nerdgasms.

June 14, 2012

I started my day with 2 hours of language lessons (from 7:30-9:30am), followed by a meeting at the HUB for some more presentations and info sessions.

Highlight of my day: the simplified “Development” presentation by our Country Director. It felt unreal to be theorizing this subject that until today felt like a distant goal. But today, I spoke (briefly) about development issues …IN AFRICA! For those of you that know what a nerd I am, you can imagine me sitting in room having a Nerdgasm (yes, I just said that) It was fucking great. It was really cool for me to hear our country director stating that Peace Corps volunteers ARE in FACT “grass-roots development practitioners and professionals”

I was like, “yesssss! I AM a grass-roots development practitioner! … Or at least I will be by the end of this 27 month journey.”

Ahaha. Anyway, I learned some new interesting facts. For example, out of the 187 countries on the Human Development Index (a composite statistic used to rank countries by level of "human development" in terms of the standard of living and/or quality of life, and distinguishing between “very high human development”, “high human development”, “medium human development”, and “low human development” countries), Mozambique comes in 184th place. Pretty alarming. But I guess it makes for a great place to start my work as a development professional.

Some other interesting facts: there are about 160-170 PC volunteers working in Mozambique. We have volunteers in all the provinces that focus on Health and Education projects, a long with other secondary projects like women’s empowerment, youth development, etc. Aside from my primary project in HIV/Aids education/activism, I really hope I get the opportunity to get involved in some women’s empowerment initiatives :)

that’s it for tonight.
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