Welcome to the year 2011, and my third year in Mozambique! I am no longer a teacher, I no longer live in a hostile house with Hortencia, and thus I feel like euphorically frolicking through the sandy pineapple fields in my genie pant uni-suit. Hallelujah.
I was explaining to a just arrived volunteer that I officially set foot for the first time in this (usually) lovely country on October 2, 2008. I was 22. In two weeks I turn 25. Shoot.
And the funny thing is, when I arrived 2 years, 3 months and 6 days ago, I certainly didn’t think I would make it two years.
“Yeah right. A year I can do, but then I am just hoping I get medically evacuated or something. Two years is too long,” says the unknowing little white girl…
With the new year comes a new job, a new house, and a new pineapple season. Maybe I subconsciously decided to extend my contract just to experience one final pineapple and mango season in Mozambique. I mean it is unquestionably the most succulent and delicious of the various fruit seasons here… though I seem to love each season as it blooms and then mourn as it withers away… the avocados, the tangerines and oranges, the papayas, the mangos and pineapples, oh the pineapples.
Now, I find myself in some ways right back where I started, in a new house, trying to figure out a new job, occupying extra time with craft projects and eating a pineapple (or two) a day.
However, unlike in 2008, I now speak Portuguese (or at least the Mozambican Ebonics version of real, proper, Portuguese), I know my community, I have a few friends, my house has an actual toilet and my pineapple pieces are frozen - a) because it is hot like the devil’s armpit in my house at all times, and b) because I have irrationally convinced myself that pineapple, when frozen, tastes exactly like ice cream… once, when I was a teenager trying to lose weight, I convinced myself that I didn’t like chocolate. Beware my powers of persuasion.
So what kept me here despite the fact that my mother employed a historically tried and true badgering technique in an attempt to get me back to the states? (Come home! Come home! Come home! You know what you should just do? Come home!...I utilize this technique as a feisty teenager and it often worked because the receptor (mom) of the badgering would just get too tired to keep saying no. I, however, am far too stubborn to cave.)
It was mostly the job. I have a contract with the United States of America for 12,500 USD to help the children. And so that is what I am doing… until April. At that point my community counterpart will take over monitoring and accounting for the project.
What plans are in the works? Well currently my community partner is in the hospital with a nasty throat lesion (how does that even happen?) so not much professional progress is being made. However, personally, in the last week, I have written a grant report, sewed a skirt, made 6 pairs of earrings, created a home storage system, decorated my house, taught the little girl who poops in my yard to play fetch and peek-a-boo and I’ve made a (rough) life plan for the next year (gasp!).
But despite this slight delay, the next four months hold more chickens, more home visits with orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS, more food basket distributions, more HIV prevention activities, and maybe even (I hope!) a Health and HIV prevention themed cultural festival.
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