Sunday March 9th

On Friday night when I stepped out for a night out to celebrate our friend Maarten's birthday I thought out loud, "Ooooh, it's chilly out!" I checked the temperature. It was 72 degrees; How long have I been here? 22 months, almost? Well, then that sounds about right. 72 degrees would make me a bit cold. In other weather related news, the rains have eased and today is the first Sunday in which it hasn't rained in a while. Graças a deus! My veranda hasn't flooded over completely and I haven't had those pesky leaks over my bed for a few days/wks now... all good news!

Moving on, on some home improvement news:

My house, but more specifically my veranda, got a huge upgrade a few weeks ago when I recruited meu amigo/site mate, Steven to help me  completely re-do it. I asked Steven to help me with this home improvement project, but in reality, he did most of the work! It turned out great though and much better than anything I had imagined! Check it out:

This was taken a few months ago before the rains and strong winds destroyed the esteiras

Engenheiro Ramirez, hard at work

Final product!

Other novidades? Work has been picking up bit by bit. At the end of February, REDES (the girls empowerment initiative I'm a part of) held regional planning meetings throughout the country to brainstorm our plan of attack for the upcoming year. As the national coordinator, I worked closely with a leadership team of 10 other PCVs to plan and execute the meetings. My duties included setting dates and deadlines, approving budgets, drafting the Agenda, making wire transfers and making some executive decisions as things came my way. In addition to my National Coordinator duties, I had to pick up some extra work organizing the materials for the Central regional meeting. My central coordinator has been having difficulties traveling down to Chimoio for an array of reasons so the workload has fallen on the rest of us... Overall though, the meeting ran smoothly and was attended by 2 Mozambican leaders and 5 of us, centralers. 

my masterpiece is out!

Other work novidades? After a crazy long delay, I finally received the funds for my Activity book project! Once March rolled around, I called up the VAST grant coordinator for Peace Corps, and was said something along the lines of 'yo, where are these funds?! I'm leaving in four months and I can't demorar (delay) on this any longer!' The coordinator, let's call him Pablo, tells me to hold and checks his database... after a few minutes he says 'Oh wendy, the funds were transfered to your account two weeks ago!'




.....

DA FUCKKKK!??! 

I've been waiting on this money for HOW LONG now?! Almost two months! I finally get the funds and you don't EVEN TELL ME?! Pablo then went on some incoherent ramble about how he has manually check the system and inform volunteers when they receive their grant funds and had not been up to date on this and blah blah blah. Well, needless to say- I was pretty liviid. 

Do your fucking job, BRO. 

ughh.

Anyway, these past two weeks have been occupied with the buying and preparing of materials for the project. Earlier in the week, I went to pick up the books from the printer and even scored a sweet bolea (ride) back to the Peace Corps office with the local staff member that works here. I was super excited to get my 250 copies of 'Aprenda Mais' and even showed it off to the rest of the staff and my site mates. Fast forward to  next day, I was assembling the packets when I flipped through some of the books and found multiple errors. Some books had pages missing, others had pages repeated and one other even had pages out of order. 

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!!" This printer was specifically recommended by my counterpart because of their professionalism and they fuck up the job. I sat there in the office thinking 'how many of them are like this?!' 

Nervous breakdown commence:

"Nothing is ever easy here. NOT a damn thing. ..Everything takes 17 additional steps. I'm chega (done). Get me out," ran through my head. I'm sorry. But, I'm exhausted. Mozambique, you have a way of just kicking me when I'm down and frankly, I've had enough. Chega. For real. I'm out. 

Luckily... My site mate Steven was in the office to calm me down and he even offered to help me take the books back to the printer. We took them back and told the shop owners we would be back when they verified that they were all done correctly. Fast forward to friday, we picked up the books and they were fixed.

In happier and less stressful news, Chimoio held its annual Carnaval last weekend. A few friends came into town and we went out on the town and had a pretty great time. Even though my site is a Provincial capital, the night life here leaves a lot to be desired... but not last week. There were so many people out, dancing, drinking and having a good time. Here are some blackberry quality pictures (my regular camera is still not functional):

Ed, Thelmita and Taylor

Olly

Ed and his ridiculous beard

Aside from all that, the Chimoio adventure crew continues with our usual shennanigans. For those who are not familiar, the Chimoio Adventure Crew is what my site mates (Steven and Jay) and I call ourselves when we're out adventuring, beer drinking and frango tastin' around town:

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