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…