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Four Years.

November 24, 2011 by 5 Comments
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Two things that a lot of you probably don’t know: One, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Two, and more significantly: it’s been four years since I’ve been in America for Thanksgiving.

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It’s been a year since I left the continent of Africa and coming up on a year since I returned home to the States after 27 months abroad, so I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m thankful for. There’s the normal stuff we always talk about—friends, family, health, a roof over our heads—but after living abroad, there are a lot of things that I’m thankful for this year that at my last thanksgiving (2007) I took for granted.

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I’m thankful for a shower that delivers hot, soothing water, after years of cold showers or bathing in a bucket. This is something I will appreciate more for the rest of my life.

I’m thankful for electricity that works, reliably, not once in a while when it feels like it.

I’m thankful that any runs in with mice, cockroaches, ants, or scorpions are rare occurrences rather than an everyday part of life.

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I’m thankful for the ability to pick up my phone and call my parents or friends whenever I feel like it. I complain about AT&T’s horrible reception in SF, but it’s better than having reception disappear for days at a time, prohibitive call rates, and the other difficulties that made communication so difficult for years.

I’m thankful that when I want to go somewhere, I can get in my car, jump on the bus, or get a cab. I don’t depend on vans that are broken down with a drunk driver and no door with 30 people inside them, or sitting on the side of the road trying to hitchhike without knowing how far I’ll end up getting and wondering if I’m going to have to sleep on the road.

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I’m thankful that I can go running and not have people staring at me, chasing me, or throwing things at me. Rather, I am one of many, and it’s normal. I’m thankful that I have a healthy and capable body that can run 8 miles with my mommy in the freezing thanksgiving day rain.

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I’m thankful that at the age of 25 I’ve been able to visit dozens of countries and amazing places in the world.

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I’m thankful for the perspective that spending time in Africa for 2+ years gave me. For knowing that every day for the rest of my life, I’ll be thankful for things I never would have thought about before.

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And lastly, I’m thankful for skinny peppermint mochas, and for Starbucks’ ridiculous $5 price point that guarantees I’ll only buy one per year.

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Courtney

What are you thankful for?

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    Reflections: On Six Months Out of Africa

    June 23, 2011 by 17 Comments
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    We interrupt this regularly scheduled broadcast of food, running, and San Francisco adventure to spend some time reflecting. These two weeks hold a number of meaningful occasions for me, and since my passion is first and foremost to write, these posts may a little bit different than the normal fare. But if you choose to read them, I hope you enjoy.

    ***

    Today marks a pretty momentous day for me. It’s officially been six months since I got back to America after 27 months abroad. At this point, I’m officially supposed to be adjusted… right?

    This blog started in Africa and Africa is an inextricable part of both me and P&P. Being so far away, a “Stranger in a Strange Land,” as it worse, changed me forever and was a big part of me starting this blog—a last-ditch effort in re-establishing connection with the “outside world” that I so often felt had forgotten me. I’ve been back now for half a year, six whole months, and life has changed drastically.

    I’m living the life I dreamed about when I was in Africa. Not that the life I’m living is a dream or ideal life, but it has everything I missed so much when I was there. Friends. A social life. Things to do. Good food to eat. Things to buy. Cute clothes. Eligible men. Places I can go by myself at night. Personal space. Language I understand. Etc. We always what we can’t have, as so often in the last months I’ve found myself longing for the simplicity of Africa, the dirt and the sand and the sea and the sky, each stretching onward in a remarkable sense of infinity. Where life was simpler and worrying about what to cook for dinner was enough.

    My life has changed a lot in between then and now, and I’ve been spending a lot of time, mostly subconsciously, thinking about what I sometimes internally refer to as The Great Divide. Africa. America. Two different lives. But not two different people. Rationalizing that has been hard. A few examples:

    Africa: Too. Much. TIME.

    America: OMGNOTENOUGHTIMEEVER.

    Okay, I saw this one coming for sure. But it’s no less of a shock. In Africa, some nights I’d come home to my hut, made dinner, ate, watched a TV show on my laptop, and changed into jammies… all before 7:15. What now? Reading, journaling, more reading… sleeping… there were nights I went to bed at 7:45 because I just simply had nothing to do. Here, my to-do list grows every single day. Finding time for just the crucial things I find important—God, important relationships, cooking, blogging, working out—feels darn near impossible.


    Africa: a cell phone with one-color screen that got reception half of the time.

    America: an iPhone that rules my life and voicemails that terrify me.

    This is probably the weirdest one: I came back from Africa intensely upset by voicemail. I recognize this is irrational. After years of not having reception quite often, much less voicemail, I grew used to the fact that communication happened on occasion, almost by accident. The idea that someone can leave me a message whenever they wanted and socially I HAD to respond to it freaked me out. I just didn’t listen to them. At one point I had 12. The breaking point was when a friend was in SF for a weekend—that I hadn’t seen in months—and she called me and told me. I thought I missed the message, but then I realized that like all the other ones, I just hadn’t listened to it. I can’t say I am perfect, but I listen to them more now. This speaks to something bigger, a bit of discomfort with the way that here we’re so connected, but in artificial ways.


    Africa: No money and nothing to spend on.

    America: no money and too much to spend it on.

    In Africa I made $5 a day. In America I make over twenty times that and I worry about money about a million times more. Bills, monthly rent which is equivalent to more than five month’s salary in Africa, utilities, and all the good stuff… restaurants, $11 margaritas, fun distractions… too much to do, and too little money, in one of the most expensive cities ever. It was so much easier to just not have any money and to not care because I spent like $30 a week. Man.

    Africa: not enough personal space!

    America: too much personal space!

    Let me explain this one. In Africa, one of the hardest things about life there was people never leaving you alone. Anywhere I went, people wanted to talk, or at least talk about me in front of me. No one ever let me listen to my iPod in peace. No one let me walk down the sidewalk in peace. I longed, literally LONGED with all my heart to blend in and simply not be bothered. Some people grew to love kids calling them “mulungo!” (white person), yelling at you whenever you walked by. I didn’t. I got used to it, but I never liked it. I simply wanted to blend in. but in America, I miss that. We keep to ourselves too much. Yesterday I asked someone what bus had just passed and they looked at me like I was a crazy person. So many places in the world, you can make friends on the street or on the bus and no one thinks you’re a creeper. Here, people are content to live in self-isolation, and I never thought I’d say this, but, I miss that about Africa.

    Africa: freedom!

    America: trapped.

    I think this has been the hardest part of coming back. In Africa, I was free. Sure, I had a job and some responsibilities, but not that many. I had a lot of flexibility. I could take off for a long weekend, hitchhike 800 kilometers, spend a day on a beach somewhere with a cold soda for 25 cents, and not really have anything to care about. I didn’t have a to-do list coming home with me at the end of the day. I could travel to Swaziland, to the World Cup in South Africa, to Thailand. I went to eight countries last year, maybe 9? I don’t remember. I felt like I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. There were no limits.

    Here I don’t feel that way anymore, that sense of endless and limitless possibility. I look at my near future and instead of seeing world travel and adventure, I see a job and bills. That’s all I see anytime soon. I know that’s not fair—that this is real life and that real life demands certain sacrifices and the obtaining of a certain sense of balance—but I’ve been so far on the other end of the spectrum that real life feels like handcuffs. The idea of not leaving the country in 2011 (when I circumnavigated the globe in 2010!) feels too much to bear. I feel like some youthful irresponsibility has been forever lost. And my heart starts pounding when I wonder if I’ll ever get it back, or if this is really it. A former Volunteer told me “it all fades to a rosy hue…” and it does. I look back on Africa now longingly, missing the parts of life I’ll never get here, and forgetting all the times I wished I was anywhere else. That’s how life goes. It’s so hard to be content in the present.

    If there’s anything this self-indulgent post makes me realize, it’s that I’m still adjusting. I’m six months back, and life simply won’t be the same, no matter how hard I try. The only thing I can do is to accept the differences and find ways to explore the joys of Africa in San Francisco, to mix the best of both worlds, to find that balance between my two lives. To find the moments where I feel free and unharnessed, that the world is wide open in front of me, and hang onto those moments. To approach my life with that same sense of wonder that I once approached the unknown. That will prove to be my key to happiness. That will be my ticket to finally once again feeling like I’m home.

    If you’d like to read any of my posts about Africa, please check out my Peace Corps/Moz tab.

    Have a good night everyone!

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    Gorongosa, Hoye!

    October 8, 2010 by 4 Comments
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     To celebrate our two-year anniversary in Mozambique (October 2nd, 2010!) and our three-day weekend (Peace and Reconciliation Day!), Camille, Sarah and I headed north on an adventure that began in Chimoio in Manica province. I was lucky enough to have visited Chimoio once before, and I remembered it fondly, principally 24-hour (!!!) Café Chimoio…

    and their 10-meticais sweet bread (freaking amazing)…

    and the fact that you can get bananas for pennies (sixteen for 41 cents, anyone?)

    After a night filled with chatter and the best pizza in the country (that’s another post…), our friendly Volunteer hostess pilar-ed some homemade peanut butter for us and sent us on our way.

    Our destination for the weekend was the Parque Nacional da Gorongosa, or Gorongosa National Park, in central Mozambique at the southern end of the African Great Rift valley.

    We crossed provinces, drove over an awesome bridge and then finally reached our destination.

    Gorongosa used to be one of the most beautiful and densely populated game parks in all of Africa, with thousands of animals and many visitors every year. Tragically, decades of war in Mozambique, first the war of independence against the Portuguese followed by civil conflict, meant no park management, severe fighting in the area and poaching of animals to feed hungry mouths. The animal population was almost completely decimated.

    Despite the dark past, the future of Gorongosa is a bright one. The US nonprofit Carr Foundation is working with the government of Mozambique to rehabilitate the park over the next twenty years and they have already seen astounding successes with the reintroduction of animals and the management of the park’s fragile ecosystems. We were lucky enough to meet Greg Carr himself within fifteen minutes of arriving at the park, and he and his colleagues graciously let us pick their brains about the park and the work they’re doing there. It was really amazing and inspiring to see.

    We spent the first few hours driving ourselves around and searching for animals. We were not disappointed.

    This big floodplain was so crowded with animals, Camille dubbed it “the party.” And it was. Unlike Kruger, where I rarely saw different species comingling, there seemed to be a camaraderie between Gorongosa’s inhabitants, perhaps because the presence of main predators is still limited.

    I was really impressed with the Park’s approach to development: they are not only trying to develop the park in a sustainable manner, but also to create jobs for Mozambicans and to better the lives of surrounding community members, through building schools and health centures, to insure the long-term feasability of the park.

    This picture does not accurately depict how giant this lizard was.

    I have a weird obsession with guinea fowl, although they don’t seem to be the smartest of animals. When they saw our car behind them they decided to run away… down the road in front of them. At about 1 mph.

    The park was FULL of warthogs and we found them endlessly charming.

    One of the park staff showed us an award-winning National Geographic film called Africa’s Lost Eden. Documenting both the history and current life of the park in NG’s typical gorgeous fashion, the film was wonderful and I’d recommend checking it out to anyone who loves NG or Planet Earth.

    In addition to the wild pigs and varieties of antelope, we most often came in contact with baboons, such as this graceful one here.

    In the late afternoon, we got to go on a game drive, which was wonderful. It was fun going on a safari in Portuguese (and even more fun realizing that we understood it without problems!). We got to pause in the plain to take in the stunning savannah and watch the sun set.

    (I stole the last seven pictures from my roommate, Sarah Hedges. Thanks Sarah!)

    Our Gorongosa adventure didn’t end there. The next day, we headed out to a different area of the park to hike to what we were told was a beautiful waterfall.

    It was about an hour hike over sloping hills, and we were not disappointed with the amazing views along the way. I miss hiking! I feel like I got to do a lot of it back in LA, and it was great to get out this weekend.

    Nearby the waterfall, there was a small “nursery” where plants were being raised. All up the mountain, different rehabilitation projects were going on.

    Once we reached the waterfall, we were stunned by its beauty. What a tranquil, untouched place!

    (Note: water is freezing.)

    After immersing ourselves in the freezing waterfall, we warmed up on a sunny spot of rock, snacked and then headed back down the mountain.

    Fresh pineapple is the best type of refuel!

    I had an amazing time at Gorongosa and my only regret is not visiting it sooner. It is crazy what kind of beauty, or wonder of nature, can exist right under our noses and we’re not even aware of it. That was Gorongosa for me, but now that I have visited and learned about the park, I feel invested in its success and excited to see what happens over the next several years.

    It was also crazy to be nearly alone in this beautiful, wide-open place, as compared to many other “back to nature” spots in the States where you’re sharing your moment of serenity with sixteen buses’ worth of other people. There definitely is beauty and peace in nature, and while it might be a bit easier to find out here in uncharted Africa, it’s definitely worth seeking out wherever you are. Even nearby, you might be surprised with what you find.

    Are you a nature person? Where’s your favorite spot?

     

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    “Estás a engordar,” or, body image in the Moz

    September 3, 2010 by 23 Comments
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    No pretty pictures of scenery or food in this post. My blog is a bit all over the place: I created it as a healthy living & travel blog, but my life is distinctively shaped by the realities that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique, and there are things I want to write about. Sometimes I wonder if the things I post about are what people want to read—not enough food, not enough pretty pictures, not enough X or Y, etc. But then I remember that I want this blog to reflect ME, and so it will continue being a little sporadic. Here goes. 

    The other day, I led a training for about 30 of my Mozambican coworkers. I was in front of the group for most of the time, and I wore a new dress, made from local materials. I thought it was pretty, and I felt good in it.

    “Estás a engordar.” Literally translated, “You are getting fat.”

    More on this in a moment. The next day, a colleague and friend told me point-blank that the dress made me look big, and that “all the colleagues were asking me if you are pregnant.”

    Mortifying.

    Granted, I have gained a couple pounds in the last weeks. STRESS, not eating super well, not running (I am injured)… it happens. These things come and go. And I of course notice, but want to pretend that it is all going to be okay.

    But apparently everyone thinks I am pregnant. “Should I never wear this dress again?”, I wonder.

    Let me back up. Here in Mozambique, “estás a engordar” is a complement. Literally, you could have lost a couple of pounds but look healthy and some smiling friendly neighbor might walk up and tell you how fat you look.

    After two years I still am unable to completely shrug this off. (At least I don’t cry every time anymore. Kidding.) In my culture, this is a horrible thing to THINK about someone, much less SAY, much less if they look FINE! How DARE you say this to me?!

    But then I step back. In Mozambique, “fat” means healthy. “Fat” means rich. “Fat” means happy. Thousands of people are starving. Thousands more go to sleep each night not being sure where their next meal will come from, or when it will happen.

    “Fat” means you have food to eat.

    People are poor. The average income in most rural sites is less than a dollar a day. Every spare cent is scraped together to buy food or to send the children to school. Often, it is not enough.

    “Fat” means you have money to take care of yourself and your family.

    HIV and AIDS and chronic malnutrition are all widespread in Mozambique. People get skinny, emaciated, fraca (weak). To be magra is to be sick, to be not able to take care of yourself.

    “Fat” means you are healthy.

    We shape our body image around our societies’ ideals of beauty. For us, too often this is skinny supermodels or people who seem to champion the anorexic look. (Mozambicans would flip.) It is refreshing in a way to see how many of those ideas of perfection are shaped by our cultures and that there IS NO one ideal of beauty or best body type.

    Because of my culture, I will never COMPLETELY take it as a compliment when someone tells me I am fat, but I can recognize the differences. And while we are often very careful about how we describe people for fear of offence, Mozambique is not like that. Calling someone “the fat short white girl” or “the really dark skinned tall guy” is just matter-of-fact. Okay. I can deal with this.

    Part of me enjoys the bluntness and what I see as universal acceptance of body types. Okay, if you are skinny maybe you want to get a little bigger, but if you’re a little chunky, or maybe a LOT chunky, you OWN it. You love your body, and you know you look GOOD. I love that easy confidence that Mozambican women seem to have, and envy it.

    But at that same meeting, something else significant happened. We were talking about stigma, and I asked my colleagues to draw a picture representing a time in their lives when they felt isolated, rejected, or different. And one of my (presumably female) colleagues submitted this.

    This was a complete eye-opener for me. I sit here all at once resenting Mozambicans´ attitude towards bodies (stop calling me fat!) and envying it (none of you worry, why should I!) and then it made me realize that no matter what confidence we portray, women everywhere feel judged because of their bodies. Diferente.

    I recognize now that body image issues exist in every culture, regardless of what the ideal of beauty may be. But what I have learned is that “fat” and “different” and “pretty” are just words. What matters is what is on the inside, and how you feel about yourself. And THAT shows more than anything else… whether or not everybody thinks you may be pregnant. And I have Mozambique to thank for finally helping me realize that.

    Speaking of self-image, Tina over at Faith, Fitness, Fun is doing an amazing online initiative called “30 Days of Self Love and Reflection” which aims to, according to Tina, ”help us all learn to love ourselves more and to uplift one another in the process. To begin to realize our true beauty and value. To battle the inner dialogue that strives to bring us down.” If anyone is reading my blog who hasn´t gotten into this yet (highly doubtful!!! Or probably impossible…) please check it out, it is a really amazing thing.

    Being here and experiencing moments like the one  mentioned here give me reason to reflect on how I feel about myself and to recognize how those inner feelings affect every area of my life. I hope we can all take a moment today, whether through the 30 DSLR or on your own, to find something you love about yourself, whatever your society may say.

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    A Maputo Travelogue

    May 14, 2010 by 10 Comments
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    This post is a random narrative about some aspects of a trip I recently took sozinha (alone) to Maputo, Mozambique’s bustling capital city. The majority of what I did there was eat–which will be detailed in part II, my Maputo Restaurant Tour, coming soon. :) For all of you planning on exploring the Mozambique restaurant scene in the near future… Also, this is the first time I am trying to stagger photos and I am having a lot of trouble, so I apologize for the awkward layout… I will get better at this, I promise. Well, I hope so.

    I love to travel. That is something you can probably discern by looking at my blog for about two minutes. While I live in Mozambique and every day is a travel experience in its own way, I enjoy the times when I actually get to leave my pretty cabana on the beach and go somewhere else.

    Recently, when I had crazy chest pains appear out of nowhere, it was time for a trip. For the first time, I was blessed enough (and by blessed I mean “in a state of questionable health”) to FLY to Maputo, the capital, from my town!  (We have an airport right here, but normally we have to take the 10-14 hour bus ride down over horrible roads, in the dark.) Check out our airport:

    Yup, that´s it. That’s our whole airport. I had actually just left hitchhiking to another town when I got a call that said there was room on the flight for me. So I had the car I was in pull over, bid it adieu, and hitched another ride right back into town. Normal form of transportation. I had a couple hours at the airport with a little entertainment: Banana and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I HIGHLY recommend this book for any foodie who is interested in local food and farming. It really inspired me and woke me up to local eating and how much it could (cliche warning!) change the world.

    Between the reading and the banana eating there was plenty of time to take awkward photos.


    Finally my plane arrived! Check out this jumbo jet… Yeah, so I think the beauty of 747s is that it takes some pretty intense turbulence to awake you to the reality of your situation, as most of the time between takeoff and landing it feels like you are just in a luxury bus in the sky. On planes like THESE, you are ACUTELY AWARE for the duration of the flight that you are in a rattling rusty rattrap with whining propellers feebily shaking its way through the sky. You pray and hope for the best.

    I know you are all curious (well, all you food bloggies!) about what they serve on the flight. Check out this rockin snackie I got. Kit Kat, mini tuna sandwich (where did this roll come from? It is delicious!) and a little packet of fat free mayo. Which was made infinitely more awesome as the packet had a cartoon of a rastafarian dude saying “It´s fat-free, maaaaaaaaaaan!” on it.

    After landing I had the great opportunity to spend several hours doing fun things like getting an echo cardiogram, an ultrasound, x-rays and getting poked and prodded and my blood stolen from my veins. Apparently random severe chest pain can be a serious thing? And there is nothing as cool as getting to watch your own heart beat. I highly recommend it to anyone. Though I wish it didn’t have to happen in a blackened room with me topless and a Mozambican male doctor rubbing the slimy ultrasound buzzing wand thingy all over my chest. That part I could have done without.

    Finally I arrived at the hotel palace known as Residencial Hoyo-Hoyo. Hoyo-Hoyo means “welcome” in a few of the more prominent Mozambican dialects. Now I finally felt that I was… okay, not on vacation exactly, but maybe on a business trip or something. Which is much more fun than feeling like a patient on an episode of House.

    I went to my single room and made myself at home. It was definitely meant for someone tiny. Please look at this bathroom. Note to future hotel planners: Unless your hotel is for midgets, do not design a bathroom where in order to use the toilet, you have to put both of your feet in the shower. Also, the showerhead was about 8 feet up on the wall and the water sprayed out horizontally, making it not only impossible to actually bathe, but also guaranteeing a full on midget-bathroom flood every time I attempted to shower. Not exaggerating. My flip flops were like, floating around in there still the morning after.

    Also, in the “make yourself at home” mentality, I unpacked my few outfits I had with me and placed them in the closet. Looks decently spacious, right? Looks can be so deceiving. That was the entire closet space! So strange…

    Like any good foodie, knowing that my diet would be pretty nutritionally devoid when I was here, I stocked up. Well, the fruit is healthy. The yogurt is not, but I was told that the next day I was only allowed to eat one yogurt, before 6am, until dinner. STARVATION. Not my thing. Especially not in the name of health. Oh well. You do what you have to.

    It was a good thing that I at least brought some fruit, though, because I had to laugh when I went downstairs for the continental breakfast the hotel offers for free. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, ANY free food is good food! Seriously. It becomes such an ingrained survival mentality that I really cannot turn down anything offered to me. I hope that changes when I go back… But it was pretty awesome to sit down and receive three (THREE!!!) different types of white bread for breakfast! YES! Check out all that protein, healthy fat, fruits, and other good things! I also had a second plate which I can’t fail to mention: one piece of cheese (I am not even a cheese person–especially at breakfast–but this is a luxury), a pad of butter and some jam. The next day, in place of the piece of cheese we got palony. Check out that PINK! Make you hungry yet? Good thing I brought bananas.

    I tend to travel with some instant oatmeal packets (they are being hoarded from packages from the states, so I try to use them VERY sparingly) and a jar of peanut butter. This trip was no exception. But seeing the state of things I went out and bought some Fiber 1 as well and manage to only ever so slightly improve my breakfasts past the plain white bread. Proud of me, bloggies? :)

    So there’s breakfasts, but what do I DO in Maputo? I found myself wondering this same thing during this trip, as I had a lot of down time and was quite alone in the big city. This is rare; there are always SOME people loitering because of medical issues or PC meetings or other, but for a variety of reasons, I was flying solo. So I was just looking for things to occupy my time…

    One of the things I MUST do whilst in Maputo is stop by the Peace Corps office. It is always nice to see friendly faces, chat up some  people in English (and Portuguese, depending), run into other Volunteers, check my perpetually empty mailbox, and always stare at this map. This is all of us… tiny faces so you can’t hunt us down in our villages or anything… but it is one of my favorite things in the office.

    Another fun thing to do is wander through the outdoor craft markets. And by “craft markets,” I mean, “a bunch of dudes with a bunch of stuff spread it out all over the sidewalk, and it is fun to check it out, but you have to try to not look very interested, because otherwise they will never leave you alone, and I really shouldn’t be buying any of this stuff, oh wait that is really pretty…” kind of like that.

    Probably the thing I do best in Maputo is food shopping. It is nothing like America or even on par with South Africa mind you, despite being an hour and a half from the border, but still, you can get COOL stuff! But it comes with a price. I saw my first block of tofu in Mozambique. A single serving. I am pretty sure it cost like twenty-five dollars? And seeing I get paid… nothing, I can’t actually buy that much. But I always end up spending a week or two’s worth of “salary” at the supermarkets.

    This place here in the first two I-am-not-allowed-to-take-photos-in-here pictures is called “Deli-cious.” Get it… GET IT?!?! They have great stuff, like chocolate from all over the world, Cuban rum and Philadelphia cream cheese. And like, actual deli meats and stuff. I just go in there and smell the salami. As sneakily pictured here, they also have an Asian section, which would be the death of me if things were just a TINY bit cheaper so I felt like I could buy some of the wasabi… egg noodles… what have you. This is seriously the only place in the country that sells some of this stuff. So crazy how exciting it is to see a food you forgot about on the shelf of some tiny overpriced mini mart. My life is pathetic. The other place is Hiper, which has a pretty great spice selection (I hoard spices to keep my life… I mean, my food… more interesting) and lots of other random goodies.

    Other things to do in Maputo: WALK. I am a workout-a-holic, but presenting with severe mysterious chest pain signifies that running around a dangerous African city alone is probably not the smartest idea. So I spent about a billion hours walking, clocking nearly 40 miles in the six days I was there, and calling that a very decent attempt at keeping active. Slash it just killed time. I was so desperate for time fillers that I literally walked long loops around the city unnecessarily to arrive at my destinations. Sometimes I ran into peacocks. This is normal. Actually, not really. What are PEACOCKS doing on the streets in a nasty, crowded city?!

    There is also a movie theater in Maputo. Yes. A movie theater. It plays one movie at a time, for a week or so, two showings, and they are the original movies in English with Portuguese subtitles. Couples Therapy (or, more correctly, Terapia para Casais) was playing and I was so excited to get to watch a movie. Who doesn’t love to see movies when it’s been months and this is probably the only functioning theater around, and when you walk in and this is what it looks like.

    Actually, I think I just go to the movies for the popcorn. It is stale and has probably been sitting there for weeks given the fact that approximately two people attend any given showing, but hey, my standards are incredibly low and it’s MOVIE POPCORN!!!

    Being alone for several days, waiting between doctor’s appointments, gave me a lot of time to reflect. I spent a lot of time journaling at pretty cafes, contemplating the meaning of life. Being alone, it was amazing how little I spoke in that almost-week, besides with the doctors (most of that in Portuguese) and ordering food and whatnot during my constant eating adventures (also in Portuguese). It felt like a quiet week for me, watching the world whiz by as I sat in places like this with my journal and wrote.

    Finally after receiving a more or less clean bill of health and a nice sized sack of medicines, I was cleared to return home. This time on the bus. Mini cheese sandwich, muffin thing, and a juice box this time. It is funny how lame this sounds and yet being handed a snack box makes the entire 10 hour journey totally worth it. (Yes, this is sad. You try being in the Peace Corps for 20 months! You will be almost as lame as me…) Well, ten hours if you don’t like, break down on the side of the road or anything.

    It’s always nice to step out and get to travel, even if it isn’t the experience you expect. Watch out for the restaurant tour coming soon. That is how I REALLY filled my time on this trip!

    What are your favorite travel snacks? Do you ever modify hotel breakfasts? Have you ever been served three different types of white bread for a meal? :)


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    Bem Vindo ao Meu Mundo (Welcome to My World)

    May 12, 2010 by 11 Comments
    sunrise from my backyard...

    Welcome to my world! I chose that as the title of this post not just as an adaptation of the slogan of the national beer, 2M, but because I felt like it was fitting. I mention my bamboo hut here in Africa pretty frequently but thought the blog provided a sufficient platform to offer a small tour of my life here on the Indian coast for those who are interested!

    the hut.

    This is my house! Okay, probably not what you thought of when you heard “bamboo hut”, but I swear it is. As you can see on the veranda, the house is made of caniço, a local material similar to bamboo, with a big old thatched roof! It´s a pretty luxurious hut with running water (!!!) although just cold, and electricity (some of the time). In Peace Corps terms, we are spoiled rotten. But we pay our dues with the millions of infestations that come when you live in a house so naturale that you can see through the walls.

    check out my awesome "wallpaper." and my awesome "walls."

    We live in a beautiful compound with one large split-level concrete house (true luxury) where my bosses live, and two other caniço houses where two other colleagues stay. Camille, a fellow American volunteer, lives in the coolest house:

    Camille´s cabana

    Camille calls her house the cabana and it is pretty awesome–right up on the water. That little window on the top is the bedroom window offering sweeping views of the ocean. We called it the James Bond house for awhile (before she arrived and renamed it) because it seems like just the kind of bedroom where Bond himself would ravish some shockingly beautiful woman and then jump out the window and right into a speeding motorboat and go catch some bad guys.

    typical sighting

    Simba likes her house best. But the best part about the compound is not the houses–it´s the views.

    Simba loves his beach.

    sunrise from my backyard...

    rainbow.

    My place of zen.

    The picnic table above is where I have spent a lot of time journaling, meditating, and concentrating on just existing over the last… 16 months that I have been living here. (Time flies.) I love my house, but it is great to be able to come home and sit and take in scenery this beautiful every. single. day. It is a wake-up call to get over all the stupid stuff that bogs me down and just remind myself that I have been given this amazing gift to call this place home for two years. And plus, I have a beach gate. A beach gate!! Seeing how lucrative (not) my career aspirations are, this will probably be the only time in my life that I have a beach gate : )

    We also live with some other colleagues from CARE, and one of the house has this great veranda:

    Here’s the view of our non-beach gate, and this is where we or our empregadas (hired help) wash clothes and the like:

    Leaving the compound, take in the view of my street:

    my street, one direction...

    and the other!

    signage right outside the house.

    Down at the far end of town there are some boats that seem to never leave…

    As well as the money suck God-given establishment that is Taurus (South African export supermarket).

    THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. Goodbye, money.

    All joking and supermarkets aside, I feel blessed to get to live somewhere so amazing that people spend thousands of dollars to come and relax and take it all in. This is every day for me. Sure, it´s still really easy to get bogged down by stress and menial tasks and work obligations but at the end of the day, I live on the Indian Ocean. In my bamboo hut. So I breathe. Close my eyes. Smile. Remember that no matter what, I am lucky. People work their whole lives with a goal to retire to a beach somewhere, to relax, stare at the ocean and contemplate the meaning of life. And at the ripe young (old) age of 23, I get to do just that. Every single day. And when I am frustrated, I just need to remember the beach gate. Boas-vindas.

    Anyone else ever live somewhere CRAZY?! And if YOU lived in a bamboo hut, how would you make it feel like home? : )

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