It has been a while since my last blog entry, but that is because it has been a while since I've been in a place where the internet works well enough for me to upload things! =) Right now, it is Wednesday, December 16th 2009, 7pm and I am eating the third meal that I have made all by myself since being in Mozambique! What did I make for dinner tonight? Beans! And besides the fact that they are incredibly salty, they taste ok, I did refill my bowl. They taste better than the soupy sphagetti I made last night. A lot has happened since I last wrote. And I don't blog as my journal, so it is thus hard to bring to mind what exactly to tell you. I do suggest that you look at my pictures on facebook, because there you will find more than my words express.

I'm sitting in the guest house for Save The Children, in Morrumbala, Zambezia. Zambezia is the Province, Morrumbala is the District and Save The Children is the organization that I am working alongside with. Yes, I found out on Thanksgiving Day that this, Morrumbala, would be my site for two whole years. And my "job" well, let me tell you a little bit about that, what I know of it thus far. Save The Children is an NGO that you might be familiar with, it is very large. The main office for Zambezia is in a city called Quelimane, about 2 hours from here by car (about 4 hours in a chappa-the normal form of transportation here in Moz) and one of the two smaller offices that work more "hands-on," in the community, is here in Morrumbala, my new home. All Moz 14ers (health) from the Peace Corps have been paired up with an organization, from community based, to faith based, to large NGOs all throughtout the country. The director of the health program, Crisiti, along with all the trainers that were working with us the last 3 months decided which volunteer went where. They paired us up according to a couple interviews they had with us, our skills, and what they thought would be a good fit. And so far, I'm definetly feeling that they placed me well! =)

A short description: I will be working with a home-based care program, a pilot project in child-focused home-based care. I will be working with community activists to carry out Home-Based Care (HBC) and Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) care activities and support the staff of Save The Children in planning activities. The community activista's activities include visits to patient's homes at least twice per week, the provision of first aid and home-based health care activities for the acutely ill, the referral of patients and family members to public and program supports. They also accompany patients to the hospitals and/or provide references for patients' hospital visits, supervise patients' adherence to medication (especially in the case of patients on ARVs or who are being treated for TB) and participate in the distribution of food baskets to patients who qualify for food support. Activistas' responsibilies include the provision of psycho-social support to patients and their children. As part of this attention to psycho-social support in the provison of Home-Based Care, the activistas of each neighborhood work as a group to coordinate and run weekly or bi-weekly activities for children or parents with chronic illnesses, choronically ill children, and other neighborhood children. These include football and other games as well as dance, singing,, and theatre workshops.

Ok, did you get all that? =) My job, is assisting in all those things, because I work closely with the activistas! The main goals of Save The Children-Mozambique are
1.) Mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDs in communities, especially children
2.) Food security and nutrition
3.) Education, support to improve instruction, and the quality and participation of communities in schools
4.) Responding to emergencies (ie: floods)

This is a NEW site, as in I am the first person from the Peace Corps to live in Morumbala. Also, I have NO site-mate. The closest PCV to me is Jordan, and she is about 2 hours away. I have been here for 3 days now, and things are definetly different. But, this is the Peace Corps I imagined. The last 3 months have been wonderful! I learned a new language, which I am communicating quite well in; I gained so much knowledge about public health from amazing trainers (thank you Caroline and Sonia!!), specifically about HIV/AIDs, malaria, cholera and TB (those that affect Mozambicans the most). I lived with a terrific host family, who I grew to love and plan to visit in the next two years. And I made amazing friends, whom have impacted me in ways that I didn't think could happen in such a short amount of time. And now...I'm far away from my host family, seperated from all my new friends. I've been dropped off, in what some would call the middle of no where, with all my many bags, ready to make a new home. It won't be easy, it wasn't easy when I first arrived, but at the end, 3 months into it, Namaacha had become my home. I truly believe that the same will happen here, not immediatly, but in time. I pray that in 3 months I will feel at home here in Morrumbala. My house is going to be ready to move into next week (so they say). I'll let you know about that another time.

For now, I think I shall leave you. I've told you about my job and my new "home." Next time I will share culturual stories, and get to more of those great questions posed by wonderful Lisa! =) But I DO want to tell you how to send me letters/packages/ect. the address now to send me things is:

C/O Amanda James
Save The Children-Maputo
Rua da Tchamba 398
C.P. 1854
Ciadade de Maputo
Mozambique

What to send you ask? Well, you can NEVER go wrong sending BOOKS, any book! I have a lot of free time on my hands and not enough to read. MOVIES, can always watch another DVD, I do have my comp and sometimes have found watching a movie to be very theraputic! =) GROUND COFFEE!!! O yes....I brought my french press (thank you Lord) and yet sadly ground coffee is very hard to come by here. And from there, just think, what would YOU like to recieve when you were so far away from home, what would you miss? Cuz I prob miss it too! Let me tell you, Target, I have come to the realization that Target is by far the best store ever! If I could go back to America I would go on a quick shopping spree there! lol (but really!) But really, there is just SOOO much joy to be found in getting ANYTHING in the mail!! Thus far I have gotten 2 packages (remember it takes a LONG time for things to get here, so maybe you sent one and I just haven't gotten it yet) and it made my MONTH!! =) o as a side note: I am practicing yoga a lot and incorporating meditation into my prayer time, and I am learning a lot through these two new practices, and also enjoying them very much! So, that is to say, anything related to either of those two things; yoga & mediation, books, dvds, incense...be creative, would be O SO APPRECIATED!! ;) yoga hasn't quite caught on here yet!! Ok, ok, one more thing I WISH I would've thought of before coming here, that I'm just gonna throw out there, since we are on the topic, I wish I would've thought of buying a kit to start me on some new HOBBY! Anything really, knitting, hemp, something that I don't know how to do and usually don't have the time to learn and now have ample time. I am starting to garden though, well, ok I plan to start, once I move into my new home. So just throwing that out there, if you see any cook starting kits for...anything that you wish you had the time to learn to do, I prob wish I could learn to do it and thus you can live vicariously though me! ;)

NOTE: If sending a package, check into the flat rate boxes @ the post office, its the best deal! And you can fill it up w/heavy things like BOOKS!! ;) And remember it's best to lie about the value/whats actually in the box AND lastly decorate the box in some kind of religous manner (get creative!) lol these are just ways that will HOPEFULLY keep things from being stolen.

I hope this long amount of writing finds you happy, well, and in good health. Thank you for taking the time to get all the way down here to the bottom! =) That makes you a true friend! lol ;) O and my new motto here, "Don't just do something, stand there!" You should try it out to, hard to adjust to, but you notice things that you never saw before!

So much love from Morrumbala, Mozambique to you, wherever you are reading this
XoXo Amanda