1 Year as a PCV

Since I had some time to kill before my ridiculous series of flights home start (Nampula, Maputo, Johannesburg  Frankfurt, and finally Newark) I decided to make a collage celebrating my 1 year anniversary of being a Peace Corps Volunteer.

 Hopefully that'll hold all of you over until you get to see my beautiful face in a few days. Ate ja!

Coco vs Pigs Video

Taking a break from farming

In the process of realizing my year-long dream of planting a garden at my house, I witnessed perhaps the funniest thing to happen in Alto Molocue. While Tojo and I were taking a break from digging and hoeing my garden, Coco decided to climb over the wall that separates my house from the Administrador’s. At the same time, the Administrador’s pigs were let out of their pens to graze. Hilarity ensued. Luckily I was taking pictures of the garden, so I was able to catch it on video.

Please excuse the crazy man laughing in the
background. I know it was funny, but that’s no reason to sound like a guy who just took hallucinogenics and is watching Tele Tubbies for the first time.

By the way, since when do pigs graze? I always thought they just ate slop from a trough served by an off duty cop with a pet sloth.

Dia do Agradecimentos 2012

So I know that normally thanksgiving is the 3rd Thursday in November  But who chose that? The man probably. As a rebel nonconformist, I cannot accept this and am instead fighting the power. I, Samuel Harris Bar, am declaring today, the 4th Tuesday in November as my personal day to give thanks. My first amazing year in the Peace Corps has given me plenty to be thankful for, so here it goes. Viva a revolucao!

-Cold water
-Ice cream

It's much easier when they're drunk

-Frozen turkeys
-Refrigeration, in general
-Clever hand turkeys
-Incorrect stereotypes about Africa
-Trustworthy and loyal friends
-Loving family that misses me
-Movitel fiber optic, and how it can make distant friends and family feel closer
-How easy hammocks are to make
-Finding a perfect pair of new jeans while searching through bales of clothes in the market
-Temperature regulated ovens
-Being kept busy
-Gutters for collecting rain water
-Coco, despite the stressful moments
-Woks and Soy Sauce
-Capuala hoodies (yes, they exist!!)

-Never having to call PCMO or go to the ER of the HDAM for a ME
-Acronyms

Chiure thanksgivings 2012

-Low expectations, high hopes
-Refrigeration again, its just that good
-Having one’s achievements recognized, even if only by a couple people

-Dancing to flag a car down for a boleia (ride)

Last step of our boleia dance

-Seeing the sun set into the rolling hills of Zambezia from my front porch
-Students who are excited to learn
-The Broly Trinity
-Being able to look behind you and see how far   you've come
-Being able to look forward and have an idea of where you want to go


Phew, that was a mouthful. Good thing I didn't try to do this on the "official" thanksgiving. My bloated stomach wouldn't have been able to handle it. I hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving full of food, friends, and family. See you all in the states in 2 weeks!

Back to the Namachaa

One year later and where am I? Back in the Namaacha for training.

Me and the host family

Though most of the activities were the same, my point of view was sooo different. I still ate meals with my host family, went to mind numbing tech sessions with the other trainees, practiced Portuguese with the language trainers, and spent a ton of time celebrating every day of training with my friends Manica, 2M, Preta, and Capitan Morgan. But where last time I was a scared little newbie portugeseless trainnee, this time a grissled and chiseled bearded veteran volunteer.

Just like during my PST (pre service training), each the 10 weeks has 2-3 of the current volunteers visit to share their experience. Though many volunteers apply, a couple months ago I was surprised to find out that I was one of a handful of 17ers selected to attend training. Like all of the visitors, I taught model lessons, explained what I do at site, and helped out the trainees with their Portuguese. But I had the great luck to also be there for site placement, aka when they find out where they'll be spending the next 2 years of their life.



Non-formal education with trainees

Arriving Sunday with my fellow training volunteer Amanda Moore, I went straight to a family dinner at my old homestay house. Mama Laura, Cecylia, and Lina were happy to introduce me to the newest member of the family, Mimosa the cat. Not only was the food as good as I remember it, but sitting at the table with my Mozambican family felt like being home again. Since I had left, Mama had built a whole knew room on the house which she was especially proud of, my sister Cecylia had gotten a job at the German bakery, and Lina had graduated 9th grade. Of course, I brought them the standard mozambican gift of a capulana, and they all approved of my fashion choices.

Monday and Tuesday I attended teacher and Portuguese training sessions, which all went well, though I think the math and science trainees were disappointed to get a French lesson. Wednesday brought hub day, and the all important site placement.

19ers seeing their site placements

After surrounding the giant map of Mozambique, the Moz 19ers, 12 of which are transfers from the recently closed Peace Corps Cape Verde, were handed their site placement envelopes. After an agonizing pause where they read the cover letter from country director Carl, we counted down from 3 and they ripped open their packets. Of the 68, 32 are headed to the north, 6 to Zambezia, and 1 to Alto Molocue. I'm very excited to get to know my new site mate, Eric Wilburn, over the next year. It'll be great to have another volunteer in Alto and even better to have another at my school. Afterwards, everyone went out for celebratory drinks, and I got to answer a ton of questions about the various sites and site mates for the 19ers. Much to their credit, almost none of the trainees were unhappy with their placement and I didn't hear anyone complain about being far from friends, amenities, or beaches.

The Newest residents of Zambrozia

Thursday and Friday held more tech and language sessions, meals with the family, and bar outings. Saturday I left with a bunch of trainees in a Peace Corps car to Maputo for my Sunday morning flight back to Namupla. Unfortunately, the LAM pilots decided to go on strike, which is why I'm in the Peace Corps office in Maputo right now righting this post. All in all a great week at training, and I can't wait till this newest group of volunteers swear in in a couple weeks.



Snow Men Jokes

Jennea and Victor with their personal
Alto Molocue tour guide

So it's been almost a month since my last post, mostly because of an insane amount of travel and a seemingly unending stream of visitors. First, I had a several day trip to to Quelimane with the exclusive purpose of coming back with a fridge (great success!!). After enjoying my cold water and home made pickles for a few days, I then embarked on a 4 days of overland travel to Xai Xai for the 2 day Science Fair handover meeting, then 3 days of  travel back. After maybe 24 hours of relaxation at home, Steph from nearby Nawela arrived in preparation for our Moz 19 site visitors. Once they had arrived, I endeavored to show my 2 visitors everything Alto Molocue has to offer in 3 days. Needless to say, I haven't had much time for blog posts.

But do you know what I have I had time for? Starring off into the distance blankly, eating greasy travel food, getting sexually aroused by memories of air travel and high speed trains, and making up bilingual snow-men jokes.

Yay cold everything!!!!

Predictably, a snow-man joke is a joke involving snow men, women or babies. Some of them are lame (what is a snow-man's favorite breakfast cereal? frosted flakes), some are clever (what did one snow-man say to the other snow-man? smells like carrots), and some are sexual (what is the difference between snow men and snow women? snow-balls). But in my opinion the best ones take advantage of similarly sounding words in different languages. In my case, Portuguese:

• What is a snow man's favorite desert? Gelo
• How often do snow people brush their teeth? Neve
• How much do you pay a snow-hooker? Nothing, they're frio

If you think of any others, Portuguese or otherwise, please let me know. I promise to laugh out loud embarrassingly once I read them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a side note, I've been getting alot of thumbs up and back pats since the election. Politics aside, it's great for American's living abroad when our nation continues to elect diverse and dynamic presidents.

Presidential Debates

One of the nice things about living outside the US, and mostly disconnected from the internet, is that I’m well insulated from the presidential election season madness. 4 years ago, I was fully invested in the campaign, talking non-stop about the most recent campaign gaffs or poll numbers, and if I was there now I’d be just as annoying. Instead, it’s been more like watching the Tour de France, missing most of the details but finding out about and game changing scandals. Since getting on the internet involves so much effort, most of my campaign knowledge comes from other, better connected people: my parents, sister, friends in the states, fellow PC volunteers, and even neighbors and co-workers. No matter what the piece of news, it comes through with all the biases and experiences of the person doing the telling. This has made for some interesting comparisons.

After the most recent presidential debate, I heard about it first from my parents. Of course, they started with the standard but always meaningless ruling on the debate’s victor, in this case Romney.  This turned into a commentary ranging from lamenting at Obama’s poor performance to ridiculing positions that Romney seemed to have taken. For me, it was a nice surprise to hear that he finally decided to own up to his record as a governor. Having gone the whole campaign hiding from what I think is his best asset; it was nice to see that governing experience finally won out over party politics. Finally, we talked about when the next debate would be and our hopes for a better showing by Obama.

This little political conversation finally motivated me to fill in, photograph, and email in my overseas ballot the next day. A couple days later, my completed ballot was still on my desk when Juvencio came over to work on a new Scout’s grant proposal. Seeing it, he commented on how there were so many candidates running, 10 in NJ, and how politics in the US are so different. He was most puzzled by how presidential debates work. Why would Obama participate? His party was already in power. Wouldn’t going face to face just help his opponent? Is he not afraid that a televised debate would turn into a physical fight? After laughing at the image of presidential candidates fighting each other on Jerry Springer, I realized that he meant an all out civil war and was silent for a little bit. Once i regained my composer, I explained that that though the Democrats are in power, the US has a well-tuned non-violent political anger machine. Any screw-up or error made by anyone in the public eye, president or candidate, is shouted from so many channels that the best way to calm people down is to have a moderated debate. Still holding firm that it would never happen in Mozambique, we got back to work and finished the grant proposal.

So for as much stress as the presidential election season madness creates, I’d rather have a maniacal, crazed, divisive, all-consuming $2 billion dollar a year argument than not at all. 

1 Moring, 4 Projects

JUNTOS Troca. Taking this photo was the
only time I had to watch the sessions

For the past month I’ve been running at 110% managing my 4 ongoing secondary projects: English Theater, Jornal Escolar de Alto Molócuè, Escuteiros, and Science fair. Between the Escuteiros initiation ceremony, national science fair competition in Chimoio (which both of the Zambezia representatives won first place in), a JUNTOS journalism troca de experienca (experience exchange) in Gurue, and next weekend’s English Theater competition in Mocuba, it’s been a little overwhelming. Luckily, I’ve been able to finagle my schedule so that no two projects conflict with each other, but this also means that I haven’t had a free weekend in a month, and don’t expect to till the end of the school year (October 26^th!!).

English Theater performing at morning concentration

 Yet this overwhelmingly full schedule hit new highs this Tuesday. On the 25^th of September, which is the Dia da Luta Armada (Armed Resistance Day), I somehow managed to work on all 4 of my secondary projects nearly simultaneously. It started with an early morning English Theater practice to review our performance in front of the school the day before and make preparations for this weekend’s trip to Mocuba. Then I went straight to the Rotunda da Villa (City Roundabout) where I was meeting up with the scouts for our first commemorative march. As this would be our introduction to the community of Alto Molócuè, we had been preparing for a week. Though the banner making crew had only completed their work the night before, we were actually prepared. Pretty important for a group whose slogan is Sempre Pronto. While waiting for the march to the Praca da Herois (Heroes Plaza) to start, I met up with the journalist who was assigned to cover the event. After showing him how to use the camera the march got underway.

Escuteiros getting down during the march
and after its over, that's why they're smiling

Done on most commemorative days, march’s are an important part of Mozambican ceremonies. Normally, many groups relevant to the day’s event, and many more irrelevant, organize people to walk through town singing songs, clamping hands, and generally being merry. But as the majority of the town’s chefe’s are in Pemba for the 10^th FRELIMO congress, attendance was pretty low. This did not deter our scouts, who’s cheers, dances, and songs did not stop over the entire 2 km route. Even while we stood waiting for the government representatives to arrive, there were only very short stretches of time where we were not making an inordinate amount of noise. After an hour of waiting in the sun, the ceremonies finally got under way, but not without their own opportunity for a scouting demonstration. As if we had planned it, one of the older veterans of the armed resistance (1964-1975) fainted in the square and we were called over by my director. Though we were shamefully unprepared, he was moved to the shade while I ran the short distance home and picked up my first aid kit, a few cups, and several bottles of water. After re-hydrating, he felt much better and for the rest of the day scouts were on public safety patrol.

Belchoir, myself, the 2 Directors, and the Administrador

As is typical, the wreath laying at the praca dos herois was followed up by speeches, plays, and contests at the public park nearby. En-route, I pulled off my scout uniform, revealing the National Science Fair t-shirt I had worn underneath. Since one of the winners of the National Science Fair was my student, the two of us had been making the rounds of the provincial and local governments to shake hands and take pictures. But there was one more honor left. As part of the day’s festivities, Belchoir was to be presented to the community as a victor, and make a little speech. Though I was also asked to say a few words, I declined, not wanting to embarrass myself in front of the whole town. Once Belchoir was done, we walked down the stage, and joined the scouts for the end of the ceremonies. Upon our exit, JEAM’s photographer took a group picture of the scouts, and we went home. After sorting through the day’s photos with the reporter, I was finally done.

Needless to say, this was an exhausting morning (yes, this all happened before noon) and I rewarded myself with a relaxing lunch and afternoon hike with Dylan. Though I’m glad I was able to participate in all these activities, it will be nice to have some free time once the school year ends and many of my students leave town to go home. Only 1 month left, and then I’m on summer break!