Email

Hello Everyone,

Sorry I fell off the grid there for a while. I had access to internet for majority of the time while in training, but I didn't have much desire to use it. I've put off sending an email updating you all on what I've been doing, because...its hard to put everything into words. I began typing email updates a few times, but was never felt that I was capturing my true experience. However, I will share a few thoughts, and photos, and hopefully you'll get a small vision of what life in Africa is like for me.

Training took place in Namaacha, in the Province of Maputo, Country of Mozambique. We spent 10 weeks cramming language, culture, learning about the health sector (and lack of basic forms of infrastructure), as well as simply adjusting to a life away from friends, family, and everything that I've known. A typical day I would wake up around 6am, shower, iron my clothes, eat breakfast, and walk to school. The walk the first few weeks would take me about 20 minutes one way, but once I learned the roads in the neighborhood, I was able to cut off 5 to 10 minutes, depending on where we were going that day for lessons, etc.

My homestay family was basically me and my mozambican mom. We have family that lived down the street from me, and once in a while they would come and visit or have dinner with us. There is a neighbor that lives right beside our house, Felix, and he helped me out a great deal from the very beginning. We spent many nights walking around, playing cards, working on my homework, and once in a while playing soccer.

So Namaacha is a pretty nice little city. Its on a small mountain range, and has a beautiful waterfall, which, of course a company bottles and sells while the city of Namaacha is going through a "drought." Gotta love capitalism, but thats another story. The town is bordered by Swazi, and there is a point where Mozambique, Swazi, and South Africa all three meet. The health people lived in Barrio 25. Its the poor end of town, with no paved roads in the neighborhood, tons of hills, the same color and texture dirt you find in Oklahoma (red dirt :-p)and when it rains an unbearable amount of mud to walk through. But its all fun if you make it so.

We celebrated Thanksgiving, and were also given our 2 year site placements that day. It was really exciting. We combined 2 of my favorite past times, with the one thing I've been looking forward to for the past year....eating & thanksgiving with the knowledge of exactly where I'd be for my Peace Corps service. My site is Ribaue city, in Nampula Province. Its in the NorthEast part of Mozambique and is absolutely beautiful. There is a chain of mountains that runs right here to my North and West. I'm also in a coastal province, so traveling to see the ocean isn't unmanageable. Granted, its 7 hours by chapa (local form of transportation...small busses or trucks that get jammed packed with people, animals, babies..etc etc.) but when you think of the fact that the closest ocean to Oklahoma is Galveston, you'll appreciate my excitement that in a short 7 hours I can be on one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever come across.

My job: I am a Peace Corps Volunteer, and I will work with two International Non-Government Organizations. One is PSI, Population Services International (funded by USAID, and works in partnership with the Ministry of Health in Mozambique) and the other is GHC, Global Health Communications (funded by the CDC). PSI is an organization that distributes and sells condoms, water purification products, mosquito nets, and does a ton of advertising and label recognition in an effort to create behavior change through social marketing. Its a really interesting concept. One that I clung to after hearing the presentation early on during training from a PSI representative. GHC works with MARP's (most at risk populations..ie transactional sex workers, drug users, etc) and from what I gather this is more behavior change, "hands on" type of work. I'll get to know a target group and over time start to identify things they feel need to be changed or worked on, place them in contact with help, which should include personal plans for success. Now, that probably sounds very very vague, but that's pretty much what I have to go on. The first three months are basically to get to know the community and re-adjust. GHC told me they probably wouldn't be in contact with me until February or March. I've already began observing and working with my PSI counterpart in Ribaue. I also met the leaders of the government here, the district hospital director, the director of education for the region, the chief of police, and today am going to meet all the neighborhood leaders.

My house is much nicer than I ever expected. I have 3 bedrooms, a living room, front porch, big yard that is fenced in by bamboo, the view from the back of my house over looks the mountain chain. Interestingly enough, the mountains run to my West and North, if its not raining, I get to watch the sun set behind the mountains. The mountains turn pitch black and there is a red glow around them. Its an amazing site.

Christmas I'll spend a few days on the Island of Mozambique with Megan Stuart (Stu), and then we're going to another Esther and Vonnies site to meet up with everyone else. We can't lave our province for the first 3 months of service. We're doing secret santa and will probably have lots of games, etc to entertain those of us stuck in Nampula for the holidays (to be honest this is where I would have wanted to come anyways..so it's definitely win win). I was the only guy from our training class sent to Nampula Province, and the ladies that were sent here are all really good cooks :-D so...christmas dinner should be great.

I do have pictures, and I was trying to load them, but its taking a long time. I think I was able to load one picture, but I'm not sure.

I hope everyone is well! Sorry about the lack of structure to this email, but I've put off an update for long enough.

Oh, before I forget, Stu told me I could share the link to her photos on snapfish. You'll have to set up an account (which is free & takes only about 2 minutes) and then you'll be able to see a good deal of what we did during training.

http://www5.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=644870028/a=605359028_605359028/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME