Summer Break Travels

I'm not gonna even try to write a post about the last 7-8 weeks.

Get out your atlas:

Thanksgiving Party at home in Chiure, Cabo Delgado (over 30 people at the party; 23 crashing at our house!). Open-back truck to Nampula City. Train from Nampula to Cuamba, Niassa. Chapa from Cuamba to Lichinga (Niassa's capital). Lichinga to Metangula by chapa. Camping on the beach on Lake Niassa in Chuanga. Chuanga to Cobue via open-back truck. Cobue to Likoma Island, Malawi via skiff boat. Straight chilling on Likoma Island. Likoma Island to Nhkata Bay (Malawi mainland) via 17 hour boat ride! More lake chilling. Nhkata Bay to Lilongwe by bus. Lilongwe to Chipata (Zambia) via buses and cars (to get across the border). Chipata to South Luangwa National Park (camping on the Luangwa River with the hippos). S.L.N.P. back to Chipata via car. Chipata to Lusaka (Zambian capital) via bus. Lusaka to Livingstone via bus. Chilling at the falls for a while (bungee jumping and river swimming). Livingstone to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe on foot. Family meet-up all the way from the States! Victoria Falls to Hwange National Park via car with family.. Lots of animals and safari-lodging with family. H.N.P. back to Victoria Falls via bush plane. Victoria Falls to Maputo (via Jo'berg) by plane. Maputo to Machangula Peninsula via speedboat. Beach chilling and prawn eating with family. Back to Maputo via same boat. Maputo to Namaacha via chapa (Mozambican family chilling and wedding). Namaacha back to Maputo and on to Ponta D'Ouro via rented minibus (New Year's with extended Mozambican family on the beach). Back to Maputo via private car. Back to Namaacha by chapa (Moz family chilling). Back to Maputo by chapa. Flight from Maputo to Pemba. Chapa from Pemba home to Chi-town!

That spanned November 26th to January 8th. And included a ton of stories that I can't even begin to tell here.

Enjoy a lot of photos:

Thanksgiving Party aftermath. Papaya tree casualty.

 That's about $0.30 worth of mangos!

Hungry on the train? Stick your head out the window. 

Under the African Sky, Niassa Province, Mozambique 

See above comment; pocket change for a bucket of mangoes.

 Sunset, Lake Niassa, Mozambique

Praia de Chuanga, Lake Niassa

 Early morning on the lake.

Cobue, Niassa Province, Mozambique 

Evening skiff; Niassa, Mozambique to Likoma Island, Malawi border-crossing.

Six days of tent life and beach fire cooking on Likoma, Island. 

Chizumulu Island, Lake Malawi (Niassa), Malawi

Seventeen hours of putt-putting along with 15 hp engine to cross to Nhkata Bay. That dot in the background is where we left from (we are about six hours from our destination at time of photo).

Mayoka camping; Nhkata Bay, Lake Malawi 

Canoeing on the lake with friends! 

Cliff jumping, Lake Malawi, Malawi 

Jump Joanna!

Stuck in the mud; South Luangwa National Park, Zambia

Victoria Falls, Zambia Side 

 Jump again, Joanna! Victoria Falls Bridge, Zambezi River

Jump, Derek! 

Jump again, Derek! Devil's Pool, Victoria Falls 

A swim to the edge; Victoria Falls, Zambezi River 

Post-jump Derek to pre-jump Jo: "Holy shit" 

Coming in for landing from the co-pilot seat, Hwange National Park to Victoria Falls 

Catfishing with the hippos, Zimbabwe 

Chilling with some lions, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

Dunes of southern Mozambique with the family. 

Machangula Peninsula, Maputo Province, Mozambique

Catembe-Maputo Ferry. Returning from Ponta D'Ouro New Year's Festivities

Many destinations unfortunately went undocumented...

November Update

It’s been a long time since I last posted. A rundown of what’s been going on:

National Science Fair: In mid-September I traveled with a representative from the Cabo Delgado Provincial Ministry of Science and Technology, a teacher from Pemba, and two students to Chimoio (in Manica Province, two travel days equaling a total of 22+ hours) to represent our province at the National Science Fair. A very long trip, but a good opportunity for students to get to know and share ideas with fellow students from around the country. Our girl took home “Best Health Related Project” and our boy took  2^nd place overall for 11^th and 12^th graders. A three-day delay on the return trip gave us some time to hang out in the city and enjoy hot showers!

Ilha de Moçambique: Mozambique Island (google it) is a tiny island that was once a major trading port for the Portuguese. Today, the old stone Portuguese buildings are crumbling. Mozambicans have moved into the ruins of the old city. Wandering the island kind of feels like exploring something that should be a roped off historical space (a la the ancient parts of Rome, or something) but instead is filled in with random African people. Beautiful architecture and turquoise water all-around. I was there in early-October (along with about 30 other PCV’s) and had a fun time seeing friends, exploring the island, and dhow-sailing to a beautiful mainland beach nearby. 

School’s Over:  School ended. More like it kind of trickled out though. The entire third trimester was pretty much shot by weekly holidays. By late-September, no one was really around school anymore… We banged out our final exams in mid-October and I had my grades turned in a week later. Getting done feels good. Looking forward to the break, but also looking forward to doing things better next year; you learn a lot in one year teaching out here. A bit sad to say ‘goodbye’ to some of the graduating 12^th graders. While many students undeservingly graduate, every ‘turma’ has a handful of kids who are always present, try hard, and are motivated to do things with their lives. Unfortunately, by basically handing out passing scores (we have illiterate kids in our classes who will probably graduate), the education system has totally undermined the value of a diploma. Many of our deserving 12^th grade graduates will move back to their hometowns around the province and subsistence farm for the years to come.

National Exams: 10^th and 12^th graders are required to pass national exams in order to receive their respective diplomas. We spent the last week proctoring these tests. Given the regular absence of teachers at school, most students have never even seen some of the material on these exams. I tried to give a physics review a few weeks back. A few kids showed up, but we got so hung-up on discussing basic relationships between velocity, distance, and time that we never go into a lot of important material. The exams are advanced, even by American high school standards. Last year the passing rate at our school put us at 172^nd out of 176 public secondary schools in the country… ouch.

Exploring Cabo Delgado: The week between turning in grades and starting national exams gave me some time to explore a bit more of my province. I traveled west out to the mining outpost city of Montepuez to meet up with my three Peace Corps friends, Lona, Mireya, and Chris. The following day we packed into an open-back for the 220+ kilometer, 7-hour ride up the dirt backroad to Mueda. Apparently there are elephants and some other big animals inhabiting the area. We only saw some monkeys but the idea of seeing some big-game outside of a zoned-off reserve was kind of exciting (side note: Eric ate a plate of elephant in our town’s market last week). Mueda is a historical town (beginnings of the independence revolution) sitting on the edge of the Mueda Plateau. There is a wide-body-able runway right in the middle of town that terminates at the edge of the plateau. We wandered down the runway and enjoyed sunset from the edge while chowing down on some papayas. A few Tanzanian meals and some broken Makonde-speaking later and we hopped in another open-back headed northeast to Moçimboa da Praia. Moçimboa da Praia (da Praia = of the beach) is a beach town (!) not far south from the Tanzanian border. A lot of people spoke Swahili (Tanzanian language) and/or Mwani (coast language of northern Mozambique) but many spoke little or no Portuguese; most difficult communication I have had anywhere in Mozambique (aside from maybe my neighborhood…).The farthest-north PCV lives there. We crashed in her sweltering house at night, but mainly wandered around eating seafood for the days that we were there. The beach is an awesome clusterfuck of fish sales in the evening time. We bought a huge fish, shrimp, crab, stingray (yum!), and squid and found a smiling old lady who was happy to cook it all for a small fee. The terrifyingly fast Nagi Bus shot us out of Moçimboa and down the crumbling dirt road to Pemba in about eight hours. Halloween Party in Pemba (I was Donatello from the Ninja Turtles!) and then finally home to start proctoring national exams. 

Cow the Hunter: A neighborhood boy has been wandering out into the bush with our dog every day to hunt for bush meat. Apparently Cow’s occasional chicken killing and goat chasing has earned him a reputation as a quality hunter (I take credit for keeping him in shape with morning runs). He regularly tracks down and catches “ratazana,” some sort of large rodent, bush rat, prairie dog type thing. Yesterday, the hunter boy brought us the hind legs of said animal as a token of appreciation for our dog’s help. Ratazana legs fried in garlic and piri-piri are actually pretty good; we left most of the meat for Cow. The best news is that the hunting tires Cow out enough to keep him from attacking chickens or from messing too much with our…

New Cat: If I didn’t mention it before, grass-roofed houses tend to have rat problems. Over the course of the year, we have knifed, book-smashed, drowned, broom-whipped, and standard rat-trapped, to our estimates, 40+ rats (at least). In the process of doing major house cleaning today and yesterday we have found rat-chewed suitcases, glue sticks (yes, they eat glue), Neosporin tubes, Goldbond bottles, and god-knows what else. Not to mention their chewing through countless tupperwares and plastic bags to eat our bread, peanuts, tomato paste, chili powder, etc. We finally starved-out and murdered the majority of the population, but, out of fear for next year’s harvest season, procured a new feline friend to take care of any rat business. Boi (meaning bull or cow in Portuguese) is still a little kitten but is already learning to climb up into the high reaches of the house and pounce on lizards: he will be ready for next year’s rat season.

Pigs: We finally got pigs for our pig house in September. Pongo the boy (like from 101 Dalmations!) and Manja the girl. They are small. We feed them smashed corn husks and papaya peels. They will grow. Then we will eat them.

House Maintenance: We built a roof for our oven (mud-ovens melt in the rain; it has not rained here since June). We are bringing up three new papaya trees (they grow fast; maybe fruit next year!). I spent several hours yesterday morning climbing in the rafters around our ceiling and up on top of our roof to mend the countless rat holes in the thin plastic under the grass of our roof. In the process I uncovered a few old rat nests filled with shredded bits of our water-proofing plastic… ! Today we took everything off of our shelves and swept out the rat mess lying behind piles of our books. No school = lots of house maintenance time. 

Thanksgiving Prep: We are having a big Thanksgiving party here. Already found someone to buy two large live turkeys from. We will be firing up the mud-oven and roasting both birds (along with some pumpkin pies) for about 15-20 guests. Should be fun.

Travel Prep: I’ll be taking off a few days after Thanksgiving for what makes to be an epic trip. Chiure down to Nampula. Nampula into the frontier Niassa Province via train. Several days on the undeveloped Mozambican side of Lake Niassa (Africa’s third largest lake). Overnight ferry crossing into Malawi. Lakeside exploration in Malawi. Overlanding through Malawi and Zambia to Victoria Falls where I’ll say ‘bye bye’ to my traveling companion Joanna and say hello to my American family! Will be safari-ing with the family in the area then flying down to Maputo to show them a bit of southern Mozambique. After they fly out, I’ll be stopping through Namaacha to say hi to my training host family and then will hopefully find a pretty southern beach to party on for New Year’s before eventually flying up to Pemba to getting ready for my second (and probably final) year as a teacher here.

-

Anyway, life is going well here. Have been enjoying the free time to take care of the house and do some traveling. The town is emptying of students, leaving our yard quiet and primed for contemplating the coming year. It took a while, but I finally feel like we got a good handle on living well out here and what to expect/prepare for next year. The next couple of weeks will hopefully see rain (draught emergency here; people dig huge holes at night just to be able to scrape out some muddy water from the bottom first-thing the next morning) and some relaxing days reflecting on the year and prepping for Thanksgiving and the coming travels. Oh yeah, and it’s mango season! They grow on trees! In mass quantities!

August Photos

 Firing up the oven for the first time.

Wimbi Beach, Pemba with my physics student. 

Building the new pig pen (pigs still to come). 

Escola Secundaria de Chiure Science Fair Team

Internet in the Bush

I bought a little USB-stick modem yesterday. That means I'll be getting online a lot more often.

Now I can sit in my mud-thatch house with no electricity or running water and surf the internet. Story of the world in 2012, I guess.

August 23rd, 2012

Dog days of summer. Or I guess winter. After the July travels, I returned to a shitstorm in Chiure; getting organized after being on the move, starting the third trimester, organizing my local science fair group, coordinating the provincial science fair in Pemba, and dealing with our newly sexually active dog (he has only one testicle but still manages to leave the yard and terrorize the neighborhood bitches from sun-down to sun-up nightly).

The busy-ness culminated with the realization of the Cabo Delgado Provincial Science on August 4^th. We (me/Peace Corps and the Pronvincial Delegation of Science and Technology) had over one-hundred students from all over the province presenting group projects from their respective schools. The governor of Cabo spoke. A bunch of Peace Corps friends stopped through. A few of my students got to see the ocean for the first time in their lives (even though they live about 100 km from it). Aside from the hotel-to-venue bus full of students running over a person (as in under the wheel) on the way to the fair, things ran pretty smoothly by Mozambican standards. The idea is for students to be exposed to critical thought and scientific method. In the end, most of the projects are just kids mixing some honey with some leaves, calling it medicine, and pretending that that is science. Still a cool experience for all the students to get to travel, meet kids from other schools, get a certificate, and feel like they accomplished something academic (not a lot of positive reinforcement exists in schools here).

Since then, things have calmed down a lot here. August may be winter in southern Africa, but it somehow feels fitting that its waning weeks carry a semblance of the slow, stale days of late summer in the States. Four of the last eight schools days have been cancelled (teacher died in a motorcycle accident, governor came to town, governor came to town again, last day of Ramadan). Of course, school is never cancelled in advance, nor is its cancellation ever announced. Rumor just kind of starts spreading through town and then when only a handful of students shows up, the few teachers waiting around just leave. They say Africa has an “oral” culture…

We’ve taken advantage of those empty days to complete the mud oven in our yard. Mud base, mud dome, and a layer of concrete to protect it from the rain. The plan is to fire it up for the first time this weekend; pizza, banana bread, calzones? We just need some cheese. Wood-fired mud oven-roasted turkeys for Thanksgiving!

We also re-did the grass walls of our latrine, fixed part of our bamboo fence (including adding a doggy door so Cow can leave and release pent-up energy at night), and fixed our latrine hole (it was sinking…). Possibly already noted in the last post, but we also built a pig pen/house. Plan is to raise some little pigs to roast in our oven at a date TBD.

In the meantime, I’ve got the rhythm of school and Portuguese down well enough that lesson planning and school-stress are at a minimum. The days pass simply and rhythmically. Usually awake no later than 5 am. Go for a run through the dry, burned down, fallow fields. Cow runs alongside chasing the odd chicken, duck, goat, or water-totting woman along the path. Make some coffee with the previous night’s hot water and munch an orange. Stare off into the yard. Sweep swirly patterns into our dirt yard. Bike the 6 km into town to buy the days food (lettuce, tomatoes, onions, oranges, green peppers (if we can find them) and maybe a goat leg if we are feeling fancy). Bike home. Put a bucket of bath water in the yard to warm in the sun. Maybe read for a bit. Eat unrefrigerated leftovers from the previous night’s dinner. Take a lukewarm bucket bath, get dressed, and skip on over to school to impart some knowledge. Physics teaching has been fun (I made an egg float in salt water the other day. Wow!). Math teaching is a bit depressing… systems of three-equations to kids who can’t divide. I typically get done teaching early because I can enter the room early when other teachers are missing. Come home, light the charcoal, bang out another delicious dinner (we eat quite well, really), and stare off into the yard a little more. Sun is down around 6 pm and we usually wrap up dinner not long after. Read by head lamp for a bit, crawl into bed in the gazebo around 7:30 and pass out by 8. If you didn’t already calculate, 8 pm to 5 am is nine hours. I’m worried that when I get done here I won’t be able to adapt back to a high-paced life of seven-hour nights of sleep (I was lucky to get seven hours when I was getting up at 5:30 to hop Caltrain to my Turner projects).

Anyway, no complaints on this end. Broken up the weeks with some weekend beach travel in Cabo. Reading lots of stuff that I figure I probably won’t have the time to read in later years (although hopefully I am wrong about that). Learning how to cook more and more yummy stuff; coconut rice pudding! sweet peanuts! homemade hot pockets! Dicking around in the neighborhood. Just living the Peace Corps life, ya know?

Putting the neighborhood kids to work on the oven.

Winter Break 2012

Been off of school for a few weeks. Traveled back up north to the deserted beaches of Pangane, stopped by school to turn in my grades, then ran south. Conference in Nampula, hanging around Chimoio, and beaches in Inhambane Province. Some great hitchhiking luck to connect it all, including free beers, free pastries, and some very very long distance hauls in comfy private cars for free. Headed back north tomorrow to start the third trimester.

Some recent highlights:

 Cow finds haircuts pretty boring.

Chiure life; bbq pork over charcoal.

Grilled rat and cassava beer by candlelight. 

 Life is hard in the Peace Corps; beach beers in Pemba.

Card playing to pass the hours on the road. 

Open-backing in the north. 

Back to Pangane. 

Fresh lobster on the beach, Pangane, Cabo Delgado. 

Squid ink eye-black; Vilankulos, Inhambane. 

Life is hard in the Peace Corps.  

Man in the mangroves.