Every Child Deserves a 5th Birthday

It's funny, in the United States the death of a child is a tragedy. The death of a child from a treatable infectious disease makes headlines. As it should, since the leading causes of death for children 1-4 years of age in the Unites States are accidents, congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities.

Under-five mortality rate is the probability per 1,000 that a newborn baby will die before reaching age five, if subject to current age-specific mortality rates. In 2010, the under-five mortality rate in the United States was 8. This same year in Mozambique, the rate was 135. And the major cause, you guessed it, comes from a 100% preventable and treatable disease- malaria.

I am in no way justifying the deaths of children in the United States. In no way are they more or less important than the deaths of children in Moz. But here, this exorbitant number of deaths is not news. It is not a tragedy. It is just a way of life.

Many people are aware of World AIDS Day on December 1st, but less are informed of April 25th. Like World AIDS Day, World Malaria Day was created to raise awareness of the disease and its deadly effects around the world. In Mozambique, approximately 340 children die EVERY DAY from malaria. Roughly 85 children are infected every day with HIV (through mother-to-child transmission). It's time for malaria to get the recognition and notoriety it so truly deserves.

I'm not writing this to get people to donate money. I don't think foreign aid, specifically for fighting malaria, is the answer. In my opinion, the only solution is time and patience and well-informed Mozambican leaders who can generate behavior change in their own communities. Handing out mosquito nets is not an appropriate practice when the population is too poor and uneducated to pass up turning the supposed bed nets into fishing equipment or a food storage material.

Yes, unfortunately, there are no simple solutions. But that goes without saying here in Mozambique. Like so many other things, you must think "pouco a pouco" (little by little).


References:
The World Bank. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT
UNICEF. http://www.unicef.org/mozambique/child_survival.html

back to normal: mice, Mountain Dew and a music video

After a very lengthy and fabulous Christmas vacation, I came back to Monapo and got settled back into the regular grind- work Monday-Friday and relaxing/doing chores/eating chicken at Pica Pau on the weekends. Not too much has changed here in Monapo, except for the Mountain Dew that is now sold near the market. I was SO surprised to see the stuff, just too bad I don't drink it. Also, a new Mennonite family has moved in. It's so nice to have other Americans in town!I have not met the father of the family yet, but his wife and children are incredibly friendly. They have 2 dogs, kittens, and 2 monkeys! I was supposed to get one of the kittens (Simba), but he ran away before I got the chance to take him home.

Its been a slow start-up for work, but that is to be expected. Many of my colleagues still have not returned from holiday vacations but those who have returned are hard at work. SCIP recently created a new partnership with the community radios in Nampula province and I am the lead for SCIP Monapo's involvement with our community radio. The relationship requires community debates, reports on SCIP activities and interventions in the communities and radio 'spots' with health themes. Tonight is our first debate and I'm nervous! Along with 3 community leaders, a nurse and 2 HIV testing and counseling officials, my coordinator and I will participate in an HIV debate to be broadcasted over the radio.

Since returning from vacation, I've been battling against a family of rodents who have taken up residence in my house. I moved every food item into glass or plastic storage containers but the creatures just don't want to leave! While they have not caused much physical damage, the psychological damage has left me with insomnia. One night I woke at 3:30am to a mouse on top of me! I don't know how it got inside of my mosquito net (I guess I didn't tuck it in tight enough) and I don't know what it wanted, since I obviously don't have any food in my bed with me. Needless to say, I didn't sleep the rest of the night and only for a few hours each night afterward. Until one morning I woke up to find a dead mouse on the floor of my kitchen-the rodent poison finally took its toll! And 2 days later I was shocked to find a paralyzed rat (slowly dying from the poison) beside my mini-fridge. I was screaming and in no condition to remove the thing myself, so I got my 8 and 12-year old neighbors to help :)

Many people want to know how I spend my weekends here. So I thought I'd explain how I spent my time this past Saturday... I woke up early to meet some colleagues (members of SCIP Monapo's theater group) to have a meeting. I've asked them to help me with a workshop I'm going to be giving to community leaders on stigma and discrimination. So they wanted to show me a short skit they've been working on to perform at the workshop. Unfortunately, when I got to the office to meet them none of them were there! So I went over to Ariel and Leah's house (my new education volunteer sitemates) and chatted with Leah and some of our friends. Then I left to go pick up Simba, the kitten, from the Mennonite family. But of course when I arrived at their home they informed me that he ran away. Feeling pretty defeated, I stopped by the market to buy some fancy new plastic basins for washing clothes. I returned to my house to find 3 members of the theater group waiting for me and we were finally able to have a short meeting to talk about their involvement in the stigma workshop. After they left I washed clothes for 2 hours and ate leftovers (my attempt at pad thai) for lunch. Then, my friend Assane met me to go to the carpenters and ask about the prices of wood as I want to build a table in my kitchen to have space for preparing meals. We went back to my house after the carpenters where I invited Assane to watch an episode of "So You Think You Can Dance" (Season 6) with me. We didn't have time to finish the episode before another friend, Ismael, showed up to have me film his music video. Ismael has been asking me for months to help him with this video and we have just never had the time to do it before. So I spent about an hour filming him and his "dancer" with my camera as they performed to an original song written by Ismael. I'll let you all know when the video gets posted to youtube! You'll be able to see my lovely house and laundry (mostly underwear) hanging up in the background. When the boys finally left it was dark out so I locked up for the night, made banana pancakes for dinner, and fell asleep watching Robin Hood. All in all, a pretty solid Saturday.

Here's what February looks like- more collaboration with the radio, stigma and discrimination workshops in Monapo and Moma, stigma and discrimination refresher course in Nampula, Carnival in Quelimane (the biggest in Southern Africa!), Chocas or Ilha for the holiday weekend (Mozambican Hero's Day), and preparing to leave for vacation in SOUTH AFRICA!

thankgiveness

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving (or thankgiveness, as the Mozambicans like to call it)! Mine was very strange but still pretty wonderful. I spent the week before Thanksgiving in Nampula for a workshop on "best practices" with the entire SCIP Nampula team. The workshop was led by a young woman from Boston. While she did an amazing job facilitating the workshop, she does not speak any Portuguese so another American who works for SCIP, the 3 other PCVs who work for SCIP and I acted as translators all week. It was pretty exhausting.

At the workshop in Nampula I was asked to attend and help facilitate another workshop on stigma and discrimination, especially focused on HIV/AIDS. So me and 2 other SCIP PCVs went to Ribaue (a district in Nampula west of Nampula city) to help our fellow volunteer, Patty, who had coordinated the workshop along with the rest of her SCIP co-workers in Ribaue. The workshop was a huge success. Many of the community leaders that attended had no idea what the words "stigma" or "discrimination" even meant. But after the 3-day workshop, they were able to define the words, describe how stigma and discrimination can be displayed in their communities, and create plans to disseminate the information they learned to the members of their communities. Along with Jack (a PCV from my group, Moz 16), I led a discussion on "modes of transmission" and "portals of entry" for HIV and was pretty surprised by how much the community leaders knew on this subject.

After the workshop ended on Wednesday afternoon, a SCIP car took me, Jack, and Bethany (another Moz 16 SCIP PCV) to Malema, which is Bethany's site. Two of my friends from the province of Cabo Delgado came to Malema on Thursday and another Moz 16er from Niassa province came on Friday to celebrate Thanksgiving. We cooked ALL DAY on Friday. Literally. From 8am-6pm. We started with a delicious breakfast- fried eggs, hash brown potatoes with peppers and onions and french toast with banana and mango syrups. Afterward, we started the preparations for dinner. What's on a Mozambican Thanksgiving menu, you ask? Here's what we were able to come up with- mango salsa, cornbread, chicken parmesean, Jamaican macaroni salad, macaroni and cheese, curried vegetables, Mozambican beans (feijoada), rice, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole (with fried onions), beef roast, pumpkin cake, apple crumble, and ginger cookies with lime icing. We ate like kings.

Bethany invited several of her Mozambican friends over to eat with us and before eating we all stood in a circle and went around saying what we are thankful for. It was a little emotional, but the general consensus among the PCVs was being grateful for the amazing opportunity to be in Mozambique and to have each other to share the holiday with.

On Sunday we all left Malema and I rode the train back to Nampula. The scenery was absolutely amazing, riding through the lush mountain range. But it was nearly a 7 hour ride and we were all exhausted by the time we arrived in Nampula. Now, I am back in Monapo (finally!) and am still pretty exhausted. I have so much unpacking and setting-up to do in my new house. Not to mention house repairs and building furniture. And with Christmas right around the corner I am feeling overwhelmed! I never, ever thought I would be so busy as a PCV. But I would take this over having nothing to do any day.

Here's what my life looks like for the next month- spend as much time as possible with Vonnie (my sitemate) because she leaves to go home on Dec. 7th, work with Edmundo (my supervisor) to supervise the community distribution of birth control pills and condoms with our team of promoters and animators, get OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) from two neighboring communities legally registered and enrolled in school, welcome the Moz 17 Education PCVs (I'm getting 2 in Monapo!), go to Nampula for a week to work with the SCIP Monitoring and Evaluation official, travel South to Inhambane province for Christmas, and finally, celebrate the New Year in Maputo! 2012 will be here before I know it!

changes in addresses

The Peace Corps branch office in Nampula has moved locations and now has a new address (see right). The caixa postal (post office box) is still the same, so I should still get anything that was sent recently with the old address.

After an amazing week in Maputo for our Reconnect conference, I'm back in Monapo. While it was great to get away and spoil ourselves in a beautiful hotel, I'm happy to be back. This weekend we'll be saying goodbye to Megan as she leaves Monapo on Monday. Unbelievable. Then I'll move out of the irmas and into her house! I'm very excited but also a little nervous to be living on my own for the first time in my life. So wish me luck!

time flies when you're having fun

It has been quite a long time since I’ve officially updated on my time in Monapo. But things are going great, much better than I ever could have expected during Pre-Service Training! I am still living with the nuns and try to remind myself daily that come mid-November I will no longer have running water or a flushing toilet. Not to mention the delicious meals and desserts the nuns whip up! Still, I am looking forward to having more independence and being able to cook for myself. I have definitely gained weight since coming to Africa, and living with the nuns has not helped in this area! I know I’ll regret thinking this, but I’m looking forward to “tempo de fome” or “time of hunger.” Rumor is, come December, the only produce you’ll find at the market is tomatoes and onions.

I started local language classes with a boy in SCIP’s theater group as my instructor. I’m really trying, and Abel is a great teacher, but Macua is just really tough to learn. I know enough to greet people and introduce myself, and can pick up on words/phrases here and there when people are talking, but that’s about it. And unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll get much better. We just don’t have Macua sounds in English! Or Portuguese!

I spent the month of September working long hours Monday-Friday and enjoying the gorgeous beaches of Nampula province on the weekends! I spent a weekend in Ilha de Moçambique (Mozambique Island) and another weekend in Chocas. Ilha has 2 parts- one in which the locals live, full of mud and straw huts; and the other, the “tourist” side, filled with dilapidated buildings from the Portuguese colonization. You can easily see that Ilha must have been a really beautiful place during the colonization. And parts of it still are quite beautiful, but so much is just run-down. We didn’t spend much time on the beach because it is filled with trash and human waste (the majority of the locals’ houses lack latrines), so our trip was centered mostly around food. This, of course, was absolutely fine by me  Ilha has tons of great restaurants with food you can’t find in Monapo- pizza, pasta dishes, lobster, squid, club sandwiches, chocolate cake, etc. You can also get a gin and tonic or a glass of red wine! It was such a treat to eat such delicious food, but also very expensive on a PCV’s budget! Chocas beach was a completely different experience. The town of Chocas is this quaint little beach town with houses owned mainly by ex-pats and wealthy Mozambicans. There is a resort called Carrusca (see photos on my Facebook, if you haven’t already!) that is about 3K from the town. The only things you’ll find by Carrusca are a handful of bungalows, a restaurant, and beautiful, never-ending white sand. It is without a doubt the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. My friend, Caitlyn, and I rented a boat to take us to an island right off of the mainland. The ride out was absolutely terrifying. We even considered what we would do if the boat capsized. I knew I’d be able to swim to shore but was panicking about all of the electronics onboard! Long story short, we made if safely to shore and the experience on that island was well worth the nightmare we went through to get there. We spent hours just walking around collecting shells and staring out into the beautiful turquoise water. Even now as I write this, I cannot believe a place so incredibly untouched exists. They are in the works of building a restaurant on the island (knowing Mozambique it will probably take another 10 years to complete, if ever…and how would they regularly transport supplies, anyway?) but I really hope that never happens! Some places need to be left alone.

While Ilha and Chocas are probably the closest beaches to me, they are also the most expensive. Well, really any beach is expensive because their target populations are tourists or rich Mozambicans on vacation. So I obviously cannot afford to be at the beach every weekend. Nor would I want to because I like spending time in Monapo! We have a soccer field and I went to several games during September. Teams from all over Nampula province come to play. And my supervisor, the coordinator of SCIP Monapo, coaches a “health team” that plays other Monapo rec teams. The experience of a Mozambican soccer game is, oddly enough, very similar to being at a Manheim high school football game. The soccer field is THE place to be while a game is being played. Everyone at the game knows each other and all of the players by name. You can buy snacks to eat during the game- hard boiled eggs and weird little bean cakes. And guards walk in front of the bleachers with huge shotguns. Ok, so not everything is the same.

I am lucky enough to have 2 sitemates- Vonnie, an education volunteer and Megan, the health volunteer that I’m replacing. We also have 2 education volunteers, Jenn and Lauren, in a town about 15 minutes outside of Monapo, called Carapira. So I usually spend my weekend nights with them. Monapo has a few restaurants but we always go to one called Pica Pau. Along with all of the other restaurants in Monapo, Pica Pau serves one thing: Meio Frango (Half a chicken). My sister, Janine, thinks this is the funniest thing but the plate is really good! Half a grilled chicken, French fries, and a cabbage salad. But the whole experience of Pica Pau is really what makes the food so good. We usually go around 5 or 6pm, knowing that our food will show up 2 hours later. We always take card games to play while we are waiting. And when our server brings over a teapot and basin for us to wash our hands we know its only another 5-10 minutes until we have our chicken! But I’m certain the food would still be really good even if you weren’t completely starving.

So that’s pretty much my life. Honestly, things are starting to feel so normal that I just don’t know what to even blog about. Very few things shock me anymore, like they did in the beginning- grown men wearing Hello Kitty T-shirts, infants riding on motorcycles, a woman squatting to pee in a grassy area across from the market, grilled rat for sale on the side of the road, “Justin Beiber” written on the street in chalk, and so many exposed breasts (because of breastfeeding, not lack of clothing). But, I promise to do my best to start doing a better job of taking note of the things that are different here. Also, I apologize if that sentence, or any others, doesn’t make grammatical sense. I rarely write in English anymore!

just another day "at the office"

This past Tuesday was definitely my favorite day at work so far. An M&E (monitoring and evaluation) specialist from SCIP Nampula came down to work with our team. We spent all day out in the field visiting communities that collaborate with SCIP Monapo. The objective of our visits was to focus on the monitoring and evaluation systems that are currently in place for the comités de agua (community water committees) and clubes de jovens agricultores (youth agriculture clubs). The specialist from Nampula randomly picked 4 communities in Monapo district for us to visit. For 2 of the communities, we focused only on the comités de agua and for the other 2 communities, we looked at the M&E for the clubes de jovens agricultores.

The first community we went to, called Napala, is the one I am the most familiar with. It is the closest community to Monapo vila (where I live), only 9K, so I’ve been fortunate enough to attend many meetings and trainings there. One of the community members actually recognized me from a previous training I was at and greeted me, “Bom dia mana Adriana”. It made my day! We met the secretary of Napala’s comité de agua and walked with him to his house, where we sat on an esteira (large straw mat) underneath of a huge cashew tree. The M&E specialist and Duado, the M&E team member from my office, talked to the secretary and looked over forms. The specialist pointed out places where forms were completed incorrectly and Duado translated this information into Makua (the local language) for the secretary. The forms are really basic. They are written in Portuguese and are created by the leaders of SCIP Nampula. For example, the first page asks you to list the names of all members of the comité de agua. Pretty easy stuff. But things become tricky when you are asking an elderly man, with very limited schooling and Portuguese, to fill them out. So the specialist and Duado spent a lot of time going over the forms with the secretary, pointing out what he did correctly and what he needs to revise. Because Napala is so close to our office, team members are always making visits for trainings, meetings, or to simply check up. Therefore, the comité de agua is really organized and well-documented. The comités de agua and clubes de jovens agricultores of the other communities we visited that day were not nearly as organized or well documented. In one case, there was evidence of false reporting. Our SCIP Monapo records showed that the youth agriculture club had 38 members, which are required to be 10-24 years of age. But when we arrived to the community, their ledger only showed 20-some registered members, many of which were over 25 years. Additionally, the club was basically non-functioning. They had only received 1 visit from our clubes de jovens agricultores team member since the creation of the club. That visit was over a year ago. They hadn’t received seeds, gardening tools, or technical trainings on plant cultivation. So even though our documents showed a large, functioning club, in reality it was anything but.

The rest of our day continued in the same manner: traveling out to the communities, searching for the chefe (leader) or secretary of either the comité de agua or clube de jovens agricultores, and looking over and comparing our forms. We finished around 4pm and were treated to food and drink at a restaurant in the neighboring town. We ate conchs, fresh from Ilha de Moçambique, and cabrito (goat) with chunks of bread. Not your typical “happy hour” fare, but it was delicious with a cold beer after a long, hot day. Afterwards, we returned to the office for a brief and awkward meeting. The specialist informed our coordinator (my boss) of our findings and explained the severity of false reporting.

This was a special day. Not every day, in fact most, are not like this. First of all, when we go out into the communities almost everything is spoken in Makua. Fortunately, the M&E specialist is from Zambezia province where the local language is not Makua. It’s frustrating not understanding what is going on during meetings or trainings, but its more important that the community members understand. Some days I go to the office, wait 30 minutes for somebody else to show up, and then proceed to sit and play on my phone for several hours while they type away on their computers. Then, someone says “let us go” and we hop into the SCIP 4x4 truck and are out in the field until 5pm. Some days my “work day” is over at 10am. Some days I get to go back to the nun’s house for lunch. Some days we’re out in the field all afternoon and I’m famished by dinnertime. You just never know. So I make sure to wear comfortable clothing and shoes everyday (which is easy because jeans are considered “business dress” in Mozambique) and lather up with sunscreen before leaving the house.

a little bit about my job

In an effort to increase synergy across USAID/Mozambique’s programs in order to amplify their collective impact in Nampula Province, Pathfinder International, Population Services International (PSI), World Relief (WR), CARE (Cooperative Assistance and Relief Everywhere) and the Cooperative League of the USA (CLUSA) have established a partnership to implement the Strengthening Communities through Integrated Programming (SCIP) Project. Pathfinder will lead this seasoned Team that has more than 35 collective years of experience working in Mozambique.

Team Member & Project Area of Responsibility

1. Pathfinder- project management

monitoring and evaluation

capacity building

reproductive health, family planning and maternal health

subgranting and subcontracting

2. PSI- communication (Behavior Change, Interpersonal)

3. World Relief- HIV and OVC (orphans and vulnerable children)

interventions, child survival, linkages to non-health programs, FBO (faith-based organizations) networking

4. CLUSA- training of youth farmers in conservation farming

household handling and storage techniques

5. CARE- potable water and sanitation

The SCIP Project aims to strengthen capacity of the public health system, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) to reach the seven results defined in the RFA. The Project will work at the provincial, district, and community levels in 14 districts of Nampula in a coordinated and complimentary manner with other USG (US Governemnt)-Funded development activities, especially with the Food for Peace Title II Multi-Year Assitance Program (MYAP) Cooperating Sponsor. So for me, the respective areas are: Province- Nampula, District- Monapo, and community- all those within Monapo district, which are many, but the ones we work with the most often are located within 50K of Monapo city.

Pathfinder and its partners are well positioned to rapidly implement activities that will assist the Government of Mozambique and USAID/Mozambique to achieve three Strategic Objectives: rapid rural income growth sustained in target areas; increased use of child survival and reproductive health services in target areas; and transmission of HIV reduced and the impact of the epidemic mitigated.

The Project Goal: SCIP will improve quality of life at the household and community level by improving health and nutrition status and increasing household economic viability. Project results are described under four synergistic objectives: 1) Strengthen and sustain facility health services; 2) Facilitate and promote community health and hygiene behaviors; 3) Enhance livelihood capacity; 4) Increase availability of multi-use water systems for health and wealth. Implementation of interventions supporting these objectives will transform communities and achieve the goal of: Healthier, stronger families, less vulnerable to disease, contributing to increased economic productivity and involved in civil society activities.