Moz Revolution Day

Today is a national holiday, which means there is no work, no shops are open, and a majority of the population are already at the bar drinking (its 15:30). So I took the day to clean my small apartment, do a yoga workout, walk to the open air market where I bought all sorts of delicious fresh fruits and veggies, enjoyed the sunshine on my face as I walked through the bustling streets, and returned home to have a sun-ripened papaya with lemon juice on it - while sitting in my hammock. 

I listened to a few good podcasts while making some home improvements; capulana wall hangings, setting up my new table/desk/work area, and just did a general cleaning of my house. I feel somewhat accomplished, and content with my day.

It has been an enjoyable, slow day, mainly spent at home because of all of the political commotion going on around town right now. Nice to just recharge with some alone time.

I hope that you are in good health and spirits.

happy thursday

td

new wall hangings, and my work station

another view

my hammock and bedroom doors (that i finally got to open)

par for the course? or boredom?

Why the hell am I still here in Mozambique?

It’s a question I have been asking myself as of recently, more and more. I do not love it as much as I should, or as much as I did the first two years. A lot of it has to do with moving sites, seeing my friends leave, and all that shit. Living in the big city now means that I am just one of the masses- another face in the crowd. And because my face is a white one, and I am a woman, and I am working with an I-NGO sooo many people expect me to have money. Including my co-workers! When I try and explain that no, I do not receive a salary – I get eye rolls and the standard tongue-click of disbelief, and then the numerous questions start to flow, well if you don’t have money, how did you buy the tea you are drinking? If you don’t have money, how did you buy the fancy clothes you wear? You may not be receiving a salary now, but when you go back to your country, you’ll have money waiting for you there, and you’ll get a salary for your work here, right?

Sigh…

It is very hard to explain my life to people here in the city. When I tell them about the conditions I lived in before in Quissico, again, many do not believe me - while others begin a long list of questions about how I survived in these conditions etc. When I state that I had visitors to this house, people become shocked and almost dismayed- how could you let people experience those horrid conditions?? At this point, I generally get fed up, and want to yell at them ‘I want to go back to that house and life!!’. At least there, being the foreigner meant that people knew me, and knew my story, and I was enveloped in a sense of community.

This past week has been somewhat productive work-wise. I have been eating healthy, doing a mini-workout every night. . but a life without music, media, or company is a truly boring one. I get up in the morning, shove a banana or two in my face, put my coffee or tea in my travel mug, and hop a bike taxi to work. I am at work from 7ish until whenever my day ends. Sometimes it is over at 3pm, others it’s not over until the fat lady sings. I don’t have a specific job description yet, because no one is giving me the goddamn time of day.

I am finding work to do, trying to stay busy. My supervisor is happy with the progress I have made thus far. . . so I guess that’s a good thing.

I just think I expected more.  More from my coworkers, more of a game plan, more organization within a work day, more involvement in the planning of things…. Rather than just ‘show up for work and find out whats happening in my life today’…. Annoying.

I like Quelimane enough… it has all of the necessary things someone may need. Good fruits and veggies, lots of shops to get whatever I need for my house etc… but there are still the same frustrations of living in a third world country. . . people don’t show up on time for appointments, house repairs  on a budget, being dependent on a third party to get things done, constantly being upcharged in the market for produce, the stares and cat calls I get just walking down the street (mind you, I can be in a dirty, three day old t shirt, hair in a bun, glasses on and still get these, simply because my skin color stands out) etc… the list goes on.

And now that my computer charger has shit the bed, I have difficulty getting work done in the evenings; I have no way of getting music, or watching media on a weekend when there really isn’t anything to do, and there are only so many times I can go walk around the town to pass the time. Especially in the heat here …. Ugh Quelimane is fucking HOT.

Alright. That’s enough venting from me. It’s the same shit, just a different day. Tomorrow will be better. Or it won’t be. Either way, I’m here.

who needs a computer in africa?

 Hello hello -
Again, sorry its been a bit since I’ve posted. I think that this year, blogs will be a but more sporadic due to my workload and such. I appreciate all of you sticking with me though, and promise to try to keep it as interesting as possible.

So I am officially settled here in Quelimane. I have started hanging things on the wall in my apartment, hung up my hammock on the veranda, done the first load of laundry etc. Moving into a new house takes time. You have to go through each room and make it your own, introducing yourself slowly as time goes, and making modifications to small things. And on a Peace Corps budget, it is just that – slow goings haha. 

Work has been going well, just like the house it takes some time. Pouco a pouco as they say, little by little… however I feel overall that i am making good steady progress. I just need to remember to be patient with myself, the process itself, and those that I am working with. It still amazes me just how quickly time slips away here in Mozambique. . . how did it suddenly become mid-September? 

Quelimane has been a tricky place to get used to… while it has a very fun social scene, one can become a bit dependent on specific people, and when those people travel for work and other reasons you can kinda get left behind. I am trying to branch out and make friends, my work colleagues do not really seem interested in getting to know me outside of the office, which is fine (a bit disappointing) but I suppose that’s the way it’s going to be. I cant help but compare this experience to the one I had in Quissico- there all of my coworkers were very involved in my life, actually providing my social circle aside from a few families in the community. Here in Quelimane, I have my work circle between ICAP the DPS and the CDC, and then some friends I have happened to make in town. Most of my evenings are spent at home, cooking, reading my books and laying in my hammock. 

a fellow pcv and i enjoying a beer on a friday night

My computer charger has decided, after years of dedicated service, to die. So most of my work is now being done here at the ICAP office at the computer… Most of my work, or at least thus far has me in the office at the computer, or in various reception areas at various health centers in the city. Those are interesting days, full of many different emotions – even after being in this country for over two years, I can be appalled and disheartened by the conditions of some of the health facilities here.

work at the office...  

Imagine, you walk through an old rusty chain link fence into an overgrown sandy yard where many stray dogs that are covered in mange are laying. Chickens run amok in the yard, barefoot babies, some without clothing cry in their mothers laps – a majority of the people are huddled under the shade of a solitary mango tree, waiting, sometimes for hours for a consult. During this consult, the exhausted doctor or technician will only speak to the patient in Portuguese, not caring that the patients’ language ability starts and stops with a basic greeting. During these consults the technician will often shame the patient for not knowing better than to get sick, hand off a prescription for a potentially improper medication, and send them on their way.

And that’s just the consult rooms. In the reception area and HIV testing centers, where I do most of my work, paperwork and patient files are organized in such a clusterfuck, its amazing that any work actually gets done. The facility I went to on Monday has many patients who are consistently getting their medication from the pharmacy, but are not going to their consults. This is a problem for many reasons… one – the patients CD4 count may have changed, meaning that their dosage of medication should also be changed, two- the patients should not be able to get medication without a receipt from their clinical consult, which means that the pharmacy is handing out medication to potentially incorrect people. Etc. . 

So what we did on Monday was go through all of the ‘abandono’ files and separate the ones who are actually active in the pharmacy, but not in the clinical consults. It was a lot of paperwork, number dictation, and not mentally stimulating at all. But necessary, and it will help us streamline the ‘busca’ process for that specific health center.

Yesterday I participated in a meeting with the DPS, CDC, Ministry of Health, and various implementing partners that discussed the current situation of HIV and the accelerated plan to get more people on treatment, and retention of these patients. Very interesting facts and statistics, again some more disturbing than I was expecting. Out of 4,682,435 people in Mozambique, 294,993 have HIV. Out of those, 117,997 are considered eligible to start ARV medication (meaning they have a CD4 count fewer than 300) however, only 83,767 are actually on the medication. And who knows how many of those who are on treatment will continue to stay on it, or have already abandoned it. 

My day today has been spent writing up project proposals – 

Community Mapping Project for Abandonos and Target Groups

Proposal: Using a terrain-view map of each district or area surrounding a health facility, outline the neighborhood demographics of abandonment rates. These statistics can also be broken down into target groups such as, pregnant women, people who have abandoned treatment within the past 6 months, children at risk, etc. This Community Map could not only be used as a resource for the local community, but in conjunction with the Montly Busca project proposal.


and the second is


Monthly Buscas for Abandonos

Proposal: Once a month, using the resources from ICAP (car/team) go into the field to help with the buscas activas that are further than Peer Educators can achieve alone. Choose a centralized location according to the Community Mapping project, travel there in the car and from a decided stopping point, walk in small groups to locate patients. This project could be completed once a month with an assigned team.


I look forward to seeing where these proposals can go, and am preparing for a proposal meeting tomorrow with a representative from the Ministry of Health about the GAAC toolkit. Lots going on. Lots of work is deskwork, and project management…. So I’m not loving it, missing the hands on lifestyle of my small community, but feel that its good I have that basis of understanding and can use those experiences to further my work here in a practical manner.

 

I have 80 days until I am stateside for my leave, and while I am in no real rush to go home, obviously, I am looking forward to it. Until then, I'll have a cold one at my downstairs bar, and send you all some love...

 

~ t

~starting over~

Year 3- Quelimane

Hello all! It has been a very long time since I’ve posted a blog, and for this I apologize – however my life has been a bit crazy as of late, and because of this communication on my end has been a bit faulty.

I am officially moved in to my apartment here in Quelimane, Zambezia Province. It is in a safe, and relatively quiet corner of the town, the building itself only 3 stories tall and overlooks a big square (where I hear that the Carnival celebration happens). I live on the 2^nd floor; the first is shops and a bar (convenient, right?) and there are 4 apartments that share my hallway. It is a veryyy spacious place, high ceilings, big doors, etc. My old home in Quissico could probably fit inside it three times over. I’m not sure how much I love it just yet, to be honest. It's a bit dark, and dingy, a bit shabbier than it is chique. Little by little I am adding homey touches to it, and am doing my best on the Peace Corps budget to make it home. There was just no instant love like I felt for my home in Quissico – that little grass hut will always have a special place in my heart.

Life in Quelimane is vastly different than life in Quissico as well. Because it is a big city, things like bonding with your neighbors, having a tomato lady in the market, being known around town –are much harder. There are benefits to living in the city; supermarkets where I can buy just about anything, a big central market that has all sorts of fresh produce all the time, lots of movement, and fun social activities to do, so that's a plus. I just haven’t really met enough people yet to go out and enjoy things, and some of the fun activities do cost a decent amount of money (live concerts and such). I also don't have the loving comfort of Lua, I knew that I depended on the furry creature to keep me sane, and for company, I just didn't realize how much- until I found myself sitting in my house alone yesterday, staring at a wall haha.

This past weekend I played host to quite a few PCV’s, and on Saturday I helped out with the provincial science fair, a secondary project started by Peace Corps. It was really a neat experience, seeing what high school kids do for science experiments here. I was happy to see that some of the classics were present; light bulbs powered by lemons, remote controlled planes, making glue from styrofoam and gasoline etc. It was a long day, and at points stressful for the PCV who was running it, but overall I think it was a great success, and I’m happy that I had the opportunity to participate.

Anyway.... on the work aspect, I think things are going well - I had a very productive conversation with my contact at the CDC last Friday about where we are with the GAAC toolkit, and we are working to hopefully have it all completed by the end of the month. I want to try and present it to the Ministry of Health when they come to Zambezia province next week.

My work at ICAP is a bit more complicated … I am trying to schedule a meeting with people some time this week to finalize my job descriptions. However it is a busy time (closing of the fiscal year etc) and I think that my arrival has been put on the back burner. Not a bad thing, but just how it is. So I’m just sitting in the office with the team here, writing this blog to you all.

I have yet to return to the DPS (provincial department of health) where I will be working with the community outreach/linkage programs. The timing hasn't been right, with hosting PCV’s, trying to get work done with ICAP, the GAAC Toolkit, and moving into my house… plus this past weekend was a holiday weekend… so hopefully sometime this week I will get back there. I don’t know if I should go alone and just try to meet with my contact there (she hasn’t been very responsive to my communication attempts) or if I should ask someone from ICAP to accompany me there again. I will try to get in touch with.

So, I suppose all in all - its starting off slow, and I'm a bit disappointed with some things, and very stressed out about others, but know that the trick to life here in Moz is patience. I am going through some pretty big life changes, and just trying to keep it all in order, and keep my head up looking forward.