Summer is in the air...

As a student in the United States as soon as May comes along you can feel the sun getting stronger and the air getting thicker with the promise of hot summer days. Suddenly kids at school are itching to get out of their seats to be outside or go to the beach and everyone is anxious for summer vacation to kick in! Despite the fact that the seasons are reversed and the school year is therefore on a different schedule, the same feeling is starting to set in here. I only have 9 weeks of school left, which means that I already have 29 weeks behind me! The cool "winter" air is slowly disappearing, the sun is feeling hotter, and those pesky, malaria-carrying mosquitoes are starting to emerge.
Despite the desire for summer vacation to come, things are moving along quite smoothly in Chongoene. My JOMA group (theater) are working on their last performance of the year which is a short play in English that they will perform in an English Theater competition at the end of October. My REDES girls (girls empowerment group) are working hard on producing capulana bags (purses made of local fabric) to sell to generate some income for the group to start new projects with. I am starting to look for financing for a project at my school. The idea for the project is to start raising chickens to then sell the chickens for meat when they are big, or raise egg-laying chickens to sell the eggs later on. Theoretically this would be a project that I would help finance and could continue on in the future, but that's if all works out as it should. It costs about 23(90 cents US) meticais to buy a baby chick and when it is a full grown chicken they sell for 130($4.80) meticais so the school could really benefit from this project if it all goes well.
I have a 4 day weekend this weekend because I am going up to Inhambane for a JOMA handover meeting. The volunteers who arrived the year ahead of me are leaving in November or December so we will have some big organizational meetings and they will hand over all of the responsibilities to us. Should be fun to have a weekend away (and on the beach!).