The Norm

Sometimes I forget that friends and family at home are not acquainted to life in Africa and although I am used to it now and it feels like the norm, im sure not everyone could say the same.  For instance the norm in Moz is… 

Goats tied to the side of the road, chickens everywhere, cows crossing the road stopping traffic.  Women carrying things on their heads like 5 gallon buckets of water, cases of soda, bundles of sticks or brooms.  Little girls practicing carrying things on their head with smaller buckets of water or water bottles.  Woman carrying a capulana with them everywhere, women wearing a capulana wrap over jeans or skirts.  People not wearing shoes including kids, men, women and elderly people. People asking complete strangers if they can use their bathroom.  Hitchhiking is a mode of transportation, people make hand signals in which direction they are going and the driver is expected to stop and or hand signal a different direction, explaining why they cant provide a ride.   Riding in a chapa or bus/big van where people sit 4 to a row instead of 3.  Chapa drivers will wait as long as they have to until the entire chapa is filled up before leaving.   While your waiting on a chapa venders will come up to your window with chips, cookies, bread, tangerines, phone credit, CDs etc  If there is no more room to sit in a chapa people will still pack in and stand up in awkward positions for the entire ride.   Chapas can also be the back of a pickup truck with im guessing up to 15-20 people at a time.   Kids make their toys out of different pieces of trash such as bottle caps, wire and bottles, the toy cars are pretty sweet!  Roosters crow here at all hours of the night and day… I guess they didn’t get the break of dawn memo.   Everyone has American music which they blast at all hours… theres nothing like taking a bucket bath bumpin to lil’wayne.   Mozambicans love Celiene Dion, Jean Claude Van Dam, and Brian Adams.  A mud house with a really loud stereo.   Mozambicans believe that everyone in the Peace Corps were neighbors in the states before coming to Africa and if there is a white person in town they must be our friend.    Women breast feed EVERYWHERE like on the street selling cashews or through my entire supervisors conference… I mean everywhere!  During my last meeting a young mother was obviously not breastfeeding correctly because an older woman in a business suit insisted on giving her a live demonstration.  Sometimes they forget to put their boob away and just act like its completely normal to have one tittie out during a conversation lol  TMI ?  People selling American DVDs and CD on the street, I think my homestay dad had more American rap than I do.   Phone credit is sold by street boys with the phone company vest on and you whistle for them to come over.   Hissing is the common way to get someones attention in Moz.  Children greet you at all hours with “good morning, how are you, I am fine, thank you” as one whole phrase.   Men will kiss at you and say “hey baby” as a cat call.   Venders will say “my sister” “I give you a good price, the best price” to try and get you to stop and buy something.  Street venders sell used clothes, shoes, phones and accessories, food, kitchen wear, DVDs, CDs etc.    There is no running hot water … not that I have seen so far.   People testing positive for HIV and living in denial, not telling their family or friends or starting treatment.   If you take someone’s photo they will definitely want to look at it.   People sweep their front yard every morning with a small broom made of sticks, moving all the trash and leaves to the side of the house instead of in front of it.   Trash everywhere!!  There is a specified trash hill next to the soccer field in my town and in Namaacha my family had a trash hill next to our house.    There is no drinking age in Moz, its not uncommon to see people drinking in the morning or while driving.  Cats are only to keep the rats away and dogs are only used as gaurds, there are no domesticated animals here.   You never shake or accept things with the left hand because it could be someone’s wiping hand when using the bathroom.   A very good chance that there is no toilet paper in public bathrooms.   There are no disposable diapers, only cloth. Tampons are only for city people… again maybe TMI lol  Weddings are a 2-3 day ceremony and the groom is expected to pay for everything.  The wife goes to live in with the husband and his family.  People greet each other with a touch of both cheeks or a kiss on both cheeks.  The most common greeting is tudo bem? which translates to everything good? and the response is tudo… everything.   Im sure there are many more things that I take as normal but cannot remember at the moment.    

Explaining my role

Oh how naive am I.   When I imagined joining the Peace Corps I saw a little African town struggling to accomplish certain goals like a program to reach out to AIDS victims or an orphanage.   I thought this town would request a volunteer for the area and everyone would welcome me with open arms.  The people in the town would be so happy and appreciative that Hannah Elyse has come to help them work on this specific problem that they have been trying to accomplish for so long. 

 Well the reality check is that the director of the school I am placed with told the previous volunteer that she wasn’t sure what I could work on with them and didn’t have any ideas for me.  She failed to show up to the supervisor’s conference and sent the lady in charge of buying food for the school instead.   When my counterpart introduced me to the hospital staff they had no idea that I was coming nor did they seem to care that I was there at all.  Half of the people she talked to about me, while I stood quietly, didn’t look at me or introduce themselves.   So not what I expected to say the least!    Chokwe is just like any other city where locals know each other but no one has any idea who I am or what the Peace Corps is.  The concept of a volunteer obviously does not translate because both of my organizations assumed that I was here to give them money or help get them money.   During training we were told that some of us who are new to an org would probably need to explain our role and that many of them would think we were there to give them money.  However I was not prepared for the leaders of an org who have been working with Peace Corps for over 2 years to still not understand this concept.    My counterpart from the hospital who attended the supervisor’s conference was surprised to hear that I was not going to provide food and money to the community, even though the opening line at the conference was the volunteers are not here to provide money! 

But to focus on the positive… some of the things I look forward to working on at the preschool are: helping make the financial and administrative work more organized, giving short classes (palestras) on supervision, lesson planning and preparation, child supervision and safety,  HIV transmission, child self-esteem, learning through play, and general child development.   I want to start a story time that would happen every day and stress the importance of reading to children.   I want to teach the teachers new songs or encouraging them to use songs they already know.  I want to decorate the class rooms with children’s art work, numbers, letters, shapes, days of the weeks and months, calendars and colors.   I am also going to start a perma-garden, try to add more nutrition to the lunch menu and teach cooking techniques to save nutritious value in the food.   I want to find a preschool in Maputo that functions well and take the teachers to see what their preschool could look like.  I want to show them a youtube video of a preschool in the states to see what our school standards are like as well.   I want to sit down with the director of the preschool and create a yearlong curriculum for the teachers to follow and have a posted schedule in the classroom for each day of the week.   I want to encourage the director, through conversations over the next two years, to enforce rules and consequences on the teachers for their behavior and work ethic. 

At the hospital I look forward to working with the peer educators on: establishing their own association, improving home visits and palestras, helping them look for patients who abandon treatment, income generation projects, and grant writing.   I want to look into ways to help in the mental health and maternity sectors of the hospital.   I want to help create a more organized structure for processing HIV positive patient’s paperwork.  I also want to see if any improvements can be made to post counseling sessions for HIV positive patients.  Hopefully if people feel more comfortable coming to the hospital and taking their medications, the number of abandoned treatments will decrease.

I am going to start a Redes group which is girls empowerment group for youth!   I can focus on anything I want with them from playing soccer to having conversations about self-esteem and I am going to do it all!   It is just a club for girls to feel good about themselves and have a positive female remodel to encourage them.   I am also going to apply to be in the peer support network.  It is a network for Peace Corps volunteers to support each other through good and bad times.  If you are a counselor in the peer network then volunteers are provided with your number if they need someone to talk to.  I think this will be a good way to see if counseling is something Im interested in and to help my peers.    

I have been feeling like my jobs are unstructured and the people here are unmotivated which can be discouraging but I just wrote so many things that are possible for me to do here which makes me happy!  I just got a Portuguese tutor which is great so I can feel more comfortable with the language to accomplish all of these things.   I am feeling much more at home in Chokwe :) Till next time Elysea