Last weekend was our REDES conference in Monapo. There were
several other groups from around Nampula and Cabo Delgado that were able to
attend the conference. Traveling to Monapo went much better than Anna
and I had expected. We met up with the 4 girls from our REDES group on the
highway outside of Nacucha and then traveled together to Monapo. We ended up
getting a very nice boleia and he took all six of us all the way to the door of
our destination—it was a free, and air-conditioned ride…boleias don’t get much
better than that. :)
The weekend went by in a blur and we were crazy busy the
whole time but it was great! Anna and I were in charge of buying food for the
first day—thankfully we were able to take one of the cooks from our pensão with
us to help carry stuff back. Buying food for 55 people in Mozambique is a bit
difficult. On one of our trips to the market we bought 15 live chickens for
dinner, 10kilos of xima flour and 55 bananas. I’m proud to say I looked like a
Mozambican woman because I carried the xima flour on my head! :) Thankfully the cook
tied all the chickens together and put them in an empty rice bag to carry them
back to the kitchen. (I only had to hold one chicken for 5 minutes but it
really was not a pleasant experience. I don’t know what my problem is but I
realized I have a thing with live chickens; I just don’t like to touch them or
hold them.) I didn’t drop the flour off my head once—I was pretty impressed but
I definitely didn’t look as experienced as the other women.
The conference sessions went really well and our girls
learned a lot of information about women’s health, puberty, reproduction, self-esteem
and income generation. It was eye opening to me that many of the girls had no
background knowledge of reproductive health or puberty. That session took a
good three hours instead of the one it was scheduled for because the girls had
so many questions. I was really pleased that all the participants felt open
enough to ask those questions. I think that everyone went back to site with a
lot of new knowledge and will hopefully pass that on to other members of their
REDES groups. And of course there was a lot of dancing and singing! The last
night we had a talent show that our girls had been preparing for and even made
pompoms! The volunteers even did a dance, which made all the girls laugh,
overall it was a very fun-filled weekend! Our girls from Nacucha really
surprised us at how much they knew and we learned a lot more about them. I’m
really excited for them to come back to school after break in August and teach
the rest of the group everything they learned.
After a tiring long weekend we made it back to site and
slept practically the whole day away. This week has been busy doing tests,
grading, sleeping off a cold and trying to get caught up from being away. My 8th
graders are done with classes for their winter break and have to work in the
farm the next two weeks then have break until August. However, my 11th
graders still have classes until July 12th and then I’m on break
until August 1st! At least I’m pretty sure that’s my break…Nacucha
loves to change things at the last minute so we’ll see. This week I’m working
on getting tutors and bookcases for the library and trying to finish all my
binders of tests from this semester.
This weekend we have site visitors coming to Nacucha! We
have a lot planned to get ready for them (like cleaning, making sure we have
enough beds and buying food in Nacala so we can feed them). I’m excited to meet
the two trainees from the Moz 20 health group and hope they enjoy their visit
here—maybe we’ll even get to take a beach trip with them :)
Just a few more weeks until break and then a few more until
I’m reunited with two of my best friends in Peace Corps in Gurue for a fun
weekend! And in 52 days AMERICA!! :)
“Just remember there is someone
out there that is more than happy than you with less than what you have.” – Unknown
No comments:
Post a Comment