Site Visit to Vilankulos!

Site visit was amazing! It was really great to get out of Namaacha and see more of the country! We took a 12 hour bus ride up to Vilankulos, so I was able to see quite a bit. We also spent one night in Tofo-which has a really beautiful beach and a little hostel along the beach that we stayed at. I´ll back up and fill you in on the last few weeks though first before I get on a rant about how beautiful these sea side towns are!

The Halloween party was pretty successful-it was a lot of fun to hang out with all the Trainees outside of PC sessions. There were some very creative costumes with such little resources here. There were vampires, a fairy, mummys, a giant flower, Fred and Willma Flinstone, the world cup-my siblings were a soldier, a nurse, and a soccer player and I was a cave woman! The kids ate a bunch of candy and danced, there was a pretty big turn out. In the later part of the night we went to Palucia´s, a local restaurant/bar and got to hang out with all the Trainees.

The next week we were all really excited for hub day to find out where we would be going for our site visits! Peace Corps sends all the Trainees out to stay with current Volunteers throughout the country to get a feel for what life as a Volunteer is really like and to go to work with them and see the school or organization where they work. I was really hoping to visit a Volunteer living near the ocean, but had totally prepared myself to be placed somewhere in-land, either way, it was the perfect time for a break from training. Everyone really needed to get away and have some independence back-even if it was only for a little bit, and to get a break from each other. It´s tough being in such a new culture and learning so much every day and being around each other 24/7 with such big, out-going personalities...it was just perfect timing to have some time away!

I was SOOO excited to find out I would be visiting Vilankulos. It is a very touristy town in Inhambane province along the Indian Ocean. I had seen some pictures on facebook of the volunteers that lived there and was hoping I would have a chance to visit at some point, so this was perfect! Sarah and Courtney are the Volunteers living there, they´ve been here a year. I had 2 other trainees staying at their house with me, and 3 other education trainees also went to Vilankulos and stayed with an education Volunteer close by. We left Saturday morning at 4am and it was around 12 hours to drive all the way there. It was not exactly desirable circumstances, but I knew it was going to be worth the trip! The commom transportation here is called chapa´s, they are basically big vans that fit about 16 people, but generally you can expect to squish 20+ people in!

Once we arrived in Vilankulos and got to the Volunteers house it was all worth it! Their backyard is the Ocean! I felt completely stress free as soon as we arrived! We were also really excited about dinner and getting a chance to cook some American meals. Sarah and Courtney had made us tacos and even brownies for dessert, it was amazing! There house is really nice, they have running water and an indoor shower, a stove and oven, electricity...it´s very nice. We went out Saturday night for a bit and met some of the other Volunteers that live in the province, it was fun to meet people that have been at site for a while now and understand what we´re going through with training. Sunday was very relaxing, we layed out by the Ocean and swam a bit. It was really hot and I had to reapply my sunscreen about every 15 minutes because the sun is so powerful here. We watched a couple movies and even ordered pizza which was very exciting! ....oh the simple pleasures! On Monday we went to work with Sarah and Courtney to see what the organization they work for is like. They work for CARE, which is an NGO educationg people on HIV/AIDS and they plan different events in the community. The organization is pretty large and their work is very structured which isn´t usually the case for health volunteers. This years Volunteers won´t be assigned to positions like this because PC is trying to give health Volunteers more time for secondary projects and have less structure in their jobs so they can have more of an opportunity to define their own job and tasks. We attended a meeting with the girls and met some co-workers, then hit the beach :) It was good to see their office and find out what they do, but there wasn´t much more we could do, so we went into town and bought some things to make dinner and then swam and laid out for a while. The next morning we left early to travel to Tofo, which is another touristy-beach town about 3 hours south. A lot of other trainees that had site visits in surrounding areas also came down to spend the last night in Tofo, so there were about 250-25 of us Peace Corps people there. I really loved the town, the only down-fall was that we were all looked at as tourists and people didn´t realize taht we actually are living in the country, so it´s a little irritating to be treated this way. The same can be said for Vilankulos. People living in these towns just assume you are a tourist and try to sell you merchandise and talked to us in english which I did´t really like. We all stayed up pretty late the last night and hung out at Fatima´s, which is a little hostel on the beach with a bar and music. It was a lot of fun!

The trip back the next day was a bit grueling with the lack of sleep and having to say goodbye to my ocean gettaway! I feel completely refreshed though now and have been in a great mood since returning. It´s all downhill from here with only 3 1/2 weeks of training left! We´ll find out where our actual site placements are on Thanksgiving, so I have that to look forward to! After staying with Volunteers I´m sooo ready to be out on my own and start making a life for myself here! I feel re-energized and ready to really focus on my Portuguese these last few weeks and get the most out of training, along with really making an effort to spend more time with my host family and to try to not be so irritable with them :/

I´ve had some really great conversations with them the last couple nights. Yesterday I was able to talk with my mom about her Labolo (bride price) and found what my dad paid her family in order to marry her-money, clothing, and animals is the norm. I also asked if she was going to have Labolos for her daughters and was incredably happy to find out she´s not! She said she wants her daughters to go to school, get jobs, buy a house and car, and THEN get married and just have a wedding. I was so happy and proud to hear her say that! I´ve been teaching my host family a lot about my family and life back in America and feel like it´s much easier to deal with the homesickness when I can talk about home to my family here. The other night I had them draw pictures for me to send with my letter home to my parents and then they decided they wanted to have me write letters from them in english, so they told me in Portuguese what they wanted to say and I wrote it in english to my parents. It was the sweetest thing about how they want to come visit me and my parents in America and that they are going to be so sad when I leave in December and want to visit at my site. The family is really starting to grow on me and I feel much more comfortable in the home now that I´m able to communicate a bit more with them.

I´m off to have lunch and then meet with my APCD (assistant Peace Corps director) about where I would like my site placement to be and with what type of organization I want to work for! Tchau!