On Sunday of this week (yesterday) we were supposed to go to Maputo for a week long mid service conference. This is the first time that we get to see all of the volunteers in our group since training (a year ago). We also are supposed to have medical check-ups and training sessions designed to support us in our second year. Due to the tropical storm earlier this week, apparently Mozambican government officials decided to open a dam in the southern region to prevent flooding in that area. As a result, the water released flooded a road, the ONLY road to be exact, that goes from my province to Maputo, the capital. The 10 volunteers in my region who were stranded met in two different cities to wait for instructions from Peace Corps. Peace Corps sent two cars out in the morning in an attempt to find an alternate route. They bushwhacked for 8 hours on old paths used for transporting coal and wood and failed to get to us. In their own words "mission possible turned impossible". After waiting around all day we were told to go home or at least to a volunteer's house nearby for the night. Now we are starting day two of our mission. Apparently there is a train that can take us through the flooded zone so that we can get to Maputo. Some volunteers managed to get on it last night and we heard that it took them 12 hours, even though by car it's only a 100km stretch. We have to travel just over 2 hours to get to the town where the train leaves from so we will find out soon if our trip to Maputo will be possible. Wish us luck!

On Monday Southern Mozambique was hit by Tropical Storm Dando. Meteorological technology isn't quite what it is back at home so naturally we had no idea what was coming for us. Monday was the first day of the school year which meant that we had a big meeting with all of the students, teachers, and parents. Monday morning was cool, and I thought to myself, "how nice after so many days of scorching heat". I would soon regret that fact. I arrived at school and our school directors were concerned about where the meeting would be held. Usually it is held in the shade under a grove of mango trees but it was overcast and raining so that would not do. Someone went to check if we could have the meeting at the catholic church up the road since it's the biggest indoor space in our town. We rounded everyone up and filed into the church. After everyone was organized they decided that it wasn't right to have a church meeting in the house of god so they kicked us out and we squeezed maybe 200 people into a classroom made for 30 students. When the meeting finally started it was raining cats and dogs and the corrugated metal roof over our heads was flapping and threatening to blow off. When the meeting ended everyone took off for their respective houses. I closed up my house as best I could, wrapped myself up in a rainjacket with a backpack with anything that I would need and took off to my boyfriend, Francelino's house. Trees had fallen down, roofs were coming off, and the wind was blowing like crazy. I made it to his house running and wading through the roads to get there. When I arrived he had secured the metal roof with extra cement blocks. We locked ourselves in the house, put on dry clothing and tried to go to sleep. The power had already gone out and wouldn't come back on for a few days. In the morning the worst of the storm had passed but it had taken it's toll on the town. Two of my neighbors' roofs came completely off. Luckily mine stayed on, but sustained some damage and one of my rooms flooded. Houses were completely blown over and destroyed, most of the town's farmlands were flooded with water and two classrooms at the school had their roofs torn off by the wind. It's been a slow week of lighter rain and slow reparation of houses, but progress is being made. Pictures coming soon...

Holidays at home

After 2 and a half weeks in the US I am on my way back to Mozambique. The visit was great as I was able to catch up with family and so many friends. I was spoiled by my mother's excellent cooking. She made all of my favorite dinners while I was home and delectable Christmas treats like cherry cheesecake and peanut butter fudge bars! Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and I consider it a very special family holiday so being able to spend it at home this year was a dream come true. The whole day was wonderful with breakfast and presents in the morning followed by a visit to my uncle's house in Connecticut where I got to catch up with many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. The family Yankee swap was fun as usual, although I think my family took pity on me being the "poor volunteer in Africa" and I came out of it with a cool little telescope.
I appreciated down time, hanging out with friends on the couch and watching a movie, and definitely appreciated having a car at my disposal instead of having to rely on unreliable public transportation, as I do in Mozambique.
Many people have asked me if I experienced culture shock in the return from Africa to the developed world. The truth is that I wasn't as affected by it as I thought I would be. The weirdest thing was hearing everyone speaking English all around me, because I rarely speak English in Mozambique. I think that the since US and Mozambique are so different, and I know to expect them to be different, that I was prepared for the changes that I encountered back at home in the United States.
One of the biggest changes that I noticed In the US since last year is how much more everyone has become dependent on their cell phones! Your cell phone tells you everything: where to go, how to get there, the menu at the restaurant you're going to, you can answer any question on them! I know all of this existed in 2010 when I left, but everyone seems to be much more dependent on them.
The goodbyes were bittersweet after my visit. I felt blessed to have had the opportunity to visit during my Peace Corps service and I knew that I was going to miss everyone like crazy all over again, but the stay reminded me how much I love what I am doing and how much I love Mozambique. All in all, I feel ready and rejuvenated for my second year of service.

Things I can't wait to do in 72 hours...

Things I plan to do in the United States while I am home:
Use a washing machine and dryer!
Get a haircut
Heat up some food in a microwave
Take a long, hot shower
Go skiing—pray for snow for me!
Drive a car
Dry my hair with a hair dryer
Wash dishes in a sink with running water, or even better in a dishwasher
Eat ice cream (I'm not going to go farther into other foods that I'm craving because this list could go on forever)
Go to the movies!
Sing Christmas carols
Drink hot chocolate by the wood stove
And most of all, see all of my family and friends! Can't wait to see all of you in just a few days!

Exams!

Much of my time here in the last month and a half has been consumed by National Exams in my school. In secondary school (8th-12th grade) students have to do exams twice, once at the end of 10th grade to move onto 11th and again at the end of 12th grade to officially graduate from school. There is a separate exam for each subject. The 10th graders have to do exams in Portuguese, English, Geography, History, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics. 12th graders usually have to do a maximum of five exams and have more lee-way because they can choose to do one exam over the other. During exam weeks, testing is run from 8am until 6pm. Boy, it is exhausting standing and watching kids take exams for 8 hours a day! The students have two opportunities to pass all of their exams. In the first week of exams they could pass 3 exams and then have to come back and pass the others in the second week of exams which happens a month later.
I was placed in a group with several other teachers correcting the exams of the twelfth grade students. The exams are multiple choice and they are done on scantron sheets. These sheets are USUALLY used because they are quickly corrected by a machine, but we end up correcting and grading them by hand and then the tests get sent to Maputo to correct our errors. Why are the exams not sent to the machines in the first place to save us days of work? I'll never know...
Once the exams are corrected we have to enter all of the grades into a chart to print out, post, and show to the students. Since people have little to no computer skills I have been the one to enter in the grades because something that takes me an hour takes everyone else five, and it's pretty painful to watch.
Most volunteers don't have to participate in this process of exams, but I didn't really insist against it and it is interesting to see how the process goes. Luckily, or obviously, my tenth grade English students did very well on their exams which made me very happy! I practiced sample exams with them for weeks so I was so pleased to see that the preparation paid off! Just one more day of exams and then I'm out of Mozambique and on my way home!

The Sound of Music

One thing that is impossible to go unnoticed here in Mozambique, is the Mozambican love for music. Firstly, wherever you are, you can almost always hear some sort of music blaring somewhere. You can seriously be in the middle of a town which has no electricity, in the middle of the night and hear music bumping. Forget running water, cell phones, televisions, and lightbulbs, the Mozambican priority is a sound system complete with large speakers and an amplifier.
Moving off subject, Francelino and I made a trip to his original hometown this weekend, Manjacaze. We hopped on a bus at 6am and took it about an hour north, part way on narrow, dusty, and sandy roads to reach our first stop, his grandmother's house. We stopped at his aunt's house to leave our backpack so we wouldn't have to lug it along on our trip and his cousin accompanied us into the bush! We trekked along for about an hour, stopping to buy a bag of bread along the way. We passed lots of caniço (straw-like) round houses, water wells and pumps, and lots of cashew trees! Manjacaze's landscape is full of cashew trees, with the occasional mango, mafura, coconut, or eucalyptus tree mixed in. We finally arrived at Vovo's (Grandmother in Portuguese) house and she hurried out to greet us. We went and sat in one of her little round houses and, as a family member prepared hot water for us to take bucket baths, we sat and ate a hearty breakfast of tea, bread, cashews, and chicken (which she of course had personally killed for us earlier that day). When you arrive at someone's house here and have been travelling the first thing that they offer you is hot water to take a bucket bath. I have gotten used to this and it's actually really nice because after travelling you are almost always covered in a layer of dust and sweat. The day at her house was relaxing. We ate, took naps, sat outside and talked with her, and Francelino made a video with my digital camera of Vovo talking about her children, grandchildren, and telling stories, which was very entertaining. She wanted to kill a duck to cook for us at about 4pm but we had already eaten so much and had to be on our way to had to decline. She lives way out in the middle of nowhere with just her sister who is also elderly. I have no idea how old she is, nor does anyone, because she can't even tell you the year she was born in, but every day she does to her machamba (fields) and work to cultivate produce like corn, peanuts, tomatoes, and other crops depending on the time of year, amazing!
In the evening we left and went back to his aunt's house. We were welcomed by a group from her church that were sitting outside on grass mats drinking tea. I sat and chatted with them until they went on their way. The rest of the day mostly consisted of taking baths, eating dinner, and finally going to sleep!
On day two we went back to the road and got in a truck to bring us to the center of the village where Francelino's uncle works. He has a salon there where he cuts hair so we found him there and got a little tour of the “downtown” area. I, unfortunately, had drunk a few cups of water the night before and my stomach did NOT like the water there so I had a few hours of frequent bathroom trips and abdominal pain. We later got into another car to take us out to his uncle's house. There were so many people waiting for us! We met several of his aunts and so many cousins! I think there must have been 12 kids under the age of 13 running around. The afternoon was relaxing and we strolled around the area, took lots of pictures of the family, and ate lots and lots of delicious food. Cameras are not super common so we spent hours making videos of the kids dancing or taking pictures and then showing it to them.
All of the houses that we visited are not connected to electricity but two of the tree have a solar panel which charges a battery which they use to charge important necessities like cell phones, and of course to power their sound systems.
My other inspiration for the title of this blog post is that I watched the movie The Sound of Music with Francelino this week and he loved it and that made me really happy.

Time for Reflection...

There have been a lot of big and important events that have happened around here lately, but I'm short on time so I'll tell those stories another time and instead reflect on my time already spent in Mozambique. I have now been here for over a year. I arrived in Mozambique on September 29th 2010 and we are almost through October 2011. Time flies. This has really been one of the most interesting years of my life, if not the most interesting. Honestly, when I came here a year ago I didn't know what to expect. I assume it's the same for many Peace Corps volunteers. I was ready to jump into a new job, culture, and environment just for the experience truly not knowing if I would love it or if I would have to force myself to stay for the two years. I have enjoyed life here so much that I am sad that a year has gone by so fast. I feel so well integrated into the community here and it's a really comfortable environment for me. One thing that still bothers me here is racism and descrimination. I feel totally at home in Chongoene. The people all know who I am and I never really feel the difference in the color of my skin. When I go to Xai-Xai or any other city or place where people don't know me, I hate the attention that I get for being white. A lot of the time people assume that I know no Portuguese or local language so they will talk about me and think that I don't hear them. They all assume that I am rich and make other assumptions about me based on the color of my skin. Men always harrass me for my phone number and ask me to take them back to the U.S. with me. These are things that I have gotten used to and do my best to ignore, but it's hard to be completely numb to them.
Despite these challenges I can't complain. My boyfriend's family has really welcomed me into their home. His younger sisters and brothers play with me around the house, and his mom has also really taken a liking to me. I love my job at the school and I love my students. It's great that I have the opportunity to open my students up to new opportunities through the theater or girls empowerment group at my school.
I watch the nightly telenovela on TV with Francelino every night, and I hate when we miss it. I have gotten used to eating rice with every meal and having the same food day after day. I think it would be weird to sleep in a bed without a mosquito net on it and taking a real shower will be pretty strange after 2 a day bucket baths for the last 13 months.
I find myself wanting to stay at site more and more with people from my town. I get less urges to go to the city in search of a pizza or a few hours on the internet (hence the lack of blogs of late...). All in all, I think that I have really settled into the pace of life here. I no longer obsessively check the time like I did in the U.S. although I still do get bothered when people are obnoxiously late.
I might have mentioned this before, but I did decide that I will go home this December to visit my family and friends over the holidays. I think that my transition back to the United States will be a weird one. I might be overwhelmed with 100 TV channels to choose from, the use of cars, and how easy technology makes life. It should be an interesting trip, and although I will miss Mozambique terribly during that time, I can't put a price on being with family for Christmas.