lunch with the ambassador.
Monday, June 27, 2012.
Week FOUR of training has been flying by! A lot of interesting things have been happening this week, but honestly, I almost don’t have the energy to sit here and go through the details of my week… so, I’ll just write about the highlights-
The U.S. Ambassador to Mozambique came to visit us on Wednesday! We had a little palestra (a talk) with her, where she told us about her career and then took the time to answer our questions and give us advice. It was really exciting to get to meet someone that has dedicated her life to foreign service. She had a lot of interesting stories and facts about Mozambique in general, but also about International Affairs careers. She has lived in several countries through her life- Turkey, Brazil, China, Portugal, Costa Rica, Mozambique, and of course, the U.S. It was fascinating. Although I am not necessarily interested in the position of ambassador, I would love to live and work around the world throughout my life. It is one of my dreams.
It was really interesting to see how we, a group of Peace Corps volunteers, responded to her… A few of us brought up the dichotomies of international service work- how much of it is a ‘capacity building’ process that empowers people at the grass-roots level and how much of it falls under the U.S. ‘neo-imperial’ umbrella of economic interest and resource exploitation? She was frank in her responses and I appreciated that. After all, the job of an ambassador is to work with international governments to push certain interest or projects… Overall, the experience was pretty legit. She stayed after the palestra and had lunch with us. I think our swearing in ceremony (at the beginning of August) is at her house in Maputo… but don’t quote me on that.
Today, we had both language and technical training, along with the first round of site placement interviews. The interviews were pretty informal and short. It was basically just to get to know us a little bit and inquire about our interest/experience. The more important interview will be the second round, where we will get a description of the organizations we will be working with… We will rank our preferences based on these descriptions and we will also be going into more detail about what kind of locality we are hoping to live in…. Unfortunately, Mozambique doesn’t have any jungles I can live in… Don’t ask me why I have this jungle fantasy, because frankly, I have no clue where it stems from. Maybe from The Jungle Book movie? Who knows! Lol :P
Some new/interesting facts:
-Mozambique is among five of the poorest countries in the world.
-The U.S. donates $400 million dollars of foreign aid assistance to Mozambique per year.
-At the time of independence here in Moz (37 years ago), there were only 60 trained doctors… now the numbers almost hit 1,000 (but this is still an extreme shortage in a country of 23.7+ million inhabitants)
-70-80% of the population lives in rural areas
-Literacy rate: 50.4 %
-HIV prevalence in Mozambique: 11.8% ; but the percentage rises in certain areas (ex: HIV prevalence in Maputo City is 16.8%, and 25% in the Gaza Province)
Week FOUR of training has been flying by! A lot of interesting things have been happening this week, but honestly, I almost don’t have the energy to sit here and go through the details of my week… so, I’ll just write about the highlights-
The U.S. Ambassador to Mozambique came to visit us on Wednesday! We had a little palestra (a talk) with her, where she told us about her career and then took the time to answer our questions and give us advice. It was really exciting to get to meet someone that has dedicated her life to foreign service. She had a lot of interesting stories and facts about Mozambique in general, but also about International Affairs careers. She has lived in several countries through her life- Turkey, Brazil, China, Portugal, Costa Rica, Mozambique, and of course, the U.S. It was fascinating. Although I am not necessarily interested in the position of ambassador, I would love to live and work around the world throughout my life. It is one of my dreams.
It was really interesting to see how we, a group of Peace Corps volunteers, responded to her… A few of us brought up the dichotomies of international service work- how much of it is a ‘capacity building’ process that empowers people at the grass-roots level and how much of it falls under the U.S. ‘neo-imperial’ umbrella of economic interest and resource exploitation? She was frank in her responses and I appreciated that. After all, the job of an ambassador is to work with international governments to push certain interest or projects… Overall, the experience was pretty legit. She stayed after the palestra and had lunch with us. I think our swearing in ceremony (at the beginning of August) is at her house in Maputo… but don’t quote me on that.
Today, we had both language and technical training, along with the first round of site placement interviews. The interviews were pretty informal and short. It was basically just to get to know us a little bit and inquire about our interest/experience. The more important interview will be the second round, where we will get a description of the organizations we will be working with… We will rank our preferences based on these descriptions and we will also be going into more detail about what kind of locality we are hoping to live in…. Unfortunately, Mozambique doesn’t have any jungles I can live in… Don’t ask me why I have this jungle fantasy, because frankly, I have no clue where it stems from. Maybe from The Jungle Book movie? Who knows! Lol :P
Some new/interesting facts:
-Mozambique is among five of the poorest countries in the world.
-The U.S. donates $400 million dollars of foreign aid assistance to Mozambique per year.
-At the time of independence here in Moz (37 years ago), there were only 60 trained doctors… now the numbers almost hit 1,000 (but this is still an extreme shortage in a country of 23.7+ million inhabitants)
-70-80% of the population lives in rural areas
-Literacy rate: 50.4 %
-HIV prevalence in Mozambique: 11.8% ; but the percentage rises in certain areas (ex: HIV prevalence in Maputo City is 16.8%, and 25% in the Gaza Province)
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