October 7, 2013
So given that I am the worst blogger ever I will try to
bring you up to date on events that have unfolded since I arrived in Montepuez
two months ago.
After our swearing in ceremony on August 6 those of us who
were placed in the northern part of Mozambique flew to Nampula, the capital of
its eponymous province. There we had a
two-day “Supervisor’s Conference” where we met our counterparts and supervisors
with whom we will be working for the next two years. The point of the conference was mostly to lay
a foundation of the relationship between Peace Corps and our host
organizations. This is done more as an
insurance policy just in case our organizations start getting into any funny
business and Peace Corps can say we talked about these policies with you and
your volunteer. For us volunteers,
Supervisor’s Conference was more a last two days together than business of any
sort so we tried to spend as much time as we could together knowing it would be
a few months before we saw one another again.
After Supervisor’s Conference I went to Pemba with my
organization, Fundacao Ariel Glaser, for another short conference that served
as an introduction to the organization – what they do, what their goals are,
where they work, etc. There were four
volunteers placed with Ariel in various parts of Cabo Delgado Province so we
got to spend an extra four days with each other. I’m not sure I really got anything out of the
conference, but staying in a hotel with a balcony that overlooks Praia do Wimbi
(that’s Wimbi Beach for all the non-Portuguese speakers out there) was a pretty
sweet deal. (And you should totally
Google Image ‘Wimbi Beach’ to see what exactly Peace Corps life is all
about).
A little background on Fundacao Ariel. There is a large American Non-Government
Organization called the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, or
EGPAF. EGPAF was founded in 1988 with
the goal of eliminating pediatric AIDS.
Elizabeth Glaser contracted HIV through a blood transfusion in 1981 and
passed the virus on to both of her children.
Her daughter, Ariel, contracted HIV through breastfeeding and her son
contracted HIV in-utero. Ariel died of
AIDS in 1988 at the age of 4 and thus EGPAF was born. EGPAF has been working in Mozambique since
2004 in three provinces, Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Gaza. In 2009, as a part of PEPFAR II (PEPFAR
stands for President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief and was started by
President Bush in 2003 – arguably the best thing he did as President),
President Obama included the goal of transferring HIV/AIDS work to local
organizations as a part of USAIDs plan for sustainable development. Ultimately this will result in Mozambicans
taking care of Mozambique’s problems, but the idea is still in its
infancy. One of the first organizations
created after this announcement, however, was Fundacao Ariel. It is 100 percent run by Mozambicans,
although they receive almost all of their funding from CDC. They took over EGPAF’s role in Cabo Delgado
in 2010 but maintain a working relationship with EGPAF. They even use the same logo as EGPAF. The main work that Ariel and EGPAF do is to
get as many HIV+ pregnant women on treatment as possible in order to reduce the
probability that she will pass the virus onto her child. A woman has roughly a 45% chance of passing
the virus onto her child if she is not on any treatment, but that number falls
to 2% if she is on treatment.
Additionally, in 2012 53% of pregnant women received treatment globally,
which is up from just 14% in 2005. So
you can see the importance of receiving treatment and how effective various
programs have been implemented worldwide in order to reduce Vertical
Transmission. It’s some pretty cool stuff.
I finally moved into my house in Montepuez on August 14 and
I have to say it is far nicer than I ever thought it would be. I had heard that I was going to have a mud
brick house because that is what the Health volunteer before me had and I was
totally fine with that. But when we
pulled up to my house and it was a cement house with two bedrooms, a living
room, kitchen, and indoor bathroom I couldn’t help but smile really hard
knowing I lucked out with a great house.
My house in located in Bairro Matuto I. It is a seriously beautiful neighborhood with
small alleys running in every direction and palm trees drape the background no
matter which direction you look. It is a
fantastic location for the things I need.
I am a 10 minute walk to the hospital and Community Based Organization
(CBO) where I work and 15 minutes to the market, bus station, and the house of
the education volunteers in Montepuez.
One of the things Peace Corps drills into you during
training is the importance of integrating into your community. I swear that by the end of training my least
favorite word in the English language was integration because we heard about it
every day we were in Namaacha. I understood
that it is definitely an important aspect of my service, but I just felt like
it was dwelled upon too often. That
being said, integration is a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be and
I now understand why certain aspects of integration were such a huge part of
training. I thought I was going to move
into my house and within the first month all of my neighbors would stop by my
house, awkwardly introduce themselves and ask me some questions about
myself. If nothing else, I thought this
would happen because I am the big white kid living in the neighborhood. Surprisingly, though, only two people have
actually come to my house to introduce themselves. Although there is a water hose in my front
yard where a number of neighborhood women get their water, not one of them has
actually stopped to talk to me. I have
tried to say hello and have some small talk with them when I need water myself,
but they spend most of their time talking to one another in the local language,
Macua (or Makua, Makuah, or the other 12 ways you spell it), so it is really
tough to actually insert myself into one of their conversations. And let’s be honest, I have never really been
one for small talk anyway. Even at home
I don’t really enjoy small talk because it all seems so superficial and I think
it really arises out of people feeling awkward in silence with another
person. Anyway, I haven’t done the best
job integrating into my neighborhood, but it’s only been two months – I’m
getting there.
Switching topics – I spend most of my time working at the
Hospital Rural de Montepuez. It is the major
hospital in the Montepuez district where people come if they have more serious
issues that cannot be treated at the local health centers in their
villages. I go to the hospital
Monday-Thursday and spend most of my time there in the office responsible for
statistics, data collection, and patient filing. I was surprised to learn that the hospital
has an online file of all patients it has received since 2000. I was expecting filing cabinets to be
overstuffed, unorganized and unusable, but I was pleasantly surprised to see
the online filing. As for what I do on a
day-to-day basis I’m really not sure I can say.
I generally arrive to the hospital 8:30 (which is extremely late compared
to when most volunteers start their day, but I am not complaining) and sit in
the office for about an hour and until somebody realizes I am there and not
doing anything. (I usually bring my
Kindle or a book because I know there is a lot of down time and I’m not always
going to be doing something). I might
help someone with something they are working on for an hour or two and then I
go back to doing nothing until around 12:30 or 1. (As an example, I am writing this blog post
from my desk in the hospital right now).
By that time if I am still doing nothing I will call it a day and head
to the market to buy whatever food or other things I need for the day. On Friday’s I go to the CBO in Montepuez that
receives funding from Ariel, called Associacao de Cuidados Domiciliarios de
Montepuez (ACDM). They mostly do things
called “buscas activas” which essentially entail the members of the CBO going
into neighborhoods in search of HIV+ people who have abandoned their treatment
to try to find out what happened to them and convince them to restart
treatment. Each member of the CBO is
also responsible for weekly visits to different HIV+ people who are on
treatment to see how they are doing, ask if they need any support or help, and
reinforce the fact that they need to continue taking their medication. It’s some pretty intense stuff, but it is
definitely reassuring to know that there are organizations out there doing what
they can to help those people most neglected by their own society.
In the next few weeks there are a lot of exciting things
happening. Next week I will be going to
Pemba for the first official conference with Ariel. We are supposed to have monthly conferences
in Pemba to discuss what we have been working on, what we should be doing, how
to go about different things, etc. It’s
a good way for everyone in the province to hear about what different people are
doing and what they have found to be effective.
I highly doubt the meetings will happen every month, but even if I were
to go to Pemba for a full week every other month, accommodation and per diem
included, that would be a pretty sweet deal.
The first week of November is the first big Peace Corps
conference for those of us in Moz 20. (I don’t know if I explained before, but
every new group is given a number that corresponds to which group they are in
that particular country and I am a part of the 20th group of
volunteers in Mozambique). There are
three official Peace Corps conferences where everyone in Moz 20 gets together
to get away from site, see their fellow volunteers, and talk about all the
stressors that no one at site can really understand. So November 3 I will be leaving for Maputo
for the entire week and I will see all the people in Moz 20 who I last saw the
first week of August. I’m really looking
forward to it and it should be a great time.
After I return from Maputo I will have about a month in
Montepuez before the holidays in Mozambique start. From what I understand the whole country more
or less shuts down between December 15 and January 15 so it will be nice again
to have some free time and the opportunity to visit some other volunteers at
their sites and see different parts of the country.
