FESTA! Thats party in Portuguese

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Alright, I have received enough e-mail lashings to know that it is just been too long for my adoring public since my last blog entry. I thought that writing was part of what was keeping me sane here, but clearly, all of you back in the states rely on it much more heavily than I do. Please accept my apologies and take my word that I will do everything in my power to not deprive the good ol' U S of A (oh, and all my fans in Canada and Austrailia as well) of my witty prose and penetrating insights into the fascinating world of Africa.

On that note, lets begin with a story. As some of you may know, the last couple months have been somewhat of a struggle for me. There has been a time or two when I may have been feeling slightly sub-par. Ok, maybe it is more accurate to see that when I am feeling average, it is a great day. Anytime I am feeling great like that (average) I feel as though I need to take advantage of it by acting goofy, or making a joke, or doing something that makes me feel like I still have a personality. So a couple weeks ago I went for a run, and it turned to to be a pretty good run. While I was standing around catching my breath at the end, I just started feeling really average. It was a cool evening, lots of people were out walking around, just a real nice scene. As I continued to look around, I noticed a large group of people walking down the side of the road in my direction. I decided to be a little playful and capitalize on my averageness. As they got closer to me I yelled out, "Hey, where's the party"? They looked at me and didn't say anything and just kept walking. It struck me as strange that no one laughed, but hey, I've been around crowds before that have lacked a sense of humor, so I took it as more of a reflection of their lack luster personalities rather then my lack luster jokes. As the crowd continued to move, one man who I recognized, broke off from it and came in my direction. When I asked him why no one had found my party comment funny, he explained that the crowd was not in fact headed toward a party, but rather, to a funeral instead. I will give you all a couple minutes now to recover from the shock of losing any and all romantic thoughts you may have had of Peace Corps volunteers being ambassadors of goodwill throughout the world. Or maybe just losing those thoughts about me.

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Alright, I assume that if you are still reading this, you have either forgiven me, or you have a sick perverted sense of humor, and really you are no better than me. Lets continue. So before I give a brief rundown of what exactly I have been doing with myself over the past couple months, let me give you an update on my emotional well being. It sucks. Moving on....
Ok, maybe there is more to it than that. I will admit, it has been somewhat of a struggle up to this point, but I believe in my heart, and because my mom tells me to, that things are improving. I have implemented a few coping strategies that I would like to share. Some of my loyal readers may already be familiar with these, but I ask those of you in the know to bear with me as I take a few moments to inform all the other people in my life who I do not like enough to send personal e-mails to.

1) Dinner and an Album. So I like music. I have an ipod here along with a small speaker, which allows me to listen as I do things around the house, such as wallow in self pity. What I have started doing, is that once I have finished cooking my dinner, I sit down at my table, alone of course, and play the next album alphabetically on my ipod. I have a notebook where I write down the next name of the album, all my comments for that album, and then I give it a star rating out of 5. So far John Coltranes 'A Love Supreme' has the best rating, with 4 3/4 stars.

2) Jimmy's Dance Party. Before I began cooking dinner, I get the ipod going, put on about 2 or 3 songs in a row I know I can dance to, close the curtains, close the doors (ok, door) and just start going crazy. I try to do all sorts of interesting and creative dance moves that I have yet to unvail in public, but I have confidence that one day I will, perhaps on Soul Train, or something like that. One of the first dance parties I had, I tried this spin move where I actually ran into one of the two chairs in my house and fell down. It gets pretty intense.

3) Lastly, I have began this thing where I am recreating my name. Perhaps I should explain. My name, despite what my new community may think, is not in fact 'branco', but Jimmy Schneidewind. This was great for the first 23 years of my life, but it just isn't enough anymore. I have become pretty taken by the thought of one day being a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV). I think I just like to imagine that I won't be completely emotionally crippled once I get out of here. Anyway, if you read any Peace Corps publication that talks about what RPCVs are currently doing, they always refer to them by name, country served in, and years served, for example: George Bush (Iraq 2002-2050). I hope that one day, my name can be: Jimmy Schneidewind (Mozambique 2007-2009). This is my dream. I want it bad man. I was telling some people, that if I ever do get it, I'm gonna use that name for everything, when I'm putting my name on tests, writing checks, signing off on my taxes, whatever. I have figured that there are 38 characters in this title, which if you divide that by the number of days I am expected to serve in Mozambique, works out to about one character every 3 weeks. Each time I hit a 3 week mark, I fill in a new character on this sign I have put on my door. Right now, I am: Jimmy Sch. As one friend told me, there is no way I can return without at least having regained my last name, that would just be shameful.

So theres that. As far as work goes, well, it actually goes. I try to work as much as I can, to tell you the truth. I wish I could say that it is due to my benevolent nature, or this burning desire within me to do good, but really I think it can mostly be attributed to the assumption that if I were to skip work, or work low hours and spend the rest of the time in my house, I would probably have gone crazy by now. With that being said, here is what is going on. I remain working at the local health post with a group of about 15 people who are HIV+ called peer educators. Our main priority is to find people who are supposed to be on ARV treatment for AIDS, but have not been coming to the post to pick up their medication. I help to organize the whole process, and just help in any way I can, which in a few instances meant conducting a couple trainings on how to fill out the forms we use when we are locating these missing patients. Oh, and I do this in friggin Portuguese by the way. Pretty sweet, except the time I realized that when I was trying to say that people who are working hard could be rewarded with bread, I was actually saying that they could be rewarded with wooden posts. I think either are good personally. Currently, myself and the head peer educator, are going around to a few local schools to conduct interviews to determine what type of information students already have on broad HIV topics, and what information they lack. We will take the results and use them to design a program of lessons on HIV/AIDS, and then take this program to a few schools and see if we can spread a little knowledge. We are also talking with a community based group who has a number of dancing and singing groups related to the topic, to see if we can hook them up with some groups of students at these schools to turn their newfound knowledge into music and dance steps. This is the way of public health education here.
Outside of my work with this group, I have come across another group of about 7 teenagers who we are planning on making into a theater/running group. Sounds like a great idea huh? Whats that? You don't know what the hell I'm talking about? Oh, ok. Well, it goes like this. I originally met a couple of them because whenever I go running I pass the market of their neighborhood. Eventually, they started running with me everytime I passed by. I asked them one day if they would be interested in forming a running group. They said yes. Then I found out about this organization called JOMA, which exists in Peace Corps Mozambique. JOvens para Mudanca e Accao (Young people for change and action). This organization helps to develop groups of young Mozambicans who are interested in forming clubs of theater, photography, art, or journalism. They host a few conferences every year where any qualifying and existing groups who are accompanied by a Peace Corps volunteer, can come and receive training specific to their chosen topic for a week, and ideas of how to go back into their community and organize a sustainable group. So now you understand how running and theater are connected, right?? No? Ok, let me explain. So this group will be expected to put on some sort of a performance every three weeks or so, all around the community, which is actually quite vast, since there is a lot of land solely dedicated to farming, which makes it so some neighborhoods are separated by miles. This makes it difficult for a theater group, or a group of any kind, to reach all the communities, since the only way of getting around is by puclic transport (which costs) and bicycles (which cost). I figure, hey, if we got 7 guys who can run, maybe we don't have to worry about the costs of traveling and are not restricted by the tiny dirt paths that sometimes lead to particular neighborhoods. Problem solved! One of the resources that the states has the Africa is somewhat lacking is obesity. Which makes cholesterol related deaths slightly more difficult, but theater/running groups a bit easier.

So that is what has been going on. About 2 weeks ago I, and all the other volunteers from the northern third of Mozambique, met in a provincial capital for 5 days for an event that many refer to as 'regionals'. Although the STATED primary purpose of 'regionals' is to gather volunteers for meetings and exchanges of ideas, which certainly happened, my primary purpose there was to use a flushing toilet and a functional shower. I took a nap while sitting on the toilet, just because I knew that I wouldn't have to worry about a lizard crawling up my butt and making his new home there. Not enough information? Please begin subscribing to "The Fresh Prince of Mozambique: The Unedited Version", and details like this and many more can be yours.

I feel like maybe I should say that things are getting slightly better here, and that my troubles really have had nothing to do with Mozambique, per se, but rather probably just being away from family, losing language, etc. Sooner or later I will post a serious blog entry where I tell what I have learned and how I have grown (mentally of course, I am still standing at the height of an average girl), but that time is not now. I think thats all I got. Lets see.....yup. Hope this will keep any physcotic crazed blog lunatics at bay for at least a few weeks. In the near future, I will be having high speed wireless internet installed into my house, so there shouldn't be anymore delays.

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Photos

Yup
the only house guests i have had so far