Chimoio, Manica Province!! :)
After weeks and weeks of TENSE anticipation, at last I received the decision on my permanent site location, the place where I will be spending the next 2 years: the city of Chimoio, located in the beautiful, mountainous province of Manica! That's me on Peace Corps Volunteer swear-in day in Maputo, pointing to the exact spot I'll be calling home for a long time to come. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
It all started at the beginning of November when we PCTs were given a much-needed break from training in Namaacha, and for a period of 5 days, we were scattered to the far corners of Mozambique to visit currently-serving PC Volunteers. Shadow Site Visits. The idea was to get the chance to see and experience the way Volunteers really live at their sites, to pick their brains, and to hopefully return to Namaacha with a better sense of what characteristics we would prefer in our own future permanent sites. With fellow Moz-21er Joe at my side (a fantastic human being), I visited Yuri (another fantastic human being) at his site of Chidenguele in the province of Gaza. Electricity but no running water. Bucket baths and pit latrine. Tight-knit community of friendly teachers. Awesome Mozambican roommate. Stunning beaches. An insanely beautiful night sky. There's a lot to love about Yuri's site, and I began to get very excited for my own permanent site.
Chidenguele, Gaza:
Chidenguele, Gaza:
We also teamed up with fellow Moz-21ers Sarah and Aleesa to visit their currently-serving PC Volunteer, Taylor. A combined shadow site visit, basically. Unlike Yuri, who teaches at Chidenguele's high school, Taylor is a health volunteer. She lives in Quissico, Inhambane province, and although I don't have pictures of the area surrounding her house in her site, it's just ridiculously beautiful.
Quissico, Inhambane:
Quissico, Inhambane:
After these shadow site visits, the next thing was to return to training in Namaacha and get ready for my permanent site placement interview. What had I learned about what I wanted in a site? I didn't know. I could see myself being happy at a site like Yuri's or Taylor's, but I could see myself being happy at just about any site. The beaches near Chidenguele and Quissico were nice, but mountains are nice too. I could enjoy being within a few hours of a city with a supermarket that sells cheese imported from South Africa (like the city of Xai-Xai for Yuri and Taylor), but I could also enjoy learning to live deprived of such things for two years. I was getting pretty excited about living on my own without running water and with insects and lizards always in the house (in my time at Yuri's and Taylor's sites I saw that these things are really no big deal), but I figured that that reality was pretty much a given wherever I got placed. And how much would my stated preferences even matter? You hear plenty of stories of PC-Moz Volunteers getting none of the things they requested in their permanent sites anyway.
We were supposed to come to our permanent site placement interviews with a preferences questionnaire completed. The questionnaire included things like this:
Among the Moz-21 PC trainees, there was much talk and deliberation about what everyone would put down. Some people enthusiastically lobbied for an as-rustic-as-possible site, others pleaded for amenities. The magic wand question was especially interesting; answers were as varied as beaches, mountains, fruit trees, nearby hiking, nearby swimming, electricity, no electricity, Mozambican roommate, cold weather, north and south parts of the country. But what could I put down? The things I wanted in a site--to feel like my work matters, and to not be separated from the people I had gotten close to during training--those things weren't anywhere on that questionnaire. I didn't see any way that that form could help me with what mattered to me. I resolved to leave the questionnaire blank and throw my fate into the wind, the way we all did at the very beginning of this journey when we applied to be sent to any far corner of the world.
Then, a spark. My friend Steven returned from his shadow site visit with a face full of excitement, and pulled me aside at CORE the first day we were back at training. He had just returned from an amazing place, he said. A place where the weather is cool, where there is beautiful hiking within walking distance, where there is awesome wildlife in the region (elephants!). A place that not only has supermarkets that sell cheese, but is home to Mozambique's only small, but promising, budding dairy industry! A place where Peace Corps lodges its Volunteers in a fantastic house with electricity, running water, a garden, and a backyard that is almost too good to be true--grapevines and mango trees, lychees and passion fruit, all there for the picking. A place where other Volunteers are always passing through. A place with fully-stocked fresh food markets, where you can get a solid plate of rice and beans for just 20 MT. A place home to a regional market with one of the biggest and best capulana selections in the entire country. A place so universally liked by visiting PCVs that 3rd-year-extendees come to live there when given the choice of living anywhere in the country. A city, but a small city that has a comfortable and manageable feel. Chimoio.
But more important than any of that, Steven told me about how Chimoio is home to a university with the only engineering programs in the entire country outside of the capital city of Maputo. The Universidade Católica de Moçambique, or UCM for short. The only spot in the country, it turns out, where Peace Corps has Volunteers working as college professors instead of just your standard high school teachers. Steven told me about how he and the PCV he visited (Anna Derby) hung out with some UCM students while he was there and about how they had long, excellent conversations together. He told me about how bright these students are and about how they actually talk about wanting to use the education they're receiving to build and develop their country. (The opportunity to go to college in Mozambique is extremely rare.) On top of ALL of that, Steven told me that UCM is launching a brand-new electrical engineering major (my background) in 2014 and a brand-new mechanical engineering major (his background) in 2015.
You can only imagine how much my excitement was building. Steven told me that UCM loves the Peace Corps Volunteers they have now and have had in the past, and that the university has been begging to be sent more. He told me that Anna told him only one PCV from our group (Moz 21) was slated to go to Chimoio to teach at the university, but that maybe we could lobby for an additional one given how much the university wanted it and given the symmetry of sending both an ME and an EE to develop the two new respective engineering departments. Knowing that our two backgrounds would be perfect for the site, Steven came to me and wanted to know if I liked the sound of all of this before we started to make our case for it. I was just floored. It all sounded amazing to me. I thought of the amount of positive impact a team of two young, enthusiastic American engineering professors could have on a country with a real need for industry, the amount of impact we could have given the supply of intelligent and focused students coming through the doors. We talked about how together, we could build a culture of positivity and excellence within the engineering department, about how we could connect these bright kids with the resources they deserve, the resources that will allow them to do great things in their country. Everything seemed perfectly aligned, as if my five years working as an engineer and two working as a teacher had all been preparing me for this, had all been to get me to this point. I knew Chimoio would be a dream-come-true if it could become my site. I decided I would try as hard as I could to get a post at UCM.
So instead of leaving my questionnaire blank, I filled out only one part--the magic wand section. My magic wand section said effectively this: "Send me to UCM in Chimoio." That, along with the best rationale I could come up with for why doing so would be a good move for Peace Corps. I made sure to leave everything else on the form blank, not wanting to dilute my request with any other secondary requests. In my interview with the site placement staff (I believe the date was Monday, November 11th), I continued to pursue this single-minded strategy of being sent to UCM. The interviewer asked me about my site visit to Chidenguele, wanting to know what things I liked and didn't like, but I told him I only wanted to talk about me going to Chimoio. But crushingly, he told me that Peace Corps wasn't sending anyone from Moz-21 to Chimoio, that the vacant UCM position was going to a 3rd-year-extendee who would be moving to Chimoio. I asked him instead that I be sent to a different university to teach engineering, to which he replied that Peace Corps didn't work with any other university in the country, that I would be going to a high school.
I left the interview feeling like things could not have possibly gone worse, but that at least I had tried. It was a reminder that the decision was never anyone else's but Peace Corps'. After getting so excited at the prospect of being a university professor, I tried to ratchet my expectations back down to where they had been previously. I tried to remember that my site would be exciting no matter what. And that's true. But what happened next blew apart any expectation-setting I tried to do for myself in those days. What happened next would be described as a miracle by all but the most frigid, unblinking rationalist.
After 2 days of agony and 1 day of finally being at peace with things, my wait for site placement announcements--and everyone else's--was finally over. The Peace Corps staff assembled all 51 of us and tried in advance to keep expectations and emotions under control--a ludicrous proposition. The Country Director (everyone's boss in Moz) explained that based on his experience, roughly 1/3 of us would be miserable--without basis--upon receiving our site placements, roughly 1/3 of us would be ecstatic--again without basis--upon receiving our site placements, and that only the remaining 1/3 of the group would get it right by reacting with measured calm and keeping things in perspective. In his experience, hindsight shows PC trainees to be lousy at predicting how much they're going to like their own site.
The staff walked us outside to a nearby soccer blacktop where they had drawn an enormous map of Mozambique. The idea was that we would receive our site placement packet and go stand at the place we'd be living for the next 2 years. The drama of seeing just how close or far away your friends have been placed lent a certain sensory-realness to the whole exercise. This country literally takes days to traverse without an airplane. No matter where you get placed, at least 50% of the other volunteers will be basically too far away to ever realistically visit. That's the kind of thing that I was thinking about, but there was plenty to be anxious about as far as site specifics go, too. There was also plenty to be excited about. So yeah, it was an intense moment to be sure.
We got our site placement packets, and I was definitely in the 1/3 that reacted with unhinged ecstasy. Chimoio. It was impossible, but there it was on the page. The site placement staff decided at the last minute that what the heck, they would send just one more volunteer to UCM in Chimoio, what could it hurt. I walked to my spot on the map in a daze. There was Steven sharing my spot, with his big goofy grin, a better roommate and site mate impossible to find. I looked around in a dream-like trance. There was Fei, just steps from me on a map the size of an Olympic swimming pool, impossibly. Fei, the thought of whom being placed far away from had been more difficult than any other. 3-4 hours away by chapa in a country where the average travel time between any given two volunteers is more like 20 hours. I couldn't believe it. Some of my very favorite people all around me--Carly and Aleesa, also both in Manica. More favorites just a jump away up in Tete and Zambezia. I couldn't believe any of it.
Like anyone receiving news on this level of insane awesomeness, I spent the next couple of weeks on cloud nine and simultaneously being afraid that it wasn't real and that there had been some mistake that would be corrected and then everything would disappear. But it hasn't disappeared, and nor has my joy.
Like any other, my site will present its challenges to be sure, and maybe a small part of me will one day wistfully think back to the Country Director's warning of the misguided, overenthusiastic 1/3 at site placement announcements. But I don't really even believe that. The truth is that I have just simply won the lottery by every conceivable metric and in every way imaginable. I don't see how this site placement could be any better. The work, the people, the area--it's all there. Many weeks have passed and I still have not gotten over what a crazy lucky hand I drew. I probably never will. We are in the realm of things far beyond what is statistically reasonable, and I don't know what else to do besides throw up my hands and be grateful. I don't deserve any of it but I am so happy to be here and to have been given the ultimate high-five from the universe.
We were supposed to come to our permanent site placement interviews with a preferences questionnaire completed. The questionnaire included things like this:
- Rank in order your preference for teaching the following subjects: English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, ...
- Would you be willing to have a site mate (other PC Volunteer in your same town)? Roommate?
- On a scale of 1 to 5, how rural or urban a site would you like?
- If you had a magic wand to grant you one single thing at your permanent site, what would it be?
Among the Moz-21 PC trainees, there was much talk and deliberation about what everyone would put down. Some people enthusiastically lobbied for an as-rustic-as-possible site, others pleaded for amenities. The magic wand question was especially interesting; answers were as varied as beaches, mountains, fruit trees, nearby hiking, nearby swimming, electricity, no electricity, Mozambican roommate, cold weather, north and south parts of the country. But what could I put down? The things I wanted in a site--to feel like my work matters, and to not be separated from the people I had gotten close to during training--those things weren't anywhere on that questionnaire. I didn't see any way that that form could help me with what mattered to me. I resolved to leave the questionnaire blank and throw my fate into the wind, the way we all did at the very beginning of this journey when we applied to be sent to any far corner of the world.
Then, a spark. My friend Steven returned from his shadow site visit with a face full of excitement, and pulled me aside at CORE the first day we were back at training. He had just returned from an amazing place, he said. A place where the weather is cool, where there is beautiful hiking within walking distance, where there is awesome wildlife in the region (elephants!). A place that not only has supermarkets that sell cheese, but is home to Mozambique's only small, but promising, budding dairy industry! A place where Peace Corps lodges its Volunteers in a fantastic house with electricity, running water, a garden, and a backyard that is almost too good to be true--grapevines and mango trees, lychees and passion fruit, all there for the picking. A place where other Volunteers are always passing through. A place with fully-stocked fresh food markets, where you can get a solid plate of rice and beans for just 20 MT. A place home to a regional market with one of the biggest and best capulana selections in the entire country. A place so universally liked by visiting PCVs that 3rd-year-extendees come to live there when given the choice of living anywhere in the country. A city, but a small city that has a comfortable and manageable feel. Chimoio.
But more important than any of that, Steven told me about how Chimoio is home to a university with the only engineering programs in the entire country outside of the capital city of Maputo. The Universidade Católica de Moçambique, or UCM for short. The only spot in the country, it turns out, where Peace Corps has Volunteers working as college professors instead of just your standard high school teachers. Steven told me about how he and the PCV he visited (Anna Derby) hung out with some UCM students while he was there and about how they had long, excellent conversations together. He told me about how bright these students are and about how they actually talk about wanting to use the education they're receiving to build and develop their country. (The opportunity to go to college in Mozambique is extremely rare.) On top of ALL of that, Steven told me that UCM is launching a brand-new electrical engineering major (my background) in 2014 and a brand-new mechanical engineering major (his background) in 2015.
You can only imagine how much my excitement was building. Steven told me that UCM loves the Peace Corps Volunteers they have now and have had in the past, and that the university has been begging to be sent more. He told me that Anna told him only one PCV from our group (Moz 21) was slated to go to Chimoio to teach at the university, but that maybe we could lobby for an additional one given how much the university wanted it and given the symmetry of sending both an ME and an EE to develop the two new respective engineering departments. Knowing that our two backgrounds would be perfect for the site, Steven came to me and wanted to know if I liked the sound of all of this before we started to make our case for it. I was just floored. It all sounded amazing to me. I thought of the amount of positive impact a team of two young, enthusiastic American engineering professors could have on a country with a real need for industry, the amount of impact we could have given the supply of intelligent and focused students coming through the doors. We talked about how together, we could build a culture of positivity and excellence within the engineering department, about how we could connect these bright kids with the resources they deserve, the resources that will allow them to do great things in their country. Everything seemed perfectly aligned, as if my five years working as an engineer and two working as a teacher had all been preparing me for this, had all been to get me to this point. I knew Chimoio would be a dream-come-true if it could become my site. I decided I would try as hard as I could to get a post at UCM.
So instead of leaving my questionnaire blank, I filled out only one part--the magic wand section. My magic wand section said effectively this: "Send me to UCM in Chimoio." That, along with the best rationale I could come up with for why doing so would be a good move for Peace Corps. I made sure to leave everything else on the form blank, not wanting to dilute my request with any other secondary requests. In my interview with the site placement staff (I believe the date was Monday, November 11th), I continued to pursue this single-minded strategy of being sent to UCM. The interviewer asked me about my site visit to Chidenguele, wanting to know what things I liked and didn't like, but I told him I only wanted to talk about me going to Chimoio. But crushingly, he told me that Peace Corps wasn't sending anyone from Moz-21 to Chimoio, that the vacant UCM position was going to a 3rd-year-extendee who would be moving to Chimoio. I asked him instead that I be sent to a different university to teach engineering, to which he replied that Peace Corps didn't work with any other university in the country, that I would be going to a high school.
I left the interview feeling like things could not have possibly gone worse, but that at least I had tried. It was a reminder that the decision was never anyone else's but Peace Corps'. After getting so excited at the prospect of being a university professor, I tried to ratchet my expectations back down to where they had been previously. I tried to remember that my site would be exciting no matter what. And that's true. But what happened next blew apart any expectation-setting I tried to do for myself in those days. What happened next would be described as a miracle by all but the most frigid, unblinking rationalist.
After 2 days of agony and 1 day of finally being at peace with things, my wait for site placement announcements--and everyone else's--was finally over. The Peace Corps staff assembled all 51 of us and tried in advance to keep expectations and emotions under control--a ludicrous proposition. The Country Director (everyone's boss in Moz) explained that based on his experience, roughly 1/3 of us would be miserable--without basis--upon receiving our site placements, roughly 1/3 of us would be ecstatic--again without basis--upon receiving our site placements, and that only the remaining 1/3 of the group would get it right by reacting with measured calm and keeping things in perspective. In his experience, hindsight shows PC trainees to be lousy at predicting how much they're going to like their own site.
The staff walked us outside to a nearby soccer blacktop where they had drawn an enormous map of Mozambique. The idea was that we would receive our site placement packet and go stand at the place we'd be living for the next 2 years. The drama of seeing just how close or far away your friends have been placed lent a certain sensory-realness to the whole exercise. This country literally takes days to traverse without an airplane. No matter where you get placed, at least 50% of the other volunteers will be basically too far away to ever realistically visit. That's the kind of thing that I was thinking about, but there was plenty to be anxious about as far as site specifics go, too. There was also plenty to be excited about. So yeah, it was an intense moment to be sure.
We got our site placement packets, and I was definitely in the 1/3 that reacted with unhinged ecstasy. Chimoio. It was impossible, but there it was on the page. The site placement staff decided at the last minute that what the heck, they would send just one more volunteer to UCM in Chimoio, what could it hurt. I walked to my spot on the map in a daze. There was Steven sharing my spot, with his big goofy grin, a better roommate and site mate impossible to find. I looked around in a dream-like trance. There was Fei, just steps from me on a map the size of an Olympic swimming pool, impossibly. Fei, the thought of whom being placed far away from had been more difficult than any other. 3-4 hours away by chapa in a country where the average travel time between any given two volunteers is more like 20 hours. I couldn't believe it. Some of my very favorite people all around me--Carly and Aleesa, also both in Manica. More favorites just a jump away up in Tete and Zambezia. I couldn't believe any of it.
Like anyone receiving news on this level of insane awesomeness, I spent the next couple of weeks on cloud nine and simultaneously being afraid that it wasn't real and that there had been some mistake that would be corrected and then everything would disappear. But it hasn't disappeared, and nor has my joy.
Like any other, my site will present its challenges to be sure, and maybe a small part of me will one day wistfully think back to the Country Director's warning of the misguided, overenthusiastic 1/3 at site placement announcements. But I don't really even believe that. The truth is that I have just simply won the lottery by every conceivable metric and in every way imaginable. I don't see how this site placement could be any better. The work, the people, the area--it's all there. Many weeks have passed and I still have not gotten over what a crazy lucky hand I drew. I probably never will. We are in the realm of things far beyond what is statistically reasonable, and I don't know what else to do besides throw up my hands and be grateful. I don't deserve any of it but I am so happy to be here and to have been given the ultimate high-five from the universe.
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