Rainy Season and a Holiday Trip

Hi Friends!

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season. I, along with 4 of my friends, took a trip to Vilankulo, Mozambique. It was my first real experience in African travel and it was an adventure. Our way there included a pick-up with over 24 people and ten cases of beer and a 15 hour bus ride. The bus ride was one of the worst experiences of my life, the bus was way overbooked so we had to stand for the entire time and were pushed around my the other passengers. It did not leave us with a favorable first impression of Mozambicians. The bus was also extremely hot whenever it stopped and I ended up being sick because of my malaria medicine, luckily my friend Mike had a ziploc bag. We survived and were saved by a flat tire that enabled us to take a mini-bus the last 60 km. We took mini-buses home to avoid that experience and it was much better.

With that said I had a wonderful time on my trip. Our guesthouse was right across from the beach so we started many days with a morning swim. The Indian Ocean is beautiful and since we were there for a full moon we saw some amazing tides. We were also able to visit Bazarato Archipelago and go snorkeling. Sadly we did not see dugongs, sea cows which are highly endangered, and sea turtles. But we did see an amazing reef with clown fish, a lion fish, puffer fish and lots of parrot fish. It was truly beautiful and wonderful to see a healthy reef. We were also able to spend the night on one of the islands, although we were attacked by crabs in our sleep.

It was interesting to see another country besides Zambia, the most striking thing was how much more infrastructure there was in Mozambique. It was frustrating to once again not know the local language, travelig in Mozambique without knowing Porutgese is hard as many of the waiters and sales people knew limited english. It gave us all a chance to remember our Spainish and be greatful for even limited Nyanja that I know.

Currently its the rainy season and will be for quite awhile. While my neighbors are off that their fields I've been helping test people for malaria at my clinic. My area has a major problem with malaria and some days we have 20-30 people test positive. Seeing children throw-up and have seizures from malaria has given me an even greater drive to do something about it and take my own malaria medicine everyday. Yesterday while I was there we had two child deaths which was not an easy thing to know about. To see the mothers come out and just cry, and then have to walk back home was terrible.

I've attended two funerals since being posted. Funerals in Zambia are a lot different then in the US. Mostly it involves of wailing of loved ones, wailing is the most intense crying that you will ever hear it, I can feel it in my bones. That usually lasts a day and then the body is brought and a eulogy and small sermon is given before the procession to the graveyard. Once the wailing ends almost all signs of outward grief are over.

Well I don't want to end on a sad note...Tomorrow I am off to Lusaka for In-Service Training. A nice 10 workshop to give us a little more knowledge, we are going to do gardening which I am very excited for because I finally got some land to plant a few veggies. However I am most looking forward to seeing a movie or two, eating cheese, ice-cream, and bread, and seeing my friends.

I want to say thanks for all the Christmas and B-day cards, I love mail.

Love,
Allie