written monday march 31
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It seems that every time I sit down to blog I always have some sort of calamity going down in my house, ahaha. What is it today, you say? Well, my bathroom sink has been clogged for days and I've been asking my landlady (the Dona) to call the plumber. Yesterday, the sink base started leaking water and
inundar'ing (flooding) my bathroom with dirty water. I told my Dona, and she told me the plumber would be here today at 16 (4pm). It's 10 to 6pm right now and this fool is nowhere to be seen. Totally expected, but completely infuriating at the same time. Oooh Mozambique.
With 16 weeks to go, I've decided to start a list of 16 things I am looking forward to in the states. You can jump towards the end of this entry to check out my first 5.
Anyway, onto the novidades in vida do wendel-
Work has been pretty crazy lately and in fact, it was kicking my ass this last week and half. How interesting is it that I had nothing to do for the first year and half of my service (and then some) and NOW! ALL OF A SUDDEN, I am swamped!!!! I knew this would happen, though. Taking a leadership position within
REDES and then pushing to get my project funded was not a plan that would allow me to go easily. So let's start with my chefe duties for REDES.
A week ago, I submitted the Budget Proposal to the small grants coordinator at the Embassy. I worked off the proposal from last year and updated it to reflect the goals/ changes that we have made in the past few months and looking to maintain for the upcoming year. Editing the proposal was kind of a pain; there was a lot of things to change- way too many generalizations that had no citations, statistics that were outdated, and in general- just some poor structure to the proposal that I had to sort out. In the end, I conseguir'ed and I turned in the proposal a week early. I'm still waiting on feedback from the coordinator at the embassy, but at this point I am somewhat relaxed because I took care of my end .
In addition to editing this proposal, I've been putting in the leg work to set up our upcoming TOT (Training of Trainers), which takes place in mid April. Planing, organizing and executing a conference here is nothing short of stressful, but I feel more comfortable this year since I actually attended these events last year and I have a better idea of what's suppose to happen and what errands must get done prior to. My central coordinator was actually able to travel down this past weekend and run some errands so that will alleviate the work I have to do this week.
In addition to this, EVEN more, I have been busy with chefe REDES task which include: overseeing the planning and execution of the other provincial TOTs, reviewing and approving budget proposals for these TOTs, and coordinating the logistics of yet another conference that a select group of REDES leadership members will attend in Maputo at the end of the month. SO.MUCH.WORK! Aghhhh! Moving on-
Coloring book (VAST grant) proj: Since I last wrote, my counterpart (Virginia) and I implemented the first few sessions of the coloring/activity book, Aprenda Mais! We held our first sessions at a school 30 minutes west called EPC (Escola Primaria Completa de) Chibata. How did it go? Weeeeellllllll, mais o menos. The sessions with the kids ran pretty smoothly but ... (sigh)... I don't know. In retrospect, it's a total shit show (just as I was bracing myself for it to be). Ok. I might be exaggerating a bit. Not a total shit show. But also not that smooth either. I will give you some examples:
Before we even received the funds for the project, my counterpart and I sat down and made a plan to carry out 10 sessions at 5 schools (2 sessions at each school). We planned on reaching 250 kids and having 25 kids at each session. We talked about this. Well, after our first session at EPC Chibata, Virginia starts closing the session and goes on this random tangent about how we will come back and have sessions EVERY tuesday and that we will have lanche (snack- in this case, a breakfast sandwich and a soda) for them every time. WHAT?!!! I stood there like wherethefuck did this come out of?! This is NOT in the budget. Each session was suppose to be a one time thing. We TALKED ABOUT THIS!
Well, when I addressed this concern to Virginia she played it off like it was a big misunderstanding because of the language (me speaking Portuguese) or whatever. UMMMMMM, NO. I placed Advanced HIGH in my language exam after 10 weeks of training. That was almost 2 years ago. My Portuguese is NOT THAT BAD where you could've misunderstood what our plan is. We wrote out a budget together!!!? WHAT? Makes no sense.
Anyway, I told Virginia we could come back the next week to finish the session (logistics for the first session took too long), but that we didn't have enough money in the budget to keep going back to a school that was a 30 minute ride from town.
There's many more stories. Oh did I mention that 4 out of the 5 schools that originally agreed to work with us pulled out of the project?! YUP. 4 schools, all of a sudden asked us to submit letters to the ministry of education. forget it! If we submit letters to the ministry, we will never get a reply and this project will go nowhere. I'm still not sure why the school pulled out. Virginia says that because we are providing a snack, the schools don't want to be liable if a kid get sick or something.... I told her, well, if the snack is the issue, let's cut it out and still work with the kids. Virginia negar'ed and was like 'no, we can't put on an activity and not give out lanche'. God forbid.
Really? uuuughh. Remember my friend Joanna that use to live about 2 hours from me? Her voice rings in my head constantly because one day while stressed out at the office trying to get her project off the ground she said to me, "NEVER write a grant!" The stress is not worth it, she said. Well, Joanna, you were right and I knew this even before I jumped into this little project. Ahahaha (Saudades, pah!)
Anyway, back on track. All of a sudden, we are missing 200 kids to participate in the project and we are scrambling to figure out a new direction. I've reached out to the ex-pats in town and have asked for the contact information to local orphanages to see if any of them are interested and will help us implement the project. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and I have even received invitations to other provinces to present the project! I am going to try to finish what I started here in Chitown since the grant did not account for travel expenses outside of town... but after the feedback I've received, I think we will conseguir and it will all be fine ....eventually... ahaha.
Adventures:
Moving on to the adventures of CAC! Steven's birthday was 10 days ago so we took a day trip to Manica, a district capital that sits about an hour west of Chimoio, near the Zimbabwean border. We passear'ed around, checked out a super random geology museum, had a tasty lunch, and checked out a few cool bars. Manica is a gorgeous little town surrounded by picturesque mountains and marked by charming colonial architecture. It was a fun little adventure and we will definitely be going back to do some more exploring.
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| Manica |
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| the boys |
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| Random Geological Museum |
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| Women at the water pump |
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| passear'ing around :) |
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| cheers to the birthday boy |
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| bar crawling |
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| soccer game by the old church |
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| abandoned church |
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| THIS view <3 |
Mais novidades? Well, I think that's about it. Oh yea, it's MY BIRTHDAY on friday :)
"What do you want to do?!" Everyone's been asking... weeeeelll, honestly, what I really want to do is throw on a pair of white jeans, go to a paisa club and pop some bottles of tequila, aahahahha. Don't think meus amigos here really get this reference though soooo I will move on (*ahem*). There will be a lot of people in town this weekend so I am looking forward to celebrating with them. The central crew is pretty fun after all!
Now... as promised...
16 things I am looking forward to in the states:
...first 5 have to do w/ Proper infrastructure; how mind blowing will it be that all housing in the states has to meet a minimum standard?! I am looking forward to:
- Not having to constantly fix something broken in someone else's fucking house even though they clearly have the resources to do so themselves; fucking chefe Donas. I'm over you. Alsooo...
- Roofs that don't leak
- Houses that don't flood
- Clean bathrooms
- Public restrooms that don't make me want to literallllllyyyyy diiiiiieeee
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PS. friends and family back home:
I will be finishing up my service here at the end of July so please don't send anymore care packages my way. Packages can take up to 3 months to get here and I don't want to run the risk of missing anyone's package before leaving Moz. & Thank you to everyone who's already sent a little something my way throughout my service!
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