I've been out of training for a few weeks and right now, I wake up pretty much every day just astounded by my good fortune in the lottery that is the Peace Corps site placement process. Cidade de Inhambane (see-dah-day day in-yum-bahn-ay) is a beautiful place. This blog is all about all of the wonderful things I have discovered so far about my new home and jobs for the next two years.
It is a bona fide city (at least in the Mozambican context) which means that it has paved roads, side walks cross walks, multiple stores, what we here call "Chinese Walmart", a beautiful central market with crafts and lots of yummy fruits and veggies and spices, restaurants that serve pizza and gourmet salads, espresso (albeit the previous three things are things I cannot afford on a regular basis) and a chapa (shah-paw) station with benches and signs and all other sorts of citified types of things.
My city features many beautiful, well maintained concrete buildings that are painted pretty colors and is surrounded on three sides (it's a peninsula) by a turquoise bay of the Indian Ocean called "Flamingo Bay." Next to the water there is a path with benches and palm trees that I can walk on my way to work and I can sit and stare at the water while I study portuguese or write or read (or simply just sit and stare with a crazy smile on my face). There are gorgeous mosques and large churches and schools and government buildings and all are very well maintained.
It's very safe and well lit here and there are lots of foreigners living here that are working at various agencies and aid organizations as well as boat loads (literally, most people access the city by boat from Maxixe) of tourists coming through on their way to Tofo and Barra. What this means is that unlike Namaacha (or many of the sites of my fellow volunteers), the cries of "Mulungu!!" are few and far between and the staring and teasing and taunting is much more manageable. People are just not that surprised to see a white person walking around and generally once I say bon dia (bong gia) they smile and move on. My larger annoyance so far is that I am assumed to be a tourist headed to Tofo every time I walk by the chapa station.
I've also heard that it wins the "cleanest city in Mozambique" award every year, which is wonderful, because every where else I've visited in Mozambique so far is plagued by piles of trash and trash strewn everywhere and the smell of burning trash on the wind and in your clothes. This city has a bona fide garbage collection system which makes me want to find and hug the city administrators.
Okay, and obviously, Tofo beach is 30 minutes away by chapa. And it is gorgeous!!! I have been three times already and met wonderful people and I've seen more whales in this past two weeks than I have in my entire lifetime. The ocean is a lovely temperature and is that clear aqua blue of all of my tropical fantasies, the sand is white and soft and squeaky (yes, like squeaky cheese) and it is relaxed and slow paced and all of the things you would hope of a beach town.
I am in a temporary house now, well, technically a "dependencia of a dependencia" meaning that I have a room attached to a mother-in-law apartment of a larger house. For the past week we haven't been sure where in the world I was going to live after the 17th of this month and the only leads were not ideal situations and while doable would have been very challenging for two years (for example, a single room in another dependencia of a dependencia with no kitchen). But today, we signed the papers for a two bedroom house with a living room, a kitchen, running water, a hot shower, grates on the windows, a front porch, my own concrete laundry sink outside, and a little space for my own machamba (mah-shahm-bah) (garden). I have lots of neighbors, some foreigners and some mozambicans in a secure fenced compound with a security guard. My dono de casa (landlord) seems like a nice, organized man and there is a swing set in front for the kids that live in the compound to play on. It is beyond ideal! Plus, as I learned when I had friends over this weekend, sleeping four people in a single room is not a comfy situation. Now I will have a place to put all of those Inhambane visitors!
One of my organizations, Bios Oleos de Maxixe (by-owesh oh-lay-osh day ma-sheesh), is a natural body products company with a focus on community income generation that has brought me in to help with community initiatives like permaculture. Right now I am working on putting in a demonstration permaculture garden on the property, helping to make soap out of local products, looking at using recycled glass packaging, and just generally getting to know the organization.
The other organization, MONASO (Mozambican Network of HIV Aids Organizations), has wonderful people working for it, and so far, the work I have been doing is reading all of their documents and slowly but surely translating them from Portuguese to English. The good news is that I can actually do that, the bad news is that it takes a lot of time. But their basic role is to help with funds management and capacity building for local organizations and my co-workers seem wonderful so I'm looking forward to the projects I will get to do with them.
All in all I am ecstatic! I love it here and am so excited by the work I will be doing! I hope that this blog finds you all well. I love when you leave comments because then I know that I am writing to someone real and it makes me feel closer to all my folks over there in the U.S.! More soon.
- The Wanderlust Queen
