Next Stop, Morrumbala

After 3 weeks of unexpected “training”, a word which is used very loosely and can mean anything from sitting indoors at a center and copying notes from a power-point presentation to walking around a farmer’s fields, bugging him with questions about potatoes, to crashing through the overgrown bush, strategically not in front of the line so as to avoid any disgruntled snakes, I think I’m finally going to site on Thursday. However formal or informal the learning process has been during my time here, the bottom line is I do in fact feel more prepared than when I arrived.

I’m currently spending a few days in Nicoadala, at a sleepy “training center” (again, use this term lightly) with a very small group of people (just me and 6 Mozambicans), talking about conservation agriculture, visiting nearby farmers who are actually implementing NGO-promoted practices, and motivating local youth to organize themselves into groups and begin growing vegetables. That’s where I come in handy – kids the world over generally take a speedy liking to me, and my time in the DR left my head filled with ideas of how to get them excited about things they might usually see as mundane. What. You won’t race to carry 50 gallons of water from the far away stream to irrigate the garden? What if the winner gets to braid my hair? Mmm hmm. That’s what I thought. (OK So this may be a bit of an exaggeration. However, I can only hope that African children will be as susceptible to my mind tricks as Dominicans.)

Driving around is still quite an experience, for everyone involved. Most of the places I’ve been taken recently to see farming operations are far enough off the beaten path that those who catch a glimpse of me as we zip dustily by in our indestructible white pick-up truck don’t even have the forethought to make gestures or comments; they’re too busy being completely shocked to see me that all they can do is stare. The most quick-witted manage to throw a thumbs up my way, and impulsive children chase the truck until their little legs can take them no further. Those that, by some miracle, don’t notice the white woman in the front seat, who could very well be the only one they would ever see, are almost as shocked to see a car at all, and skip out to the path to watch until it’s out of site. It’s the most exciting part of their day, and the smallest jump in place and yell “Carro carro carro!” The rest of the time I spend jolting fearfully out of my strangely involuntary bumpy-car-ride-naps as we come unbelievably close to toppling yet another cyclist or herd of goats.

Each night, we return to a modest dinner, tea if I request it, and refreshingly easy and fluid conversation before we’re accompanied by the tune of crickets to an early bed in our ascetic cement chambers. Up at 6:30 to a breakfast of tea and bread, and a modest lunch of xima (corn-meal boiled to the consistency of play dough) and small bony fish, fried if you’re lucky, boiled if you’re not. There’s something to be said about such a simple lifestyle, and in fact I thought I was getting pretty good at removing the numerous tiny spiny bones of my daily fish, until lunch this afternoon, when I met the ‘Temba’. As opposed to the ‘Carapão’, a common and light-tasting fish of the sea, the Temba tastes like it’s river home, and once boiled, comes off the bone more meal than flake. It was challenging, to say the least.

I’m beginning to see why Peace Corps Mozambique has to be so fundamentally different than Peace Corps Dominican Republic, i.e. why volunteers are brought in to work at specific schools or hospitals and are provided housing by their institutions. It’s not feasible to simply arrive in the Mozambican campo, move in with a host family, try to start projects and eventually find my own house, all things I did in the DR. Poverty is too great here, resources are too few, and although I never actually blended into my site in the DR, I was able to integrate myself into daily life and develop patterns that I feel would be impossible in the most rural areas of Africa. I can only imagine the mental and emotional toll it would take until my hypothetical neighbors developed a semblance of normalcy and casualty around me. My differences here have arrived at a whole new level, and actually that’s ok. That’s good. It makes my interactions fresh and, in the end, makes the experience genuine and memorable.