Mid-Service Mark

1 year of service done, 1 more year to go!! This past year has gone by fast! I just finished my mid service conference and I'm heading back to the states tomorrow to visit!!! I'm excited to see friends and family and to EAT EVERYTHING before heading back to Moz for another year. This past year, I definitely received (experience, personal growth, knowledge, list goes on) way more from my community than I've given. I'm looking forward to making year 2 count and finishing service strong! :)

This past month has a lot of ups and downs (see previous 2 posts from this month), here is a quick update of the rest of August:

Cabo Cookoff
8/9/14 I went to Montepuez for the day for the Annual Cabo Cookoff and got 2nd place for my sluttier slutty brownie (layers of brownie, peanut butter, oreo cookies, and cookie dough) =D It was really fun! We spent all morning cooking and preparing our dish and then vote and eat in the afternoon.

Mid-Service Conference 
8/25/14 - 8/29/14 I was reunited with the whole Moz 20 group! It was good to see everyone, specially those from the South, together again. We had sessions all morning from Monday to Friday and afternoon were for medical check ups. I had my dental appointment on Monday (no cavities, yay!) and medical appointment on Tuesday so the rest of the week was free time for me.

REDES
8/6/14 The girls sew a bunch of capulana flowers so I can bring it back to the states to sell to help raise quick money for our trip to the city. We're planning to make and sell peanut butter (a more sustainable project) in the community next.

8/22/14 I wanted to do something fun before I leave site for a month so we had a dancing day! We followed along with youtube tutorial video and danced to Shakira- Waka Waka! The girls told me they want to practice the dance more when I come back and then perform it for the community at the next holiday celebration! They want to practice 3 times a week when I get back on Sept 22 to get ready for either Oct 4th or Oct 12th holiday. I'm really excited to make this dance performance happen!! :)

Hora das Criancas

8/1/14 Bean bags toss game- Hit the mosquitoes!

8/7/14 Practice writing letter I and colored Batman

Vovinam
My class is growing! The girls told their friends so I had 9 students this session including 2 boys! We're still working on the basic stuff- punches, kicks, blocks, and chops. They're learning how to roll and I also taught them attack forms #1-3.

English
I only did 5 sessions of English class this month since I was away from site for half of the month. It's been going really well! They come with questions or topic that they want to learn so we didn't waste any time at all. Two of my coworkers are improving a lot so I'll probably group them together next time.

Zambie

She finally gave births on August 4th! I guessed 4-5 kittens and I was right! I came home from work to find one side of my mosquito net down because Zambie tried to get onto my bed. She kept trying to get back onto my bed after I carried her outside to the living room multiple times. Finally she [unhappily] gave up and had the babies on the table. Saved my bed this time! :) The babies are so cute! All different color- white with black spots, black, calico, black with white underneath, and grey.

I miss them already! 1 week down, 3 more weeks til I get to see them again

RIP Nunes Mucucula

When I accepted my invitation to serve in the Peace Corps, I received a Mozambique Welcome Book in the mail. I remember reading this part in the book:

"It is important to be aware of the high emotional toll that disease, death, and violence can have on Volunteers. As you strive to integrate into your community, you will develop relationships with local people who might die during your service."

Yesterday and today are the saddest days of my service so far. I went back to work on Tuesday 8/19 after traveling out of town for a week. My coworkers told me that Nunes was in a motorcycle accident on Sunday and is currently in a coma in the Nampula Hospital. Yesterday evening I received a call from one of my coworker with devastating news: Eu quero informar que Nunes já morreu. (I want to inform you that Nunes already died) Between the loud background noises and my poor Portuguese skills, she had to repeat it a few times before I screamed O QUE?! into the phone. I attended his funeral today and I didn't think I was going to cry but it was really hard to hold in the tears. A ton of neighbors, coworkers, and even community leaders whom he worked with came. Nunes is one of the facilitators for the Metoro post. The facilitators stay and live in the field majority of the time but I've gotten to know and worked with him in the field many times this past year. He always greeted me in Macua and laugh when I can't keep up with talking in Macua. He wear reading glasses with the +1.25 sticker still on them. I never got around to telling him he can take them off :(

RIP Nunes, you will be missed!

Malaria TOT

8/11/14 Ancuabe -> Nampula

I had a horrible day! So my boleia fell through to leave Ancuabe early in the morning so I ended up getting into Nampula late at night around 6pm. I spent most of the 6 hours ride to Nampula texting and calling people in Nampula to help buy a train ticket for me to go to Cuamba the next day. That didn’t happen because apparently all the tickets were sold out so I decided that I was going to take a chapa to Cuamba. After arriving to Nampula, I was getting off the truck and I was heading straight to a taxi to go to the hostel when a guy came up from behind and yanked my purse off and ran away. I chased after him screaming for help but no one stopped him. Luckily he dropped everything on the ground and ran away with only my phone and camera. People helped me picked up my passport and the rest of my bag on the ground so I didn’t lose the important stuff. It’s all replaceable items but it still sucks though since my iphone and camera were both new ): Lesson learned! Cannot let a 3rd time happen ): I hate this city! Anyways, so I got to the hostel, checked in, and went to a nearby food stand for dinner. The guy working there has a car and was going to help me track my phone but it was offline so couldn’t track it. Luckily I had an extra basic phone on me to use so I was able to get some phone numbers from my icloud. I only had 1 bar of battery left on my phone though and no one at the hostel uses the same charger. I couldn’t sleep well that night since the guy underneath my bunk bed was snoring really loud and I kept waking up every hour because I was paranoid that my phone would run out of battery and I’ll oversleep.

8/12/14 Nampula -> Malema -> Cuamba -> Mecanhelas

I left the hostel at 4:30am, took a taxi to the chapa station for Cuamba, and then found out that they’re not going to Cuamba today. I ended up taking a chapa to Malema (5am – 10am) and then waited for a chapa going to Cuamba to come.  About an hour later I managed to get a ride with a freight truck passing by heading to Cuamba. The ride was horrible because the roads were so bad. Imagine sitting on a trampoline and having someone jump on it next to you.. that was the majority of the ride was like. So that took another 5 hours so I got into Cuamba around 4pm. I found the chapa for Mecanhelas and waited 1.5hr for it to fill up before it finally leaves. I finally made it to Mecanhelas at 7:30pm! And just in time right before my phone was about to be out of battery. I was turning it on and off all day to save the battery.

8/13/14

I woke up so sore!! It has to be from sitting in bus/truck/chapa all day the past 2 days. So I spent the day prepping for the TOT and exploring Mecanhelas a bit with Alice, a fellow Moz 20er. We thought we didn’t have a projector so I started writing what I need on the big poster paper but were relieved when we found out that one of her org does have a projector.

8/14/14 Malaria TOT day 1

7:30am- 8am: Chá

8- 8:30am: Boa Vindas e apresentação

8:30- 9am: Pré teste

9-10am: Causas da Malária

10- 10:30: Lanche

10:30- 12: Sintomas da Malária

12- 1pm: Almoço

1-3pm: Prevenção e Tratamento da Malária

3pm: TPC                 

Day 1 went really well and according to schedule. We got to Alice’s org at 6:30am to set up for the training. There were 15 participants total.

We started session 1 (Causes of Malaria) with an agreed/disagreed/not sure activity where the participants move to whichever corner that represent their position the best after we read a statement. The three statements were: The families in my community believe that malaria is serious and can be fatal; the families in my community believe that they are at risk of malaria; the families in my community believe that it is worth it to protect themselves from malaria. We then talked about transmission and life cycle of malaria.

The second part of session 1 was symptoms of malaria. We gave each participant a flash card with a symptom on it and had them put it in either the ‘symptoms of malaria’ pile or ‘not symptoms of malaria’. Then we went through it and told them which ones actually are symptoms of malaria and which ones are not. After the symptoms, we talked about malaria in Mozambique with some facts and statistics. We finished a little early before lunch so we went outside and played a quick trivia game with bean bags. We asked them a question related to the information they just learned and then throw the bean bag to a person and they have to answer it. During this time, one participant made a comment that we have to get rid of all the mosquitoes to eliminate malaria. We explained to him that we don’t have to kill off all of the mosquitoes to get rid of malaria, we just have to get rid of the malaria parasite so that there won’t be any for the Anopheles mosquito to infect people with. It was a light bulb moment where they were all ‘ooohhh!!!’ hahaha

Lunch was yummy and the portion was huge! We had chicken, rice, salad, and potatoes.

We played an ice breaker game to get them energized after lunch break. We played hug a buddy and called it abrace amigos.

We started session 2 talking about ways to prevent malaria. We also did a net hanging demonstration, an activity that shows the importance of having everyone sleeping under a bed net, and hang the mosquito net (pin the tail on the donkey style)

For treatment of malaria, we asked for 3 volunteers and gave them each a ‘weak parasite’, ‘strong parasite’, and ‘very strong parasite’ sign to hold to. Then we did an activity to show the importance of completing the 3 days treatment instead of stopping after 2 days even if they feel better and wanted to save the 3rd day treatment for another time. We ended the day with giving them TPC to do, which was to read the Tatu book and do the mini test at the end of the book.

8/15/14 Malaria TOT day 2

7:30am- 8am: Chá

8- 8:30am: Revisão da Informações

8:30- 10am: Combatendo da Malária em Mecanhelas

10- 11: Apresentação

11- 12: Pos Teste e Availação

12- 1pm: Almoço

1pm: Encerramento e Certificados

Day 2 started a bit behind schedule but the timing worked out eventually. We began by reviewing all the information that they learned from day 1 and then we went outside to play relay games. (I love activities!)

We divided the participants into 2 teams. The first round of the relay race game, they had to arrange the steps in order of what they must do if they have malaria. 

For the second round, each player from each team has to run to the front of the room, pick up a paper with a symptom on it and then run to the side to put it in either the 'symptoms of malaria' or 'not symptoms of malaria' pile before the next player can go.

After the games, they were divided into 4 groups according to their organizations to create an action plan to fight malaria in their community.

Each group presented their action plan to everyone

Doing pos test and filling out evaluation of the training

Alice giving out perdiem

People love certificates here

group photo!

8/16/14 Mecanhelas -> Cuamba

I took the first chapa out of Mecanhelas and got to Cuamba around 7:30am. The ticket booth wasn’t open to buy a train ticket until later in the afternoon so I wandered around Cuamba for a bit until Brianna was free. We baked delicious chocolate cinnamon banana bread and did a marathon of Once Upon a Time. We watched 8 episodes total and ate lots of bread and ice cream all day :) We met up with other 6 other PCVs for dinner

8/17/14 Cuamba -> Nampula

I met up with a 4 Moz21ers to take the train to Nampula together. I think I have bad luck with this train.. The first time I took the train from Cuamba to Nampula, it broke down so we didn’t get into Nampula until midnight. I spent 18 hours on the train that time (it was supposed to be about 10 hours only). This time, it ran out of gas so we had to wait for a truck to bring more gas from Nampula, which delayed us for about 2.5 hours. I didn’t get into Nampula until almost 6:30pm. I got to crash with Rayna (Moz21er) for the night at City Hotel so I didn’t have to pay for a hostel, yay!

8/18/14 Nampula -> Pemba -> Ancuabe

I woke up at 3am to head out. I didn’t see any taxi running but I got a boleia with a Senegalese guy to the bus station. I got into Pemba around 10:30am and went to LAM to change my return flight from Maputo to Pemba. It only cost me 1307mets so not too bad! :) Then I met up with friends, ate lots of the frozen yogurt and ice cream, bought cat food, and then got a boleia back to Ancuabe. It feels good to be home!! I was homesick since day 1 of the trip hahaha