Ok I know I’ve been MIA for a while, but I’m back and hope
to share more about my experience here in Africa! I said goodbye to my Peace Corps life in Cape
Verde in mid- September and arrived in Mozambique ready to start my second year
of service along with 11 other Cape Verde transfers and about 55 peace corps
newbies. Even though the 12 of us
transfers had already done training in Cape Verde we had to complete training
round 2 here in Mozambique. It was a ten
week long training located in a beautiful town on the border of Swaziland, and
I was fortunate to have a really wonderful host family who made having to do training
for the second time a little more bearable.
Thankfully all of us made it through training, and for some of us, swore
in as Peace Corps volunteers for the second time. We are now all spread out over this gigantic
country in towns within all 10 provinces.
My new site is in the province of Inhambane about four hours
inland from the coast, in the town of Mabote.
When I was driven to my site for the first time we turned off the main
highway onto a dirt road passing fields, more fields, trees, more trees, a few
scattered houses, some cattle, and then more fields. After about 2 hours of this we reached the
small town of Mabote which has some stores, a market, a clinic, and… that’s about
it. Then we turned left onto another
dirt road and after 15 km my school popped up pretty much in the middle of
nowhere. I was surprised by how new of a
school it was and the style of it reminded me of a ranch out in Arizona
somewhere. It’s a professional school
for students who opt out of finishing regular high school to study things like
carpentry, agriculture, or construction/engineering. It’s a beautiful school and has plenty of
space! I’ll be living on the school grounds
along with the other teachers and all of the students as well. It will be very different from my experience last
year because my school will be my community.
I found out after arriving that things are also going to be different
because I may end up teaching P.E. instead of English! The school year hasn’t started yet so I have
until the beginning of February to figure out how I’m gonna do that!
I’m super excited about being here, and have already met
some wonderful people. I still get
surprised by the generosity of others, and am thankful for those who have
helped me get used to living out in the bush, or matu as they call it here.
I’m happy to be in Mozambique and even though it was hard leaving my
site in Cape Verde I feel like this is exactly where I’m supposed to be right
now. This is truly a unique experience
in Peace Corps to serve in two countries in two years, so I am going to take
advantage of this opportunity and hope to learn as much, if not more the second
time around.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and cheers to a
happy new year! Love you all and can’t
wait to share more with you soon.
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