tape.

Efficiency vs. Enjoying the Moment

Hand in hand with things not being planned is a general lack of a sense of urgency about pretty much anything. When you live 6 kilometers from your town and have to bike down a dusty path in the heat to squeeze in meetings before your afternoon classes, lack of scheduling and timeliness can be extremely frustrating. You can’t plan to meet X from nine to nine-thirty, then Y from ten to ten-thirty, then quickly do your shopping and get a plate of rice and beans before racing back to school for noon class. Just no way anyone is reliable enough for that kind of scheduling. A huge part of getting things done here is simply being present. You meet with people or hear about plans whenever it is you bump into the relevant people. And in some ways, there is something great about that. Nothing is so important that it should get in the way of sharing a meal, beer, and/or conversation with whoever you run into throughout your day. Meeting scheduled? Oops, couldn’t make it because a teacher friend invited me to share a plate of matapa.

Things happen when they will happen. No need to stress. It’s great way to live when you get used to it. But I haven’t been able to totally suppress my American (and engineer?) urge for efficiency (which is probably a good thing…). The change in pace of life will surely be a jolt to my system upon my return.

Outdoor vs. Indoor

If you haven’t picked up on it from all the photos on this blog, I essentially live my entire life outside. I sleep, work, cook, eat, shower, shit, shave, and stare into outer-space outdoors. I go inside to change my clothes and to get the salt. Even traveling, I end up in the open back of a truck half of the time. It’s great. When I wake up in the morning, I can guess the time to within +/- 3 minutes based solely on the color of the sky. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I can tell what time it is based on the angle of the moonlight. I go to sleep when it’s been dark for an hour. I wake up at the first crack of dawn. I bathe under the stars. My bathroom never smells because its three grass walls keep the fresh air flowing. When I cook, I just throw food scraps to the side to get cleaned up by the animals. There are few downsides to living outside. The only complaints might be the dirtiness and lack of rain protection. You can pretty quickly get used to outstretched-hand-sized spiders, rats, bats, lizards, army ants, etc. chilling with you in your house. They are chilling and doing their thing – generally no interference. What’s tough about the grass-mud house situation is the hot and rainy season. The roof always leaks. Rain blows onto the porch living room space. Summer downpours are generally stressful and wet. The physical outdoor life also tends to mean regular scrapes, cuts, and burns. No big deal… except during the wet and hot season the smallest hangnail goes septic in about an hour. Keeping it clean and disinfected is tough when you manage outdoor life in the yard (animals, charcoal, bucket laundry, wood chopping, etc.).

 But hey, as long as I have a steady supply of Neosporin and the hot season only lasts for 3-4 months, I’m happy to keep up the outdoor life. Will be a claustrophobic transition home.

 ---

Chiure Town:

 

Will miss teaching... sometimes:

Home sweet home; will miss this:

Wont miss cleaning clothes this way:

Will miss beaches like these:

And chilling with people like this:

The end of Manja, the pig:

...for a good cause: party:

...dance party:

...complete with poetry readings:

And some more partying down on the Lurio River:

I leave home on Saturday. Will spend a couple of days in Pemba saying "bye" to local Peace Corps friends. To Maputo on Monday. Four days doing close-out stuff. Friday night bus to Jo'burg. Jo'burg to Amsterdam (via Dubai) on the 16th/17th. Then some time in Netherlands, Begium, and France to see friends and visit a couple of potential grad schools. In D.C. on December 5th via flight from Paris with a stopover in Iceland. Stateside for the first time since February 2012!

Living the Life

I've been in Mozambique for more than two years now (if you don't count the six weeks at home post-accident). I haven't left Africa since returning from med-evac in February 2012. Been living the life here, I guess. It's only when we get visitors or talk to incoming trainees (I spent the last week helping out at training for the incoming group) that day-to-day life seems particularly remarkable. Sleeping and waking with the setting and rising of the sun, occupying hours of my day procuring and preparing food, really just being outside a lot; it's a good way to be.

I've filled the last few months teaching my last trimester of physics, planning and realizing the Cabo Delgado Provincial Science Fair, traveling to Maputo for my group's close-of-service (COS) conference, putting together our school's English Theater team, and focusing on figuring out post-Peace Corps life (i.e. grad school applications). After being here for a couple of years, few of those things are particularly stressful. I've got solid command of my classroom and deal with few to no classroom management issues. I know the role I have to play working with the government on Science Fair. I've had some good opportunities to visit friends in my province. English Theater is a low-key, fun project (and we got 2nd place!). Grad school apps are a pain in the ass, especially given that I have to bike 6 km for electricity and internet, but the pace of life allows for plenty of time to edit the hell out of essays and to get things organized.

Kind of cruising to the finish line now. Awesome. Exciting. Terrifying. Will leave Chiure on November 10th, fly to Maputo on the 11th, spend a few days "COS'ing," bus to Johannesberg, then fly to Amsterdam on November 16th. Plan is to visit friends in Amsterdam, check out potential grad schools in Delft, Netherlands and Leuven, Belgium before making my way to Paris to fly back to D.C. on December 5th. Paris. Cheese.

I'll miss the lifestyle here: the pace, the time outdoors, the calm evenings cooking feasts on the charcoal stove, the disconnect from the literal and figurative noise of the modern, more fast-paced world. Will have a lot to reflect on in the coming weeks. Couldn't be more excited to see family and friends, eat cheese, and function in a more organized world. But couldn't be more terrified to leave behind the tranquility of my backyard living space and the general simplicity of life.

I often focus these posts (and associated photos) around big events, travel, etc. I was happy to have some visiting friends shoot a bunch of photos of more day-to-day scenes in the Chiure life recently. Enjoy:

15 mt lunch from a bucket; standard; I rarely have time to return home from town before going to school - a $0.50 bowl of rice, beans, and salad, served from a bucket powers me through my afternoon classes.

Throw me a bone; the boys get excited when we cook meat; chopping pork on the porch.

Oven, latrine and shower area; still standing. 

Standard evening scene; bedroom on the left; zen moment in the center; guard dog and kitchen to the right. 

Got this thing down.

How I spend two hours of every day; cruising in town. 

Food, friends, and fido; classic Peace Corps gathering on the porch. 

Salting the pork in the kitchen; feast time. 

Warm Manica beer to pass the hours managing the oven fire.

Chiure District Science Fair Team.

Manja gets accosted by her children; the piglets are getting a bit big for this (time to eat mama?).

Goodbyes to the family in Namaacha. 

The Namaacha family grows up quickly.

Trimester Break Travel Photos

Time off to travel is always welcome. There are a lot of cool spots to visit in Mozambique. I got my grades turned in on July 19th and was on the road by the morning of the 20th.

Cow and the neighborhood dogs followed me on the 5 km walk to town to send me off south-bound. I waited a few hours for a ride but eventually got a free lift in the empty back of a pick up truck. Good news: free and lots of room to lay down and half-nap the ride away. Bad news: chewing sand on the under-construction highway for the entire four hours to Nampula. Crossed the city, waited for a couple travel friends in-bound from Montepuez, and we caught a chapa for the 1.5 hour ride to Murrupula to crash at our friend's house (who had left us the key). Up early the next day for a freezing cold (yes, cold!) open-back ride another two hours down the highway to Alto Molocue, the turn-off for the backroad to Gurue (our first real destination). We crammed into another open-back (this one very full) and settled in for the three-four hour scenic ride on the backroads to Gurue via Nauela.

Spent three days in Gurue. The place is mystical and sort of incomparable. You are in rural Mozambique. You also feel like you might be in a village in the Swiss Alps. It's a lot colder than the rest of Mozambique. Instead of being surrounded by disorderly broken bush and bean plant fields (like most of the rest of the country), the town sits in a valley sunken in lush green orderly tea plantations that reach up to the feet of stunning mountains. It almost feels like a ski town in summer. Except it is still definitely Africa. And because of its rural location, there really are very few foreigners. Made for some epic hikes and barefoot runs through the tea fields up to tranquil waterfalls and stunning views. We enjoyed the company of a Peace Corps friend living there (as a health volunteer) and several other PCV's passing through.

Our departure sent us north-bound on another scenic backroad, once again jammed into an open-back truck. Passing into the rocky hills of Niassa Province, we arrived at another friend's house in Cuamba. We spent a much needed rest day at our friends house eating cheese, napping, and watching media on a laptop. He lives at a Teacher Training Institute built by the Japanese. The place is pretty simple, but the Japanese aesthetic is definitely present. Clean, pleasant spaces to relax. We hung out with several other PCV's passing through, along with a French student doing thesis work in the area. Caught a train out early the second morning with another PCV and two American med students traveling in the area. Train is a fun, relaxing, safe way to travel (see travels post from January). You can nap, buy produce out of the windows, and not worry about being run off the road by a truck.

There are lots of nice people in this world. Several months back, a well educated Mozambican woman (did a master's degree in Australia; speaks great English) picked me up on the side of the road and gave me a ride home on her way to Pemba. At the time, she mentioned that I could crash at her place in Nampula City anytime. I hadn't been in touch with her in months, but decided to give her a call. She not only put me up, but she put up my three friends as well. Family style feast and hot showers. Enough said. 

I hitched my way home to Chiure the next morning (one hour chapa to the north-bound turn-off, three-hour hitched ride with Brazilian missionaries to a town south of mine, one hour in a semi-truck hto my house) to get the house cleaned up for Eric and his family. They arrived a few hours after me. It was fun showing some non-Peace Corps Americans a slice of our life here. We walked around town, cooked feasts, did the Chiure thing. They were great guests, arriving with a couple bottles of whiskey, up for the adventure and happy to chip in for a case of beer.

I originally planned to take advantage of a comfortable ride with Eric's family's car transfer out to the coast and then try to hitch my way to Ibo Island on fishing boats. Upon arriving at their lodge (a beautiful eco-lodge spot on a totally isolated stretch of Cabo Delgado coastline), the staff agreed to let me sleep in staff housing and only pay the food rate. $45/day for a PCV on a $230/month salary is a bit steep. Eric's family very generously offered to put me up and even took me along on a snorkeling trip out to the absolutely stunning Rolas Island. We enjoyed a couple beautiful days at the lodge in Guludo on some of the best beaches I have ever seen. I was even able to get a free lift on the boat transfer to Ibo Island.

Enjoyed a few days on Ibo Island, once a major Portuguese trading post and now a beautifully deserted island of old colonial ruins. Saw a few students there. Hung out with PCV's and some of their families. Ate good food at a couple fancy little lodges. High-life.

Transferred back to the mainland on a local's little boat. Waited on a beach for four hours. Then caught a lift back to Pemba. Three days in Pemba to do nothing on the beach, see friends, and do some science fair work (five hours in a Kafka-esque bank line).

Now I'm home and going in to school. But no teachers and almost no students are there. Typical first week back. Grad apps and post-vacation re-integration. Gotta rally the motivation for the final three months!

 Murrupula-Alto Molocue cold morning ride.

Open-backing from Molocue to Gurue via Nauela.

Out to the mountains in Gurue.

From the top of the waterfall; view back onto Gurue.

Hiking in the hills, Gurue, Zambezia.

Tea-field kids.

Team Montepuez walking the primped roads of Gurue.

Gurue, Zambezia

Chilling in the cha.

Rolas Island, Quirimbas Archipelago

Fishing fleet, Quirimbas Archipelago

Some mediocre beaches...

Low-tide on Ilha do Ibo, Quirimbas Archipelago

Old Portuguese Fort, Ibo Island

Sunday afternoon on Wimbe Beach, Pemba 

Living the hard life, Pemba, Cabo Delgado

June Update

The pace of life has picked up significantly over the last few months. Relatively speaking, of course. Since travels down to Quelimane during the April break, we’ve had a number of visitors including a med student from Finland and a PCV from Zambia. I did some local traveling to Ocua (to do nothing in the middle of nowhere) and Pemba (for Provincial Science Fair planning).

Produce shopping out of the bus on the way to Quelimane, Zambezia.

Bike taxis to Praia de Zalala outside of Quelimane. 

 City life; sunset beers in Quelimane.

River life in the bush, Lurio River, Ocua, Cabo Delgado 

Chilling in the neighborhood. 

Neighborhood crew in front of our house.

Around my birthday (I turned 25, ah!) we organized the first (hopefully annual, will be our legacy!) Cabo Delgado Cookoff, a cooking competition for PCV’s in our province that our friends hosted in Montepuez (small city a few hours from Chiúre). Two and a half kilos of BBQ pork over grilled pineapple was enough for us to take home the coveted Cabo Cookoff Cup! Other dishes included homemade peanut-butter and banana sandwiches, green curry, french toast on homemade bread with butter milk syrup, calzones, and passion fruit glazed grilled chicken. Yum.

Team Chiure on its way to the win.

I’ve met with a group of students on a weekly basis this year to do science experiments and to encourage students to do their own projects for the district science fair. It’s a challenge to get kids to do independent work but, in the end, I had eight students enter individual projects in the Chiúre District Science Fair that I organized with the local education office.  Three local high schools brought projects. All of the other schools had teachers make projects and then coach the kids on how to present them, and the local education office basically turned the event into a FRELIMO (ruling party) propaganda opportunity, but the kids still got a bit of a sense of academic accomplishment that is all-too-lacking here. I was proud of my kids for having independently done all of their projects. Four of my students will be traveling to the provincial fair in Pemba which I am organizing with the provincial government (to be held in August).

The jury, Eric included, evaluating science fair projects. 

Yours truly making the opening speech at the Chiure District Science Fair. 

Chiure District Science Fair. 

My student making me proud.

Last weekend we hosted about twenty other Peace Corps friends for an all-weekend party for Eric’s birthday. The festivities included mud-oven baked hot-pockets, plenty of beer motor-biked in cold from town, and… pit-roasted Pongo (our pig). For all you Michael Pollen fans out there, I can now say that I know what it is to slaughter my own meat (pig aside, the chicken/turkey kill count was long ago lost track of); before dawn last Sunday we wrangled Pongo out of his corral, tied his legs up, and I sawed through his throat. We cleaned him out, stuffed his gut with veggies, and then lowered him into a hole to roast all day. Our roasting project was slightly flawed. We were told to totally seal the hole, trapping heat and extinguishing the fire. But the fire was too quickly extinguished and the heat was too little. Unfortunately, you can’t re-open the pit mid-roast to find this out. So the pig emerged from the hole only partially roasted. No big deal; we pieced him up and were continuously frying and grilling pork for the entirety of the Sunday evening party, satisfying the hunger of Peace Corps friends and Mozambican friends alike.  

Sorry Pongo.  

Party Time: Beer and Friends. 

The first taste goes to the matador! 

Burning off Pongo's hair. 

More early-morning hair removal. 

Stuffing his belly with veggies. 

And into the pit he goes.

Monday morning (holiday, no school) everyone stumbled out of tents and beds in pork-and-beer-induced stupors but were able to rally for a trip to the locally famed Quedas do Lúrio (Lúrio Falls). We rented our own open-back truck and driver, bought bread and fried bean paddies for the road, and bumped our way a couple of hours down a dirt road through the bush to some stunning waterfalls on Mozambique’s second largest river (after the Zambeze), Rio Lúrio. The Quedas are the kind of mystical place that is stunning enough to warrant guide book hotspot status (it’s not listed in any guidebooks) but still so pristine that even our local driver had to pick up a villager on the backroads to the falls in order to avoid getting lost. There is no entrance fee. There are no guardrails and “prohibited” signs. Just a bunch of local villagers excited to show you where to dive off the rocks. We spent a few hours climbing around on the rocks, swimming, and generally exploring the area. I fell-in trying to jump from one rock to another, got swept down a rapid, but luckily swam out before the bigger rapids farther downstream. Phone got soaked and died… but then dried out and came back to life a few days later.

As Quedas do Lurio. 

Pristine. 

I fell in trying to jump from where those people are to that rock. Oops. You can see me floating out of the rapid, phone in pocket. 

No trip is complete without some good cliff jumping. 

Locals showing up the way. 

Team Peace Corps and the local kids enjoying a last look at the falls.

Life has been busy. But busy is relative here. There has still been plenty of time to sit around with the cat and dog, to master the slackline (jumping on and off, quick turn-arounds, walking backwards, dips), to get some custom-made Makonde black-wood carvings commissioned, to get a bunch of cool African-fabric clothes tailored (lots of hoodies coming for those who asked), to find out my close-of-service date (November 14^th!), to do lots of cruising around town, and (last night) to get attacked by the swarm of army ants that has been cruising around our yard for months. It was cool to just watch them march around the yard at a distance, but then they came on our porch at night when we couldn’t see them and attacked our feet. Bites from army ants are really really painful. In the course of decimating the colony with boiling water and a broom, I got bitten at least seven or eight times. In the Peace Corps...

No post is complete without a shot of the animals. Boi and Cow, brotherly love.

Oh yeah. School is running normally, as they would say here. “Como estás?” “Normal.” How are you? Normal. Standard exchange. Never bad. Never good. Just normal. School is running normally. Fun times in the classroom but getting the material to stick is a tough process. In the Peace Corps…