Down to the wire.

 The last five weeks since I've been back at site have been pretty jam packed. I've been scrambling to finish my projects and I'm happy to say that I might be finishing my coloring book project tomorrow! yayyy! Well, if everything goes according to plan, that is.... After coming back from Maputo, I've carried out the coloring book project in three new places- an orphanage called Rio de Deus (run by American and Brazilian missionaries), another orphanage called Projecto Nihuersi that is funded by the Catholic Church and a small pre-school that is run by a small local church in Bairro 7 de Septembro. The plan is to return to 7 de Septembro this Thursday with more materials and carry out the activity with 40 more kids. 

Rio de Deus Orphanage
"Mosquitos are not our friends!" aha

Malaria Activities w/ OVCs at Rio de Deus

Boys Dorm



totally peace coprs-ing



Projecto Nihuersi
Virginia leading the session




Preschool run by Igreja Pedra Vista, 7 de Septembro
the outside of the mud-hut preschool



kinda blurry but a good action shot nonetheless 


Two weeks ago, I participated and helped run the REDES workshop for Manica & Sofala provinces. It was held here in Chimoio and had the participation of 34 girls, 10 facilitators and 4 PCVs.  The workshop ran pretty smoothly despite a few last minute changes and the girls had a blast. I think it may have been the best secondary project event in my whole two years as a PCV. 


Fatima and I led a session about reproductive health



Claudia & Rosa

:)


Inspirational Guest Speakers 


Vilma 

Income Generation activities



Group picture!

Nerzita!

At the end of the workshop, I said a few parting words to the girls and to the facilitators to thank them for allowing me to be part of this project and for all the memories I've created through my involvement in REDES.... I'd like to say that I was composed and cool during this brief despedida, but who the fuck am I kidding. I broke down and cried in front of EVERYONE. OH GOD. I'm the WORST! 

Well, that's that. Right now, I'm in the midst of planning the REDES Handover. We've elected the new board of PCV leadership and if you remember from last year, the new and old leadership gets together for a two day conference to review the happenings of the previous year, plan for the upcoming year, and officially transfer responsibilities over. This handover will take place in two weeks from Friday and after that- I am officially retired from Peace Corps secondary projects. 

In addition to closing out my responsibilities with these two projects, I've been trying to work on my resume, plan my travels post COS, and basically get my life together. Resume drafting and getting my life together hasn't been too successful so far, but! I did manage to plan my COS trip! Here's the tentative plan for those who are curious as to when I land in LAX, eeeek!!

COS date: July 31st; Hang out in Mozambique for a few days after that...

Aug 13th: fly Maputo > Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Aug 16- aug 30: Overland Safari tour from Dar es Salaam to Victoria Falls (5 countries in 15 days!)
Aug 31: Victoria Falls> Lusaka, Zambia
Sept 1: fly Lusaka> NYC!
Sept 2: Land in NYC; NYC for a few days to visit amigos, check out schools, eat good food!
Sept 8: NYC> DC ; friends/touristy shit/schools/food
Sept 11: DC> NOLA! ; visiting some friends 
Sept 14: NOLA> LAX ?! ahahhhhhh!!! :D

Again, this is a tentative plan. I am still in the process of getting things sorted out, but if it all works out... I will be home mid September. The COS trip is a bit longer than I expected, but I found this company that does these overland tours and figured I might as well go for it! There's so much I wanted to see and not having a travel companion/the restlessness of just wanting to be home already almost kept me from it. Sure, the trip is gonna be long, but then again- when am I going to be in this corner of the world again?! I might as well pack in the game drives and all the African sights I wanna see before moving on. After all, it's not like I have any commitments to come home to! Just kidding, Sneaker, Mamas coming!!

so excited to see this little guy soon! <3

Will post updates when I finalize travel plans and keep ya'll in the loop!
Até a proxima!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3 months in!

Image
Oi,  Two days ago marked my 3 month mark at site! Whoooo! It’s definitely the first of many Peace Corps milestones. Reconnect Conference also took place last week in Maputo. Reconnect Conference happens after your first 3 months at site (our conference was a week premature) and its designed to bring your group back together, share your experiences from site, talk about the challenges you’ve experienced & brainstorm some resiliency strategies to help cope. We also had a session on Monitoring & Evaluation, which is just a fancy way of describing the process of ‘reporting’ back to Washington. I left Chimoio early Sunday (the 4th) and flew down to Maputo. It was great to see my fellow Moz18ers once again and hear about everyone’s experiences at site. We had daily sessions from 8-5 Monday through Thursday and a half day on Friday. On the first night there I got to go to a reggae show on the marginal (like the Cali PCH, but in Maputo) which was pretty great. Aft...
Read more

fidel castro.

July 11, 2012 I just got back from a short trip to the northern province of Gaza… I visited a current volunteer in a barrio called Fidel Castro, which is about a 30 minute drive from the capital of Xai-Xai. The trip was definitely a learning experience… a lot of questions ran through my head during the last few days, and although I did not fall in love with the barrio of Fidel Castro, I am glad I got to see first hand what the PCV experience is like. I think that in general, the Peace Corps experience is characterized by highs and lows. Sometimes you are happy to be here and other times you can’t seem to stop asking yourself what the hell you signed up for… These last few days have certainly followed this pattern…. My alarm went off at 2:40-ish on Saturday morning. I got dressed, gathered my things and set off to meet the rest of the volunteers by 3am. I walked over to our meeting spot with Carla and her host mom in absolute darkness. There was a power outage right as I was ...
Read more

O ano ja acabou!

Image
The year is over (well, almost!). December is here and health associations are getting ready to close down for the holiday season, meaning that work is coming to a halt d'aqui a nada . Last week was actually a really busy week of work (hey! I never get to say that!) that served to pretty much close the associations activities for the year. Here's a short re-cap of the past week: Monday, November 25th was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and my association, LEMUSICA, kicked off a series of activities: Monday Nov. 25th- International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women The association led a march and performed a dance to "One Billion Rising" in the center of town. The director gave a speech about cultural norms that perpetuate the tolerance of violence against women. She called on the crowd to defy cultural norms and recognize violence against women as a grave human rights violation. Sometimes, when bys...
Read more