future plans?

Written January 16, 2013

So I was awakened this morning by the sound of cows passing by my house on the road. . loud noisy creatures. I don’t think I’m a fan.

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about what my Peace Corps experience means to me, and how I can use this experience to shape my future life. Like I said I am leaning towards going back to school for a Masters of Public Health, maybe with an international focus. That way I can incorporate international development, but in a health related aspect. Which means I’ll probably have to take a few science classes when I come home – considering I took none during my undergrad career (the beauty of being a political science major).

So, I’m going to use down-time here in Moz  to study for the GRE’s and re-take them when I get back to the states. I can take them here in Maputo, but something about traveling 6 hours to take a 6 hour test, just doesn’t really do it for me. I figure I will have about a year between Peace Corps and grad school. . . I COS in August 2014 (assuming that I don’t extend my contract) I want to do a bit of traveling before coming home – maybe a yoga retreat in India, go surfing in Australia, go to Indonesia or Vietnam? Who knows. . the world is so huge, and I do want to see a lot of it before I have to “grow up”.

So that tentative plan brings me home a bit before the holidays of 2014. . . during that time I’ll take my GRE’s start getting application things together (letters of rec, transcripts, personal essays etc) together, and look into community college courses to fulfill any missing requirements. At this point I’ll probably need to find some sort of job, hopefully I wont have to go back to waiting tables. . but you never know.

Then I’ll turn everything in, and hold my breath for a response for the fall class of 2014. . .

Thoughts on this plan?

Sheesh.

“We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

After having said that, I feel overwhelmed. I’m happy I have the next 18 or so months to really hash that plan out a bit more.

So life here has gotten back into the normal routine. Up, coffee/breakfast with the pup, off to work (today I have a meeting with Acomuza), to the market for some stuff for lunch/dinner, then hanging out around the neighborhood until dinnertime. Cooking, dancing with the dog, and some tv shows/a movie with dinner.

It’s a simple life here. But I dig it.

No big plans for the weekend, if the weather holds up, maybe going down to the lagoon with the pup. . if not, a movie weekend with the pup it shall be.

I was at the hospital yesterday, organizing paperwork, and registering people for their antiretroviral medication (a bit depressing) when my one supervisor from ICAP showed up, great people, I just wish I had a more defined role with ICAP, rather than “paperwork organizer”. Anywayyy, I talked to him about my idea for a project with the Peer Educators. The hospital has some space in the front, and the center (its shaped like a doughnut) that would be perfect for a small garden. I was thinking about planting Moringa, medicinal plants like eucalyptus, lemongrass, garlic etc. . .that way the peer educators can teach people about these simple, free yet effective ways of staying healthy, or helping to combat the side-effects of other drugs.  Just one of my ideas.

With Acomuza, today we are going to get to talking about our Moringa/juice project. And with Despertai tomorrow, we are going to plan out the rest of this month and February. We didn’t get on the mango-drying thing fast enough, most of the mango’s are gone now (sad but true) but I suppose we could dry pineapple, and other fruits. . . stay tuned.

You cannot plough a field by turning it over in our mind. ~ Unknown

Dream big, and dare to fail. ~ Norman Vaughan