No news is good news.
I have been spending time lately integrating and finding my place at work. I'm pretty much "over" doing home visits everyday, so I took it upon myself to revamp my organizations monitoring and evaluation systems, which turn into me creating new forms to track if the activists are doing their jobs, patient care sheets, sheets designed for our activists that cant read or write...etc etc. And I've also been helping out with the monthly reports, and the entire organizational structure...so...yeah. I'm much happier now doing organizational development work than when I was just going house to house visiting patients in our home care program.
Other than that, I'm prepping to leave for our in-Service Training in two weeks (in Maputo! Yay!) and some other things that might be happening. We have a whole new batch of health volunteers coming in June. And so many trainings and things coming up, so yeah....its looking a little busy in the near future. Things are still the same, I wish I had more to write. So many interesting things happen everyday, and I get so caught up in it all, I forget to write things down (and to take pictures). I went to Ilha de Mocambique two weeks ago, which is this beautiful island off the coast in the Indian Ocean. It was absolutely gorgeous. Its all so....vintage. It's home to Mozambique's first hospital (it was actually the first capital of Mozambique) and its just....gorgeous. Yeah, there's really no other words to describe it. All the seafood you could ever want. Giant beautiful seashells. Old forts. Sand. The smell of the salt in the air from the ocean. Yeah...little slice of heaven.
To get to Ilha from the Niassa province, you have to take the train. Its an 11hr (give or take) adventure. If you're lucky enough to get 2nd class tickets, you get these sleeper cars, 4 (although on my way back, it was 6) to a room. Which is great, because you leave at 5am. Every stop, people from the villages/towns RUSH to the train to sell stuff. It is literally way better than a grocery store. I took some pictures of the frenzy, I'll post them later. But really, everyone (EVERYONE) comes when the train rolls by. There's people hanging out of the train windows buying giant bags of onions, tomatoes, potatoes, chili peppers, green peppers, garlic, peanuts, giant esteiras, chickens, mandioca, etc. There's kids running by selling water, bread, bajilhas, samosas, people negotiating. And once the train starts to pull off, you see people actually running after it, trying to get their money, people trying to sell last minute items, people hanging out of the window trying to reach for their change...its really a sight to see. We pretty much spent the entire train ride eating. And everytime the train stopped, we'd stick our heads out of the windows to watch the show. Hundreds of people, doing business. Selling their crops. (cheap too! I bought a bag of onions for 20mts)
The shopping frenzy at every stop makes you forget that the ride is so long. It was actually a lot of fun....seeing what different things were available at what stop. When the conductors come by to check tickets, they offer to make change for people who will be shopping. Plus, the ride is so scenic...and there's no potholes. Way better than a chapa.
