#peacecorpsexperience

[mel2africa]

One Year In...

So, I have been putting off my whole one year post for several reasons.

1) I already am quite a slacker in regards to posting and making updates.

2) I don't really know how to put my feelings about my completion of one year in Peace Corps into effective and comprehensible words.

3) It's both sad and exciting that I am halfway done. 

4) I hesitate writing here a lot due to my moods. Sometimes, I think i  should not write when things aren't going as smoothly as I'd like. And I don't want to give off an image of bubble gum and cherries when it is not so.

5) I have slacked off so much on including information and updates on this blog, I don't even know if it would make proper sense in detailing things now. 

This all being said, here is my attempt at writing something succinct and effective.

So, I am currently sitting in my house after correcting a grant proposal that I originally submitted 2 months ago. I also just got the approval from my district offices last week (also 2 months later), giving me permission to paint a malaria mural. I basically have been frustrated with that for 2 months now. Hopefully, after these corrections, things will speed along now and we'll be done painting by October. I'm also still working on the garden project at the hospital that I started trying to make happen since February/March of this year. It is just a struggle for lack of better terms. My orgs are just kind of bobbling around without direction no matter what I suggest to them, which has left me soliciting opinions on possible projects from whoever will listen to me and trying to start them with just those groups. My JUNTOS group has fallen from over 50 kids to about 5 now due to lack of organization and leadership with my group leaders. I also had a falling out with the girl who was teaching the dance group and it is now more of an exchange of dance abilities in which everyone contributes dance moves and we then use those to organize routines, which I like. The journalism group is kinda dormant for right now. But, not for long. Trying to partner that instead with the local secondary school instead of neighborhood kids. It is a lot easier that way. I did a feasibilty study with one of my orgs, which went ok, but now I am trying to expand it and just make it better.

I think right now, I am definitely feeling the panic of 1 year down, what the hell have I done? Oh that's right, not much. And so now I have to  kick things a bit more into gear. I feel like most of my time is spent writing documents and having unsuccessful meetings. 

At least, my community integration is pretty ok. I know a lot of people, I hang out with members of my community and I feel like a member of my community. 

The only cultural issue I have here that still grinds my gears to no end is with Mozambican men. Anyone who talks to me on a fairly regular basis knows that I do not like Mozambican men, in general. My experiences with them on a daily basis have made me very wary of having male friends here and kept the number of male friends that I do have here to a very small number. In my personal experience they are particularly mean and disrespecful. Not everyone, but just in the majority of my personal experiences. For example, just the other night, a trio of boys probably aged 10-14, runs up behind myself and the family I hang out with and starts to harass us. Yelling things like, "Baby" and other gross things in local language. Then, one slaps me on the butt. They continue to follow us until we reach the minibuses to leave. I then encounter another male passenger who stares at me and tells me that he is looking at my hair because it appears like someone needs to fix it because it's ugly. That is just a span of 30 minutes. Before then, a guy sitting next to us on the boat, starts trying to hit on me. Asking why I don't want any male Mozambican friends. 

It's just always the same interaction. If it's not an insult, it's someone trying to hit on me or touch me. It gets very old and my reaction depends on how many times in one day I have been called out to or grabbed or insulted or hit on. I can be calm at times or sometimes I just ignore people, or sometimes I just snap and start cursing in English. I have developed my potty mouth quite a bit here, in English and local language.It does make me a little sad when I think about years down the road how many of my negative experiences during service will be in regards to this. 

Also, I think many of my experiences have been unique in being an African American female. I sometimes refer to myself as a hybrid. Depending on who I am interfacing with, I can appear as a foreigner or people will assume I am Mozambican. It has given me a range of experiences different from what other volunteers experience. In some instances, it has made integration easier or harder. Other times, it has shown me a bit of the reality that Mozambican women face. Many other times, I have become frustrated to no end in regards to having no one to completely understand how I feel. My mozambican friends don't know how it feels to be an American living here and the experiences associated with that. And my American friends, including other PCVs, can't always empathize with the things I am experiencing and how it makes me feel because it just isn't happening to them. I may have to try to write another post in regards to this. It is just a whole other thing.

Anyways, I guess, this 1st year alone has changed me in ways I like and other ways that I don't really like, but just accept now. I think it has been quite the journey and experience and I am anxious to see what this 2nd year brings. I know it won't be lollipops and rainbows, nor will it be a crapfest. But yea, here's to year 2! 

[mel2africa]

"Well, that's different...but intriguing."

So, I’m sitting here on an esteira (straw mat) talking with a member of my favorite Mozambican family and writing project proposals. It’s winter now and is gradually starting to get colder here. I could not be happier. But at its current state, it’s still hot during the mornings and then the temperature drops in late afternoon. I wish the weather would just make up its mind.

Right now, I am headlong into planning and finalizing things for World Malaria Day, which is next Friday. I am very nervous as this is my first time to organize a march here and I am worried that people won’t come. We shall see.

Yesterday, I was hanging out yet agin with my favorite Moz family and the topic of birth and traditional medicine came up. Here are some things I learned:

1)      If someone is a breach birth (born foot first instead of head), they need to perform some sort of ritual in order to make sure that when they marry they don’t kill their husband/wife when they have sex with them for the first time. Or if they are lucky enough to bypass that omen, they still have to do the ritual in order to prevent having a stillbirth.

2)      If you give birth to twins and one dies, they isolate the mother and other twin outside of the house. She goes to the house of another woman, probably an older woman in her family, who will then counsel her until she is well. The mother is also not allowed to cry, as she may cause the other twin to die as well due to her unrelenting sadness.

Other interesting ritual-related/cultural things I have noticed:

- If a baby pees on you, it signifies that you will have children.

- A woman that is married absolutely has to wear the capulana ( traditional cloth) or she will get a mouthful from the older members of the family

- When someone dies, the family cleans the body

- During the funerals, men and women sit separately because it is believed that they grieve differently

- During the funerals, it appeared that just whoever was nearest the grave, all took turns to shovel in dirt. There aren’t designated people to do this and  the funeral doesn’t end until this is done.

- After the funeral, everyone eats and they still eat in a gender-based form.

- If a person has had sex the night before they are not allowed to touch a baby younger than one month.

- You can’t have sex with your husband for 3 months after you give birth.

- Braided hair and hair relaxed (or straightened) or hair in braided extensions is considered beautiful, but if you wear your afro-textured/coily/curly hair out, be prepared to be judged.

That’s all that I can remember right now. More to come in later posts.

[mel2africa]

You like me, you really like me!

So, yesterday I awoke to my landlady yelling at me at 4am that something was burning in my house. The night before when the electricity shut off unexpectedly while I was cooking rice, I forgot to unplug and turn off my stove, so when the electricity came back on sometime between 3am and 4am, my rice continued to cook until it burned to a crisp. Bottom line, I nearly burned down my little caniso hut, but didn't! That day was unusually long with running around to my orgs and trying to figure out how exactly I could help them with World AIDS Day preparations. Later though, I got to hang out with my favorite, Palmira, who I swear is like a surrogate grandmother of sorts, I love her. She taught me how to prepare chicken. But then just as she was leaving, she got into a deep discussion with my landlady about my nearly burning down my house, my use of light after dark which apparently makes me a super easy target for thieves, and various other ways in which I as a foreigner fail at life in Mozambique. It was one of those conversations, where I began to feel like a child and didn't really contribute much to the conversation and could barely defend myself. "No, I have never handwashed my clothes before I got here, I barely ever cooked for myself, and I don't know how to do things the "Mozambican way", but I am learning, geez guys... I'm not absolutely helpless."...this is what I was thinking until I started to realize that they actually have concern for me and care about my well-being and want to make sure that I am surviving. This means alot to me because I was starting to feel super useless at my orgs and liek I wasn't integrating very well. I just keep having the same conversations over and over again, the same frustrations with language over and over again, and also feeling like a child every single day. It felt good to have a bit of a sign that I am integrating even when I don't feel like it and I am advancing even when I don't feel like it. *Sigh of relief*